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thirteen years later—”
     
    She interrupted him. “But you see, no matter how much I talk about it, I’ll never get it out of my system. It was just too awful to be forgotten. Besides, you told me that a positive mental attitude will speed up the healing process. Remember?”
     
    He smiled. “I remember.”
     
    “So I shouldn’t talk about things that just depress me.”
     
    He stared at her for a long moment. His eyes were incredibly blue, and they were so expressive that she had no doubt about the depth of his concern for her well-being.
     
    He sighed and said, “Okay. Let’s get back to the matter at hand—your amnesia. It seems like you remember nearly everything. What holes haven’t filled in yet?”
     
    Before she answered him, she reached for the bed controls and raised the upper end of the mattress a bit more, forcing herself to sit straighter than she had been sitting. Her back ached dully, not from an injury but from being immobilized in bed for more than three weeks. When she felt more comfortable, she put down the controls and said, “I still can’t recall the accident. I remember driving along a twisty section of two-lane blacktop. I was about two miles south of the turnoff to the Viewtop Inn. I was looking forward to getting there and having dinner. Then, well, it’s as if somebody just turned the lights out.”
     
    “It wouldn’t be unusual if you never regained any memory of the accident itself,” McGee assured her. “In cases like this, even when the patient eventually recalls all the other details of his life, he seldom remembers the incident or the impact that was the cause of the amnesia. That’s the one blank spot that often remains.”
     
    “I suspected as much,” she said. “And I’m not really upset about that. But there’s one other thing I can’t recall, and that’s driving me nuts. My job. Dammit, I can’t remember even the most minor thing about it, not even one little detail. I mean, I know I’m a physicist. I remember getting the degrees at UCLA, and all that sophisticated, specialized knowledge is still intact. I could start to work today without having to take a refresher course. But who was I working for? And what was I doing— exactly? Who was my boss? Who were my co-workers? Did I have an office? a laboratory? I must have worked in a lab, don’t you think? But I can’t remember what it looked like, how it was equipped, or where on earth it was!”
     
    “You’re employed by the Milestone Corporation in Newport Beach, California,” McGee said.
     
    “That’s what Dr. Viteski told me. But the name doesn’t mean a thing to me.”
     
    “All the rest of it has come back to you. This will, too. Just give it time.”
     
    “No,” she said, shaking her head. “This is different somehow. The other blank spots were like mists... like banks of heavy fog. Even when I couldn’t remember something, I could at least sense that there were memories stirring in the mist. And eventually the mist evaporated; everything cleared up. But when I try to recall what my job was, it’s not like those misty blank spots. Instead, it’s dark... very dark... black, just a perfectly black and empty hole that goes down and down and down forever. There’s something... frightening about it.”
     
    McGee slid forward, sitting on the edge of his chair. His brow was knitted. “You were carrying a Milestone ID card in your wallet when you were brought into the emergency room,” he said. “Maybe that’ll refresh your memory.”
     
    “Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “I’d sure like to see it.”
     
    Her wallet was in the bottom drawer of the nightstand. He got it for her.
     
    She opened the wallet and found the card. It was laminated and bore a small photograph of her. At the top of the card, in blue letters against a white background, were three words: THE MILESTONE CORPORATION. Under that heading, her name was printed in bold black letters, and below her name was a