#i don't think it contradicts jonathan's later reasoning either necessarily. they could work together

[vickyvicarious]

If Jonathan has been suffering from brain fever which has apparently symptoms of delirious ramblings and no memory of who you are and where you live, does that mean that he had lost his memory even BEFORE he arrived at the station?

Because Sister Agatha said that he was asking for a ticket at Klausenburg station. But he never said a ticket to WHERE.

They assumed he was English from his manners and language, but he never said he wanted to go to England. "the guard was told by the station-master there that he rushed into the station shouting for a ticket for home." Home to where? Where is home? He evidently couldn't tell, he could just say home.

So did he climb down the walls and run across the Carpathians while actively losing his memory?

Ooh, this is a really interesting possibility. I have always kind of assumed that he didn't experience the worst of his brain fever until he broke down/was in the hospital. Then, a combination of his memories/attempts to talk being disregarded as delirium, and his body breaking down, and PTSD (and also maybe all those religious symbols burning the vampire infection out of his blood) - those were what led him to forget, to dismiss whatever he did remember as just delusions. He knew that he couldn't afford to linger on the memories for multiple reasons (they caused him to panic, they caused others to call him crazy) and just blocked it all out together with actually forgetting. He chose not to seek further because whatever the truth, he didn't want to know. He didn't want to deal with confirming that he had actually gone mad, or opening up the possibility that he hadn't. So he didn't read his diary. He was out and he wanted to move on.

But he already felt like his brain was on fire before he left. What if he was losing memories/coherence as he fled? What if everything else started to disappear, what if he only barely managed to hold on to a couple of concepts that were of the utmost importance to him? So he knows he has to get home. He knows he can't stop until he does so. He knows the way to go roughly (knows to travel West, knows to take a train) but can't explain it, can only wildly call for someone to send him home without being able to give any details on where that is. He knows the urgency but can no longer remember why, just that he is terrified and he cannot stop. (Until he has no choice, until he's forced to do so. And then, once he does stop, he loses himself entirely. The linchpin has been removed; without being able to go home he no longer can move at all, can't say who he wants to find there or where it is. With the urgency forced away he loses even his sense of time. At least for a while.)

And the one other thing he knows, the thing he's spent months doing. He knows he must protect his diary. He travels with it in his coat pocket, where he can reach in and feel it at any moment and reassure himself it's still there. When he's put in the hospital he never tells anyone about it. Maybe he asks Sister Agatha if it is still there, or maybe he can't share even that much, maybe he only asks her to keep his clothes in the room with him where he can see them. He protects it even from himself, he allows no one to read it or to touch it or to ask him about it. He doesn't even remember exactly why anymore, he just knows whatever is inside is terrifying and deadly important. He knows it is secret. He knows it has to be kept safe at all costs. And while he can't bear even to face it himself, even after he has started to recover, he absolutely cannot get rid of it either. And so he gives it to the one person he knows with absolute certainty will never break his trust, who can be allowed to open it at any time because she can be trusted with all of himself and everything he knows or once knew, who will never make him face it again unless he absolutely needs to do so. He gives it to the one person he knows will protect it without question. He gives it to Mina.