The Only Lost Girl in New York

Author's Note- The following is an expanded version of a story I'd written for the 750 Word Challenge, "Lost Girl". There were many who were confused by the original version and a few who got it, but suggested that the telling suffered from trying to stay within the 750 word limit.

It was originally inspired by a post in the discussion boards made by someone who seemed to be speaking in gibberish. I was struck by the reactions of those who were either mocking the poster or trying to make sense of it all. It made me think that we will always struggle to process the places and names from a different map than the one that we're standing in.

But that for those trying to tell the story, it all made perfect sense, if you made allowance for the possibility of madness, or magic. If you're willing to go back over it slowly, connect the dots, and step through, to the story, we sometimes discover that it's one of those that we once knew ourselves by heart, even when we were very little.

So, you're supposed to feel a little confused reading through the first time. My hope is that once you've figured out the twist, and looked at the maps, you'll want to go back and read it again, right away, now in on the secret.

It was only after I'd finished it that I realized, that for those of us who have gone through a Winter, without any new stories popping up out of thin air, it was really about refilling our supply of magic, in the way that only falling in love really can.

*******

The Only Lost Girl In New York

It was faster to walk from Andrew's apartment in Resident Housing by Columbus Circle to the NYPD Midtown North Precinct than it would have been to try and catch a cab at this hour on a Saturday night.

He'd be grateful that once his third year was over, he'd no longer be on call for the Weekend Mobile Crisis Team. He was in line to be Chief Resident next year and might have been able to push his weekend off on one of the others, but the Director of his program was a stickler for that kind of thing and if Andrew hoped to end up on staff or teaching at Mt Sinai one day, it would all be worth it.

After showing his ID at the desk, he was buzzed through, and met by a Detective Rivera, who held a phone to his chest as he introduced himself and then resumed his conversation as they walked down a hallway, making their way back to the interview rooms.

"Okay, Miss Wright," He stopped and held up his palm to Andrew as he spoke into the phone, just outside the door. "I'm going to need to hang up for a moment, but will call you right back."

Looking through the glass, Andrew could see there was a young, blond woman seated in the room, speaking urgently with a uniformed officer.

"Yes. Please keep your phone with you." He rolled his eyes slightly as he waited for a response, trying to end the call. "This will only take a minute and then I'd like to go through it one more time...Yes. Bye." He checked to make sure the call had ended before looking up. "Thanks for getting down here so quickly, Doc," He pointed into a room. "She's been speed-talking for the last twenty minutes. Took blood already, but you know how that goes. Could be hours on the results."

"Any reason you didn't just transport her up to the emergency room to be evaluated?" The woman seemed relatively composed, but Andrew couldn't hear what she was saying through the glass. She didn't look like someone who needed a psych eval., but you could never tell. Most of the time NYPD was just trying to figure out whether they needed to process someone to Riker's or Bellevue. From his first visual impression, it didn't look like she belonged in either. But again, it was always hard to tell until you did the assessment.

"I'll be honest with you Doc," he shrugged. "I'm still trying to get my bearings on this one. I'm on the phone with her girlfriend in London and trying to make sense of what these two are saying, but it's all mezclado at this point." He shook his head and threw up his hands. "She runs into this patrolman who's writing a ticket out on Broadway...around 51st." He jerks his thumb through the glass toward the uniformed officer at the table with her. "I mean she's running down the sidewalk and plows into him. Hard. Full panic mode. He picks her up off the sidewalk and she's talking gibberish, but she doesn't look like your average Saturday night drunk and disorderly."

"So she's been drinking?"

"He said he could smell alcohol on her, but she doesn't seem sloppy," He shrugged. "More like panic, you know, disoriented. Said she's trying to find her friends, can't find her way back." He pointed to the phone. "I'm going to call her girlfriend back and see if I can get a coherent statement, but so far we got nothing that makes any sense." He handed Andrew his card with her name, DOB and a case number written on the back.

The detective used his left thumb on the phone even as he poked a code into the door lock on the interview room with his right index finger. As he opened the door and held it for Andrew, he was already speaking into the phone. "Miss Wright?...Detective Rivera again. Yes, miss...she's fine....let's back up..." He was already walking down the hall.

"Is that Liz...?" The woman looked over as he came in. "Was...is that man speaking with Liz?"

The door closed, cutting off all sound from the hallway. He noted the time as he set his phone down beside bag and pulled his notepad. 9:42 PM. The uniformed officer got up from the chair and stepped into the corner to give him his seat. Big guy, but he looked a little nervous, maybe grateful that someone else was there to take over.

"Did he say that was Liz...?" The girl had turned back from the window to face him and was searching his face eagerly, then looked down at his phone, frowned, and checked her watch. Andrew noted that she wasn't wearing cuffs. Her watch looked expensive.

"I'm not sure who 'Liz' is, Miss...," Andrew sat down, opening his notebook and placing the detective's card on the table. "I'm Dr. Brennan. I'm hoping you can walk me through what's happened to you this evening." He wrote her name, the date and the case number at the top of a blank page.

"Doctor?...wait...has someone been hurt?" Her eyes were a pale, lively blue, searching his own, confused, with a hint of worry.

"That's what we're trying to assess. Have you taken a fall this evening...had any head injuries... lost consciousness?" He was noting the time and place of the assessment on his notebook as he spoke, looking up as he finished the question.

"No,...no," She shook her head dismissively, keyed up, but puzzled, not angry. "As I told the officer, we'd just walked over from my family's place for a drink...at the Elephant & Castle...the one in Kensington..."

"That's a bar?"

"Yes...well...a pub. Just up the road. Bit stodgy, but just around the corner from great gram's place. So Liz, Essie and I..." She looked at him quizzically. "You've never heard of it?"

"No," He smiled politely. "Don't get out much." She was cute, if bookish. Fair, hint of freckles, her wispy blond hair pulled back up into the sort of carelessly, messy bun, that somehow still managed to look put together at the same time. Her accent was adorable.

"We'd only just went for one or two," She continued. "We'd spent all afternoon moving in...still half unpacked, y'see." She was clearly in some degree of shock, speaking quickly, but didn't seem especially frightened. "Normally none of us could afford a place like that, but it's been in the family for ages. My Great Gram made sure it could never be rented or sold, but it's been empty for a few years. I've just started my first job, in Finance, with Deutsch Bank...in the City?" She looked at him for a sign of recognition. She actually seemed quite lucid, if a little keyed up.

"Yes, so you were saying you went out for a drink with your girlfriends...?" He went back to taking notes. Her clothes looked clean, fashionable, not disheveled. She wore light makeup, not fully covering the freckles. Her lips were fuller than he had first thought and he caught himself thinking that she had very nice teeth. He didn't note that.

"Yes, right," she nodded, finding her place again. "We'd only meant to stay a minute, but it turned out to be quite fun and this lovely ginger boy, Pete, showed up." Her voice trailed off for a moment. "Oddest thing. I've never really had a thing for gingers," she shrugged. "Much prefer tall, dark and Mediterranean, two days since the last shave and all that." She caught herself, likely regretted sharing so much with a stranger, and blushed. Her eyes went down to her hands, actively fidgeting on their own on the table top. "But Pete had such a baby face, and that kind of messy hair, you know, like all the boys from Art school do these days." She looked up briefly and waved dismissively.

"I think one of the other girls might have fancied him, but he didn't seem interested. Anyway, I might not have let him keep chatting me up, but it was quite busy and I was having the hardest time getting another drink and he offered..." She looked up, quizzically. "Maybe he worked there?" She squinted slightly, a faint worry line revealed, just between her eyebrows. "He was back so fast." Her speech slowed and she tilted her head, as if just then remembering something. "He'd said something about knowing my family..."

"This man, Pete...did?" He wrote and circled 'family friend?' "How many drinks would you say you'd had by then?"

"Well, let's see...a couple of gin 'n tonics before he started buying, but then he'd somehow botched up the drink order and brought back these funny coconut shells with something fruity and...like with Goldschlager or something?" She waved her finger over the table, making a small circle, as if stirring a drink. "...little glowing bits sprinkled in. Guess we had a few of those...they didn't seem very strong, but I had the most lovely buzz going."

"And you'd been drinking how long?" He leaned back in the chair, tilting his notebook away from her and jotted '5+ drinks? B.A.L? tox screen?'.

"From nine I suppose...until two when we went to leave," she glanced down at his phone on the desk again, puzzled. "wait...that can't be right...?" She looked back at her own watch.

"So two...AM?, you left the bar...sorry...pub?" He kept taking notes.

"Right," she nodded. "Told the girls we'd meet out front. Liz had to go to the girls and I think Essie was going to give this guy she'd met her number." She waved her hand, getting herself back on track. "So, Pete walked me out." She giggled. "I tried telling him I was just down Holland, but somehow we got spun about as we were talking...we were walking toward the park...he was trying to tell me a story..."

"Central?...or Bryant Park?" Adding to his notes, remembering that she was picked up at Broadway around 51st.

"No... the gardens...outside St. Mary Abbotts," She waved it off. "He was asking me...if I had my choice, where would I like to go at that moment and would I prefer a gift of a thimble, an acorn...or a kiss." She blushed. "I figured he was trying to be clever and I was still deciding whether I'd let him kiss me, so I stalled, and said something like 'I'd take only take a kiss from him in Time Square'...and I was just about to say 'on New Year's Eve', but he'd already gone in by then...and then...," she shrugged apologetically. "Well, it all got sort of glowy after that...felt like I was floating for a moment." Head tilted, she started to smile a little as she trailed off.

"You were kissing..." Andrew tried to redirect her. Her cheeks looked a little more flushed, color was creeping up her neck. Her lips seemed even fuller than they had just a few moments earlier. Her eyes had taken on a far-away look. Her head shook slightly as she brought her focus back.

"Then someone bumped into me, fairly hard." Her eyes locked back onto his. "I got turned around and everyone was quite....pushy." She seemed offended. "I have no idea where the crowd had come from...all the lights...." She shook her head again as if trying to clear it. "I thought that I could hear Pete calling out at one point, but it was quite loud with all the people, the traffic."

"Did you fall down at this point, maybe hit your head?" Andrew looked up from his notes. He could see that her anxiety level had gotten elevated again as she relived the experience. Her eyes started tracking side to side, as if looking for a way out.

"No..., no...I was spun around but I thought I knew which way we'd walked from and I started running...back the way we came...trying to find the pub again." She looked up at the officer in the corner of the room and then back to Andrew. "But it was all gone...and I was, I was...well here...and how...how does this...any of this...make sense?"

"Let's just take it slow, Miss Darling. I just want go through it again."

epilogue

The boys crowded around, still full of questions. The day had already warmed up considerably since he'd begun telling them what had happened. It was Spring now, and Summer wouldn't be far off.

"So you lost her, then..."

"Well...yeah," Peter smiled, reclining back against the tree. He was whistling softly. It was something he'd heard for the first time in the pub. He couldn't read very well, but the words on the screen above the bar hadn't been complicated. The song was called, "The End". He couldn't make sense of the name of the band. Something...maybe Poland. Like the country.

One of the others piped up, "But if you'd already used up the last of the dust just getting there, how'd you manage...and then get back here after?"

"There's more than one kind of magic, boys". He reached for his pipes, eager to work out the notes of the song. So he wouldn't forget them again later.

The main thing was that, after all this time, the house wasn't empty any longer.

It was going to be a good, long Summer this time.