The silence that hung over the halls of the 3rd-floor hospital wing in the early morning hours was nothing unusual. The patients had all been tucked in for the night and throughout the building the common sounds of broken hospital rest reigned.

Amid the low thrum of electricity emanating from the nearby vending machine, the light inside flickering to the beat of its incessant hum was the beep and buzz of the medical equipment that was currently monitoring the vitals of the third-floor residents. In the main portion of the corridor, several nurses sat at the desk speaking in hushed tones and swapping stories of their families or of the patients they cared for. From their station, they could just make out the muted laughter of a studio audience coming from a television in one of the rooms.

A few staff members had strayed away from the desk to do patient rounds. They listened intently for the nighttime sounds they had become so accustomed to as they walked the floor. A small cough followed by the creak of the metal hospital bed as a restless body shifted positions or a soft moan floating through the open door of a fitfully sleeping patient.

In room 332, all was silent. Rebecca slept in the chair by Emily's bed, having already become acclimated to the various sounds of the building where she had kept a nightly vigil since her daughter had been admitted. The older woman, physically and mentally exhausted as she was, had not been asleep long.

Emily had been agitated for the better part of the night, tossing and turning and more than once, murmuring unintelligible words into her pillow. She had finally seemed to settle just a little after

midnight. Rebecca followed suit shortly thereafter. The peace that fell over the room as the two slept would prove to be misleading.

Sometime around two-thirty with no warning Emily shot upright in her bed, the room erupting into chaos as violent screams of terror exploded from somewhere deep within her. Tearing wildly at the sensors that were taped to her skin, she seized one and ripped it free so forcefully that the monitor behind her toppled to the floor with a jarring crash. In her struggles the long thin IV needle was wrenched from the crook of her elbow, the tape pulling free with a loud ripping sound as a thin trickle of blood began to creep lazily down her inner arm.

Rebecca, woken by the sound of her daughter's screams, took a moment to react, her sleep-deprived brain, not immediately grasping what was happening. As she tried to make sense of the commotion, the monitor slammed to the ground just beside the chair where she had been resting. The deafening noise brought her out of her paralysis, and she leapt from the chair moving swiftly to Emily's side. Placing a gentle hand on her back, she began speaking in a low calm voice, doing her best to reassure her hysterical daughter.

Emily flailed, grabbing at her mother's arm as if she were drowning. Behind them, machines were blaring loudly as the monitors' readings flatlined, no longer able to determine crucial information, such as whether the patient they had been attached to had a heartbeat. As the different alarms began to sound at the nurse's station, the uproar spread into the hallway. From the far end of the corridor came the running of feet and the unmistakable squeak of non-slip nurse's shoes.

Within moments of the first alarm, the door swung open and the same young red-headed nurse from the night before hurried into the room.

"What happened?" She asked with concern as Emily sat wild-eyed with one hand still on her mother's arm, gasping for breath.

"I'm not sure," Rebecca answered in that same quiet voice, but the underlying fear that tinted her words was evident.

The conversation between the two women barely pierced Emily's consciousness. Her mind was lost in a fog of panic and fear that she had no idea how to escape from. She had broken out in a cold sweat, her skin coated in a thin sheen of it. Even so her entire body felt overheated. Inside her chest, her heart galloped along at roughly the speed of a prize-winning racehorse. It pounded out a frantic drumbeat rhythm she could feel in her ears and inside the hard prison of her ribs. Her lungs were drenched in fire, a long lingering slow burn that danced along the edges of every breath she drew.

The young nurse quickly surveyed the scene in front of her before moving around the bed toward the ear-splitting shriek of the overturned monitor. As the room began to slowly fall into silence Emily leaned forward and bent at the waist moaning softly. Pictures and fragments of images flashed across the inside of her closed eyelids. Pieces of a dream she couldn't recall.

She had seen the bird again, its mouth agape, wrapped in its pillar of flame, a small window through which the smallest sliver of moon was visible, and had there been the sound of muffled voices? She thought there had been but it was the screaming that had affected her the most. The screams she had realized were her own and that realization was what had finally woken her. So lost was she in her desperation to remember that she didn't immediately register the sound of her mother's voice from beside her.

"Emily baby talk to me. What's wrong?"

"I..I..can't...breathe..." she stuttered, her fingers clenching her mother tighter as she struggled to draw a breath. There was a tightness in her chest that she had never experienced. It felt as if a large hand had slipped through her rib cage and was slowly squeezing the air from her lungs.

The nurse, after putting the monitors back to rights, came to stand on her other side. Slowly, she began to reconnect some of the sensors and then used a cotton ball from one of the cabinets to clean up the blood on the girl's arm. She spoke as she worked, her voice calm but firm.

"Emily, I'm Maddie. Do you remember me?"

Emily nodded. She did remember her, but she didn't recall if she had ever heard her name before now.

"I think you might be having an anxiety attack," she said in that same matter-of-fact tone, "I need you to concentrate on slowing your breathing."

"I... can't," Emily replied, her eyes glassy with unshed tears.

"You can. If you're able to talk you're able to breathe. I'm going to get you something to help you relax but I need you to try to focus on your breathing. In through your nose out through your mouth. I'm here and your mom's here. You're safe. We're not going to let anything happen to you. Can you slide back and sit up straight for me?"

The sarcastic look that Emily shot her, even in her current state, caused Maddie to laugh out loud.

"There we go," she said, chuckling. "It's good to see you still have that fire about you."

"There's f- forty pounds of p-plaster wrapped around my leg," Emily stuttered as she fought to slow her breathing.

"I'm well aware. This isn't my first night as your nurse. Remember? Your mom and I will help."

Maddie raised the bed and then, sliding a hand under Emily's arm, motioned for Rebecca to do the same. Moving slowly, they gently helped her slide back into an upright position resting against the pillows.

"You're doing great," Maddie told her stepping away from the bed to check the monitors. They were now miraculously humming away in the background as if they had never been disturbed. "Your color seems to be coming back and your vitals look good. Your heart rate is a little elevated but nothing alarming. Sit tight for a minute. I need to put in a call to your doctor. I'll see what I can do about getting you something to help you relax."

She quietly slipped out and left Emily and her mother alone in the room. Rebecca patted her daughter's arm and softly squeezed her hand.

"How are you doing, hon?"

"Better," Emily answered.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not now," she answered, shaking her head.

Her heart still felt as if it were moving several beats too fast. The pounding hoofbeats in her ears were distracting. She had, however, managed to slow her breathing. It had gone from gasps to slow ragged inhalations.

Emily had managed to push the images from her dream to the back of her mind, not wanting to dwell on what they could mean right now. She was afraid that putting it all under too harsh a light might send her over the edge again. She would work on figuring it out as soon as she got her traitorous body under control.

As if on cue, Maddie slipped back into the room with a new IV bag. Rebecca took a step back to make room for her as she slipped in beside the bed. Working quickly, she first ran a new IV for Emily and then replaced the old bag on the IV stand. Emily closed her eyes not wanting to see what the nurse was doing. There was shuffling from behind her and then the rattle of plastic followed by Maddie's soft reassuring voice.

"Ok. You're all set. You should start to feel a lot better pretty quickly. You might even start to feel a little drowsy so-"

"Yeah. I know," Emily answered jokingly, "no operating heavy machinery."

Maddie chuckled. "Exactly right," she said patting Emily's hand before starting around the bed, giving Rebecca room to reclaim her position beside her daughter.

"I'm going to let you get some rest now," she said to Emily. Then, turning to Rebecca, "I've put in a call to Dr. Malcolm. She'll be stopping by to see you first thing in the morning. If you need anything else, hit the button. I'll come on the run."

"Thank you, Maddie," Rebecca said.

The young nurse smiled and gave her a nod as she dimmed the lights and pulled the door shut behind her. The medication was already starting to take effect. A warm feeling, starting at the point of the needle under her skin, was beginning to spread and radiate throughout her body. The numbness that followed was odd, but not altogether unwelcome. It left her feeling as if she were outside herself.

Closing her eyes, Emily prodded at her newfound lack of feeling, like a child poking at the socket of a lost tooth. She allowed the images from her dream to seep in, slowly washing over her in waves. With the drug in her system, she couldn't find it in her to care what they meant, much less to panic.

Her body felt as if it were floating, her mind suspended somewhere between wake and sleep. From far away she could hear her mother quietly calling her name, but the thought of answering her felt exhausting, so she said nothing, opting instead to fake sleep. Her last waking thought as she slipped into true unconsciousness was of an ancient pickup truck parked by the side of a one-lane dirt road. Its driver obscured by shadow.

https://youtu.be/DHhHUZsXTBk

Emily woke in stages, swimming slowly toward the surface of awareness. The sun was already up. She didn't need to open her eyes to be sure of this fact. She could feel the warmth of it on her skin and see its light, painting a faint pink glow on the insides of her eyelids as it streamed in through the window of her hospital room. It was a moment before she became cognizant of the whispered voices nearby and a heartbeat longer before she recognized them.

Her mother's voice was the first followed a split second later by Dr. Malcolm's. Her face was turned away from them and neither appeared to have noticed that she was awake. Keeping her eyes closed and her breathing even, she strained to hear what they were saying.

"I've looked over her charts from last night and I don't see anything that suggests any type of medical emergency. It seems that she had an anxiety attack. Do you have any idea what might have triggered it?" Dr. Malcolm asked.

"A nightmare, maybe," her mother answered, obviously unsure, "she was having some trouble sleeping last night. Tossing and turning, talking in her sleep that sort of thing. When she woke up she was hysterical."

There was a pause and silence fell over the room. Emily found herself visualizing the two women standing there, Dr. Malcolm nodding in that thoughtful way that she had as she carefully chose her next words. The silence in the room seemed to stretch out for an eternity and Emily found herself wishing desperately that she was facing the door so she could at least venture a peek. Her mother was the first to break the silence.

"Do you think she remembered something?"

"It's possible. Only time will tell. The therapist I told you about should be able to help. She may be able to help all of you in fact. If her memories are what triggered this episode, then in all likelihood it could happen again. You need to be prepared for that possibility and know how to navigate it if it does happen."

Emily was thrust back to the events of the night before. She remembered the tightness in her chest, her racing heart, and her struggle to breathe. There had been a sense of foreboding and the intensely frightening sensation of being a stranger in a body that she no longer had control of or even understood. Dr. Malcolm's words caused her stomach to twist uncomfortably at the very thought of experiencing that again.

From the other side of the room, came a small, choked sob that Emily thought had to be her mother.

"I wish I had better news for you," the Doctor continued, " but what your daughter has been through was terribly traumatic. I don't think she herself even fully understands the scope of it yet."

"Is this something she'll recover from?"

Again there was a lengthy pause before she spoke. Emily found herself wanting to turn to the Doctor and tell her to get on with it already answer the question but she knew the conversation would turn to something else entirely if they were aware that she was awake.

"I believe she will. I feel I must tell you though that she will most likely never be the same as she was before. That's not to say that she won't get better but traumatic circumstances have a way of changing people. Often permanently."

Rebecca didn't respond. From that end of the room, Emily heard another small sniff.

"Why don't you take a moment Mrs. Lansing? Step out and get some breakfast perhaps," Dr. Malcolm suggested, "the nurses tell me you've been here around the clock. You need a break and Emily will be out for a while."

Yep. I'll be out for a while, Emily thought sarcastically to herself, fighting the urge to giggle.

"I don't know." Her mother answered a slight hesitation in her voice.

"I'll have one of the nurses nearby keeping an eye on her room and we'll page you if there's an emergency. You need to take care of yourself too. Your daughter's going to need you."

"Ok. Maybe just down to the cafeteria for a minute."

"Good, good," The Doctor answered. Emily heard the squeak of the door and could almost feel the heat of her mother's eyes on her, checking one last time before she stepped out into the hallway.

"So, how is your husband doing?" Dr. Malcolm asked as she followed behind, their voices already starting to fade.

"Burying himself in work and the police-" the rest of her mother's reply was cut off as the door swung quietly closed with a light click.

Emily didn't need to hear the answer anyway as she opened her eyes and gazed out the window just feet from where she lay. She knew her father well and felt pity for anyone who opposed him in a courtroom right now. He had been considered a bulldog on a good day. He would probably best resemble a rabid pit bull at the moment and she could only imagine that he would be making an absolute nuisance of himself at the police department.

Dillon Lansing was not a man that liked to feel helpless. If there was nothing else for him to do he would create work for himself. Anything to avoid sitting on his hands and waiting around for someone else to deliver a resolution.

Emily pulled herself into a sitting position and stared down at her leg wrapped in the cursed plaster. Slowly she took in the scratches and the ugly bruises already starting to go a sickly yellow color around the edges that seemed to cover her entire body. Examining her hands she saw that her nails, which had always been kept so neat, were now broken and brutally short. In her mind, she heard Dr. Malcolm's words "traumatic events have a way of changing people. Often permanently."

It was at that moment that something within her changed. Anger bubbled up inside her so hot and bitter that it left her feeling a little sick. Anger at being robbed of her memory and her life as she had known it. This cannot be who I am now. I won't allow it she thought to herself. Whoever had done this to her had taken her memory she would not allow them to have her life too.

Looking down at her broken body one last time, only hardened her resolve. One way or the other she would reclaim her memory. She would reclaim everything that had been taken from her and when she did the people who had left her like this would regret ever having heard her name.