MirrorWorld

“I stabbed myself in my right kidney.”

She presses on my torso with her gloved fingers, feeling all around the wound. “Actually, you missed it. Nothing but muscle and fat. Mostly muscle.”

“Even better,” I say.

“But why?”

“Because I wanted to leave.”

“What I meant,” she says, “is why did you choose to stab yourself in the kidney?”

“You mean, why did I choose to stab myself next to my kidney?”

“Right.”

I shrug. I don’t recall making the decision, but I understand the logic of my subconscious. “If I missed and struck my kidney, who cares? I have two of them. If you ever need to stab yourself, keep that in mind.” I lean back. “I can’t feel the wound.”

“I’ve given you a local anesthetic so we can take care of this.”

I look around the ambulance’s interior. It’s what you’d expect, except I’m alone in the back with this woman. I think there are usually two people in the back. But what do I know? Aside from where my kidneys are and what Dubai is like. While I don’t remember the events of my own life, I know a lot about the world. “Aren’t you a paramedic?”

She pulls out a hooked needle and thread. “I’m your doctor.”

“My doctor?”

“For now.” She threads the needle, ties a knot, and cuts the remainder. “Not afraid of needles, are you?”

I motion to the knife in my gut. “I stabbed myself.”

“I was joking.” She places the needle on a tray as the moving ambulance bounces over something in the road. My doctor leans toward the front and raps on the door. It opens a crack. “We’re starting now, so do try to avoid any more bumps for a few.”

“Trying,” says a man. “But it’s hard to with all this—”

She shoves the door shut. “Right. Enough of him.”

“Who is he?”

“Your driver,” she says. “Try to hold still.” Before I realize it, she’s dousing the knife with alcohol. “Still nothing?”

“Fine.”

“Wonderful.” She takes hold of the knife and slips it out of my gut. The ceramic blade clangs against the tray, and she scoops up the needle and thread. She leans over my exposed stomach and starts sewing. Her hands move quickly and efficiently. She’s done this before. Not just stitching a wound, but while on the move.

“You were in the military,” I say.

“Handsome, fearless, and perceptive,” she says without looking up. “My, my.”

She’s clearly not going to say anything more, so I don’t bother digging. There’s something else I’d rather know. “Why am I fearless? The woman I met told me my doctor could explain it.”

“The woman?”

“Who told me to stab myself.”

She gives the needle a few tugs, cinching my skin together. “You trusted a woman, whose name you didn’t know, who asked you to stab yourself?”

“I don’t know my own name,” I tell her. “Or yours.”

She pauses, turns to me, and offers me a bloody gloved hand. “Doctor Kelly Allenby, at your service.”

I shake her hand. “I’m Crazy.”

“With a capital C,” she says, the phrase old hat.

My mind freezes up for a moment. How did she know? Before I can ask, she turns to me and says, “Winters filled me in. She’s the woman you met. Jessica Winters.”

“Who is she?” I ask.

“Not my place to say.”

“You’re avoiding my question,” I tell her.

“Winters will brief you later,” she says.

Brief me. Definitely military.

The ambulance sways from side to side for a moment. I hear the engine revving loudly. We’re moving fast. But the siren isn’t wailing.

“I wasn’t talking about Winters,” I say.

She smiles at me. I can’t see her lips behind the mask, but her eyes crinkle on the sides. “Short-term memory seems to be fine.”

“Please.”

She turns back to stitching. “Do you know what the amygdala is?”

“A region of the brain,” I say, though I have no idea how or why I know the answer to this question.

“Two regions,” she says. “On either side. The size of almonds. Part of the limbic system. Not very big, but they regulate a few functions that are applicable to your situation. Memory and fear. Typically, a condition like yours is the result of Urbach-Wiethe disease, which destroys the amygdala. The result is a complete lack of social, emotional, and physical fear. But you’re not like a sociopath. You still feel other emotions, like empathy, sadness, and joy, and you understand concepts of right and wrong, though in your case that sense of moral judgment is a bit exaggerated.” She glances my way. “I read your file.”

“You said ‘typically.’ Are there other ways to destroy the amygdala?”

She pulls the line tight and ties a knot. Scissors appear in her hand and she cuts the line. She turns away from me to put the needle and thread beside the discarded knife. “Brain trauma could do it, but it would have to be one hell of a coincidence to destroy both amygdala on either side of the head without turning you into a vegetable.”

“But it’s possible?”

“Anything is possible,” she replies, taking her bloody gloves off and tossing them atop the tray. The mask and glasses follow. “But that’s not what happened to you.”

“How do you know?”