Rejected, Then Reborn
Chapter 45

“Hello, Miss Reynolds.”

“Uh, hi.” The curly haired girl greeted the tall, lanky, smiling doctor who had just entered her room after a brief knock, a surprised look on her face. “You’re not the doctor who assessed me earlier.” She pointed out with a frown, and truly, he wasn’t. That one had been old, and quite pleasant, this one looked young and… well, quite pleasant too.

“No, I’m not.” He agreed, the smile not leaving his face for a minute. “I’m Zack Mueller, licensed psychologist,”

“Right, right.” Lacy’s tone was dismissive as she cut him off, her demeanor agitated. If she wanted to have a meet and greet, she would have been seated at some fancy restaurant for starters or a boring conference even… not a bloody hospital for crying out loud. “So, can I go home now? Look, there’s nothing wrong with me, doctor, aside that five-year complete blank, and my parents are only really exaggerating on the gravity of the whole situation, it’s really nothing serious, I can assure you. I’m pretty sure it’s just mild trauma from being all alone in the forest for so long— you know, Retrograde Amnesia and its effects, and I know this because I am a registered nurse. My memories will come to me eventually.”

“You make solid arguments, Nurse Reynolds,” the doctor teased with an amused smirk, “But most of your results aren’t in yet, like the MRI scan for instance, which is the most important one that would actually determine if you can be discharged or not.”

“I can request to go home and come back tomorrow or something, and there’s nothing you’ll be able to do to stop me, you do know that, right?”

At that point Lacy did not even know why she was being difficult, especially when everyone around her seemed to have nothing but her best interests at heart.

It was just that… since she had come to in that chair right in front of Rannulfus and Ash’s home, she had had a lot of questions.

Questions that Ash had assured her that her family would be much more able to answer… but so far, all she was getting were a lot more questions, and no f*****g answers, that was pretty much enough to turn a girl’s thoughts and actions haywire, causing her to come off as an a*****e or even worse, an entitled spoilt brat. But in that moment, she didn’t even care.

Yes, that’s how far gone she was.

“You want to put that to the test?” Lacy snapped out of her thoughts just in time to hear the doctor say, the words triggering some sort of memory in her mind, but all she got was fuzzy, hazy, flashbacks that gave her a migraine so strong that she began to thrash and cry out in pain.

The doctor was by her side in a minute, pressing pagers and calling for pain relievers, and assuring her that everything was going to be fine, when all Lacy was praying for was death so that perhaps, the sudden anomaly would cease. But even in her pain, the whole irony of her situation was not lost on her. Hell, she would have laughed if she hadn’t already started bawling her eyes out from the intense pain.

So much for going home today.

In a few minutes, the strong relievers had entered her b***d stream, and they had already started to do their work, a small sigh of relief leaving Lacy’s lips at the decrease in pain levels.

“Feeling better now?” The lanky, (now that Lacy was paying attention to it, handsome) doctor asked, a relieved smile on his face.

“Much.” She managed to glare softly at him, (if that was even possible), stuck between still being upset, and partly feeling grateful that he had been there and quick in saving her life.

“Miss Reynolds, can you tell me exactly what happened to you there?” This time, all traces of a smile was gone from his face, his clipboard and pen were already at the ready, waiting to jot down her experience.

“I don’t know… but something about your words had triggered a memory, as though someone had said those very words to me before not too long ago, and all I’d tried to do was really remember. The migraine was what I got for my effort.” Lacy could see the doctor furiously scribbling on his clipboard, but all her mind was fixated on was not wanting to be stuck here like some lab rat, but even she knew that it was just wishful thinking.

It was going to be a long night.

****

“Senator Reynolds, Judge Reynolds,” Doctor Gordon Allan tipped his imaginary cap at the human girl’s parents. It wasn’t every day that two influential people appeared at his practice wanting nothing but the very best of service for their daughter. He treated A list celebrities all day long, but most of the time, they were either impatient, downright rude or just pretending to be wonderful people… you know, doing it all for the gram.

“How’s she doing, doc?” The woman asked, concerned looks on both her and her handsome husband’s face.

“She’s fine, though her case is a very special one. The closest we came to explaining it is by diagnosing her of Selective Retrograde Amnesia, though her other tests are still not in yet, and so we’re waiting for those to validate our findings.”

“Retrograde Amnesia? You–you think she went through some trauma of sorts?!” Mrs. Elvyra Reynolds’ eyes widened in horror, a perfectly manicured hand going right to her heart in dismay. “Oh God. No, no, no…not my poor child! Only God knows what happened in those woods.”

“Calm down, Mrs. Reynolds. Trauma isn’t the only reason why these things happen, though it doesn’t mean I’m completely ruling it out. The old, burly man was honest, his honesty doing nothing to assuage the poor mother of three’s fears. “I’ll be honest with you two, our assessment didn’t really reveal much, and we also can’t ignore the fact that she’s an adult capable of making her own decisions, no matter how it may seem in the moment. The only questionable thing we found were cut marks on her right thumb… they’re more than three, and judging by their number, done intentionally, but we don’t know for sure if she did them by herself or if there was another party involved.”

At that point, Lacy’s father, the powerful Phillip Reynolds just lost it, storming out of the doctor’s office, his steps springy with purpose. His poor wife trailed after him, totally confused at his sudden exit, “Phil? Phil! Where are you going? What’s wrong?”

He turned so abruptly that his wife almost bumped into him, his green eyes bright with anger.

In that moment, it wasn’t so difficult to guess where Lacy got the same brazen temper from. “What is wrong? Well, I’ll tell you, Elvyra… I think I listened to Lacy and made the biggest mistake of my life letting the guy that brought her go.” He started to become agitated, “You heard what the doctor said, possible trauma… now how do we know that she didn’t even suffer this at his hands? Lacy mentioned that he had a brother, what if he was involved too, and they completely brainwashed her into thinking they were the good guys? What then, huh?” The old man with dark curls like his daughter’s and greying sideburns began to pace. “What if we had our daughter’s perpetrators right in our hands and we just let them go just like that?”

At that point, Elvyra herself was heaving with anger, her husband’s words suddenly getting to her, filling her with rage and regret, even as she calmly closed the gap between them and pressed her hand against his chest in the only way she knew how to calm him down. “You know what, Phil? We may have let them go alright, but you and I are going to do whatever’s in our might to find them and get to the bottom of this,” She stared up at him, looked him right in the eyes, “And if we have to turn that bloody forest Lacy camped in upside down to find those bastards and bring them to justice, you know without a doubt that you and I would do it in a heartbeat… but time is of the essence here, so get your men, and get this done.” She kissed him on the lips, as though filling him with all her love and support, “Go. I’ll stay here and take care of child.”

So that was exactly what he did.