Free Elizabeth Mansfield by Mother's Choice Page B

who's suffered severe trauma," the doctor said bluntly.
    "Trauma?" Cicely asked. "What's that?"
    Dr. Swan smiled sheepishly. "It's a word we doctors like to use to make us sound important. It simply means wound."
    "Which severe wound are you speaking of, Doctor?" Eva inquired dryly. "Her wrist, her hip or her head?"
    "I won't minimize any of them, but I'm sure it's the head wound which gives you, her family, the greatest concern. As, I admit, it does me."
    "Why?" Eva wanted to know.
    "Because such mnemonic impairment—the abrupt onset of derangement due to memory loss, in plain words—is very rare. I myself have never seen a case of it, although I've read of them."
    "Derangement!" Cicely gasped. "That's a dreadful word!"
    "Yes, I agree," the doctor said, reaching across the table and patting her hand. "But it is my understanding that such impairment is usually temporary."
    "How temporary?" Cicely asked.
    The doctor shrugged. "Hours... days... weeks at most."
    Eva peered into his eyes intently. "Have there been cases when the... er... impairment has not been temporary?" she asked, searching his face for the truth.
    He met her look. "To be honest, there have."
    "Oh, my God\" Cicely wailed.
    "However, I have no expectations of such a dour outcome," Dr. Swan assured her. "Your mother seems to have retained a remarkable degree of alertness and responsiveness, as well as a capacity for fairly complicated mental performances, all of which makes me quite hopeful."
    "Whatever causes such a strange thing to happen?" Charlie asked curiously.
    "I'm afraid we don't know much about how the brain remembers, so we cannot have a precise idea of the damage that external violence does to its mnemonic functions. I can only theorize that the blow or blows that Lady Beringer received caused a numbness in the brain that resulted in the mnemonic loss."
    "What we should be asking," Jeremy pointed out, "is how to help her recover."
    "Yes," agreed Eva. "Lord Inglesby is quite right. What can we do for her?"
    "You may not like my answer to that, your ladyship," Dr. Swan said, "for I must ask you and your niece to stay away from her until she asks to see you."
    "But why?" cried Cicely in tearful chagrin.
    "Because seeing you frightens her. You both are too close to her. She understands that she ought to recognize you, and she can't. That must be a terrifying feeling. We do not wish her to become more upset than her condition has already made her. What she needs most is rest and calm." He rose from his chair and picked up his bag. "And as for the rest of you, those who go into her room, do not keep telling her who you are and expecting her to remember," he advised as he went to the door. "Answer her questions simply. Let her learn at her own pace."
    After his departure, a strained silence fell upon the occupants of the room, all of them suddenly imagining how they might feel if suddenly deprived of memory. None of them had ever before considered how important memory was. The only sound in the room was the incessant reverberation of Cicely's sobs.
    Upstairs in the bedroom Mrs. Stemple had not yet come to sit with Cassie, and she was frightened of being alone. Despite having drunk Dr. Swan's potion, she was too uneasy to let herself fall asleep. She did not want to dream. But neither did she want to lie awake and think, because thoughts were frightening, too. She could not create any pictures in her mind. She could not imagine herself in any place but this room, nor could she bring to mind any faces but the few she'd seen in the past twelve hours. Everything else was a vast emptiness.
    She sat up and looked around her. Strangely enough, she could identify everything she saw—the bed hangings, the draperies at the windows, the little dressing table with the mirror above it...
    Good heavens! A mirror! she thought with a burst of excitement. She knew perfectly well what a mirror was. She could look into it and see herself! If she could see herself, she'd