by Tammy Walsh
“Has anyone seen—?”
I looked up into the eyes of my closest friends but their chairs were empty.
Shocked, I bolted up onto my feet and found no one else in the classroom.
Empty seats lined rows of irrelevant desks.
Then, a creepy white mist seeped into the concrete and papers pinned to the walls, turning them fuzzy, then invisible.
My heart hammered in my chest and I backed away.
“What’s going on? What’s happening?”
I could feel the tears running down my cheeks as the mist encroached further, blotting out one desk after another, closing in on all sides.
I leaped back, shuffling into the middle of the room.
I looked up at the emergency fire escape but it’d already been subsumed.
“Please! Don’t eat me!”
I spun, frantic, as the last vestiges of the memory were erased one fine line at a time.
It washed over me.
I peered down at my hands.
They turned translucent before fading away altogether.
I peered at the cloudy whiteness that surrounded me on every side.
I was a ghost’s consciousness floating in this world.
White walls on every side like I’d been swept up in a blizzard.
It’s okay, I told myself. It’s okay. I can figure this out. I can…
The thought broke apart beneath my fingers like breadcrumbs.
What’s going on? Why can’t I remember any…
Another thought evaporated like water moisture in the atmosphere.
I turned and ran on silent footsteps.
I no longer had feet and couldn’t feel the ground beneath me.
Was I really moving?
Or just jogging in place?
The thought evaporated and I forgot what I was doing.
I hadn’t entirely disappeared.
Not yet.
I was still alive.
I could recall my early memories.
The mist couldn’t take that from me…
And then it did.
It swept over each of my memories, and there were more than I thought.
Many tucked away in the crevices of my mind, never to be remembered or recalled ever again.
An enormous database experienced only once, each one a fragment of who I was.
The mist chipped away at it piece by piece.
One after another…
Playing with Klop back home and him licking my face…
My mom in the kitchen, cooking something sweet and tasty.
I reached up to grab a piece of it…
And that too was swept from my mind.
I need to stop thinking of these memories, needed to think of nothing so I could preserve what remained of myself.
But I felt it wiping my past from all existence, like a robber in the back room.
It didn’t matter if I was thinking about them or not, they were still disappearing one by one.
Startled by the accelerating speed, I reached for them, clutching them tighter to my chest than I had ever held Jirax.
My father with a big grin on his face, reaching into his transporter for the present he bought me…
I eased up onto the balls of my feet to see it the moment he brought it out…
He held his hands out, grasping something heavy in them…
But his arms were empty.
I reached for the invisible gift, to feel it, touch it, recall something about it…
But it was already gone.
I tried to speak.
The words came out as mumbles.
I’d forgotten even how to talk.
I had lost my voice.
I was left with nothing but my terror of being in this place, knowing I would soon disappear and exist no more.
I bolted upright, a yelp half-formed on my lips.
I panicked and cast around.
I was surrounded by white walls, and the mist lay draped over my lap, consuming me.
I kicked at it and was surprised when I felt something solid.
It was a blanket, not mist.
Immense relief washed over me as I ran my hands through my hair.
It’d been a nightmare, nothing more.
I chuckled and shook my head and flopped back on the bed.
Somewhere over my shoulder, a machine beeped in perfect time with my racing heart.
I ran a hand over my forehead and a cold sweat dampened my fingertips.
I was alive.
I hadn’t been consumed by the white mist.
Then where was I?
I was in a hospital of some sort.
I tried to recall what happened for me to end up in this place.
I’d been…
Where?
What had I been doing?
If I was in a hospital, it must have gone wrong somehow.
Was I injured?
I ran my hands over my legs, chest, and arms.
I hissed through my teeth at the pain in my right tricep.
I gently prodded it and felt the same pain again.
I had a deep gash there.
It’d been cleaned and dressed.
Beneath the gown that felt like paper, I sported a dozen other marks and burns.
What was going on?
What was I doing in this place?
Had I been captured?
That didn’t seem right.
If someone had captured me, why would they waste good medical resources on me?
And where was the armed guard?
The room was small and plain, with a row of mismatched chairs along one wall, the blue leather worn from thousands of concerned asses.
I put a hand to my temple.
Surely I could remember what happened to me?
Surely this dull white mist that swept over my mind couldn’t be permanent.
I focused as hard as I could but not a single memory traced a gnarled finger over my mind.
I remembered the nightmare, but before that…
Nothing.
It was a terrifying thought.
I was a non-entity without a past.
How could I have any hope of having a future?
I moved to swing my legs over the side of the bed.
They felt weak and could barely brace my weight.
Then the door swung open.
Loud noises erupted from behind the figure standing in the doorway.
I spied long corridors and harsh overhead lights.
Figures rushed to and fro and some kind of speaker system rattled garbled announcements.
A trolley with a figure on top was rapidly rushed past nurses with frenzied expressions on their faces.
I blinked at that.
Nurses.
Yes, nurses.
That was what they were.
Just like the woman who had stepped into my room.
How could I know what they were but not know who I was?
“Ah. I see you’re finally awake,” the nurse said.
She had a pleasant smile and cradled a clipboard in one arm.
“You took quite a nasty blow to the head. We hoped it wouldn’t take long for you to wake up.”
“Why… Why am I here?” I said, surprised the words could even form on my lips.
“You were involved in an accident. You were in an airplane and it crashed.”
“Airplane?”
I racked my brain for any hint of an airplane but nothing came to mind.
“What was I doing on an airplane? Was I a passenger?”
“No, dear. You were the pilot.”
Pilot?
I couldn’t recall being a pilot.
“You crashed into Phoenix Lake out by Ashbourne,” the nurse said.
She shut the door behind herself and approached the foot of my bed.
“A young woman was driving by at the time and helped you from the water. She called the emergency services and that’s how you ended up here.
”
I crashed?
In a lake?
A young woman rescued me?
I remembered none of it.
“I shouldn’t be here,” I said. “I need to go.”
I couldn’t understand the reasoning behind that statement but I sensed on some level I was right.
I really shouldn’t be there.
I should be somewhere else…
But where?
“Honey, you’re not going anywhere,” the nurse said. “At least not for a while.”
The nurse pressed me gently but firmly back into bed and pulled the sheet over my legs.
She approached the bank of beeping monitors and hastily made notes on her clipboard.
“Do you notice any dizziness? Any nausea?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“That’s good news. Do you remember the flight that led to the crash?”
I shook my head again.
“Do you remember which base you took off from? Why you were flying?”
“No.”
This time, the nurse frowned.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
The dream.
Only the dream.
It felt private, personal, and I didn’t want to share it.
Maybe because it was the only memory I had.
“Do you remember anything from before the crash?” the nurse said.
I focused on that white mist that’d taken up residence in my mind.
I felt certain if I waded into it far enough, I might see something on the other side of it.
But I didn’t know how long that journey would take.
So, I shook my head.
“I can’t remember anything.”
The nurse was slow in covering up her look of concern.
She smiled, though it took some effort.
“I’m sure it’s nothing. I’ll go get the doctor and we’ll see what we can do to help you.”
She turned on her heel and marched from the room a lot faster than she had come.
I focused on wading through that dense mist.
Maybe if I kept going, I could reach the far end and uncover at least a hint of the memories that should have been available at the forefront of my mind.
I stopped moving and stood stock still.
For the moment, I was an island, floating in an enormous empty ocean.
In that situation, the best thing you could do was to stay put.
“You have amnesia,” the doctor said.
He had a long face and a mole on his cheek that needed surgery.
He’d taken me from one machine to another, forcing me to drink various liquids and consume various pills in order for them to work effectively.
I saw a great deal of the modern equipment and experts working tirelessly to piece together the puzzle of what happened to me.
Now the verdict had come back and I wasn’t surprised.
“Will I recover?” I said, feeling the bite of anxiety at my heels.
“It’s hard to say. Amnesia can be a very slippery opponent. Sometimes it only lasts for a few hours, other times a few days, and sometimes…”
He let his meaning hang.
It can become permanent.
I tried not to dwell on it too much.
I bit down on my reservations and fixed him with a look.
“How can I help myself recover?”
“Memory exercises. The pathways are still there but you’ve lost access to them. If you keep trying to walk down them, eventually, you should pick up on some breadcrumbs. But really, it’s up to your mind how you recover.”
I would be okay, I decided.
I would regain myself piece by piece.
So long as I was surrounded by medical professionals, I had a chance of making a full recovery.
“Is there anyone we can call?” the doctor said. “Someone who might be able to help?”
He caught himself a moment too late, remembering I couldn’t remember anyone or anything.
“What I meant to say is, you have no forms of identification. No dog tags, no wallet, no ID. It’s like you suddenly appeared out of nowhere.”
“If I’m a pilot, there must be some way to track down where I came from. Someone would miss a pilot and airplane going missing, right?”
The doctor nodded noncommittally.
“We haven’t heard anything yet but we’ll let you know as soon as we do. In the meantime, we’d best find you somewhere for you to recover.”
“Can’t I recover here?” I said, growing a little panicked.
“We need the bed, I’m afraid. And it will be much cheaper for you to stay elsewhere.”
He placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Trust me. Things should come back to you.”
He issued an order to a nurse and wrote out a prescription.
“Ensure the patient receives everything he needs. And find him somewhere to rest for a while. He’s going to need time.”
The doctor gave me a comforting smile and then whisked out of the room.
So far as he was concerned, I was no longer his problem.
Then I felt something tug on me.
Not a physical thing—though it felt like it could have been.
I had a feeling buried inside my gut that had nothing to do with my memories but some instinct hardwired into my cells.
The tugging led my eyes down the hallway to another part of the hospital.
Something was there, I thought. Something I was meant to see.
To find.
To explore.
All at once, I felt at home.
I was warm and desired more than anything to discover what that pulsing light pointed to.
The nurse handed me some medicine and I took it without hesitation.
“So, it’s my job to find you somewhere comfortable to stay for a while,” the nurse said. “Do you have any preferences?”
I handed the small paper cup back to her and glanced in the direction of the pulsing light.
“Well?” the nurse said. “Any ideas where you want to stay?”
Yes, I thought. But I wasn’t sure the person on the other end of this spiritual hotline would entertain such an idea…
Isabella
I rode with the patient in the ambulance to the hospital.
A team was on hand to help him inside.
I drifted after them like a puppet attached to his gurney.
“What’s the patient’s name?” a young nurse with a clipboard said.
“I… I don’t know.”
“Where’s he from? Are you related to him?”
“I… A plane… It… crashed… The storm…”
The nurse must have noticed I was in shock and led me into the waiting room.
She handed me a cup of fizzy liquid.
My tastebuds were too numb to notice the flavor.
It was black and bubbles popped on its surface and tickled my nose.
Coke?
Pepsi?
Dr. Pepper?
I had no idea.
I just sipped on it every time the nurse told me to have some.
“Is there anyone I can call?” the nurse asked gently.
I nodded and was slow in my movements.
I handed her my cell, unlocked it with my thumbprint, and said:
“My parents.”
The nurse searched my contacts and made the call.
I couldn’t even understand the words she was saying.
I would have been useless at making the call myself.
“They’re on their way,” the nurse said, not bothering to hand me the cell and instead tucked it in my pocket.
About twenty minutes later—I had to guess as my head was still packed with cotton wool—I blinked and came awake.
I was in the hospital but I hadn’t really been there.
Now the sounds filtered through my dumb ears.
New arrivals spoke in hushed whispers at the fron
t desk while half a dozen friends and relatives waited anxiously.
I moved to the front desk.
“I’m here to check on a guy I came in here with. He was in a plane crash. A nurse asked me about him but I was still in shock. I’m feeling better now, if she has any questions for me.”
“I’ll see if I can find her,” the receptionist said. “Please take a seat.”
I never intended on spending so much time at the hospital.
After all, I didn’t know the guy.
I just happened to be the person he almost crashed into.
I had jumped in the water and waded in to help rescue him.
It all seemed so surreal now as if it were part of a nightmare.
My clothes were still a little damp and the ring of silt made a lazy line about my waist, so there could be no denying it really happened.
But the nurse from earlier wasn’t the one who greeted me to discuss the facts of the evening.
Two cops did.
“Am I in trouble?” I said.
“No, ma’am,” the officer with the sloping forehead said. “The sheriff sent us to make sure you’re okay and to ask for details for our report.”
The sheriff.
A.K.A. Liam, my ex-boyfriend.
Just the person I didn’t want to see right now.
“Are you going to take me down to the station or something?” I said.
“No, ma’am.”
Ma’am.
You got to a certain age and you were instantly cobbled together with grandmas.
“You’re not in trouble and you’ve done nothing wrong,” the officer continued. “We would just like to discuss the details with you.”
He motioned to a quiet corner of the waiting room and we sat down.
I told them everything—from the moment I dropped Trudy off, to seeing the bright blue explosion in the sky and the plane screaming toward me before it crashed into Phoenix Lake.
I conveyed my concern about jumping in and the possibility of drowning, calling 911, and then seeing his body floating on the surface of the water, and my dragging him to the shore and placing him in the recovery position.
The officers made copious notes and nodded sagely, stopping only to ask questions whenever they needed clarification.
“Did the pilot say anything before he passed unconscious?” the officer said.
“No,” I said. “He just passed right out… No, wait. He did say something. What was it now? Something about shadows. ‘Beware of the shadows’ or something like that.”
“Shadows?” the officer said, ears perking up.
“That’s what he said.”