Splintered Memory

by Natascha Holloway

  Six months on and his mood still hadn’t improved. He was irritable with everyone, and his temper remained highly volatile at all times.

  He was tired of telling everyone the same thing, and finding himself reassuring them and trying to minimise their concerns. No one ever bothered to ask how he was doing, or how he was coping with the situation? In fact no one seemed to think about him at all. All the sympathy was for Charlie, and this annoyed him above everything else. He knew it was wrong, and he hated himself for feeling like this.

  Charlie was coping with the situation well, or as well as anyone could be expected to. Matt had known that she’d been scared initially, and that she’d been nervous when she’d been re-introduced to people from their lives, but as the days had passed her nerves had seemed to lessen and he’d watched her set about making copious notes and memory cards. He’d known that her hope had been that she could capture enough information to re-learn who she was, or at least who she had been.

  Matt at first had encouraged this behaviour, hoping that something that he, or Claire, or Rich, or one of the others said to her or told her would lead to the “Eureka” moment. The point in which the lights would come back on, and Charlie would once again know who she was. Sadly though it had transpired that nothing had acted as the trigger for Charlie’s memory, and he’d eventually started to find it nothing more than annoying that she’d say things to him that she’d learned hoping that he’d react positively to them.

  For him, each time that she’d done this it had acted as a very painful and unnecessary reminder that she didn’t have the vaguest memory of their lives together. She had no idea who he was, or who she was, and he’d had to accept that his Charlie was either still lying dormant somewhere or had gone for good.

  “Morning Dr Grayson,” Nurse Willis said pulling Matt from out of his thoughts.

  “What’s the emergency?” He asked feeling the renewed sense of control that he always felt when he was in the hospital. Here he was the one with the answers, and the ability to control the situation. Whilst he was at work and busy, he didn’t have time to dwell on Charlie and the declining domestic situation that surrounded him at home.

  Charlie

  When she heard the back door close, she rolled over and turned the lamp next to her side of the bed on. She hadn’t wanted Matt to know that she was awake. Her feigning sleep was the only time that she didn’t have to feel the tumultuous feelings of guilt that she felt in his presence.

  Charlie got out of bed and headed downstairs. She turned the light on in the kitchen, and flicked the switch on the kettle. She leant back against the sideboard, and she stared almost unseeingly at the back door that she knew Matt would have walked out of moments ago. She felt tired to her very core, drained both emotionally and mentally.

  Since having been released from the hospital nearly six months ago, Charlie had worked tirelessly and endlessly to try and get her memory back. She had done everything and anything to find a cure for the retrograde amnesia that she was, according to her doctors suffering from.

  She’d been to hypnotists, acupuncturists, Chinese herbalists, therapists, psychologists, counsellors, but nothing had worked. She had talked to Matt, and to her parents, to try and understand what she had been like. She had visited people that had been her friends and work colleagues, but nothing had had the slightest effect on her.

  When she had first come home from hospital Matt had been polite, if not a little distant with her, but over time he had become quieter and quieter and this had made Charlie feel awkward. She didn’t feel at home in their house, and she instead felt far more like a guest. A guest that had long outstayed their welcome, but had never formally been asked to leave.

  She spent her days in the house alone trying to find things to do. She couldn’t go back to work as she couldn’t remember what it was that she’d done before her accident, and she couldn’t spend time with the people that had visited her in hospital because they all had jobs and were at work.

  So to pass the time she’d started to do little projects around the house. She’d first attacked the photos. There had been hundreds upon hundreds of loose photos in drawers and in boxes. She’d gone out and bought ten large photo albums, and then she’d begun putting them in an order that seemed to make sense to her.

  She’d tried to do it by an event, or by clubbing a series of photos together where she and Matt had looked in and around a certain age bracket. Holiday photos she’d stored separately, as they’d been more easily identifiable by the backgrounds and the clothes that they’d had on.

  When she’d finished with the photos she’d taken to sorting out all the books in the house. She’d tidied Matt’s medical books into subject order in the spare room, and then she’d done the same thing with what she’d assumed had been her law books and she’d put them in the loft. Next she’d begun to re-read books that she’d thought were mostly likely to have been hers, hoping that she could get a sense of what kind of person she’d been by understanding her previous likes and dislikes.

  These activities had helped her feel like she was regaining some control, and they’d given her a sense of purpose. Unfortunately though, there were a number of other things in her life that were completely outside of her control.

  Charlie didn’t know any of her or Matt’s routines. She hadn’t known the types of hours that he worked, or that he would often leave the house in the middle of the night to respond to a page from the hospital. She didn’t know what he liked to eat, or even what she liked to eat. She didn’t know if she cooked for him, or if he liked to cook. She didn’t know where anything in the house was kept, or even what she was supposed to do when he came home from work.

  The kettle boiled, and Charlie’s attention returned to the immediate job at hand. She turned round, and poured the boiling water into a large mug and dropped a tea bag into it. Yet as she stood there playing idly with the tea bag, she wondered how long she was supposed to leave it in the cup for? The familiar feeling of irritation returned. How could she not remember the most basic of things she thought?

  When she did finally remove the tea bag, the tea was nearly black. When she went to sip it, it was cold. She poured the tea down the sink and sat down wearily at the table. She wasn’t sure she even liked tea, but given that Matt kept making her cups of it when he was at home she could only assume that she’d used to and therefore still did.

  Matt

  The first night that Charlie had come home from the hospital, had without doubt been one of the most miserable in his entire life. He’d known that he ought to have been ecstatic that his wife – whom he knew had nearly died, was in good health and had been released from the hospital, but as he’d helped her pack up her things he hadn’t felt the slightest trace of happiness. He hadn’t been bringing Charlie home, he’d been bringing home a stranger that merely looked and sounded like her.

  Matt knew that there wasn’t a definite prognosis for Charlie’s amnesia, which Oak had diagnosed as retrograde amnesia. In fact Matt knew that when it came to amnesia there were no definitive’s at all. Charlie could regain her memory tomorrow, or she may never regain it again. Yet whilst he had tried to steal himself for the worst possible scenario, what he hadn’t done was prepare himself for the simple task of being with Charlie on a day to day basis.

  Every time he saw her, or was close to her, he had to fight every instinct in his body. They’d been together for so long that every movement he made towards her was habitual, but he’d soon learnt that he had to watch every movement that he made around her. If he got too close, she moved away. She didn’t know how to react to him, and she didn’t know how to be near him.

  It was evident that he made her nervous and self-conscious, and this in turn made Matt feel embarrassed and increasingly uncomfortable. She had forgotten him entirely. She didn’t know his gestures. She wouldn’t have known his kisses, and she couldn’t remember the little winks that he’d used to give her when he’d known that she’d been feel
ing nervous or self-conscious.

  She didn’t know what his glances meant, or the knowing nods that they’d always exchanged when they’d been communicating silently. Now whenever he came near her she looked at him warily, unsure of whether or not she could trust him. She looked at him like he was a stranger.

  The day after Charlie had regained consciousness, Oak had explained that the tests that he’d run had been inconclusive. He simply hadn’t known if the amnesia that Charlie was suffering from was only temporary. Charlie had been understandably upset by the news, but when Matt had reached for her hand she’d moved it away from him. Matt had looked up at Oak, yet when he’d seen the sympathy in his mentor’s eyes he’d experienced a rush of anger and resentment.

  How had he let himself be convinced that everything would be alright he’d asked himself? Why had he allowed himself to hope he’d thought dejectedly?

  Charlie had been keen to do anything that might assist with her recovery, and at Oak’s suggestion that she should return home she’d asked Matt if it’d be okay. He’d known that he couldn’t say no, but he had wondered how he was going to cope with the situation.

  He’d realised that he’d need to make adjustments and treat her differently. He’d known that he’d need to think of her more as a guest than as his wife, but again against his better judgment he’d found himself hoping that there could be light at the end of the tunnel. He’d found himself hoping that just maybe, when she was around all of her own things again she’d remember. There was a chance that it’d all come back to her, and that their lives could return to normal.

  He knew though, that in just the short amount of time that it had taken them to walk from the hospital to their home that things were far from normal. Charlie asked him question after question about their lives together, and Matt found himself responding in a voice that didn’t sound like his own. He felt disconnected and unfeeling, and he even noticed that he’d begun to speak about their past together as though he was telling a well rehearsed story about two other people’s lives.

  When they arrived at the house he used the back door just like he always did. He threw his keys onto the small round table in the kitchen just like he always did. Yet when he turned back around like he never did, he saw Charlie stood in the doorway looking nervous. She was holding her small bag from the hospital in front of her and she looked shy and timid.

  “You can come in,” Matt said smiling encouragingly at her.

  Charlie took a small and almost tentative step inside and asked; “where should I put my bag?”

  “Here, I’ll take it,” he said holding out his hand for the bag. “I’ll show you where the spare room is if you like. If you want to unpack your things,” he added stupidly knowing that all of her stuff was already here and that there was hardly anything in the small bag that he was now holding.

  “Do I normally sleep in the spare room?” She asked quizzically.

  Matt didn’t answer immediately, feeling somewhat taken aback by her question.

  “Well, no,” he said pausing; “but I assumed that you probably wouldn’t want to sleep in our room, given that,” but at that moment a thought occurred to Matt and he realised that he was being an idiot. She was probably just curious as to whether it was normal that, as his wife, she would sleep in the spare room of the house that they lived in together.

  “No, you don’t. You normally sleep in our room with me,” he said. “Look you should take our room, and that way you can try and familiarise yourself with your surroundings again. I’ll take the spare room, okay?” He asked.

  Charlie looked at him unblinkingly, and then she let her head drop and mumbled nervously; “that’s not exactly what I meant.”

  Matt looked at her not understanding what she was trying to get at, and he watched her take a deep breath to compose herself. It was the same action that she’d always done before the accident, and it usually came right before she was about to say something that was making her feel uncomfortable.

  “I just assumed that we shared the bedroom, and obviously the bed,” Charlie said uneasily. “And Oak said I should do everything like I did before my accident,” she added quickly at the end.

  Matt stared at her feeling both a little stunned and a little stupid. He wasn’t handling this well at all. How was this situation so difficult, and why was he feeling so awkward around her he thought? Also why was the idea of sharing a bed with her so terrifying he asked himself? He’d been sharing a bed with Charlie on and off for fifteen years! Yet as he looked at the shy woman in front of him, he was all too aware that she wasn’t the same person that he’d shared a bed with all those times before.

  “Okay,” he said his voice coming out in a slightly higher pitch than normal. “I’ll show you to our bedroom then.”

  He walked out of the kitchen and started to walk up the stairs that led directly off their living room. He could feel Charlie’s eyes on him, but he didn’t turn around to see if she was following.

  When he reached their bedroom he walked over to their bed to put her bag down, and he knew instinctively that she was behind him. He turned to look at her, and he answered the question that he assumed was most likely to be on her mind. “You usually sleep that side,” he said pointing to the right hand side of the bed that was the side furthest from the window.

  She nodded, her eyes taking in both the room and him.

  “Do you mind if I look around the rest of the house?” She asked.

  “Of course not,” he said.

  He watched as she turned and walked out of the room, but he couldn’t bear to follow her. He didn’t want to watch her take in their surroundings as if it was all brand new, because it wasn’t. He sat instead on their bed and slumped forward, and put his head in his hands.

  That night Matt hardly slept. He stayed on the farthest side of the bed from her, and allowed himself the smallest amount of room possible. He was terrified that if he accidently encroached on Charlie’s side he would scare her to death. He was also afraid that if he got too comfortable he would fall asleep. He knew that if that happened, then there was a very good chance that he would roll over and pull her close to him in the night the same way that he had always used to.

  He watched the light gradually creep in through their window, and he felt the last trace of hope fade away as a sense of disillusionment settled deep within him. He was trapped inside a nightmare that he couldn’t wake up from. He was living with a woman that resembled Charlie in every way, but in his heart he knew that she wasn’t the Charlie that he loved and had married.

  Charlie

  One of the only good things that came from her weekly visits to her psychiatrist was that she got to talk about all of the things that were bothering her. She knew that she was a burden on Matt, and as disconcerting as she found this she didn’t know how to talk to him about it. Instead she found herself withholding more and more of herself from him, which in turn led to her feeling more of a sense of relief from being able to talk to Maria.

  Maria was an elderly woman with a sweet face and kind eyes, and Charlie had found something incredibly reassuring about her from the moment that they’d met. She was unsure if this was to do with Maria’s demeanour, or her grey eyes which seemed to hold a kind of wisdom and life experience that she herself didn’t have. She guessed that Maria was in her mid to late sixties from the soft wrinkles that lined her face, and the grey that had replaced most of her once jet black hair.

  Charlie had been terrified when she’d first come to see Maria that she was going to end up alone. She’d confided to Maria that her greatest worry was that her friends, who’d all been kind and supportive since her accident, would eventually grow tired of her and begin to look at her the way that her husband did.

  Maria had never sought to reassure Charlie during any of their sessions, but instead she’d listened to her concerns and let Charlie talk until she had nothing left to say. When Charlie had poured the contents of her heart out, Maria had addressed one pro
blem at a time.

  She’d first focused on Charlie’s concerns about her friends, and on her feelings of being overly dependent and burdensome on them. She’d given Charlie tips on how to navigate conversations away from herself, and she’d taught her how to reconnect with the people in her life.

  From Maria’s tips, Charlie learned that it was quite easy to reform her friendships without having to constantly discuss the state of her mental health. She’d simply, rather than keep trying to reintegrate herself with her friends based on who she had been in the past, set out to make friends with them all over again. She’d taken an interest in their lives. She’d found out about them, their work, and what they’d been up to.

  It had actually been rather easy, and enjoyable, and she’d realised that she could spend entire evenings talking and laughing with her friends without ever once having to talk about herself.

  The renewal of these friendships had helped her, and little by little and day by day she’d become to feel less like she didn’t belong. The fears too that she’d had about not being able to take back control over her life were dissipating, and she’d started to feel like her confidence was growing.

  This new found confidence had led her to start discussing with Maria what she could do with her life in terms of a career. She knew that she couldn’t return to the law firm where she’d worked before her accident, as she couldn’t remember anything about what she did or what she had learned at university, so she had started to seriously consider going back to school.

  Maria encouraged Charlie to take a proactive approach to her life. She’d taught her not to dwell on a past that she couldn’t remember, and she’d explained to Charlie that sometimes the pursuit of trying to regain memories was actually counterproductive and could hinder rather than help the mind’s healing process.