His expression clouds. “I can’t help you with this morning.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, puzzled.
“I didn’t see you.”
“You mean I left even earlier than you did?”
“No, Ally, you weren’t here at all. You’ve been gone for two whole days.”
6
I hear his words, but they stall out in my brain.
“Hugh, I don’t understand,” I say. “What are you talking about?”
“I haven’t set eyes on you since Tuesday morning.”
The full-blown panic I experienced this morning had slowly subsided, but it now it rears its head again like a jungle cat catching the scent of prey on the wind.
“But … we ordered in.” I think of the vague memory of the evening I’d shared with Dr. Agarwal. “We watched TV.”
“That was Monday night.” Hugh’s expression is pained. “You were in bed when I left the next morning at around—I’d say, seven—and I assumed you were asleep. That was the last time I saw you before I came to pick you up at the hospital.”
My heart races as I grasp the truth. I’ve been so focused on making sense of today that I didn’t give much thought to the days immediately prior. But Tuesday and Wednesday, I now realize, are a total blank. Where the hell was I?
“Why didn’t you explain this to Dr. Agarwal?”
“I wanted to get you out of there, and it seemed that the less said at the moment, the better.”
“But … weren’t you worried about where I was?” I say, almost pleading. Why hadn’t Hugh called the police?
“Yes, of course I was, but not because I thought you were in any danger.” He takes a breath, exhales. “We … we had a big argument before bed Monday night. I thought you’d gone to stay with a friend for a couple of nights. Gabby, maybe.”
It’s not that odd that his mind went to her. Gabby’s the first important friend I made in New York—we ended up sharing an apartment after we met through mutual friends—and though we’re wildly different, we’ve been close for more than a decade. But the idea of my taking off seems unfathomable.
“Hugh, that’s crazy. How could you think I would just move out for a few days?”
He swipes a hand over his scalp, raking his fingers through his short brown hair. “You said you needed space, that you wanted time alone to think, and so I took you at your word. I tried calling you, of course—a bunch of times. But you never called me back.”
I push myself up from the sofa, stumbling slightly on the edge of the rug.
“Ally, please sit down,” he insists.
But I can’t, and instead pace in front of the coffee table, trying to grapple with what he’s just revealed.
“So what was the fight about?” I ask. That’s the million-dollar question, after all.
He rises from the couch himself and heads to the island, where he pours another glass of wine.
“It was my fault,” he says, avoiding my gaze momentarily. “It was a discussion I was hoping to keep positive, but it ended up spiraling in the wrong direction.”
“A discussion about what?”
“Kids. I pressed you again.”
“Well, how bad did it get?”
“We weren’t screaming, if that’s what you mean.”
No, we wouldn’t have screamed. We’re both controlled and averse to messiness, and that’s how I prefer it.
“But it did get a little heated,” he adds. “And you seemed really upset.”
Mostly I’ve tried to be understanding of Hugh’s position. I mean, let’s face it, I pulled a bait and switch on the guy, leading him to believe when we married that I was enthusiastic about parenthood but then developing cold feet. That said, the sudden pressure from him was unexpected. It was as if “have a kid” was the next box he wanted to tick off after “make partner” and “buy a dream apartment.” But as I’d told Dr. Agarwal, Hugh had promised to table the issue for a while. I must have been really pissed when he raised it again the other night.
And yet, how could a fight on well-trodden terrain be enough to make me disassociate, lose track of my identity?
“Do you think I was at Gabby’s all this time?” That would be some kind of relief—meaning (1) at least I was safe and (2) she’ll have a few answers for me.
“No. I called her Wednesday morning, hoping to make contact with you, and it was clear you hadn’t gone there.”
“Did you ask her directly?”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t want to let on what had happened in case you weren’t there. So I told her I needed a few ideas for your birthday, and she ended up giving me a bunch of suggestions. It was clear from her tone that you weren’t at her place, and that she probably had no clue about our argument.”
I throw up my hands, more confused than ever. “If I wasn’t with Gabby, where was I?”
“At another friend’s, I guess.”
It’s hard to imagine who that could be. My other two closest friends aren’t in New York at the moment: Diane recently accepted a job in Chicago, and John is freelance writing from Dallas while his partner handles a two-month project there.
“Maybe I stayed in a hotel. Do you know if I took a bag?”
“I assumed you did, but I haven’t taken a look in your closet. But I don’t think you were at a hotel. I checked the credit card statement on Wednesday afternoon. Like I said, I wasn’t worried at that point, but of course I wanted to know where you were. The only charge was for around fifteen dollars for food on Wednesday. It must have been for lunch.”
“Where was it?”
“A place called Eastside Eats. I googled it and it’s on Fifty-First Street between Third and Lex.”
I can’t imagine what I would be doing in Midtown East. I’m rarely in that part of the city.
“According to the website,” Hugh adds, “it looks like it’s your standard-issue gourmet café.”
That tells me nothing other than the fact that at some point while I was missing, I went hunting for a cup of coffee and maybe my usual tuna salad and sprouts on multigrain.
“What about my bank card? Did I ever take cash from an ATM?”
“Nope.”
I glance around the room, hoping again for a prompt, for a hint of any kind.
“Was the fight in here?”
He shakes his head. “It started in the den, right after we turned off the TV.”
“What did we watch?”
“A documentary. About the financial meltdown in 2008.”
“Okay,” I say, as images from that day pop up in my memory, “I do remember Monday.” I spent a chunk of the day at WorkSpace with my assistant/researcher, Nicole. Then Hugh and I had dinner and watched the documentary. “But nothing after that.”
Nothing. I grab my head in my hands. “This is crazy.”
“Ally, as Dr. Agarwal said, it’s important not to stress yourself out.”
“I’d be much less stressed if I could figure out where I was all this time … I wonder if I managed to show up for my appointment with Dr. Erling on Wednesday.”
“If you missed it, Erling will clearly understand. You’re going to get ahold of her, right?”
“I already left her a message. God, she has to help me remember.”
“Is it really the end of the world if you don’t end up remembering everything? The key thing is that it doesn’t happen again, and that means getting the best medical help.”
It does feel catastrophic to me; there’s a sense of fear creeping up my back, spreading over me. Fear about the missing days and what happened to me during that time. I grip my head again, as if the pressure could somehow force the memories to the surface.
“I also think you should see a neurologist for a second opinion,” Hugh adds. “Maybe you did sustain a concussion.”
“Yes, that makes sense, I guess,” I say, but I’m still thinking about Tuesday and Wednesday. “Shit, what about my podcast on Tuesday? What if I didn’t show for it?”
“You’re okay on that front. You’d told me before this that you’d banked one last Tuesday and weren’t recording this week.”
That’s right. I remember that now.
“Ally, why don’t we table this until tomorrow?” Hugh steps toward me and pulls me against his chest. “This can’t be doing you any good tonight.”
He’s right, I realize. I’m exhausted and feeling weirdly fragile. By rehashing this, I’m doing the opposite of what Agarwal suggested. The last thing I want is to find myself back in the psych unit.
Five seconds later the intercom rings with the concierge announcing our food is here, and while we wait for the knock on our door, I set the table, grateful for a menial task to occupy my mind.
During the meal I ask Hugh about the boat ride with the potential client. He doesn’t like the guy, he admits, and is thinking of foisting him onto another lawyer in the firm. The conversation seems stilted at times, as if we’re two strangers attending a convention and eating lunch side by side in the hotel ballroom.
Shortly after ten o’clock, we dress for bed. A peek at the top shelf of my closet indicates that my overnight bag is still there, and it appears as though my clothes are all accounted for. I think of the foul-smelling skirt and blouse I’d stuffed in the hamper earlier. Clearly, I had been wearing them for days.
Once I crawl beneath the covers, Hugh reaches out and spoons me, and I relax a little into his strong, smooth arms. Before long, his breathing goes deep, indicating he’s drifted off. I’m bone-tired, but every inch of me resists sleep. I’m afraid that when I wake up this might all be gone again.
After close to an hour of lying in bed wide-eyed and wired, I unwrap Hugh’s arms, slip out of bed, and grab my laptop and calendar from the alcove. Quietly I pad down the hall to the living room. I know I should be giving my brain a rest, but there must be answers waiting for me if I’m willing to dig.
Using our portable phone—which despite the endless robocalls, I’ve kept for years as a backup—I start with a call to Gabby, whose cell-phone number I know by heart. It’s after eleven, but she’s a night owl. She’s also a good fibber when she has to be, and I’m praying that she knows more than she let on to Hugh. The call goes to voice mail. I leave a message saying I need to speak to her ASAP, and asking her to call our apartment phone because my iPhone is missing in action.
Next I open my laptop and google “dissociative state.” It’s defined just as Dr. Agarwal described. “Dissociative disorders,” I read, “are typically experienced as startling, autonomous intrusions into the person’s usual way of responding or functioning. Due to their unexpected and largely inexplicable nature, they tend to be quite unsettling.”
The understatement of the year.
As I continue to read, I learn they’re sometimes referred to as “fugue” states, but the medical profession has moved away from using that term.
And then there’s this: “The major characteristic for all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality, rather than a loss of reality, as in psychosis.”
Thank god for small favors, but none of this is telling me what I really want to know.
I open a new window and call up the website for Eastside Eats. I definitely don’t remember being there. I stare hard at the home-page photos. Did I sit at one of those wooden tables, consume a croissant or sandwich? It’s distressing to think I don’t recall a second of it.
I move on to my calendar next, starting with Tuesday. Like today, most of the morning was blocked off for writing. I reach for my laptop again and click on the “book” folder only to discover that it was last saved on Monday. So that’s not what I was doing Tuesday morning.
Tuesday afternoon on the calendar is mostly blank since, as Hugh had pointed out, I didn’t need to be in the podcast studio that day. At 3:30 I’d scheduled a phone interview with a new source for my book, a woman named Glenda Payne, but I have no idea whether I ended up calling her.
Wednesday morning is also blocked off for work on the book, followed by my appointment with Erling at one P.M. After that is a notation to “shop for new coat.” I had saved that activity for after Columbus Day, when winter coat prices always start to drop.
Next, I scroll through emails received and sent, starting with Tuesday morning. Though I have no recollection of doing so, I composed several messages between 9:00 and 9:17 A.M. One was to my editor regarding the proposed catalog copy for my book. I sound perfectly coherent, as if nothing was awry. “The copy is great in general, but the phrase we want in this context is ‘money market fund,’ not ‘money market account,’” I’d told the editor. “They’re not interchangeable.” Hardly the sound of a woman who’s becoming unhinged.
Another email was to Nicole about a flight for an upcoming speech, nothing unusual there. She replied that she was on it and also reminded me she was headed out of town that day to attend her sister’s wedding and wouldn’t be back at WorkSpace until next week.
Interestingly, this batch of emails was sent from my phone rather than my laptop, which suggests I might have been on the move during that period.
From 9:17 A.M. onward, there were no outgoing emails, and every one to me since then—and there are plenty—has gone unanswered. To my chagrin, I see a message from Glenda Payne asking if we ended up with our wires crossed about the time. Lovely. And also one Wednesday evening from Dr. Erling, wondering why I didn’t make the appointment and asking if everything is okay.
So I was a no-show, which means Erling won’t be able to offer any clues.
I see there’s also a “just checking in” email from my father, who’s been spending the fall in San Diego with my half brother Quinn and his family, gaining his strength back after his heart attack in July. God, it’s been three days since I had any contact with my dad, when we usually talk every day or every other. I quickly reply saying hi, love you, sorry I’ve been so busy but will write more later.
Finally, I glance through emails from the week before, wondering if anything I see will shed light on why I showed up at Greenbacks, but there’s nothing. Just for the hell of it, I search for my last email exchange with Damien. It turns out it was roughly five years ago, the week I left the company.
I chew on my thumb for a minute and then jump up. I grab a pad and pencil from the island counter, and return to the couch, where I begin scribbling down a timeline. I know I can be really anal, but it helps me to put things in writing.
MONDAY
evening: dinner, TV, argument
TUESDAY
7:00: still in bed
9:00–9:17: sent emails
WEDNESDAY
Possibly lunchtime: bought food at Eastside Eats
THURSDAY
8:05: arrived at Greenbacks
This offers next to nothing about where I was those days, especially after dark. What did I do for food? And where did I sleep? Somehow, no matter what it takes, I’m going to have to fill in the blanks.
But ultimately, I need answers to more than the “where?” and “when?” questions. I need to know why I lost my sense of self. Was it really because of a fight with Hugh regarding kids?
Or was it instead—as Agarwal prompted me to wonder—because of a trauma from the past? The only thing that fits the bill is something that happened to me when I was nine years old. But that can’t be it, can it? Would a dreadful afternoon from so long ago really have made the wheels come off for me?
7
When I wake the next morning, I still feel exhausted and frayed at the edges. Hugh’s side of the bed is empty, though I detect the aroma of sautéing onions drifting from the living area. He’s making breakfast. Perched on the edge of the mattress, I quickly comb through my memory, praying that somehow the missing days have emerged as I slept, but they haven’t.
At least I’ve woken up in my own bed.
After dressing, I find Hugh at the stovetop, standing over a sizzling skillet with a Williams Sonoma dish towel tucked into his khakis. He smiles but I detect a wariness in his eyes.
“Hey, how you feeling?” he asks.
“Okay, I guess. Rested.” Though that’s a stretch. I didn’t crawl into bed again until after midnight.
“I thought you could use one of my pepper and onion omelets.”
“Fantastic … Why aren’t you dressed for work?”
“I figured I’d hang around here for the day. There’s nothing on my schedule that can’t be rearranged.”
I’d love his company, but he’s in the middle of a big case at work, and I hate to take him from it. “Hugh, I promise I’ll be fine, and if you’re here, it’ll only make me feel more like a patient.”
He looks relieved. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, please.”
“Okay, but I’d really appreciate it if you stayed in today and just tried to relax.”
I nod, knowing I shouldn’t push myself.
“By the way,” he adds. “I’ve emailed a few people for neurologist recommendations, without saying what the issue is. I hope to have a name by later today. Any word from Dr. Erling?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure I’ll hear from her as soon she checks her email.”
“Let me know when you do. By the way, do you plan to tell your family what happened?”
“Roger, yes, but definitely not my dad. It would be too stressful for him.”
“How about my parents? Should I say anything to them?”
“Let’s not for now, Hugh. I’m counting on this sorting itself out, and I don’t want to worry them unnecessarily.”
There’s a bit more to it than that. I like Hugh’s parents, who have been generally lovely to me. But they’re fairly high on the uptight scale, and I’m sure this news would wig them out.
Hugh and I eat breakfast at the table, watching the nearly cloudless sky brighten. At several junctures we seem oddly at a loss for words. Is he on pins and needles, I wonder, terrified I’ll unravel again?
After changing into a suit, Hugh tells me good-bye, promising to stop by an AT&T store this morning and outfit my old phone with a new SIM card so I can start making calls.
I pour myself another cup of coffee and, using my laptop, respond to the most urgent emails in my in-box, including the one from Glenda Payne, the interview subject I dropped the ball on. I apologize profusely and ask her if we can reschedule. I also shoot a response to Sasha Hyatt, a former beauty editor who’s convinced she can transform herself into a personal finance guru and has been foisted on me as an intern by an executive with the company that’s sponsoring my podcast. She’s written me three times since Tuesday, wondering if I received the research she’d emailed me for the next show. I tell her yes, I have it, but I’ve been under the weather and will need to follow up later.
Just as I’m finishing my coffee, the portable phone by the couch rings. When I lift the receiver, I see Gabby’s name on the screen and the sight of it triggers a rush of relief.
“Hot date?” I answer. “Or did you go to bed ridiculously early?”
“What? Wait, did you forget?”
My blood seems to freeze. “Forget what?”
“That I’m in London?”
“Oh gosh, sorry,” I say, suddenly recalling that she’d planned to leave this week on a trip for the jewelry business she runs. And it means that she probably won’t be able to offer me any clues.
“Is everything okay?”
“Uh—not exactly. But it can wait until you return.”
“No way. I’m just hanging out in the hotel until my next appointment. What’s going on?”
I spill it all then—about the fight with Hugh, how he assumed that I was at her place, my amnesia, my long, distressing day in the ER.
“Ally, this is so scary,” she exclaims. “Hugh did call me, right before I left on Wednesday, but I never sensed anything was wrong. I’m supposed to fly back Monday, but let me call my assistant and see if she can get me out of here earlier.”
“No, please, don’t even think about it. You can answer a few questions for me, though.”
“Of course, fire away.”
“When was the last time we spoke?”
“Let’s see—it must have been Monday, late in the afternoon.”
That’s one thing I do remember now that she mentions it.
“Did I give you any hint I was coming undone?”
“No, you sounded fine. The only thing that seems odd in hindsight is that you promised to call me before I left for London, but I never heard from you. I just figured you were busy and forgot.”
My pulse quickens. “Have I been forgetful lately?”
She sighs. “To be honest, a little.”
“About important stuff?”
“Nothing like that. Maybe distracted is a better word. Like last weekend, you said you were going to swing by my apartment at three but you showed at three thirty.”
I picture her sitting at her wooden table, her long red hair fanned out around her shoulders. We chatted about a thriller we’d both read, a new guy she’s seeing, her search for a better publicist for her rapidly expanding business.
“I’m sorry I screwed that up. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“It wasn’t a big deal. I know the baby stuff has been eating at you. Do you think all the stress caused this?”
“I’m not sure, but now I’m even more stressed, and I will be until I figure out where I was.”
In my mind’s eye I can see the wheels turning in my friend’s mind. “You know what I would do if I were you?” she says. “Hire a private detective.”
Gabby’s an out-of-the-box thinker—it’s what makes her jewelry designs unique and riveting—so I’m not surprised she’s going there. But her suggestion feels like a move I’m not ready to make yet.
“Maybe.”
“Why maybe?”
“It would be an awfully big step. Besides, I’m hoping my therapist can help me regain my memory, and then I won’t need a detective on the case … but anyway, I should let you go.”
“Okay, but promise you’ll call me day or night if you need anything. And why don’t I plan to drop by right after I get back on Monday? My flight lands around four.”
“You’ll be exhausted.”
“Don’t worry about it. I need to be with you.”
As soon as we hang up, I check my email to see if Dr. Erling has responded, but there’s no word from her. Then I google “private detective agencies NYC,” simply to see what surfaces. The number of possibilities seems overwhelming and after perusing the first dozen or so, I shut my laptop with a sigh.
The house phone rings again, startling me. I assume it’s a robocall, but to my shock, I find myself staring at the main number for Greenbacks. Damien? When I answer, however, a woman’s voice asks for Ally Linden.
“This is she.”
“I’m Damien Howe’s assistant. I have your trench coat—you left it in the conference room—and I wanted to arrange to send it over to you. We’re lucky we still had an old home number for you.”
I’m grateful to hear it. The coat wasn’t pricey, but I liked it. Besides, I can take comfort in the fact that unlike my memory, it hasn’t been sucked into a black hole and lost forever. Maybe today won’t be as much of a hot mess as yesterday.
After I provide the address, she tells me the messenger should be there in a few hours. Something about her tone and uptalk suggests she’s young, and I wonder if she’s the woman I’d seen in the cubicle outside Damien’s office yesterday. Is he sitting in his office with the door open, eavesdropping on the call?
“Oh, and Damien wanted me to ask how you were feeling,” she adds. “He called the hospital, but they weren’t allowed to give out any information.”
I cringe as I flash back on the face-plant I did in his office and being hauled out on a stretcher, my hair slicked back with rainwater. I must have looked like a marooned seal.
“Please tell him I’m doing fine today, and that I appreciate his concern.”
Of course, I think, after we’ve signed off, he didn’t call to inquire himself. Does the idea of us speaking to each other unsettle him as much as it does me?