It's not as bad as you feared

You let out a sigh of relief and your entire body relaxes, causing you to nearly lose your balance. The damage to your face is not nearly as bad as you feared.

Steadying yourself with your hands, you lean forward to get a better look at yourself. You look to be in your late thirties. You have a strong, attractive face, with a chiselled jaw and prominent cheek-bones--made more prominent, no doubt, by an unhealthy gauntness brought on by your invalidism. Numerous small scars criss-cross your face, giving it a rough, ridgey texture, but aside from three prominent scars running down from your forehead and onto your left cheek, none of them are terribly disfiguring. Your hair is still thick and dark, and receding only a little, though it is quite short right now. It looks like they had to shave your head. You touch your head with your hand and feel scars partially obscured by the new hair growing in. It looks like you've had brain surgury!

You become a little alarmed by the thought of what might have happened to you, and by what might still be wrong with you. Was the operation necessitated by the nature of your injuries, or did they operate for other reasons? Did they operate, in other words, because you lost your mind? Maybe you did this to yourself? Maybe you are--or were--a raving lunatic, and they operated on you in an effort to "fix" you. That might explain the amnesia. And maybe the scars on your face weren't the result of an injury at all. Maybe you did them yourself. Maybe you liked to cut yourself. In fact, maybe this isn't a hospital at all--at least, not a regular one. Maybe you are in a psychiatric hospital, and you are recovering from a lobotomy. Do they still do lobotomies?

You search your face, looking for clues. You were sure that seeing your own face would trigger some memories, but nothing surfaces. Your face is the face of a stranger, though it also feels comfortable and familiar, like the face of a friend. Too bad it doesn't give you any clues as to who you are or how you got here. It is a strange experience, seeing your own face in the mirror and not recognizing it. For a moment, you wonder if you are dreaming all of this, but the pain in your back, the feeling of dizzyness and nausea, the feel of the countertop against your hand, the smell of disinfectant, are all too strong, too vivid, to be anything but real. Unless, of course, you are insane, and hallucinating everything.