Chapter 1

When you can’t remember who you are, and one day you just happen to wake up in a scratchy bed that smells like antiseptic, it doesn’t take you too long before you realize that you don’t have a lot of options. There’s the obvious first choice—leave—but unless you have some other place to go, it’s really not a good idea. Deep down inside, you probably know that whatever medical facility you are in is actually trying to help you; especially if you’re worried about your personal safety. The second choice you have is to stay where you are and hope that one day, you’ll find out why you’re in a green room wearing a very unflattering (for lack of a better description) piece of paper.

When this happened to me, I really did want to leave whatever hospital had “rescued” me. I spent hours plotting and planning, right up to the part where I would be free to find out “who” I was and “where” I came from. Some days were better than others; on the days my mind was clear from whatever drugs they were giving me, I would try to figure out a way to steal my poor nurse’s uniform. Sometimes through the vents, I could hear the nurses and doctors talking about bussing in from the suburbs. In my heart of hearts, I convinced myself that these buses were magical, that riding one would recover some mundane clue that would point me in the direction of my family or friends. I believed that the smallest thing—a kind word, a familiar face—would unlock one of my memories. Unable to get on that accursed bus, I would spend hours analyzing bits and pieces of my personality. As the days melted into one another, I grew more and more impatient, pacing endlessly in my room until my food was served. Every night that I was able to sleep, I would dream of a man that would whisk me away from the prison my mind was somehow responsible for.

In between wishing and whining, I met William.

That day (of all the days I spent in the hospital) is the one I recall the most because the world was crying. Streams of water ran down the outside of my private room’s windows; I’d take my finger and trace their path as the drops of rain fell to their death on the sidewalk below, one for each endless day I was stuck in that place.

I had been standing there, counting the days that I could remember, when someone called me by a name I didn’t know. “Sophie,” a man’s voice had said. “Do you want to leave?” Thoughts rushed into my mind how I must have looked ridiculous to him, making fingerprints on the glass in a patient’s shift, but I turned around to him anyway with my eyes closed, trembling. It wasn’t until after I said “yes” that I had opened them, hoping that the man I just said “yes” to wasn’t ugly or unkind or worse. The man had introduced himself to me as my boyfriend, William Sands, and told me (as you might a child) that my name was Sophia Miller, but everyone else called me “Sophie.”