Post by countlivin on Apr 23, 2019 4:18:55 GMT
Chapter 5: Forgotten
Penn Cassidy
It was dark. It was dark, and that was all Penn could remember. She knew her own name. She knew she was eighteen. Yet, no matter how long she racked her consciousness, she could not remember where she had come from, and her eyes were closed. She wasn't sure what kind of world she would open them to, or whether she would enjoy a life in it. Penn's overwhelming question was why?
When Penn awoke, she found herself in a hospital ward, with a white ceiling above her and blinking lights in every direction. Above her loomed a tall man with thick brown hair and a surgical mask over his lower face. His eyes bored deep into hers and he seemed to know her.
"Thank God…" the doctor whispered before he turned off the bright light shining in Penn's eyes and they fluttered open. He sat up, and so did she. She pressed her lower back against the velvety pillow and knocked a strand of dark blonde hair from her face. "We weren't entirely sure you'd wake up."
The room was very small, no larger than an average bedroom, and as a result, it felt terrifically claustrophobic. Penn felt the need to bring her knees in close to her chest and hug them. The tightness of the room scared her. It was scarcely lit and scarcely occupied. There was the bed she laid on, a wooden table with a set of steel instruments, and a dusty mirror with an auburn frame on the side of the wall.
"What happened?" she spoke, still struggling to comprehend the situation. "Where am I? Who are you?"
The doctor took his hand to his mask and hung it about his neck. A name tag on his breast pocket displayed the name Dr. Terriet Prince and a picture of himself. With his rugged cheekbones and impressive jawline, the man was easily attractive, but far too old for her. That was one more reason she wished to grown up. Did she want to grow up? Now that she thought about it, she wasn't quite sure. Then why had the desire jumped to mind so easily?
"All of your questions will be answered in due time, miss," Dr. Prince responded coldly, flipping through a check board he held in his hand. "I understand you must be scared, but I'm going to ask you to be calm… collected. So we can provide an accurate treatment, alright?"
"Alright?" Penn felt a twinge of anger. "How can it be alright? I don't know who I am!"
Dr. Prince ignored her. He clicked a pen on clipboard and hovered over the paper as he began to write down observations. "What is your name?"
"Penn… Penn Cassidy," she replied, calming.
"Do you remember anything about yourself? Age? Family members, perhaps?"
"Eighteen." She dug back to remember any sign of her parents. There was simply nothing there when she went to grasp for it. But the harder she thought, the more she recollected. There's someone there, hiding behind the blackness… "I remember my father… Nothing about him. Only that he was my father."
"Was?" He raised a brown-colored eyebrow, his pen scratching over paper. "Is he no longer with us?"
She shook her head. She could not remember anything about her father, but her heart swelled in her chest when she thought of him. These questions made her angry, and the thought of his death made her worry. "I… I don't know."
"I see..." He scribbled on his page, and Penn had the unsettling feeling that she wouldn't want to read what he had to say. He reached over to his right and flipped a switch. The bulb above her showered blinding white light onto the surrounding room. Penn felt as though she was being interrogated. "Is there… anyone else? A boyfriend? Maybe a family dog?"
She cringed away when he said dog. She wasn't sure why, because thinking of dogs made her happy, yet she still involuntarily thought otherwise. "I don't know of anyone else. Listen, why are you asking me all these questions? Can you just go get my father?"
"Not until we are sure he is your father, miss Cassidy. We must be careful about these things."
"Why am I here?" she asked.
"You are here because you were recovered at the bottom of a ravine." His lack of emotion was unsettling. "We've restored your bone capacity mostly, yet you seem to be lacking your memory."
"No way!" she shouted sarcastically, tears springing to her eyes. Her constant annoyance only worsened her feeling of emptiness. "Tell me something about me—something I can go off of."
"I can tell you that you have a boyfriend," he replied, setting the clipboard down on the table. "Himself and your father have been sitting outside the compound for the last few days, waiting to see you. I can tell you we haven't been able to let them in the door. At least until we can confirm they are, in fact, related to you."
Something inside told Penn the man was right. She did remember something of her boyfriend. The only thing she remembered firmly was his kiss… It must have fought its way through the void that her mind was becoming. "Can you send them in to see me?" she asked. She was very eager to meet the two of them. It was like meeting them for the first time, but that was foolish.
"I can't. I'm sorry."
"And why the hell not?"
"They found you at the bottom of a ravine on the outside of the fence. You were caught trying to escape District One, miss Cassidy." His face was still oddly blank. "This compound we've holed you in is not a hospital, but a prison. I suggest you get used to it."
The words hit Penn like a car. She didn't even know what she was attempting to escape from, but hearing the words from the doctor gave her something new. It felt like a personal challenge, the way he'd said it. There was no way she could sit here willingly. "I don't remember trying to escape… What was I even trying to escape?"
"You have amnesia," he replied, fairly. "And you were trying to escape the District, our home."
"I'm not going to sit here and rot for something I don't even recall doing in the first place!" she yelled at him. She tried to leap from the bed, but was held down by a set of leather shackles on her ankles. The only thing the struggle managed to do was knock the clipboard from her bed.
He breathed through his nose and rubbed his temple. "Look, girl, I just want to know if you recognize the names Jomal Cassidy or Dray Kerrigan."
"Yes. I remember both those names," she replied. They didn't help make the picture clearer, but it helped to know they were correct.
"Listen," he told her, clearly unhappy uttering the words. "You've been allowed one family member audience, but we could bend the rules to let in a boyfriend if that's what you'd like."
"Why can't I see them both?" she cried. "It's my dad, and my boyfriend. How can I pick one over the other?"
"It would help if you'd make this a bit easier on yourself." Prince shook his head, and the coldness was back. "And you're going to have to choose. You're lucky you even get that. Or you get no one. Your call."
63% of readers chose to [B. Ask for Jomal Cassidy.]
How could he be giving her this terrible choice? She was upset, but clearly, he didn't care. "Just bring my dad in here then," she pouted. "I'm telling you I didn't do anything."
Dr. Prince stood in the center of the room and turned away from his patient, the lone lightbulb forming a corona around his head. "Do you expect me to believe you? You don't even believe yourself. I know you better than that."
Once he was gone behind a locked door, Penn found herself unable to comprehend what he meant. If the man knew Penn personally like he seemed to, why would he have asked her all those questions? One more question for the pile… At least her father might be able to provide some answers.
After five minutes of staring blankly at the wall in ponderance, there was a knock on the door. Yet before she could answer, a smiling man wearing a brown leather jacket entered the room. He looked overjoyed and saddened in the same instant. She was sure she looked no different herself. The man's thick gray hair came down around his jaw into a scraggly beard. He looked rather poor, and she found herself hoping it wasn't true. "Penn…" he said, his eyes welling up. "I can't believe it. What they told me, this can't be true… right? They found you outside the gate?"
"You have five minutes," said Dr. Prince through the open door. "Use them wisely.
Penn didn't understand. She couldn't tear her eyes away from her father's if she wanted to. They were the only thing in the room that held any meaning. Slowly, memories began to rush back to her, but only from her younger years. She remembered leaping into his arms. His hair was black back then. "…Daddy?" she whimpered.
He began to laugh through the tears, his fingers quaking. "Yeah, it's me honey. I can't believe it…"
"I can't remember anything." She was tearing up too. "Where am I?'
"District One, honey," he replied, taking her hand. "It's where we live: District One. Dray is really excited to see you. We all are, kiddo."
One of her tears slipped, and then another, and soon she was crying. He wrapped her in a tight bear hug. It was easy to hug him back. It was ten seconds before he let go. "Have they treated you well in here?" he asked.
"I only woke up a couple minutes ago…" she muttered. "And no. They treated me damn awful."
He laughed through the tears. "You still have your mother's mouth on you."
"Where is my mother?" she asked him. The fact that she was not here, nor outside the gate with her boyfriend was unsettling. "What happened to her? Is she…"
"Dead?" He sat back into the chair in the dark of the room. "No. But she might as well be."
"What happened?" He didn't respond. "Daddy? What happened to her?"
"She's an avox." He bit his lip, struggling to say more. "They took her voice away from her. That darling voice… You would have loved to hear her sing."
Penn didn't know what an avox was, but she shouldn't ask. "Where is she? Is she not in District One?"
"She's with some snot-nosed freak with bushy eyelashes in the Capitol," he grunted angrily.
"Are they gonna let me out?" Penn asked him, trying to divert the subject. "I hate this tiny room."
"They'll let you out," he responded quietly. "They have to eventually. The Hunger Games is quickly approaching, and they'll need every hand."
Even though she had no idea what they were, the thought of the Hunger Games brought her a rush of excitement. There was another flash in her mind, like déjà vu, but it was real. She pictured herself throwing a shiny steel knife at a building, and then… Her very first meal cooked over a fire… It was almost happy. She didn't know what the Hunger Games were, or if they were even a game, yet her urge to win them was strong. She knew, at the very least, she had wanted it before the amnesia.
"What is the Hunger Games?" Penn asked him.
"You really don't remember anything, do you?" He answered her question with his own. As he opened his mouth to speak again, the metal door slid open and Dr. Prince walked in. "I don't know the extent of your amnesia, but it's got to be quite a bit if it erased that part of you. It's a—"
"You've had enough time in here, Mr. Cassidy," Prince said definitively. "You're done."
Dad stood up slowly, and before turning around, pulled a small wooden case from his pocket. "I'm going to post bail for my daughter," he said.
"We don't accept bail here. I suggest you leave, or I will be forced to have the Peacekeepers remove you."
Dad opened the lid of the wooden box so the doctor could see. Penn tried and tried to find a way to peek in, but it was futile. "I'm going to post bail for my daughter," he repeated.
Prince took one look at the box, and accepted it, quickly hiding it away in his briefcase. As he hurriedly stashed it away, he said, "Your bail is accepted. You may leave."
Penn slowly hopped out of bed, finding it strangely difficult to move on her legs. It was as if this was her very first time standing up, yet how could it have been? She fell clumsily into her father's arms and Dr. Prince swiftly left the room. After giving her a moment to get acquainted with mobility, her legs carried her strangely smoothly, almost better than she would have expected.
"It's time to go, Penn," her dad told her as they went to the door. He didn't bother to shut it behind them, as he sped through the cement hallway.
"What was that?" she asked as she ran to catch up with him.
"Your bail," he answered. "Quick. We need to hurry. We don't have long before we get another chance."
"A chance for what?" Penn's head was spinning.
"Another chance to escape." Dad turned the corner in the hall and spun around to whisper into his daughter's ear. "Another ticket to a better life."
End of Chapter 5
Penn Cassidy
It was dark. It was dark, and that was all Penn could remember. She knew her own name. She knew she was eighteen. Yet, no matter how long she racked her consciousness, she could not remember where she had come from, and her eyes were closed. She wasn't sure what kind of world she would open them to, or whether she would enjoy a life in it. Penn's overwhelming question was why?
When Penn awoke, she found herself in a hospital ward, with a white ceiling above her and blinking lights in every direction. Above her loomed a tall man with thick brown hair and a surgical mask over his lower face. His eyes bored deep into hers and he seemed to know her.
"Thank God…" the doctor whispered before he turned off the bright light shining in Penn's eyes and they fluttered open. He sat up, and so did she. She pressed her lower back against the velvety pillow and knocked a strand of dark blonde hair from her face. "We weren't entirely sure you'd wake up."
The room was very small, no larger than an average bedroom, and as a result, it felt terrifically claustrophobic. Penn felt the need to bring her knees in close to her chest and hug them. The tightness of the room scared her. It was scarcely lit and scarcely occupied. There was the bed she laid on, a wooden table with a set of steel instruments, and a dusty mirror with an auburn frame on the side of the wall.
"What happened?" she spoke, still struggling to comprehend the situation. "Where am I? Who are you?"
The doctor took his hand to his mask and hung it about his neck. A name tag on his breast pocket displayed the name Dr. Terriet Prince and a picture of himself. With his rugged cheekbones and impressive jawline, the man was easily attractive, but far too old for her. That was one more reason she wished to grown up. Did she want to grow up? Now that she thought about it, she wasn't quite sure. Then why had the desire jumped to mind so easily?
"All of your questions will be answered in due time, miss," Dr. Prince responded coldly, flipping through a check board he held in his hand. "I understand you must be scared, but I'm going to ask you to be calm… collected. So we can provide an accurate treatment, alright?"
"Alright?" Penn felt a twinge of anger. "How can it be alright? I don't know who I am!"
Dr. Prince ignored her. He clicked a pen on clipboard and hovered over the paper as he began to write down observations. "What is your name?"
"Penn… Penn Cassidy," she replied, calming.
"Do you remember anything about yourself? Age? Family members, perhaps?"
"Eighteen." She dug back to remember any sign of her parents. There was simply nothing there when she went to grasp for it. But the harder she thought, the more she recollected. There's someone there, hiding behind the blackness… "I remember my father… Nothing about him. Only that he was my father."
"Was?" He raised a brown-colored eyebrow, his pen scratching over paper. "Is he no longer with us?"
She shook her head. She could not remember anything about her father, but her heart swelled in her chest when she thought of him. These questions made her angry, and the thought of his death made her worry. "I… I don't know."
"I see..." He scribbled on his page, and Penn had the unsettling feeling that she wouldn't want to read what he had to say. He reached over to his right and flipped a switch. The bulb above her showered blinding white light onto the surrounding room. Penn felt as though she was being interrogated. "Is there… anyone else? A boyfriend? Maybe a family dog?"
She cringed away when he said dog. She wasn't sure why, because thinking of dogs made her happy, yet she still involuntarily thought otherwise. "I don't know of anyone else. Listen, why are you asking me all these questions? Can you just go get my father?"
"Not until we are sure he is your father, miss Cassidy. We must be careful about these things."
"Why am I here?" she asked.
"You are here because you were recovered at the bottom of a ravine." His lack of emotion was unsettling. "We've restored your bone capacity mostly, yet you seem to be lacking your memory."
"No way!" she shouted sarcastically, tears springing to her eyes. Her constant annoyance only worsened her feeling of emptiness. "Tell me something about me—something I can go off of."
"I can tell you that you have a boyfriend," he replied, setting the clipboard down on the table. "Himself and your father have been sitting outside the compound for the last few days, waiting to see you. I can tell you we haven't been able to let them in the door. At least until we can confirm they are, in fact, related to you."
Something inside told Penn the man was right. She did remember something of her boyfriend. The only thing she remembered firmly was his kiss… It must have fought its way through the void that her mind was becoming. "Can you send them in to see me?" she asked. She was very eager to meet the two of them. It was like meeting them for the first time, but that was foolish.
"I can't. I'm sorry."
"And why the hell not?"
"They found you at the bottom of a ravine on the outside of the fence. You were caught trying to escape District One, miss Cassidy." His face was still oddly blank. "This compound we've holed you in is not a hospital, but a prison. I suggest you get used to it."
The words hit Penn like a car. She didn't even know what she was attempting to escape from, but hearing the words from the doctor gave her something new. It felt like a personal challenge, the way he'd said it. There was no way she could sit here willingly. "I don't remember trying to escape… What was I even trying to escape?"
"You have amnesia," he replied, fairly. "And you were trying to escape the District, our home."
"I'm not going to sit here and rot for something I don't even recall doing in the first place!" she yelled at him. She tried to leap from the bed, but was held down by a set of leather shackles on her ankles. The only thing the struggle managed to do was knock the clipboard from her bed.
He breathed through his nose and rubbed his temple. "Look, girl, I just want to know if you recognize the names Jomal Cassidy or Dray Kerrigan."
"Yes. I remember both those names," she replied. They didn't help make the picture clearer, but it helped to know they were correct.
"Listen," he told her, clearly unhappy uttering the words. "You've been allowed one family member audience, but we could bend the rules to let in a boyfriend if that's what you'd like."
"Why can't I see them both?" she cried. "It's my dad, and my boyfriend. How can I pick one over the other?"
"It would help if you'd make this a bit easier on yourself." Prince shook his head, and the coldness was back. "And you're going to have to choose. You're lucky you even get that. Or you get no one. Your call."
63% of readers chose to [B. Ask for Jomal Cassidy.]
How could he be giving her this terrible choice? She was upset, but clearly, he didn't care. "Just bring my dad in here then," she pouted. "I'm telling you I didn't do anything."
Dr. Prince stood in the center of the room and turned away from his patient, the lone lightbulb forming a corona around his head. "Do you expect me to believe you? You don't even believe yourself. I know you better than that."
Once he was gone behind a locked door, Penn found herself unable to comprehend what he meant. If the man knew Penn personally like he seemed to, why would he have asked her all those questions? One more question for the pile… At least her father might be able to provide some answers.
After five minutes of staring blankly at the wall in ponderance, there was a knock on the door. Yet before she could answer, a smiling man wearing a brown leather jacket entered the room. He looked overjoyed and saddened in the same instant. She was sure she looked no different herself. The man's thick gray hair came down around his jaw into a scraggly beard. He looked rather poor, and she found herself hoping it wasn't true. "Penn…" he said, his eyes welling up. "I can't believe it. What they told me, this can't be true… right? They found you outside the gate?"
"You have five minutes," said Dr. Prince through the open door. "Use them wisely.
Penn didn't understand. She couldn't tear her eyes away from her father's if she wanted to. They were the only thing in the room that held any meaning. Slowly, memories began to rush back to her, but only from her younger years. She remembered leaping into his arms. His hair was black back then. "…Daddy?" she whimpered.
He began to laugh through the tears, his fingers quaking. "Yeah, it's me honey. I can't believe it…"
"I can't remember anything." She was tearing up too. "Where am I?'
"District One, honey," he replied, taking her hand. "It's where we live: District One. Dray is really excited to see you. We all are, kiddo."
One of her tears slipped, and then another, and soon she was crying. He wrapped her in a tight bear hug. It was easy to hug him back. It was ten seconds before he let go. "Have they treated you well in here?" he asked.
"I only woke up a couple minutes ago…" she muttered. "And no. They treated me damn awful."
He laughed through the tears. "You still have your mother's mouth on you."
"Where is my mother?" she asked him. The fact that she was not here, nor outside the gate with her boyfriend was unsettling. "What happened to her? Is she…"
"Dead?" He sat back into the chair in the dark of the room. "No. But she might as well be."
"What happened?" He didn't respond. "Daddy? What happened to her?"
"She's an avox." He bit his lip, struggling to say more. "They took her voice away from her. That darling voice… You would have loved to hear her sing."
Penn didn't know what an avox was, but she shouldn't ask. "Where is she? Is she not in District One?"
"She's with some snot-nosed freak with bushy eyelashes in the Capitol," he grunted angrily.
"Are they gonna let me out?" Penn asked him, trying to divert the subject. "I hate this tiny room."
"They'll let you out," he responded quietly. "They have to eventually. The Hunger Games is quickly approaching, and they'll need every hand."
Even though she had no idea what they were, the thought of the Hunger Games brought her a rush of excitement. There was another flash in her mind, like déjà vu, but it was real. She pictured herself throwing a shiny steel knife at a building, and then… Her very first meal cooked over a fire… It was almost happy. She didn't know what the Hunger Games were, or if they were even a game, yet her urge to win them was strong. She knew, at the very least, she had wanted it before the amnesia.
"What is the Hunger Games?" Penn asked him.
"You really don't remember anything, do you?" He answered her question with his own. As he opened his mouth to speak again, the metal door slid open and Dr. Prince walked in. "I don't know the extent of your amnesia, but it's got to be quite a bit if it erased that part of you. It's a—"
"You've had enough time in here, Mr. Cassidy," Prince said definitively. "You're done."
Dad stood up slowly, and before turning around, pulled a small wooden case from his pocket. "I'm going to post bail for my daughter," he said.
"We don't accept bail here. I suggest you leave, or I will be forced to have the Peacekeepers remove you."
Dad opened the lid of the wooden box so the doctor could see. Penn tried and tried to find a way to peek in, but it was futile. "I'm going to post bail for my daughter," he repeated.
Prince took one look at the box, and accepted it, quickly hiding it away in his briefcase. As he hurriedly stashed it away, he said, "Your bail is accepted. You may leave."
Penn slowly hopped out of bed, finding it strangely difficult to move on her legs. It was as if this was her very first time standing up, yet how could it have been? She fell clumsily into her father's arms and Dr. Prince swiftly left the room. After giving her a moment to get acquainted with mobility, her legs carried her strangely smoothly, almost better than she would have expected.
"It's time to go, Penn," her dad told her as they went to the door. He didn't bother to shut it behind them, as he sped through the cement hallway.
"What was that?" she asked as she ran to catch up with him.
"Your bail," he answered. "Quick. We need to hurry. We don't have long before we get another chance."
"A chance for what?" Penn's head was spinning.
"Another chance to escape." Dad turned the corner in the hall and spun around to whisper into his daughter's ear. "Another ticket to a better life."
End of Chapter 5