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it is with all my memories of work, not just that day but every day. No matter how I try to sneak up on them, they elude me. They aren’t there in the mist. Those memories simply don’t exist any more.”
    Still standing beside the bed, McGee spoke to her in a soft, encouraging voice. “Of course they exist, Susan. Nudge your subconscious a little bit. Think about sitting behind the wheel of your car that morning.”
    “I have thought about it.”
    “Think about it again.”
    She closed her eyes.
    “It was probably a typical August day in Southern California,” he said, helping her set the scene in her mind. “Hot, blue, maybe a little smoggy.”
    “Hot and blue,” she said, “but there wasn’t any smog that day. Not even a single cloud, either.”
    “You got in the car and backed out of the driveway. Now think about the route you drove to work.”
    She was silent for almost a minute. Then she said, “It’s no use. I can’t remember.”
    He persisted gently. “What were the names of the streets you used?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Sure you do. Give me the name of just one street. Just one to start the ball rolling.”
    She tried hard to snatch at least a single meager scrap of memory out of the void—a face, a room, a voice, anything —but she failed.
    “Sorry,” she said. “I can’t come up with the name of even one street.”
    “You told me that you remembered backing down your driveway that morning. All right. If you remember that, then surely you remember which way you went when you pulled out of your driveway. Did you turn left, or did you turn right?”
    Her eyes still closed, Susan considered his question until her head began to ache. Finally she opened her eyes, looked up at McGee, and shrugged. “I just don’t know.”
    “Philip Gomez,” McGee said.
    “What?”
    “Philip Gomez.”
    “Who’s that? Somebody I should know?”
    “The name doesn’t mean anything to you?”
    “No.”
    “He’s your boss at Milestone.”
    “Really?” She tried to picture Philip Gomez. She couldn’t summon up an image of his face. She couldn’t recall anything whatsoever about the man. “My boss? Philip Gomez? Are you sure about that?”
    McGee put his hands in the pockets of his lab coat. “After you were admitted to the hospital, we tried to locate your family. Of course, we discovered you didn’t have a family, no close relatives at all. So we called your employer. I’ve talked to Phil Gomez myself. According to him, you’ve worked at Milestone for more than four years. He was extremely concerned about you. In fact he’s called here, asking about you, four or five times since the accident.”
    “Can we call him now?” Susan asked. “If I hear his voice, maybe something will click into place for me. It might help me remember.”
    “Well, I don’t have his home number,” McGee said, “and we can’t call him at work until tomorrow.”
    “Why not?”
    “Today’s Sunday.”
    “Oh,” she said.
    She hadn’t even known what day of the week it was, and that realization left her feeling somewhat disoriented again.
    “We’ll definitely call tomorrow,” McGee said.
    “What if I talk to him and still can’t remember anything about my work?”
    “You will.”
    “No, listen, please don’t be glib. Be straight with me. Okay? There’s a chance I’ll never remember anything about my job, isn’t there?”
    “That’s not likely.”
    “But possible?”
    “Well... anything’s possible.”
    She slumped back against her pillows, suddenly exhausted, depressed, and worried.
    “Listen,” McGee said, “even if you never remember anything about Milestone, that doesn’t mean you can’t go back to work there. After all, you haven’t forgotten what you know about physics; you’re still a competent scientist. You’ve lost none of your education, none of your knowledge. Now, if you were suffering from global amnesia, which is the worst kind, you’d have forgotten nearly everything you