Author's Note- The following is an expanded version of a story I'd written for the 750 Word Challenge, "Lost Girl". There were many who were confused by the original version and a few who got it, but suggested that the telling suffered from trying to stay within the 750 word limit.
It was originally inspired by a post in the discussion boards made by someone who seemed to be speaking in gibberish. I was struck by the reactions of those who were either mocking the poster or trying to make sense of it all. It made me think that we will always struggle to process the places and names from a different map than the one that we're standing in.
But that for those trying to tell the story, it all made perfect sense, if you made allowance for the possibility of madness, or magic. If you're willing to go back over it slowly, connect the dots, and step through, to the story, we sometimes discover that it's one of those that we once knew ourselves by heart, even when we were very little.
So, you're supposed to feel a little confused reading through the first time. My hope is that once you've figured out the twist, and looked at the maps, you'll want to go back and read it again, right away, now in on the secret.
It was only after I'd finished it that I realized, that for those of us who have gone through a Winter, without any new stories popping up out of thin air, it was really about refilling our supply of magic, in the way that only falling in love really can.
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The Only Lost Girl In New York
It was faster to walk from Andrew's apartment in Resident Housing by Columbus Circle to the NYPD Midtown North Precinct than it would have been to try and catch a cab at this hour on a Saturday night.
He'd be grateful that once his third year was over, he'd no longer be on call for the Weekend Mobile Crisis Team. He was in line to be Chief Resident next year and might have been able to push his weekend off on one of the others, but the Director of his program was a stickler for that kind of thing and if Andrew hoped to end up on staff or teaching at Mt Sinai one day, it would all be worth it.
After showing his ID at the desk, he was buzzed through, and met by a Detective Rivera, who held a phone to his chest as he introduced himself and then resumed his conversation as they walked down a hallway, making their way back to the interview rooms.
"Okay, Miss Wright," He stopped and held up his palm to Andrew as he spoke into the phone, just outside the door. "I'm going to need to hang up for a moment, but will call you right back."
Looking through the glass, Andrew could see there was a young, blond woman seated in the room, speaking urgently with a uniformed officer.
"Yes. Please keep your phone with you." He rolled his eyes slightly as he waited for a response, trying to end the call. "This will only take a minute and then I'd like to go through it one more time...Yes. Bye." He checked to make sure the call had ended before looking up. "Thanks for getting down here so quickly, Doc," He pointed into a room. "She's been speed-talking for the last twenty minutes. Took blood already, but you know how that goes. Could be hours on the results."
"Any reason you didn't just transport her up to the emergency room to be evaluated?" The woman seemed relatively composed, but Andrew couldn't hear what she was saying through the glass. She didn't look like someone who needed a psych eval., but you could never tell. Most of the time NYPD was just trying to figure out whether they needed to process someone to Riker's or Bellevue. From his first visual impression, it didn't look like she belonged in either. But again, it was always hard to tell until you did the assessment.
"I'll be honest with you Doc," he shrugged. "I'm still trying to get my bearings on this one. I'm on the phone with her girlfriend in London and trying to make sense of what these two are saying, but it's all mezclado at this point." He shook his head and threw up his hands. "She runs into this patrolman who's writing a ticket out on Broadway...around 51st." He jerks his thumb through the glass toward the uniformed officer at the table with her. "I mean she's running down the sidewalk and plows into him. Hard. Full panic mode. He picks her up off the sidewalk and she's talking gibberish, but she doesn't look like your average Saturday night drunk and disorderly."
"So she's been drinking?"
"He said he could smell alcohol on her, but she doesn't seem sloppy," He shrugged. "More like panic, you know, disoriented. Said she's trying to find her friends, can't find her way back." He pointed to the phone. "I'm going to call her girlfriend back and see if I can get a coherent statement, but so far we got nothing that makes any sense." He handed Andrew his card with her name, DOB and a case number written on the back.
