The Woman Who Forgot Her Life

I was six blocks away and coming back to the station from investigating a convenience store robbery when the dispatcher called me and asked me to go to the corner of Broadway and Third. Trixie said the crime had just happened and the victim was down and not responding, so I flipped on my lights and keyed my lapel mike to respond.

It was a purse snatching outside one of the upscale boutiques on Third. Apparently it had gone bad and the woman had been hurt. The dispatcher had the EMT's on the way too.

When I pushed my way through the circle of people in front of the boutique, I saw a woman lying on her back and another woman sitting beside her. The dispatcher said the 911 caller had been female, so I asked the sitting woman if she'd made the call.

"Yes, it was me. She was just coming down the steps of the store when this man ran past and grabbed her purse. She had it over her shoulder and when he pulled it off, he spun her around. She fell and hit her head on the steps."

I knelt beside the woman and looked her in the face.

She was in her late twenties, I figured, or maybe early thirties, and it was obvious she was still out of it a little. Her pupils were dilated even though it was sunny, and she wasn't moving much.

"How you doing, Miss."

"I -- I'm not sure. What happened?"

"The report I got said someone knocked you down and took your purse. Don't you remember?"

The woman seemed to be thinking, and then looked at me.

"No. I don't remember anything like that"

She tried to sit up then, but I stopped her.

"Miss, you hit your head when you fell and you might be hurt more than you think. Just stay down until the EMT's get here. Once they check you out, they'll tell you if you can get up or not."

I heard the siren on the ambulance as it turned off Broadway onto Third. The ambulance stopped and two EMT's got out. I knew them both. Barbara was a former nurse's aide who got tired of changing bed pans and got herself certified as an EMT. She was great with people.

Doug was a former Army medic. I'd worked with him a few times. He'd been steady as a rock when I felt a little queasy at times, especially at car wrecks. He was great with people too.

They walked up carrying their cases of equipment. Doug asked what had happened. I filled him in on what little I knew. He smiled at the woman.

"Hi there, Ma'am. I hear you have a bump on the head, but let's be sure that's all it is."

While Doug did his examination, I talked to the 911 caller. She didn't have much more information than she'd already given me.

She hadn't seen the guy's face because he was wearing a black hoodie, and he'd been running when he grabbed the woman's purse. He ran off as soon as he had it, and hadn't looked in the woman's direction. All she really knew is he was about as tall as I am, but pretty skinny.

She knew he was a man because his jeans fit pretty tight. She said he also ran like a man would run. I wasn't sure what that meant, but I wrote it down anyway.

After that I asked the other people standing around if anyone had seen anything but they all said they hadn't.

About that time, Doug tapped me on the shoulder.

"Mike, I'm not absolutely sure what I've got here, so I'm going to transport her to Mercy. Her pupils are still dilated and she couldn't follow my light very well. It might just be a mild concussion, but I want to be sure."

I said I needed to talk to her again if that was OK. He frowned.

"You can talk to her if you want, but I don't think you're going to get much. She says she doesn't remember anything."

She was sitting up when I walked over.

"Hi, Miss. I'm Officer Bryan. I need to file a report about this incident and I need some more information. Let's start with your name."

Her bottom lip quivered, and she sniffed.

"I can't tell you. That man asked me the same question. I've been sitting here trying to remember, but I can't remember who I am."

"Well, how about any identification you have on you, you know, drivers license, voter registration, credit cards, things like that?"

She sniffed again.

"I suppose that was all in my purse, but I don't remember having a purse either."

I stood up and walked over to Doug and Barbara.

"Either of you ever see anything like this before?"

Doug shook his head.

"Nope. A lot of the guys I treated in Afghanistan couldn't remember the truck blowing up or getting shot, but they always knew who they were."

Barbara was nodding.

"When I was a nurse, we'd sometimes get a patient with a severe head injury. They sometimes couldn't remember much that happened before that for a while, but they still remembered their name, whether they were married or not, where they lived, stuff like that."

I nodded because that's what I thought was normal for something like this.

"I'm going to talk to some more people and find out if there are any security cameras on the block that might have caught what happened. I'll talk to her again once you get her to the hospital. Maybe she'll remember something by then."

Doug and Barbara took her to Mercy. I went inside the boutique and asked the girl at the register if she knew the woman. She said the woman had been there before, but she didn't know her name. I asked if she'd paid with a credit card, but the girl said she hadn't bought anything this time. She also remembered that the last time the woman had made a purchase, she'd paid in cash.

The manager of the boutique said they had security cameras inside, but nothing outside, so I checked with every store on both sides of the block. I found two cameras that had a view of the front of the boutique. One just across the street at a coffee shop showed me an excellent quality video of the guy running up, grabbing the woman's purse, and then high-tailing it down the block. The only problem with that one was it was looking at his back.

The other was at the end of the block on the same side of the street and had also recorded the whole thing. It was just too far away to make out a face even if the guy hadn't been wearing a hoodie. It did show the guy ducking into the alley in the middle of the block.

I asked both stores to burn a disk of the recording from half an hour before to half an hour after the incident. In the past, the techs in the lab had been able to clean up bad recordings, and when they go through them frame by frame, sometimes they see things most people wouldn't. I hoped maybe they could do something with these.

I drove down to the alley then, parked the squad car, and started walking. Purse snatchers usually don't hang on to the purse for very long. They'll find someplace they think is safe, dump out the contents and take any cash and credit cards they find, and then drop the purse and run off again. Since nobody chased the perp into the alley, I figured he might have dropped the purse there.

I found a purse in the third dumpster I checked. It was light blue, and the purse in the video looked to be the same color, so I put it in an evidence bag, wrote the date, time and place in the blanks on the bag, then sealed it and put it in the trunk of the patrol car. I'd hoped to at least find something like a receipt with the woman's name or credit card number, but the purse was empty.

Evidently the dumpster had been dumped that morning, because there was nothing else in it. The only other things around were a condom that looked used, and the little plastic tube thing tampons come in. Neither of those were unusual things to find in an alley behind a bar where this dumpster was. They might have been left by a prostitute and her john, or by just a couple of teenagers who didn't have anyplace else to go.

After checking all the other dumpsters in the alley as well as around and behind each one, I'd found nothing, so I drove back to the station and started my report.

After lunch, I drove to Mercy, explained to the girl at the desk about the woman, and asked if she'd been admitted. She checked her computer.

"Detective, we have a Jane Doe in room two twenty four. She was brought into the ER a couple hours ago. She's the only Jane Doe we have, so that might be her."

I said I'd have to see her to be sure. She told me to go on up.

When I got to the nurse's station on the second floor, I asked the nurse at the desk if she knew anything about the woman in room two twenty four. She checked the chart hanging behind her desk.

"She was brought up about an hour ago. She's not hurt that bad, but she can't remember her name. The ER doctor admitted her for observation and a psych exam. She's getting the psych exam right now. It'll be about half an hour before she's back in her room."

"Is her doctor still in the hospital?"

She looked a schedule above her phone.

"That's Doctor Harris, and he's in ER until six tonight."

"What about the psychiatrist."

The nurse looked at her chart again.

"That would be, let's see...Doctor Rice. He's not on staff, so he'll probably be here until about four."

The ER wasn't very busy at that time of day, but I figured it wouldn't be. Most of the things you see happening on TV take place in a real ER after dark. It wasn't often we got called out to a beating, stabbing or shooting during daylight. It usually happened after dark, and the victim would go to one of the ERs in the city.

There were a few people there coughing and one guy in a hard hat with an ice pack on his hand, but the atmosphere was almost relaxed. The cute little nurse at the desk smiled at me when I asked if she could page Doctor Harris for me.

Doctor Blake Harris looked too young to be a doctor, but I suppose that was because I'm thirty-eight and he was about ten years younger. He walked up and stuck out his hand when he saw me standing at the nurse's desk.

"Hi Dective, I'm Blake Harris. What can I do for you?"

"The EMT's brought a woman in earlier. She'd hit her head and couldn't remember anything, even her name. The nurse on her floor said you were the doctor who saw her. She was the victim of a purse snatching, and I need to talk to her about it. She didn't seem to remember anything when I talked to her before. I was wondering if she's remembered anything since."

"Yes, I saw her and no, she hasn't remembered anything. Her condition is extremely rare. I've never seen it before, only read about it. She has a mild concussion, but that wouldn't be enough to cause a complete memory loss. That's why I admitted her and asked for the psych eval."

It would sound like I was questioning his diagnosis, but I had to ask.

"Could she be faking the memory loss? I've seen that before."

He frowned.

"I suppose it's possible, but I don't think she is. She seems too lost to be faking anything, and she's just different, somehow. We get the occasional case of amnesia in here because of a car wreck or spousal abuse. She's...well, different is the only word that comes to mind. It's like her whole life just went away. That's not a clinical diagnosis, just an experienced observation. It's my guess she has some other problem that's causing it, but I'm sure it's not physical. The shrink can probably tell you more once he's talked to her."

The clock on the wall told me the woman would probably be back in her room by then, so I took the elevator to the third floor and Doctor Rice's office. I wanted to hear what he had to say before I talked to the woman again.

Howard Rice was the guy you see in the movies playing a psychiatrist. He was a small, older man, had a beard, and looked at me through thick, wire-rimmed glasses. He even wore a bow tie. He frowned when I asked him about the woman.

"What Blake told you is correct. I'm not yet sure what her problem is, but it's definitely not physical. If she'd not lost her memory, there would have been no need for her to be here. That bump on the head will be gone in a couple of days.

"No, she has a mental problem. I'm just not sure what it is yet. The brain is still a mystery for the most part. We have a pretty good understanding of how commands get transferred from the brain to the rest of the body, and we know what most parts of the brain do, but that's about it. When it comes to how and why it does what it does, it's a bit like that old child's game where you put your hand in a closed box and try to figure out what's inside. You have to keep feeling around until you find something that gives you a clue.

"If I had to make a diagnosis right now, I'd say something triggered the memory loss when she hit her head. We know the brain will try to protect itself from remembering traumatic experiences by forgetting them. That's been well documented. Women usually don't remember the pain of childbirth, for example. Most people can't describe what happened to them in a car accident. A lot of abused spouses don't remember what happened even though they were beaten pretty badly. If the trauma is severe enough, sometimes the brain apparently decides it's too bad to remember and just stops remembering it.

"Like I said, it's not easy to figure out. I'll talk to her every day for the next few days, but whatever it is, I think it must be pretty deep, a lot deeper than just getting her purse stolen. I might never find it unless her subconscious wants me to. Sometimes that does happen."

I thanked Doctor Rice, gave him my card, and asked if he'd call me if he learned anything else. Then I went to talk with the woman.

She was sitting up in bed and watching television when I knocked on the door. She looked at me and smiled.

"The nurse said you'd be in to talk to me."

She looked at the person in the other bed.

"Could we go somewhere else?"

"I could buy us a cup of coffee in the cafeteria."

She grinned.

"I don't think I want to be anywhere that public. These hospital gowns don't close in the back very well and they slide around all over the place. Maybe we could just go to the waiting room down the hall?"

She was right about the hospital gowns. When she slid off the bed, hers rode up her legs. She quickly pulled it back down, but not before I saw a very sensuous and very soft looking thigh. She just grinned again.

"See enough or should I get back on the bed and slide off again?"

"Well, I wasn't really looking."

"Sure you weren't, just like I remember everything that happened today. It's OK. I'm flattered you thought I was worth looking at."

We talked for a few minutes in the waiting room on that floor, but I didn't get any more information. What I did get was the feeling the woman was really frustrated. She just sighed when I asked her if she remembered anything yet.

"No. I've tried and tried, but there's nothing there. Doctor Rice said maybe if I watched television, I'd remember seeing one of the shows or one of the actors before and that would help. It didn't."

She looked at me and I saw her eyes fill with tears.

"What's going to happen to me if I can't remember who I am or anything that happened before today?"

I wasn't sure about that because I'd never known of anyone with her condition before. I couldn't tell her that, of course. I tried to sound optimistic and hoped that might help her.

"Oh, I'm sure you'll remember who you are in a day or so, and in time, you'll remember everything else too. It was just the bump on the head that caused this, and as soon as that's better, you will be too. The doctor in the ER said it wasn't serious."

She sniffed and wiped her eyes with her hand.

"Yeah, that's what he told me too, but Doctor Rice said I have some kind of mental condition that needs to be fixed too. He doesn't know what it is though."

"Yes, I know. I talked to Doctor Rice."

"So, if he can't find out what it is and fix it, what do I do? I don't have any money and I don't remember what I do for a living or where I live or if I have family or..."

She started to cry then, and I let her. It wasn't that I didn't feel her frustration. I would have probably cried too if I was in her situation. I just didn't know what to do to make her feel better. I did know of two ways I might be able to identify her though. Once she stopped crying and blew her nose, I told her those two ways.

"I can't help you remember, but I can maybe find out who you are if you agree."

She blew her nose again and then looked at me.

"Right now, I'd do anything."

"OK, what I'll do is take a couple of pictures of you with my cell phone, and we'll put them on the news and in the newspaper and ask anyone who knows you to come forward and identify you. I'll also have a tech come and take your fingerprints. The fingerprints are a long shot, because unless you've been fingerprinted before, neither the state nor the FBI will have a record of you. It's worth a try. What do you think?"

She chuckled.

"You want to take my picture like this? I'm not exactly looking my best."

"Just your face from the front and each profile. Your hair covers the bump so it won't show."

I took the three pictures and told her I'd send a tech up the next day for her prints. Then I asked her if I could get anything for her. She looked surprised.

"Why would you do that?"

The real reason wasn't very professional. I liked her and I wanted to help her if I could. It wasn't seeing her thigh or the way her breasts wobbled softly under the hospital gown, though I hadn't missed either. It was a couple other things really.

When she'd slid off the bed and exposed her thigh, she hadn't been embarrassed or upset. She'd just laughed and joked about it. That told me whoever she was, she had a sense of humor and was also pretty confident about herself. I liked both. The other thing was when she'd cried.

I've seen a lot of women cry and it's pretty easy to tell if they're faking it or not. Many women try tears to keep from getting arrested or to get out of a ticket. This woman wasn't faking anything.

"Well, since I was the detective on the scene, your case is mine now and I hate not being able to solve a case. I just thought maybe if I brought you a book or a magazine, it might help you remember and I could close my case."

"I don't remember what kind of books and magazines I like."

"Well, I'll just bring a few different ones tomorrow then, if that's OK."

She shrugged.

"I don't suppose it can hurt."

The next morning when I got in, I checked with the lab to see if they'd been able to do anything with the video or with the purse. Cheryl, a petite little redhead with a fantastic smile said she had.

"The first camera caught the guy watching the front of the store about ten minutes before your woman came out. A couple times, he looked across the street and directly into that camera. I blew up the pictures, so maybe you can get an ID from them. The other one was too far away, so I couldn't do much with it.

"The purse is interesting. Ever hear of a Deleroux purse?"

"No, can't say as I have."

"The women who buy them have more money than they know what to do with. They go for around five hundred or so."

"Five hundred dollars?"

"Yep, and this one is almost new. Your woman either has a lot of money of her own or a really understanding boyfriend or husband. I got a partial print off the purse handle. It's probably hers, but it might be from the perp. I sent it in for an ID. We should know in a day or so as long as they have digital prints on file. The state and FBI still have some prints they haven't digitized yet. If that's the case, it could take up to a week."

I talked to Jake Morris, the lab supervisor, and asked if he'd send a tech to take the woman's prints. He said it would be in the afternoon, but he would.

The pictures Cheryl gave me looked familiar. I pulled up the known purse snatchers on my computer terminal and started clicking through them one by one. I found the guy after fifty-three. It was obviously him, because both my picture and the mug shot had the same birthmark on the guy's forehead.