The first thing she noticed when she woke up
was the smell. Sterile, clean, with a faint hint of antiseptic. It made her feel disoriented, like she didn't belong in this place. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she was met with the harsh, blinding light of overhead bulbs, making her squint. The room around her was unfamiliar—cold, quiet, with the hum of machines in the background. She tried to move, but her body felt alien, unresponsive, as if it had been pieced together from parts that didn't fit. Her hands trembled as she reached for her face, but when she touched it, a sharp sting shot through her fingers. She
gasped, pulling her hand away. Something was terribly wrong.
She glanced down, and her eyes widened in
shock. Her arms, her legs—her entire
body—were covered in thick, jagged burn marks. The skin was raw, uneven, like it had been scorched, and she could feel a faint, lingering pain beneath the surface. Her breath caught in her throat.
"What happened to me?"
The words came out hoarse, and she coughed, as if her throat hadn't been used in days.
"She's awake,"
A voice said, cutting through thefog of confusion. A woman in a white coat stepped into the room, her movements calm yet urgent. Her face was kind, but her eyes held at race of worry, as if the fact that she had awoken was both a relief and a cause for concern.
"Who... who are you?"
Her voice was weak, andshe tried to sit up, but dizziness spun through hermind, making it impossible to focus. The woman gently placed a hand on her shoulder, urging her back onto the bed.
"You're in the hospital. My name is Dr. Lacey. You've been unconscious for quite some time."
"How long?" She asked, her voice trembling asshe looked at the woman, searching for any shred of clarity. Dr. Lacey hesitated.
"A month," she said softly. "You've been in and out of consciousness forquite a while now."
A month? That felt impossible. Her mind was a blur of forgotten moments, fragmented pieces of memories that refused to come together.
"A month?" she repeated, her thoughts whirling.
"How did I...?"
She stopped herself, thequestions slipping away, swallowed by an overwhelming sense of confusion.
"What happened to me?"
Dr. Lacey took a deep breath, her face softening with compassion. "You were found unconscious in a field. You were severely burned, and there was no identification on you. Your clothes were torn, and there was no sign of anyone else nearby. It was a miracle that you were found atall."
Her head spun as she tried to piece together theinformation, but it felt like she was trying to grasp at something too far away.
"In a field?" she asked, her voice shaky, as if the very idea didn't quite make sense.
"Yes," Dr. Lacey replied, nodding. "And when we checked your fingerprints, we found nothing. Nomatch at all. As though you didn't exist. There's no record of you anywhere."
Her heart pounded in her chest. She looked at the doctor, disbelief and fear rising inside her. "No fingerprints? No identity?"
Dr. Lacey's face softened, her tone careful."We've tried everything to find out who you are. It's like you've been hidden from the world. We can't find any trace of your past."
Her chest tightened. Who was she? Whycouldn't they find any record of her? And whatwere these burns? She lifted her hand to herface again, her fingers trembling. "I don't remember anything... I don't remember anything before waking up here."
Dr. Lacey sighed, her expression filled with amixture of sympathy and concern. "That's not unusual. Memory loss after trauma is common. We've been monitoring you closely, but... the burns are unlike anything we've seen before."
She looked at the doctor, her mind racing. "Burns? What happened to me?"
Dr. Lacey gently took a step closer, her eyessearching the stranger's face. "The burns don't match any known patterns. They're not from a fire, or any other cause we can identify. They look... unnatural, like something caused the mintentionally."
The words hit her like a wave. Unnatural intentional. She tried to swallow, but her throat felt dry, as if it hadn't been used in days. "Why would anyone... Why would someone do this to me?"
"I can't say for sure," Dr. Lacey said quietly, hervoice filled with compassion.She looked down at her body again, at the angry, misshapen marks that marred her skin. Everything about her felt foreign—her body, her face, her very identity. She couldn't remember a single detail about who she was or how she had gotten here.
"I don't even know my own name."
Dr. Lacey's expression softened further, hervoice gentle as she spoke. "You don't have to worry about that right now. We'll help you find out who you are. But you have to take things slowly. Your body needs time to heal."
The words echoed in her mind, but they didn't make her feel better. She couldn't shake the sense that something terrible had happened to her, something she should have remembered, but couldn't. And now, she was left in a world where even her fingerprints didn't exist—erased from the face of the earth as though she had never been born. The silence in the room stretched, thick and suffocating, and she felt more alone than ever before.
"I don't know who I am,"
she whispered to herself, her voice trembling.
"Who am I?.."