Double double, beginning trouble...

So I have a little dilemma right? In bumping back the beginning of my novel, I’ve cut out a lot of tedious and unnecessary exposition and whatnot, but I’m not sure how to pull off my proposed alternative beginning.

One of my main characters is a gladiator who has amnesia. Basically she was beat up pretty badly by her cellmates and ended up with a fever that leaves her a bit muddled. But since she doesn’t remember that, there’s really no point in showing it, since it is explained later on by another character.

The basic idea was to have her still fevered at the beginning of the story. She:

-wakes up

-is confused

-is put in training ring with trainer

-ends up passing out

So that’s the first chapter essentially. She is very confused and her POV bits reflect that. However, there are other character POVs that help explain things, so the reader has a bit more of an idea of what’s going on than her.

Cut to a few weeks later, after she has been treated and is on the mend. My plan was to have her POV bits be almost identical to those of the first chapter, to reflect that she doesn’t remember anything of the events in the first chapter. So pretty much, she:

-wakes up

-is confused

-is put in training ring with trainer

She doesn’t pass out this time and this is when the story really begins where she remembers it. But I’m wondering if this double beginning (for her) is actually worth it. What really makes me want to keep it is because of an event that I really want to have happen, but that she can’t remember.

Her trainer tries to kill her the first time he meets her. Basically he sees how sick she is and figures that killing her now would put her out of her misery faster. If he were to try and teach her to fight, she’d live longer, but end up dying more painfully, if she didn’t succumb to her fever first. He ends up not succeeding and so decides to give her a second chance.

Thing is, she cannot remember this. She and her trainer end up being the romantic couple in the story and if she were to remember that he tried to kill her, she would never trust him. Ever. He has a hard enough time bringing her around to trusting him after he grabs her arm trying to make her understand him. It’s not like he can just explain things to her rationally, because they don’t speak the same language. They end up communicating mostly through body language, which doesn’t lend itself to involved explanations like about why he would try to kill her.