"How long ago was that?"

She looks at the time on her phone. "Six hours."

The man nods. "May I have your ID?"

He may.

He starts tapping something into his computer, then hands her her ID back and says, with accompanying gestures, "Please go down that hallway, turn left at the end, and go into Exam Room J. Someone will be with you momentarily."

"Thanks."

Off she goes to room J. She sits and waits and flaps birds.

It's only three minutes later that someone wearing a lab coat walks into the room with a clipboard. "Elspeth Cullen?" they ask. "With symptoms of retrograde amnesia?"

"That's right."

"I'm Doctor Bale. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Thank you. What do you... do, about amnesia - the internet thinks it's pretty serious, might be a stroke or seizure?"

"Yes. We will get a few exams done. Hopefully we can find the cause."

"What do I need to do?"

"We will get a blood exam, a CT scan, and we will ask you to answer a few questions on a questionnaire."

"Okay."

So those things are arranged. The blood draw happens first, but after that's taken care of they need to prep the CT scan room so while she waits for that she gets a thin tablet with various questions on it that she can answer. The questions range from personal things (like what the most recent memory she can think of prior to the amnesia is, and when it's from) to some random details about famous public events.

She has no episodic memories from before the moment of amnesia onset. Can she... answer public event questions...?

Sort of! Specific dates of specific happenings are mostly not available to her, but she does seem to have vague knowledge of some facts about the world. She can recognise stuff like the names of those two universities or the names or various cities or some details about them like "there is a walk of fame at Del Sol Valley where celebrities write their names inside stars that are placed as tiles on the floor".

She fills out the form very comprehensively.

She still has to wait a few minutes after she's done before the exam room is ready, but then Doctor Bale shows up again and leads her to it.

"You can just lie there," they say, gesturing at the machine with a long table that can be moved into a doughnut-shaped device. "This will take a while."

She lies there. She holds very still. She wants them to find the problem so they can fix it.

The table goes into the machine. The machine makes noises. The machine makes many noises.

This goes on for rather a while.

She hopes this isn't going to totally wipe out her savings and also not leave her with identifiable parents she can call for help.

Eventually it's done, the noises stop, and the table slides out from within the doughnut.

"We will have the results in half an hour," says Doctor Bale. "I'll take you to the waiting room."

"What about the blood test?"

"All of the results will be ready together."