“I’m just going to step out for a bit, but I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Dr. Troy leaned down and whispered.
I smiled and nodded. She was super nice and something about her presence really calmed me. It was no wonder she was a psychologist for traumatized children. I was hoping I’d have more time to talk to her.
Landreia stopped beside my bed and rested her ring-clad hands on the side rails. “Hi, sweetheart.”
“Hi, Landreia, it’s nice to see you again.” This woman didn’t know me yet she took so much care to help me and get me to the hospital. I owed her my life. “I’m glad you came by.”
Her cheeks flushed and her smile widened. “I was here last night, but they wouldn’t let me in to see you, visiting hours and such. How are you doing, all things considered?”
I took a deep breath then let it all out and shrugged. “Same as last night, just warm. Oh, and I haven’t seen that guy again so that’s good. No one in the hospital has.”
“Good. That is excellent news.”
The door to my room swung open. We both jumped and looked over. Dr. Allen stood in the doorway with a clipboard in his hand. He was tall, with broad shoulders and the friendliest smile I thought I’d ever seen – although I didn’t know why I’d thought that, since I’d only seen a handful of people since waking up on that wharf.
He looked up from his clipboard and his hazel eyes twinkled. “Oh, Ms. Night, hello.”
“Hello there, Ally,” Landreia said softly and gave him a hug. “How is your mother doing after her knee surgery?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, she’s giving you all the credit of healing her pain and not her doctor son or the orthopedic surgeon. So I’d say she’s doing just fine.”
Landreia chuckled. “Hey, I insisted she followed all of her doctor’s orders…along with my tricks.” She glanced over her shoulder and winked at me.
Dr. Troy walked in behind Dr. Allen with the nurse from last night and another woman in a gray suit. I looked to my left as Dr. Troy reclaimed her spot by my side.
She smiled and gave me a nod. “Time for test results.”
My heart fluttered. What if something is wrong with me? What if something isn’t wrong with me? What if they don’t know why I can’t remember? What if I’ll never remember again? A cold chill slid down my spine and I shuddered.
Dr. Allen walked to the end of my bed and sat his clipboard down. He smiled at me. “Okay, so we’ve gone over every test and everything looks perfectly normal. We don’t even see any sign of trauma or injury to the head, at least not physically.”
Landreia frowned. “So what does that mean?”
“Something happened to cause this, it doesn’t just happen on its own for no reason. There are many psychological triggers…” He twirled the golden ring on his left hand. “I wanted to have a clear answer for you. I wanted to walk in here and say this is what happened, but I can’t. The human brain is far too complex for us to understand it entirely, so I can only work with what we do know.”
My eyes burned with the need to cry, but I wasn’t going to let that happen. Not yet. Not here with everyone watching. “So I’m stuck like this?”
“I think that the best thing to do is wait and see. Sometimes these things just need time. We monitor you and adjust treatment as we go. Psychologists can be a huge help in this area.”
Dr. Troy winked at me.
Landreia squeezed my hand.
Then I realized the other woman who’d come in hadn’t spoken at all. In fact, she seemed to be hiding against the wall with a serious expression.
I licked my lips. “Who are you?”
“Oh, sorry.” Dr. Allen shook his head then turned toward the unknown woman. “This is Detective Ronda Lewis.”
I glanced to Landreia. “Do you know her, too?”
Landreia chuckled. “I do indeed.”
Detective Lewis shook her head, grinning. She walked over to me and held her hand out. “Hello, Miss Proctor. I’ve been assigned to handle your case to see if we can get you home.”
I shook her hand. “Thank you. Any luck yet?”
She grimaced. “We’ve looked into it and there are no missing persons reports that fit your description anywhere in New England, or as far south as Maryland. Next we’ll be checking national reports and reaching out to Canada. We did a search, but the only Saraphina Proctor we could find on record anywhere was born in 1676 and lived right here in Salem.”
Landreia gasped and put her hand to her chest. “I knew I recognized that name!”
Detective Lewis shrugged. “We also discovered that this young woman vanished suddenly in 1692 during the height of the Salem Witch Trials at the age of 16 and was never seen again. Is there a chance that you might’ve read about this young woman and for some reason your brain is clinging to it?”
I opened my mouth to say adamantly no…but closed it. Because I couldn’t say that. “I have no idea. I can’t remember.” But it felt like my name. It felt right. It felt like me.
Detective Lewis nodded. “Okay, we’ll keep looking, I promise. We will not give up until we figure this all out.”
Landreia cleared her throat. “Ronda, what are you going to do with her in the meantime? Keep her here?”
Dr. Allen scowled and shook his head. “I don’t think that would be healthy. The best thing for her is to carry on with as normal a life as possible and hope that whatever caused this personality disorder rights itself.”
Detective Lewis pulled her phone out and started typing. “We can place her with child protective services, get her set up in a foster program.”
“Can I take her?”
We all gasped and turned to Landreia.
“I found her. I clearly care as I’m here now. The last thing she needs is more strangers. Let me foster her. You all know me, I’ve fostered many times in the last few decades. Ronda…you know.”
“I was already considering it.” Detective Lewis glanced sideways at me, then turned back to Landreia. “May I speak with Miss Proctor alone?”
“Of course,” Landreia said with a wide smile. She squeezed my hand once, then turned and headed through the doorway with Dr. Allen and Dr. Troy hot on her heels.
Once the room was empty except for us, Detective Lewis moved closer to me. “How do you feel about this?”
I bit my bottom lip. “What exactly does foster mean?” I thought I knew, but I had to be sure.
“It means that for a temporary window of time set by the government, Landreia would be your legal guardian. Like a parent. You’d live with her and she’d take care of you like you were her own kid. She would be legally bound to you.”
I blinked. “Oh.” Wow. That sounds…intense. She offered so quickly. What if she regrets it later?
“All of Landreia’s fosters have spoken very highly of her. She has a reputation of being a witch, but then again, this is Salem.”
I didn’t know what that meant. Or even what a witch really meant, especially since it sounded like it was supposed to scare me yet it didn’t. “How many fosters has she had?”
She pursed her lips. “Over the last four decades? Gosh, I’d say at least a dozen, if not more.”