"I need to ask you something," she said. She looked at Nair. "The amnesia. The dissociative episode. Is it — the doctor said psychological origin. How long before—"
"The doctor says the recovery of identity is a good sign," Nair said. "You've recovered significant autobiographical memory in four days. The acute phase — the complete identity loss — appears to have resolved. There may be gaps that take longer to fill. There may be things that take months." She paused. "Dr. Lata — your therapist. We've been in contact with her, with your permission. She's expecting you tomorrow."
Dr. Lata. She had not yet remembered Dr. Lata — the notebooks had named her, but the actual memory of her face and her office and their work together was still in one of the rooms she had not yet been able to open. But the notebooks had described what the work was: externalising, building the palace, making the inside available from the outside. Building the system that had, in the end, brought her back to herself.
"Yes," she said. "Tomorrow. Yes."
They left the police station at four PM. Nair drove her back to the apartment — not to drop her off, but because Nair had become the person who was present during the significant moments of this situation and this was another one. They stood outside the building together in the late afternoon Bengaluru light, the traffic of HSR Layout going past, the city doing its city things, entirely indifferent to what had happened in one apartment in one building over the past five days.
"The notebooks," she said. "Can I have them back?"
"Copies have been made," Nair said. "The originals are yours." She paused. "You built something very specific in there. The way you constructed the documentation — it held up. Every detail cross-referenced against the forensic findings, against the phone records, against the physical evidence. You were a very careful, very precise witness to your own situation."
"I was afraid," she said. "Careful and afraid are not different things. Careful is what afraid looks like when you have nowhere else to put it."
Nair looked at her. The inspector's face did something that was not quite the expression of the inspector — something more personal, something the professional surface had briefly allowed through. "You should know," Nair said, "that when I first came into that apartment — when I found you on the floor with the notebook, the first thing I thought was: this person is performing something. And the second thing I thought was: no she isn't. That was — that specific quality of being genuinely lost — it was real. I could tell. And everything I found since has confirmed it." She paused. "I don't say that to be kind. I say it because it is accurate and you seem to be someone who values accuracy."
"Yes," she said. "I do."
