Remember Mia - Softcover

Burt, Alexandra

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425278409 ISBN 13: 9780425278406

Publisher: Berkley, 2015

Synopsis

Like Girl on the Train and Gone Girl, Remember Mia is a riveting psychological suspense, exploring what happens when a young mother’s worst nightmare becomes devastatingly real...

First I remember the darkness.
Then I remember the blood.
I don’t know where my daughter is.

Estelle Paradise wakes up in a hospital after being found near dead at the bottom of a ravine with a fragmented memory and a vague sense of loss. Then a terrifying reality sets in: her daughter is missing.

Days earlier, Estelle discovered her baby’s crib empty in their Brooklyn apartment. There was no sign of a break-in, but all traces of seven-month-old Mia had disappeared. Her diapers, her clothes, her bottles—all gone. 

Frustrated and unable to explain her daughter’s disappearance, Estelle begins a desperate search. But when the lack of evidence casts doubt on her story, Estelle becomes the number one suspect in the eyes of the police and the media.

As hope of reuniting with Mia becomes all she has left, Estelle will do anything to find answers: What has she done to her baby? And what has someone else done to her?

About this title

About the Author:

Alexandra Burt is a freelance translator. Born in Europe, she moved to Texas twenty years ago. While pursuing literary translations, she decided to tell her own stories. After years of writing classes and gluttonous reading, her short fiction appeared in fiction journals and literary reviews.  She lives in Texas with her husband and daughter. Remember Mia is her first novel.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

MISSING: SEVEN-MONTH-OLD INFANT DISAPPEARS FROM CRIB

Brooklyn, NY—The New York City Police Department is asking for the public’s help in locating 7-month-old Mia Connor.

The parents and the NYPD are pleading with the pub- lic for any assistance in the investigation and are asking Brooklyn residents in the North Dandry neighborhood to come forward if they witnessed any suspicious behav- ior on the night and early morning of the 30th.

Mia Connor was last seen by her mother, Estelle Paradise, 27, around midnight when she laid her down to sleep. The mother discovered the child was missing when she woke up the next morning. The father was out of town when the infant disappeared.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Eric Rodriguez, spokes- person for the NYPD, when he appeared briefly at a news conference on Friday. “We’re hoping somebody will come forward and give us the information allowing us to locate the child.”

Immediately call the TIPS hotline if you have any infor- mation about the infant’s whereabouts. All calls are strictly confidential.

Mia Connor has brown eyes and blond hair, is 25 inches tall, and weighs 14 pounds. The day of her disappearance she wore white one-piece pajamas with a cupcake print. She has two bottom teeth.

CHAPTER 1

 

Mrs. Paradise?”

A voice sounds out of nowhere. My thoughts are sluggish, as if I’m running underwater. I try and try but I’m not getting anywhere.

“Not stable. Eighty over sixty. And falling.”

Oh God, I’m still alive.

I move my legs, they respond, barely, but they respond. Light prowls its way into my eyes. I hear dogs barking, high-pitched. They pant, their tags clatter.

“You’ve been in a car accident.”

My face is hot, my thoughts vague, like dusty boxes in obscure and dark attic spaces. I know immediately something is amiss.

“Oh my God, look at her head.”

A siren sounds, it stutters for a second, then turns into a steady torment.

I want to tell them . . . I open my mouth, my lips begin to form the words, but the burning sensation in my head becomes unbear- able. My chest is on fire, and ringing in my left ear numbs the entire side of my face. Let me die, I want to tell them. But the only sound

I hear is of crude hands tearing fragile fabric. “Step back. Clear.”

My body explodes, jerks upward. This isn’t part of the plan.

My vision is blurred and hazy. I make out a woman in baby blue scrubs, a nurse, slipping a plastic tube over my head, and immedi- ately two prongs hiss cold air into my nostrils. She pumps a lever and the bed jerks upward, then another lever triggers a motor rais- ing the headboard until my upper body is resting almost vertically.

My world becomes clearer. The nurse’s hair is in a ponytail and the pockets of her cardigan sag. I watch her dispose of tubing and wrappers, and the closing of the trash can’s metal lid sounds final, evoking a feeling I can’t quite place, a vague sense of loss, like a pickpocket making off with my loose change, disappearing into the crowd that is my strange memory.

A male voice sounds out of nowhere. “I need to place a PICC line.”

The overly gentle voice belongs to a man in a white coat. He talks to me as if I’m a child in need of comfort.

“Just relax, you won’t feel a thing.”

Relax and I won’t feel a thing? What a concept. I lift my arms and pain shoots from my shoulder into my neck. I tell myself not to do that again anytime soon.

The white coat rubs the back of my hand. The alcohol wipe leaves an icy trail and jerks me further from my lulled state. I watch the doctor insert a long needle into my vein. A forgotten cotton wipe rests in the folds of the waffle-weave blanket, in its center a bright red bloody mark, like a scarlet letter.

There’s a spark of memory, it ignites but then fizzles, like a wet match. I refuse to be pulled away, I follow the crimson, attach myself to the memory that started out like a creak on the stairs, but then the monsters appear.

First I remember the darkness. Then I remember the blood. My baby. Oh God, Mia.

The memory of the blood lingers. There’re flashes of red explod- ing like lightning in the sky; one moment they’re illuminating everything around me; the next they are gone, bathing my world in darkness. Then the bloody images fade and vanish, leaving a black jittering line on the screen.

Squeaking rubber soles on linoleum circle me and I feel a pat on my shoulder.

This isn’t real. A random vision, just a vision. It doesn’t mean anything.

A nurse gently squeezes my shoulder and I open my eyes. “Mrs. Paradise.” The nurse’s voice is soft, almost apologetic.

“I’m sorry, but I have orders to wake you every couple of hours.” “Blood,” I say, and squint my eyes, attempting to force the image to return to me. “I don’t understand where all this blood’s coming from.” Was that my voice? It can’t be mine, it sounds nothing like me. “Blood? What blood?” The nurse looks at my immaculately taped PICC line. “Are you bleeding?”

I turn toward the window. It’s dark outside. The entire room appears in the window’s reflection, like an imprint, a not-quite- true copy of reality.

“Oh God,” I say, and my high-pitched voice sounds like a screeching microphone. “Where’s my daughter?”

She just cocks her head and then busies herself straightening the blanket. “Let me get the doctor for you,” she says and leaves the room.

CHAPTER 2

Voices enter my consciousness like a slow drift of clouds, merging with the scent of pancakes, syrup, toast, and coffee, making my stomach churn.

A gentle hand touches my arm, then a voice. “Mrs. Paradise? I’m Dr. Baker.”

I judge only his age—he is young—as if my brain does not allow me to appraise him further. Have I met him before? I don’t know. Everything about me, my body and my senses, is faulty. When did I become so forgetful, so scatterbrained?

He wears a white coat with his name stitched on the pocket: Dr. Jeremy Baker. He retrieves a pen from his coat and shines a light into my eyes. There’s an explosion so painful I clench my eyelids shut. I turn my head away from him, reach up, and feel the left side of my head. Now I understand why the world around me is muffled; my entire head is bandaged.

“You’re at County Medical. An ambulance brought you to the emergency room about . . .” He pauses and looks at his wrist-watch. I wonder why the time matters. Is he counting the hours, does he want to be exact? “. . . three days ago, on the fifth.”

Three days. And I don’t remember a single minute. Ask him, go ahead, ask him. “Where’s my daughter?”

“You were in a car accident. You have a head injury and you’ve been in a medically induced coma.”

He didn’t answer my question. He talks to me as if I’m a child, incapable of comprehending more elaborate sentences. Accident? I don’t remember any accident.

“They found you in your car in a ravine. You have a concus- sion, fractured ribs, and multiple contusions around your lower extremities. You also had a critical head injury when they brought you in. Your brain was swollen, which was the reason for the induced coma.”

I don’t remember any accident. What about Jack? Yes, Mia’s with Jack. She must be.

One more time.

“Was my daughter in the car with me?” “You were alone,” he says.

“She’s with Jack? Mia’s with my husband?” “Everything’s going to be okay.”

The blood was just a vision, it wasn’t real. She’s with Jack, she’s safe. Thank God.

Everything is going to be okay, he said.

“We’re not sure of any brain damage at this point, but now that you’ve regained consciousness we’ll be able to perform all the necessary tests to figure out what’s going on.” He motions to the nurse who has been standing next to him. “You lost a lot of blood and we had to administer fluids to stabilize you. The swell- ing will go down in a few days, but in the meantime we need to make sure you keep your lungs clear of fluids.”

He picks up a contraption and holds it up in front of me. “This is a spirometer. The nurse will give you detailed instructions. Basi- cally you keep the red ball suspended as long as you can. Every two hours, please.” His last comment is directed toward the nurse.

The gurgling in my chest is uncomfortable and I try not to cough. The pain in my left side must be the fractured ribs. I won- der how I’ll be able to stay awake for two hours or wake up every two hours or use this contraption for two hours, or whatever he just said.

“Before I forget . . .” Dr. Baker looks down at me. He is quiet for a while and I wonder if I missed a question. Then he lowers his voice. “Two detectives were here to talk to you. I won’t allow any questioning until we’ve done a few more tests.” He nods to the nurse and walks toward the door, then turns around and offers one more trifle of news. “Your husband will be here soon. In the meantime can we call anyone for you? Family? A friend? Anybody?” I shake my head no and immediately regret it. A mallet pounds against my skull from the inside. My head is a giant swollen bulb and the throbbing in my ear manages to distract me from my aching ribs. My lids have a life of their own. I’m nodding off but I have so many questions. I take a deep breath as if I’m preparing to jump off a diving board. It takes everything I have to sound out the words.

“Where did this accident happen?” Why does he look so puzzled? Am I missing more than I’m aware of?

“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you much about the accident,” he says. He sounds subdued, as if he’s forcing himself to be composed in order to calm me. “All we know is that your car was found upstate at the bottom of a ravine.” Pause. “You have a lot of inju- ries. Some are from the accident. Can you remember what hap- pened?”

I reflect on his words, really think them over. Accident. Ravine. Nothing. Not a thing. There’s a large black hole where my mem- ory used to be.

“I can’t remember anything,” I say.

His brows furrow. “You mean . . . the accident?”

The accident. He talks about the accident as if I remember. I want to tell him to x-ray my head, and that he’ll find a dark shadow within my skull where my memory once was.

I’m getting the hang of this. Before I say something, I concen- trate, think of the question and repeat it in my head, take a deep breath, then I speak.

“You don’t understand. I don’t remember the accident and I don’t remember anything before the accident.”

“Do you remember wanting to harm yourself?”

“Harm myself?” I would remember that, wouldn’t I? Why am I so forgetful?

“Either that or you were shot.”

Was I shot or did I harm myself? What kind of question is he asking me?

I turn my head as far to the left as possible, catching a glimpse of the outstretched leg of a police officer sitting by the door, out in the hallway. I wonder what that’s all about.

Dr. Baker looks over his shoulder and then faces me again. He steps closer and lowers his voice. “You don’t remember.” He states it matter-of-factly, no longer a question, but a realization.

“I don’t know what I don’t know,” I say. That’s kind of funny, when I think about it. I giggle and his brows furrow again. I’m getting frustrated. We’re going in circles. It’s difficult to stay awake.

Then he tells me about my voice. How it is “monotone” and that I have “a reduction in range and intensity of emotions,” and that my reactions are “flat and blunted.” I don’t understand what he’s telling me. Should I smile more, be more cheerful? I want to ask him but then I hear a word that puts it all to rest.

“Amnesia,” he says. “We’re not sure about the cause yet. Retrograde, maybe posttraumatic. Maybe even trauma-related.”

When you hear amnesia from a man in a white coat, it’s serious. Final. I forgot sounds casual—oh, I’m forgetful. I have amnesia, I’m not forgetful after all. What’s next? Is he going to ask me what year it is? Who the president is? If I remember my birth date? “Retrograde means you don’t recall events that happened just before the onset of the memory loss. Posttraumatic is a cognitive impairment and memory loss can stretch back hours or days, sometimes even longer. Eventually you’ll recall the distant past but you may never recover what happened just prior to your acci- dent. Amnesia can’t be diagnosed with an X-ray, like a broken bone. We’ve done an MRI test and a CAT scan. Both tests came back inconclusive. Basically there’s no definitive proof of brain damage at this point, but absence of proof is not proof of absence. There could be microscopic damages, and the MRI and the CAT scan are just not sophisticated enough to detect those. Nerve fiber damage doesn’t show up on either test.”

I remain silent, not sure if I should ask anything else, not sure if I even understood him at all. All I grasp is that he can’t tell me anything definitive, so what’s the point?

“There’s the possibility that you suffer from dissociative amne- sia. Trauma would cause you to block out certain information associated with the event. There’s no test for that, either. You’d have to see a psychiatrist or a psychologist. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The neurologist will order some more tests. Like I said, time will tell.”

I take a deep breath. He’s relaying medical facts to me but I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s something he is not tell- ing me.

“They found me where again?”

“In a ravine, in Dover, upstate. You were transferred here from

Dover Medical Center.”

Dover? Dover. Nothing. I’m blank.

“I’ve never been to Dover.”

“That’s where they found you—you just don’t remember.” He slips the pen back in his coat pocket. “You were lucky,” he adds. He holds up his index finger and thumb, indicating the extent of the luck I had. “The bullet was this far from doing serious dam- age. Really lucky. Remember that.”

Bullet. I was shot or I harmed myself. Lucky. That depends on whom you ask, I think to myself. Remember that. How funny. My hand moves up to my ear, almost like a reflex. “You said there’s damage to my ear. What happened to it?”

He pauses ever so slightly. “Gone. Completely gone. The area was infected and we had to make a decision.” He watches me intently. “It could have been worse. Like I said, you were lucky.” “That’s some luck,” I say, but when I think about my ear, I don’t really care.

“There’s reconstructive surgery.”

“What’s there now? I mean, is there a hole?”

“There’s a small opening draining fluids, other than that, there’s a flap of skin stretched over the wound.”

An opening that drains fluids. I’m oddly untouched by the fact that a flap of skin is stretched over a hole in my head where my ear used to be. I have amnesia. I forgot to lock my car. I lost my umbrella. My ear is gone. It’s all the same: insignificant.

“And you call that lucky?”

“You’re alive, that’s what counts.”

There’s that buzzing sound...

About this edition

• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0425278409
• ISBN 13: 9780425278406
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368