False Memory (False #1)

by Meli Raine

  False Memory (False #1)

  Meli Raine

  Contents

  False Memory (False #1)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  False Memory (False #1)

  by Meli Raine

  It all started with the bereavement flowers with my name on them.

  Not the best way to wake up, right? I work in a flower shop. I know a funeral arrangement when I see one.

  I know a killer when I see one, too. And one is standing in my hospital room right now, right behind the man who saved my life.

  I can’t tell anyone the truth, because that’s the fastest way to really die. So I do the next best thing. I lose my memory.

  I fake my amnesia.

  Pretending not to remember a brutal attempted murder has its perks. The killer is backing down, spending less time around me, loosening the noose.

  The less I claim to recall, the more my rescuer, Duff, works to help me remember. I hate lying to him.

  But he doesn’t understand that my memory is dangerous. To me. And to him.

  Fooling everyone isn’t easy. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

  Except it’s starting to look like I’ve been fooling myself.

  In more ways than one.

  Chapter 1

  Blink.

  * * *

  My eyes are so dry. The edges of my eyelids stick together, the effort to pull them apart too much. When did my tongue get so big? It presses against my bottom row of teeth, choking me. I’m cold. So cold. Why are they freezing me? Why am I on a sheet of ice, in the dark? Someone needs to stop this.

  Where am I?

  * * *

  Blink.

  * * *

  Mom is here, holding my hand. I smell her shampoo. That’s how I know. I feel her touch but it’s like she’s a thousand miles away. There’s a breeze in the room, followed by a wheezy sound. It’s to my right. My chest rises and falls in a rhythm with it. Toes shouldn’t be icicles.

  What is in my mouth?

  * * *

  Blink.

  * * *

  “Lily? Lily?” Mom’s crying, squeezing my hand from Jupiter. I can open my eyes a slit now, the light too much, too bright, like knives in my corneas. Why does the light want to hurt me? I shut it out. I close my eyes. Mom’s hand starts to shake.

  “Tom? Did you see that? Lily looked at me.”

  I want to open my eyes and see Dad. His voice will have to be enough, because I can’t. All the energy in me goes to not choking.

  “Honey, I’m sure you thought she did.”

  * * *

  Blink.

  * * *

  “Hi, Lily! Rise and shine! Time to turn you over so you can get a better view.” Nasal tones make my ears ache. This must be Holly. I remember her from yesterday. I saw the flowers. Big, white Oriental lilies. Those are funeral flowers. Not an arrangement, but the kind I always hate when I work at the shop. The kind we use for bereavement.

  Who’s dying?

  “Lily,” Holly whispers, her breath sweet, like sugar. Her red bangs are long and brush against the edges of her eyelashes. Her eyes are big, like marbles. She came in and looked right into my eyes as my eyelids twitched. I wasn’t moving them. Not on purpose. But at the very end, I was able to slowly blink.

  Like an owl.

  She looked at me extra long that time, but shook her head like she was imagining it.

  * * *

  Blink.

  * * *

  My head hurts. It feels different. Hollow. Like it’s not quite attached. I inhale and smell the sweet scent of lilies and lilacs. It must be April. That’s when the lilacs bloom. These smell local. But how can it be April?

  A nurse walks in, wearing a green scrubs shirt. As she turns, I see it has tiny orange pumpkins on it.

  Wait a minute. When is it? Halloween? What’s the date? How long have I been asleep? How long have I been here?

  Mom walks in the door, looks at me, and sighs. Her eyes are streaked with mascara. A doctor in a lab coat walks up behind her.

  She signs a form.

  She sits next to my bed and takes my hand.

  “Lily. Please. Baby, you have to show me you’re in there. You have to. It’s–it’s getting complicated. Anything. Anything.”

  I squeeze her fingertips. She doesn’t feel it.

  Because I’m on Mars and she’s on the Moon.

  “Lily, I don’t know what to do, baby. You have to show me you’re there.” She cries.

  I’m here, I tell her. I’m here.

  But her ears are on Venus.

  * * *

  Blink.

  * * *

  “Her heart rate has been changing in a way that is consistent with stimuli,” a white lab coat says to a smartphone. They’re talking above me. They sound like humans. They’re very good at imitation.

  “Impossible,” says the white lab coat. “She’s been in a coma for fourteen months. More than four hundred and twenty days. It’s unbelievably rare to wake up from this and be responsive.”

  “Rare. Not impossible,” Smartphone says.

  Not impossible.

  I let the words roll around inside me, like the medication they stick in the IV, like the water from the sponge bath, like the radio announcers describing the World Series games in the background.

  Like the light I let in now when I open my eyes.

  * * *

  Blink.

  * * *

  “She squeezed my hand on command! She blinks once for no and twice for yes!” Mom insists. “I’ve been working with her on it. She’s one hundred percent accurate.”

  “Mrs. Thornton, I know you want to believe. Correlation does not mean causation, though.” The woman in the white coat seems annoyed.

  “I asked her if she likes orchids and she blinked no! Lily hates them.”

  “That could be an electrical anomaly. The body responds in certain ways that make us want to find patterns. But volition? At this point? I’m sorry. I doubt Lily is–”

  “Lily? Honey?”

  I peel my eyes open and stare straight ahead. I can’t turn and look at her. Even my eyeballs are tethered by thick ropes in the back of my head, ropes they can’t see but that bind me.

  “See?”

  “Mrs. Thornton, I understand you want to think that Lily could–”

  “This isn’t about what I want, doctor. It’s about what I see! What I know!”

  The ropes inside my eyeballs pull the lids shut.

  The world is nothing but weight, pulling me down.

  * * *

  Blink.

  * * *

  “The throat spasms are strong when we lighten her sedation, Mom and Dad.”

  “You’ve been working with Lily for six weeks. We’ve been here all along. We’re Tom and Bee. Not your Mom and Dad.” Mom’s voice is sharp. I know that tone. I just have never heard her use it quite like this.

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor says in a voice that makes it c
lear he’s not. “You’re asking us to take her off the ventilator. You realize there are risks.”

  “Yes,” Dad says. “And we realize that months ago, you were ready to remove it and we fought you. But this is different.”

  “We agree,” the doctor says. I can see him in my peripheral vision and I want to tell him what I think. I want to tell him I’m here, I’m fine, and my ass has fallen asleep and burns with that horrible heavy feeling your skin gets when something’s wrong. Also, the Christmas music that’s been playing in the background nonstop since the day after Halloween is obscene. I mostly want to protest that.

  Instead, I blink.

  It’s all I can do. Blinking is my bridge to personhood. Otherwise, I’m the human equivalent of a beige wall. A white carnation without meaning. Communicating makes me real to everyone else.

  And the only way to survive is to be real.

  When people think you’re not real, they behave differently. I know this now. I didn’t know it before.

  If they stop thinking you’re real, you might as well be dead.

  * * *

  Blink.

  * * *

  It’s dark. Time passes in terms of dark and light. I know what an hour is. I remember that days are twenty-four hours. That’s a lot of hours when you can’t track them. That’s a lot of time when you have no control. When everyone thinks you’re not fully there.

  But now it’s dark. I know this. I cling to the knowledge. It’s solid. Confirmed. It’s something I know, and no one can take that away from me.

  Machines breathe on my behalf. Tubes carry nutrients into my body and remove waste products. I don’t use the bathroom myself. Can’t scratch an itch. Can’t turn over. Can’t take away my own pain.

  Can’t even try.

  It’s like lassoing the moon and playing tug of war.

  Volition is a funny concept. You don’t think about it until you don’t have it.

  I know the dark. And I have one more thing I know.

  I know how to–

  * * *

  Blink.

  * * *

  I open my eyes. It’s light.

  “Can you believe it, Lily?” a woman says to me. “It looks like Bosworth is going to win! When people ask you who the president is, you’re going to have to remember the new one. President Harwell Bosworth. Of course, we won’t know for sure until late tonight, but I’ll keep you posted. I’ll keep you posted, sweetie,” she says as she adjusts the IV in my right arm, the one that burns whenever they start a new bag of medicine.

  “When the doctor asks you who the president is, you’ll have the right answer. I know you will. I don’t care how long you’ve been like this. The doctors are wrong. Plenty of people have come out of this after more than a year. I know you’re going to be one of them. My Lily is a fighter.”

  She squeezes my hand.

  I almost squeeze back. Almost. So close.

  I look to the left. A dark man. No–dark clothes. Dark hair. Pale skin peeking out under it all. Someone has something on my head and tape pulls at the corner of my eye. Blinking is harder. It hurts, like someone weakened the tender skin under my eyes. I close my eyes.

  Open them.

  “Hey there, Lily,” a nurse says. I try to look over at her but can’t. Eyes hurt.

  Close eyes.

  Open them.

  The man.

  Oh, God, I know that man.

  “Lily, your heart rate’s going up! What’s going–hold on. Whoa. That’s high. Shit, shit, shit,” the nurse mutters, turning away to go into the hall, calling for help. What’s her name? Donna? The one with the mole next to her right eye. I want to yell out her name, tell her to make the man go away, move my arms and legs and run run run but I can’t.

  I can only lay here, helpless, unable to even blink properly.

  Mom rushes into the room, moving the man aside, her face coming so close, my eyes losing focus. I want to look at her. Want to beg her to make him leave. Want to yell and scream and claw my way out of this bed to get away.

  “Lily! Lily! It’s Mommy. I’m here, sweetie. I’m here.” Her hand goes to mine, clasping it like she has a million times before.

  This time, I squeeze. I will it. I close my eyes and send the full force of the universe’s sense of mercy into one impulse, one set of muscle fibers, one aching, desperate movement.

  “TOM!” Mom gasps. “She squeezed my hand! Lily, did you squeeze my hand on purpose? Do it once for yes, twice for no!”

  I squeeze once.

  “Oh, Lord, thank you!” Mom babbles, tears rolling down her face, splattering on my cheek, stinging where the tape pulls my skin. “Squeeze twice if you want to see Daddy!”

  Squeeze squeeze.

  “She’s awake ! She’s coming out of it! My Lily is waking up!” Mom shouts. “We have to tell everyone! We have to keep her awake. Tom! Doctor! Help!”

  I look behind her. A crew of white lab coats has appeared, jabbering. And next to them, the man in dark clothes. I know I can squeeze.

  I know it is light. I know it is.

  I know something else, too.

  I know who that man is.

  Because that is the man who shot me in the head.

  The man who wants me dead.

  And his eyes are staring right into my soul.

  * * *

  Blink.

  Chapter 2

  “Bee, Tom, we have good news,” Dr. Smartphone says, brow lowered, confusion painting his features, like a pointillist made him out of a million tiny dots. “Lily does seem to be expressing some level of cognitive function.”

  “We’ve been telling you that for months!” Mom gasps, her voice more negative than I’ve ever heard it before. Bitterness and Bee Thornton don’t go together. My chest hurts.

  My chest hurts, and not just because they changed the tubing on my central line yesterday.

  I look past my feet, to the door. No man.

  I don’t want to see that man ever again.

  I’ll die if he gets close to me. I know it.

  And I can’t move. Can’t defend myself. Can’t run away. All I can do is lie here and take whatever he does, fully awake, fully aware.

  “You two do know,” the doctor says gently, but with a steel tone underneath, “that Lily’s case is extraordinary.”

  “You wanted to cut off life support long ago,” Dad says, gruff but not defensive. He’s always had a way of speaking the truth without turning it into an argument.

  “With good medical reasons,” the doctor responds. “But that is the past. Your benefactor has covered anything that Lily’s health insurance wouldn’t pay for since she was admitted. That’s a unique situation. Without those insurance limits, we’ve been able to provide her with a level of support that may have contributed to... this.”

  “Thank God for Jane,” Daddy mutters. Mom glares at no one, everyone, the window, the sink. Jane Borokov is my new friend. Jane was in the store the day I was shot. I remember now, but it’s all fuzzy and tastes like raspberries. Remembering feels like sinking my entire body into a ball pit full of confusion.

  What does Jane have to do with any of this?

  And why is Mom so angry?

  “Jane Borokov is just doing what’s right, Tom,” Mom says sharply. “Don’t praise her. She’s the reason Lily’s here in the first place. She’s doing the bare minimum.” Her lips curl into a snarl.

  I look at the door again. Still no man. Good.

  The doctor clears his throat. “We’ve done as you requested. We’ve removed the ventilator. Lily has continued to breathe on her own. She’s communicating simple yes/no responses with blinks and hand squeezes. We’ve determined these are intentional and not just random electrical activity.”

  “I told you!” Mom crows.

  “You realize this is rare, Bee?” the doctor says, kindness infusing his words. “Lily’s recovery defies the odds.”

  “I do. I also know a mother’s faith can move mountains.”


  “That may be, but Lily’s issues will require more than faith for her to have a decent quality of life as she comes out of the coma.”

  Coma?

  “I’m well aware of that, doctor. What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying we hope you’ll take a more realistic approach to expectations going forward. After fourteen months in this state, Lily isn’t going to be the same person she was before.”

  Fourteen months?

  “Of course not! But the neurologist said there’s reason for hope.”

  Dr. Smartphone jolts. “She said that? Hope?”

  “Not in those exact words,” Mom backpedals. “But she said there are case studies for people like Lily. Coma survivors who lived for many years longer than Lily before coming out of it.”

  Coma? There’s that word again. Did my mother just say coma? I’m in a coma?

  My chest flutters, something inside it, under my ribs, skittering like a scared mouse.

  “Heart rate’s climbing,” Dr. Smartphone says as a nurse comes in, her scrubs top white with big red hearts all over it. Must be Julie. Julie smells like sandalwood and cats, and she has a smile that reminds me of Mom.

  “She doesn’t like our conversation,” Dad says slowly, watching me like he’s rethinking his opinion of his daughter.