The Resurrections of Rosalind Mull

Firebird

Apparently, a whole lot can change in a span of seventy years. Rosalind's experienced change before, but nothing compared to this. As a form of a displaced person, the world has made it infinitely harder for her to live. How do people do it, being tracked constantly, having their identity defined by a series of numbers?

Waking up in a bed of dense, green brush (she vaguely notices that the vegetation has grown back) was not exactly what she expected, but in retrospect it makes sense: die in the Philippines, resurrect in the Philippines. Somewhere off to her right, she spots the Malinta Tunnel, now marked by bulky white letters attached to the concrete entrance, just in case you still weren't sure what it was from the sign posted in front of it.

A few tourists spot her and point, they're speaking Filipino. She doesn't understand them, but she guesses they're saying something along the lines of 'What is that naked white girl doing outside a historic landmark?' That might be what she'd think in their position.

Rosalind gives them a little wave and then a tour guide comes over to her and starts speaking to her in broken English. Now's the time for a story and this time, she goes with the amnesia route.

"What you doing?"

"I don't remember."

The tour guide gives her his jacket and a golf cart comes and takes her out of the forest. They put her in a hospital, which she's less than happy about. They run all sorts of tests with machines that didn't exist when she was a nurse and stick needles in her arms. They mostly ask her questions, via the translator they brought over. She pretends she doesn't remember anything.

If she's honest, she's not entirely sure how amnesia works, but maybe that fits the description of someone with amnesia, so she goes with it. The only thing they manage to gather is that she's American.

The solution ends up being sending her to a hospital in New York in hopes that being in her home country will help her memory. She thinks this is quite funny, since she's from Virginia so if she was amnesic, that probably wouldn't help anyway.

Though, as she soon figures out, this was probably the best route to go with. She gets a free flight to America and she couldn't have gotten there without a passport and no documentation or money otherwise. The only problem is figuring out how to get out of the looney bin and then start a life. Simple.

New York is all bright lights and noise. She can constantly see something outside her hospital window, so she's not completely at a loss for entertainment. It distracts her from worrying, anyhow. Her main concern is that somehow these people who are now in control of her life will find her papers and pictures from when she enlisted as an army nurse, which was a little more than seventy years ago.

She's seen herself in a mirror and she hasn't aged a day. In fact, she hasn't aged a day since 1679, when she was eighteen or nineteen, she honestly can't recall. That first death paved the way to this and oddly enough, her only wish is that she could have died a little older, so she wouldn't be stuck with a face so young.

She has a TV in her hospital room, a pleasant surprise. It's in color and the pictures are marvelous. Some of the shows are a bit iffy and some of the scenes and insinuations are atrocious, but she supposes that's just progression and that she should get used to it. It fascinates her for a while, but she soon grows bored of sitting in that room and watching TV, but at least she has the news.

For whatever reason, the police in charge of her case don't find her old documents. They probably just scoured the missing person reports and found nothing on a girl who died seventy years ago. That's a blessing, at least.