7. Stuck in a soap Opera

Anastasiya Van Houten

My vision blurred, the overlapping voices blending into a chaotic mess. I tried to latch onto one voice, but they all jumbled together into incoherence.

"It's me, Hannah."

"What are you feeling, princess?"

"Could she have internal bleeding?"

"What's your full name?"

"Enough," I gritted out, my voice sharp with exasperation. The confusion was unbearable, my patience fraying by the second.

The room fell silent. The expectant and curious looks on their faces dissolved into hesitation as if they could sense the frustrated energy radiating from me. I was seconds away from smashing something and forcing someone to explain why I was in this godforsaken hospital room.

"I'm sorry, Your Majesty. I just—" the crying woman began but was swiftly cut off by the doctor.

"Let's not overwhelm her with too much information," he said, stepping toward me with measured caution. "I understand what you're feeling, Miss Nightingale."

I eyed him warily as he continued, "Do we have your permission to move closer and physically assess your condition? It'll help us pinpoint what's causing your symptoms."

He spoke slowly, as though explaining something delicate to a child.

I weighed my options: one, knock him out and bulldoze through the three women standing near the door to escape, or two, stay put and figure out why they kept calling me Valencia.

The first option seemed reasonable enough. After all, I didn’t know where I was. Malcom could be on his dragon right now, flying in to breathe fire down my neck.

Still, a nagging feeling tugged at the back of my mind—intuition, maybe. Something felt off, and I had a gut instinct that staying here might provide the answers I needed.

"Miss Nightingale?" The doctor’s soft, slightly high-pitched voice broke my thoughts. His brow furrowed in concern. "If you don't feel comfortable, you can—"

"You can go ahead," I cut him off curtly.

Surprise flickered in his eyes, but he quickly nodded, signaling to the nurses. One of them, a woman with a grim expression and an impossibly tight bun, stepped forward holding a metal tray.

"Please excuse us," said the second nurse, directing her words to the crying woman who was still watching me with hopeful eyes. "The appropriate time for visiting will be communicated later."

The woman hesitated, her gaze never leaving mine. Pain flickered across her face when she realized I didn’t recognize her. She sucked in a shaky breath, forced herself upright, and turned toward the door, her skirt swishing behind her as she left.

She almost had me with her theatrics. Keyword: almost.

A sudden touch on my shoulder snapped me out of my observations. My body stiffened instinctively, not used to uninvited physical contact.

My fingers curled, gripping the bedsheet tightly as cold metal instruments pressed against my skin. The invasive hands moved with precision, but my discomfort remained palpable.

"Do you feel any pain?" asked the nurse with a stethoscope clutched tightly in her palm.

"I feel weak, my head keeps throbbing, and there are gaps in my memory," I replied flatly.

The nurse nodded and turned to the doctor, who stood at the opposite side of the bed. "Her vital signs are normal, except for a low respiratory rate. Her temperature is thirty-four degrees, which is concerning."

She paused, placing the instruments back onto the tray. "Should we try a hot compress to raise her temperature?"

The doctor tapped his chin thoughtfully, eyes narrowed in concentration. I waited, sensing he was about to make a decision.

"No," he finally said. "Hold off for now. I want to assess her consciousness level first. Just note that reading in her report."

The nurse nodded and gathered the equipment, her assistant trailing behind as they exited the room.

The doctor’s gaze returned to me. "Miss Nightingale?" he asked gently. "What day is it today?"

He grabbed a pen from his breast pocket before flipping the pages of the brown oak file he was holding.

“I don’t.. I don’t know” I replied almost immediately. How was I supposed to know what the date was? I literally had just woken up from a prolonged state of unconsciousness.

He nodded before scribbling something unto the file.

“Can you tell me your full name?” He asked, raising his head back to look at me once again.

To him, that question must have come off as harmless, but to me, it felt like a bear trap. I couldn’t tell him who I was.

What if he was working for Malcom.

“I can’t really remember. It’s all blurred and hazy but I did remember being addressed as Princess, Valencia and Miss Nightingale.” I paused, watching intently as his brows furrowed and his face morphed into a mask of understanding. “I can’t really confirm with conviction that this is my identity”

My voice trembled slightly towards the end of my sentence, portraying a bit of my confusion and fear.

He continued to ask a few more questions that were alike in the small sense, date of birth, age, ethnicity.... They all seemed harmless, but I couldn’t shake off the wariness I was feeling.

“Miss Nightingale” He began, setting his pen back into his pocket. “Your fall severely damaged your cranium which houses a lot of important structures like your temporal lobe and hippocampus which is responsible for memory retention” He took a deep and exaggerated breath, as if giving me tome to process the words he had just uttered.

“You are suffering from a large discrepancy in memory retention. In other words, … Amnesia”. His hand reached out to grab my shoulder, offering me some semblance of warmth. “To say whether it’s permanent or temporary would be impossible at this stage but with time, well be able to assess the situation”.

I merely stared at him, the seconds ticking by as we fell unto an awkward silence. He seemed to have taken my silence for shock.

Amnesia? Come on. I wasn’t in a fucking soap opera.

“I’ll leave you to yourself for a moment to process everything before we speak about this again” He finished not without patting my shoulder softly and turning towards the door with file in hand.

Who was this diagnosis for…I wasn’t Valencia.

My memories as Anastasiya are still present so how was this possible.

Where did reality begin and this rattling dream end. It was mixing with reality so seamlessly that I suddenly felt like the one with the problem.

My eyes snapped to the identification tag that hung from the railing at the side of the bed. A small yellow laminated card that read a name. One that seemed to be the root of everything wrong going on.

Valencia Amara Nightingale.

The mirror at the far end of the room seemed like the only thing capable of proving an answer at this moment.