The Mask

couldn’t have been driving very fast when you hit her.”
    “I wasn’t. But considering the way she slipped up onto the hood and then rolled off into the gutter, I thought maybe…” Carol shuddered, unwilling to put words to what she had thought.
    “Well, the kid’s in good condition now. She regained consciousness in the ambulance, and she was alert by the time I saw her.”
    “Thank God.”
    “There’s no indication that she’s even mildly concussed. I don’t foresee any lasting effects.”
    Relieved, Carol sagged back in the red chair. “I’d like to see her, talk to her.”
    “She’s resting now,” Dr. Hannaport said. “I don’t want her disturbed at the moment. But if you’d like to come back this evening, during visiting hours, she’ll be able to see you then.”
    “I’ll do that. I’ll definitely do that.” She blinked.
    “Good heavens, I haven’t even asked you what her name is.”
    His bushy eyebrows rose again. “Well, we’ve got a small problem about that.”
    “Problem?” Carol tensed up again. “What do you mean? Can’t she remember her name?”
    “She hasn’t remembered it yet, but—”
    “Oh, God.”
    “—she will.”
    “You said no concussion—”
    “I swear to you, it isn’t serious,” Hannaport said. He took her left hand in his big hard hands and held it as if it might crack and crumble at any moment.
    “Please don’t excite yourself about this. The girl is going to be fine. Her inability to remember her name isn’t a symptom of severe concussion or any serious brain injury; not in her case, anyway. She isn’t confused or disoriented. Her field of vision is normal, and she has excellent depth perception. We tested her thought processes with some math problems—addition, subtraction, multiplication—and she got them all correct. She can spell any word you throw at her; she’s a damn good speller, that one. So she’s not severely concussed. She’s simply suffering from mild amnesia. It’s selective amnesia, you understand, just a loss of personal memories, not a loss of skills and education and whole blocks of social concepts. She hasn’t forgotten how to read and write, thank God; she’s only forgotten who she is, where she came from, and how she got to this place. Which sounds more serious than it really is. Of course, she’s disconcerted and apprehensive. But selective amnesia is the easiest kind to recover from.”
    “I know,” Carol said. “But somehow that doesn’t make me feel a whole hell of a lot better.”
    Hannaport squeezed her hand firmly and gently.
    “This kind of amnesia is only very, very rarely permanent or even long-lasting. She’ll most likely remember who she is before dinnertime.”
    “If she doesn’t?”
    “Then the police will find out who she is, and the minute she hears her name, the mists will clear.”
    “She wasn’t carrying any ID.”
    “I know,” he said. “I’ve talked to the police.”
    “So what happens if they can’t find out who she is?”
    “They will.” He patted her hand one last time, then let go.
    “I don’t see how you can be so sure.”
    “Her parents will file a missing-persons report. They’ll have a photograph of her. When the police see the photograph, they’ll make a connection. It’ll be as simple as that.”
    She frowned. “What if her parents don’t report her missing?”
    “Why wouldn’t they?”
    “Well, what if she’s a runaway from out of state? Even if her folks did file a missing-persons report back in her hometown, the police here wouldn’t necessarily be aware of it.”
    “The last time I looked, runaway kids favored New York City, California, Florida—just about any place besides Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.”
    “There’s always an exception to any rule.”
    Hannaport laughed softly and shook his head. “If pessimism were a competitive sport, you’d win the world series.”
    She blinked in surprise, then smiled. “I’m sorry. I guess I am being excessively gloomy.”
    Glancing at his watch, getting up from his chair, he said, “Yes, I think you are. Especially considering how well the girl came through it all. It could have been a lot worse.”
    Carol got to her feet, too. In a rush, the words falling over one another, she said, “I guess maybe the reason it bothers me so much is because I deal with disturbed children every day, and it’s my job to help them get well again, and that’s all I ever wanted to do since I was in high school—work with sick kids, be a healer—but now I’m responsible for all the pain this poor girl is going through.”
    “You mustn’t feel that