“Better.”
“Good. We will wait for the police. They will take your statement and then I can release you to your friend. But you must take it very easy. I will give you an instruction sheet for care, but it is in French. Perhaps someone can translate it, or we can find you one in English or Dutch online.”
“Ce ne sera pas nécessaire,” I say.
“Ahh, you speak French?” he asks in French.
I nod. “It came back to me.”
“Good. Everything else will, too.”
“So I can go?”
“Someone must come for you! And you have to make a report to the police.”
Police. It will be hours. And I have nothing to tell them, really. I take the coin back out and play it across my knuckle. “No police!”
The doctor follows the coin as it flips across my hand. “Do you have problems with the police?” he asks.
“No. It’s not that. I have to find someone,” I say. The coin clatters to the floor.
The doctor picks it up and hands it to me. “Find who?”
Perhaps it’s the casual way he asked; my bruised brain doesn’t have time to scramble it before spitting it out. Or perhaps the fog is lifting now, and leaving a terrific headache behind. But there it is, a name, on my lips, like I say it all the time.
“Lulu.”
“Ahh, Lulu. Très bien!” The doctor claps his hands together. “Let us call this Lulu. She can come get you. Or we can bring her to you.”
It is too much to explain that I don’t know where Lulu is. Only that she’s in the white room and she’s waiting for me and she’s been waiting for a long time. And I have this terrible feeling, and it’s not just because I’m in a hospital where things are routinely lost, but because of something else.
“I have to go,” I insist. “If I don’t go now, it could be too late.”
The doctor looks at the clock on the wall. “It is not yet two o’clock. Not late at all.”
“It might be too late for me.” Might be. As if whatever is going to happen hasn’t already happened.
The doctor looks at me for a long minute. Then he shakes his head. “It is better to wait. A few more hours, your memory will return, and you will find her.”
“I don’t have a few hours!”
I wonder if he can keep me here against my will. I wonder if at this moment I even have a will. But something pulls me forward, through the mist and the pain. “I have to go,” I insist. “Now.”
The doctor looks at me and sighs. “D’accord.” He hands me a sheaf of papers, tells me I am to rest for the next two days, clean my wound every day, the sutures will dissolve. Then he hands me a small card. “This is the police inspector. I will tell him to expect your call tomorrow.”
I nod.
“You have somewhere to go?” he asks.
Céline’s club. I recite the address. The Métro stop. These I remember easily. These I can find.
“Okay,” the doctor says. “Go to the billing office to check out, and then you may go.”
“Thank you.”
He touches me on the shoulder, reminds me to take it easy. “I am sorry Paris brought you such misfortune.”