1. The Girl with No Name

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I open my eyes.

Consciousness brings a dizzying numbness into my head, a feeling of suppressed nausea and a pain in my side like hot knife being gouged into my innards. I reach up to feel the fire burning on my face. The skin's puffy and soft and stings like the tentacles of a jelly fish sting when I touch it.

I take a deep breath and focus. I'm in a bed, an IV drip runs from a glass bottle suspended from a steel stand into my upper arm. The room's white and clinical. Hospital clinical. Lifting the bed covers reveals a green cotton tabard and underneath, wound around my ribcage, a ribbon of white bandages.

Where am I?

My eyes sweep the room, this time more critically.

By my side is a stainless steel dish on a trolley with a hypodermic needle in it. The manufactory is Bayer. Bayer is German, its medical products are produced worldwide under licence. The syringe is 10cc with a 1/1/2" needle, unpacked, ready for use. Over the window, a plastic blind, with cord. The shine on the cord means its nylon, almost unbreakable. On the low bedside table is a small bottle of water, American brand.

Somehow these things are important. I must note them and remember them. Look, assess and store them in my head. A library of information to be recalled at instant notice.

There are no cards, no flowers.

I'm either here unexpectedly, or I have no friends. Perhaps I'm on holiday and I've had an accident.

Why can't I remember?

For the moment that doesn't matter. I must start again. Always do it again until you've got it. Got it all memorised.

Two doors. One slightly ajar, leads to the washroom. The other unopened, must go into the corridor. Red fire extinguisher on the floor by the door. Brand, ADT. American company but sold worldwide. It's a water extinguisher. It weighs 4.5kg when full, 2.3kg when empty. I know that.

The window blind billows into the room, like the sails on a badly rigged galleon, leaving my head swimming with the sounds and smells of the outdoors. Through the gap I can see a single jet as it noses its way across the sky; a solitary white shark cruising a surface of the deepest, fathomless blue.

I can just pick out the tops of the trees outside. I know them, the glossy leaves and heavy white flowers of the Victorian box tree catch the sunlight. The room is full of their scent, a pungent orange smell fills my lungs. Pittosporum undulatum is their Latin name, these trees are found in blossoming in the spring in the warmer climates of America and Australia.

A pool of creamy light swims on the grey vinyl floor. The sun is low in the sky. I can hear traffic outside and far off, the ringing of a bell, a tram or train. A city lies beyond the wall behind my bed. There's no clock on the wall. The fire directions on the door are in English. The height of the sun signifies sunrise or sunset, maybe 7am or 7pm. The rooms warm, I can feel the heat radiating off the floor. It's sunset.

A myriad of connections whip through my pounding brain.

A butterfly whips past in a flurry of black and yellow stripes. The wings are large, almost Amazonian but the orange and blue spots and double tails give it away. It's a Western tiger swallowtail. Habitat, western, northern America.

A far off hoot of a ship's horn drifts into the room.

In my head I visualise maps, many maps, their colours, the shapes of the continents within them. I discard those for the easier option, the Times Atlas of the World. The book has a black cover and large gold lettering. The book opens and countries flash by and stop on page forty three, Western America. I scroll down the cities on the west coast.

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