"Thank you" was the right response, so I said it. I don't know if that was something I remembered or something I had just learned. I don't love her. I sensed that I should, but how can you love someone you don't know? But I did feel something in that foggy mush. Devotion? Obligation? I wanted her to be pleased. I thought about her offer, anything you want to ask me. I had nothing to ask. The questions hadn't come yet.

So I watched the first disc. It seemed logical to go in order. It was of me in utero. Hours of me in utero. I was the first, I learned. There had been two boy babies before me, but they didn't live past the first trimester. With me, Mother and Father took extra measures, and they worked. I was the one and only. Their miracle child. I watched the fetus that was me, floating in a dark watery world, and wondered if I should remember that, too.

Each day I watch more discs, trying to regain who I was. Some are stills, some are movies. There are dozens of the two-inch discs. Maybe a hundred. Thousands of hours of me.

I settle on the large sofa. Today I watch Year Three / Jenna Fox. It begins with my third birthday party. A small girl runs, laughing at nothing at all, and is finally stopped by a tall, weathered stone wall. She slaps tiny starburst hands against the stone and looks back at the camera. I pause the scene. I scan the smile. The face. She has something. Something I don't see in my own face, but I don't know what it is. Maybe just a word I have lost? Maybe more. I scan the large rough stones her hands rest against. It is the small enclosed garden of the brownstone where we once lived. I remember it from yesterday on Disc Eighteen.

"Play," I say, and the scene moves forward. I watch the golden-haired girl squeal and run and hide her face between two trousered legs. Then the three-year-old is scooped upside down into the air and the view zooms up to Father's face laughing and nuzzling into her belly. My belly. The three-year-old laughs. She seems to like it. I walk over to the mirror that hangs near the bookcase. I am seventeen now, but I see resemblance. Same blond hair. Same blue eyes. But the teeth are different. Three-year-old teeth are so small. My fingers. My hands. All much larger now. Almost a whole different person. And yet that is me. At least that is what they say. I return to watch the rest of the party, the bath time, the ballet lesson, the finger painting, the temper tantrum, the story time, the everything of three-year-old Jenna Fox's life that mattered to Mother and Father.

I hear footsteps behind me. I don't turn. They are Lily's. Her feet make a different sound on the floor than Mother's. Movement is crisp, distinct. I hear every nuance. Was I always this sensitive to sound? She stands somewhere behind me. I wait for her to speak. She doesn't. I'm not sure what she wants.

"You don't have to watch them in order, you know," she finally says.

"I know. Mother told me."

"There are discs of when you were a teenager."

"I still am a teenager."

There is a pause. A deliberate pause, I suspect. "I suppose," she says. She comes around so she is in my vision. "Aren't you curious?"

Curious. It's a word I looked up this morning after Mother used it to describe Mr. Bender who lives behind us on the other side of the pond. I don't know if Lily is asking me if I am inquisitive or odd.

"I've been in a coma for over a year. I guess that makes me highly unusual; odd; and strange. Yes, Lily. I am curious."

Lily's arms unfold and slide to her sides. Her head tilts slightly. She's a pretty woman. She looks to be fifty when I know she must be at least sixty. Small wrinkles deepen around her eyes. The subtleties of expression still escape me.

"You should watch them out of order. Skip straight to the last year."

Lily leaves the room, and on Day Fifteen of being awake, I make my first independent decision. I will watch the discs in order.

Widening

There is something curious about where we live. Something curious about Lily. Something curious about Father and his nightly phone calls with Mother. And certainly something curious about me. Why can I remember the details of the French Revolution but I can't remember if I ever had a best friend?

Day Sixteen

When I woke this morning, I had questions. I wondered where they had all been hiding. Time heals. Is this what Father meant? Or were the words that had been lost in my head simply trying to find the proper order? Besides questions, the word careful came to mind, too. Why? I'm beginning to think I must trust words when they come to me.

"Jenna, I'm leaving," Mother calls from the front step. "Are you sure you'll be okay?"

Mother is going to town. It is the first time I have seen her leave the house since Day One.

"I'll be fine," I tell her. "My nutrients are on the counter. I know how much to take." I can't eat regular food yet. When I asked them why, they stumbled over each other's words trying to explain. They finally said that after a year of being fed through a tube, my system can't utilize regular food for a while. I never saw the tube. Maybe that's what's on the last disc that Lily told me to watch. Why would she want me to see that?

"Don't leave the house," Mother adds.

"She won't," Lily answers.

Mother is going to town to interview workmen. She is a certified restoration consultant. Or was. She had a business in Boston restoring brownstones. It was her specialization. She was busy. Everyone wants to restore everything. Old is in demand. Lily says she had a respected reputation. Her career is over now because of me. There are no brownstones in California. But Mother says the Cotswold cottage we live in needs lots of restoration, and now that I am feeling better, it's time she began making it livable. One restoration is not that different from another, she says. Fixing me and the Cotswold are her new careers.