by Kallysten
Anterograde
Kallysten
When Calden wakes up – every time he wakes up – the last thing he can recall is a debilitating headache that even his medical background failed to identify as anything more serious than a regular headache. He also remembers his decision to ignore the fact that his best friend Eli is married and to tell him about his long-standing feelings for him. He remembers June second.
But it is not June second anymore. The tattoos on his arm and chest prove it. They also tell him why he doesn’t remember anything past June second… and why Eli sleeps in his bed now.
When Calden wakes up – every time he wakes up – he gets to discover Eli is in love with him for the first time all over again.
PLEASE READ FIRST
A note about chronology
This story is presented in an out-of-order sequence, with the timeline for one character going forward, and the other backward, a narrative choice designed to enhance the plight of the characters.
If you prefer a more ‘straightforward’ reading, you are welcome to use the ‘next chronological chapter’ links at the end of each chapter and they will take you through the story from beginning to end. If that is your choice, please start here.
However, as the author, I encourage you to read the chapters in the order they were meant to be discovered. Just ignore the link above as well as the links at the end of each chapter and progress through the book as you normally would.
Whichever way you elect to read this story, I hope you will enjoy it!
Table of contents
Please read first – a note about chronology
November 15th
June 2nd
November 14th
June 27th
October 29th
July 22nd
October 5th
August 15th
September 27th
September 5th
September 5th
September 7th
August 15th & 16th
October 4th
July 5th
October 29th
June 27th
November 15th
June 7th to June 20th
November 15th
Epilogue – June 2nd
Excerpt from Moonlust
About the author
Also available
A note from Kallysten
November 15th
Calden wakes up in the middle of a heart attack.
Or at least, that’s what it feels like. His chest is constricted, his body uncomfortably warm.
It is not, as such, an unfamiliar feeling. He felt this way before, after his sister Riley’s death, when he helped himself to the hospital’s supply of opiates. That night, he ended up knocking on death’s door, though he didn’t actually pass the threshold. That was how his mother described it in a rare use of metaphors that has somehow resisted all attempts from Calden to forget the whole ordeal.
Calden’s memory is a strange thing. He can recall that metaphor, he can recall his previous overdose, but he absolutely cannot recall the high that must have caused the overwhelming tightness in his chest.
Although…
As his grip on consciousness solidifies, he opens his eyes to find himself in his bed—he doesn’t remember getting in it—and with a possessive arm thrown across his chest. The owner of that arm, rather unexpectedly, is Eli. When or why Eli climbed into Calden’s bed, Calden cannot fathom.
Why they both appear to be nude is just as much of a mystery.
Calden isn’t opposed at all to those developments, but they are rather startling when he has no recollection of what led to this. And that lack of memories, as much as the tightness of Eli’s arm, quickly becomes too much to bear.
Pulling away, he sits on the edge of the bed, his feet firmly on the floor but his mind still unsteady. A quick look at the clock tells him it’s almost eight in the morning. His last memory is of lying on the sofa in the early afternoon with a splitting headache severe enough that Eli was concerned. Clearly things have happened since then. One of those things was sexual in nature, judging from a trace of discomfort so minimal Calden wouldn’t have noticed it if he wasn’t taking stock of his body. It explains why he and Eli are naked in bed, but by God how did they get from friends to lovers in just a day?
“Bathroom,” Eli mumbles behind him, and the word feels like an electric shock. Calden nearly jumps to his feet.
“What?” he asks despite his suddenly dry throat
Eli’s eyes are still closed, but he responds readily after a wide yawn.
“Go into the bathroom. Look at your arm. Then at your chest in the mirror. Then come back to bed ‘cause it’s too damn early to be up.”
He’s not making any sense, and Calden is about to say so when he sees something on the inside of his left arm. With only the glow of the alarm clock for light, he can’t make out more than a large stain, dark on his fair skin. Frowning, he stands and crosses the hallway to the bathroom. He has to blink a few times against the bright lights, but soon he looks down at his arm and sees that the stain is a tattoo.
His first thought is that this is appalling. Of all the ridiculous things to do to his body…
His second thought is that the tattoo is healed. There’s no redness, no swelling. It’s been there for a while. But how can that be? He didn’t have a tattoo earlier today.
The next thing he notices is that this is his handwriting. He couldn’t not recognize it. Slanted and untidy, it is as distinct to him as his own face. Which means he must have written the words and given them to a tattoo artist to ink exactly as they were.
The last thing he takes in is the words themselves. Or maybe he did read them first and shove their meaning back, too unsettled to consider them right away. But he can’t ignore them. Not when they are the beginning of an explanation as to what is going on.
The tattoo on his arm says: Diagnosis: anterograde amnesia.
He runs a finger over the words at the same time as he accesses the library in his memory palace. The library is exactly where it should be, as is everything else he can see, but there’s something out of place, nothing he can quite identify and yet the feeling of wrongness is like a pinprick right at the base of his skull, where he feels much too vulnerable.
He ignores the feeling the best he can and finds the definition for anterograde amnesia. He knows already what it is, but he needs the words, needs to contain this, to make it medical data rather than fear. He also needs to make sure it’s only anterograde amnesia, and not more than that.
Anterograde amnesia is defined by the inability to create new memories, leading to the failure to recall the recent past. Long-term memories from before the inciting event remain unaffected.
His recall of that medical text is perfect, he’s relieved to realize. He thinks of another topic, the first thing that crosses his mind—the bones of the hand—and names them to himself, one after the other, the fingers of his right hand brushing against the left as he enumerates them. He is still listing the last few bones when a different topic comes to mind.
Lumbar puncture. His eyes now half-closed, he reviews the process step by step, the same way he learned it and practiced it, dozens of times.
Five more textbook pages. Five more random pieces of knowledge. It’s hardly proof of anything, but it does tend to indicate that his long term memory is intact. His breathing calms down a little. He looks at his arm again.
Diagnosis: anterograde amnesia.
His message to himself, since that’s clearly what it is, appears to be accurate.
Remembering what Eli said—how long ago was that? At least five minutes. Some people with anterograde amnesia forget events practically as soon as they happen, but Calden can remember waking up with
Eli’s arm around him, can remember what he said. How long until he forgets?—Calden glances down at his chest. There’s another tattoo there, but the letters are reversed.
He steps in front of the mirror and peers in. It’s his handwriting again. Three lines of text. The last one appears to be newer than the other two, the edges still slightly raised and a little red. Without thinking, he touches Eli’s name, inked right over his heart. His breathing returns completely to normal.
He commits the words to memory in the same way he learned endless lists of ailments, symptoms and cures. Closing his eyes, he visualizes himself in the library because it’s his most visited room and the easiest to access. From there, he walks on over to the koi pond in the yard, where he stores information and memories that relate to Eli. He visualizes three new stepping stones on the pond, interlocked like puzzle pieces, and assigns one tattoo sentence to each.
It’s useless, really, if the diagnosis is correct, but that’s what he has done with important information for more than half his life. The method of loci, this memory technique his father taught him and Riley when they were teens, has been his default way to remember things since he mastered it, and he can’t just stop now.
The house he uses as his focus is his grandparents’, the home where his happiest memories took place, and every familiar object is a visual cue associated with something Calden wants or needs to recall. A lot of it is medical information, but that’s not all he keeps in there. One room—the room he and Riley shared as kids—is full of memories of her he never wants to forget. The small office in the back is for memories of his father. He doesn’t have a specific room for his mother, only a few cues, here and there.
When the stones feel as strong, as solid in his mind as though they’ve always been there, he opens his eyes again and takes a good look at himself, seeking more tattoos, more messages. He finds nothing. Next, he touches his skull with his fingertips, methodically examining every inch, seeking scars or depressions. Nothing either.
Feeling cold from standing naked in the bathroom for so long, he steps into the shower and shivers under the cold spray for a few seconds before the water warms up. He just stands there, head bowed, sifting through his memories again.
The first cause of amnesia is traumatic brain injury, but he hasn’t found any evidence that anything happened to him. Shock or a strong emotional disturbance can also be to blame, but Calden refuses to think he’d let emotions wreak havoc on his brain, not anymore. That part of his life is over. A far less common cause for anterograde amnesia, although not unheard of, is encephalitis.
And the last thing he remembers with some clarity is that headache. It’d plagued him, on and off, for a couple of weeks, but that day it was simply debilitating. He had a fever, too, he thinks.
Getting out of the shower, he towels himself dry and pulls on the robe hanging behind the door. He strides back into the bedroom and turns on the lights before approaching the bed. Eli makes a noise of protest and draws a pillow over his head.
“Eli,” Calden says sharply. “Did I have encephalitis? Is that how it happened? When was it?”
But Eli doesn’t answer.
Calden tugs the pillow off Eli’s head and takes hold of his arm, remembering too late that it still hurts at sudden movements. At Eli’s groan of pain, he slides his hand and grabs Eli’s wrist, tugging gently until he rolls onto his back.
“Eli. Wake up. I need you to tell me…”
Calden forgets what he was about to ask when he sees the three lines of text on Eli’s chest, each an answer to the lines on his own. They’re not inverted. Not meant to be read in a mirror. Meant for Calden.
The first two are tattooed in a typewriter-style font. The last one is slightly smudged. Permanent marker rather than tattoo. Eli’s hand. They say:
I do.
You did.
I won’t.
Calden’s hand falls away from Eli’s wrist and he touches those simple declarations instead. One of Eli’s hands comes up and covers his, pressing it tight over Eli’s heart.
“You’ve got questions,” Eli says in a tired voice, his eyes narrowed against the light, “but we’ve had barely more than three hours of sleep and that’s not nearly enough for me to function. Your diary’s on the sofa. Let me have a couple more hours before we have that talk again, all right?”
Calden nods numbly. He tries to pull his hand back, but Eli holds on to it and leads it to his mouth. He presses a kiss into the center of Calden’s palm before releasing him. The touch is both foreign and strangely familiar, and it makes Calden want to get back into bed, makes him want to ask questions that have little to do with amnesia. He doesn’t and instead picks up the pajama pants on the floor and leaves the room, turning off the lights again and almost tripping over his own feet when Eli mumbles, “Thanks, love.”
He can’t remember anyone calling him that with quite that meaning. He never imagined how nice it’d be.
The diary Eli mentioned is a blue notebook, unremarkable except for the words written in large letters on the cover. Calden’s hand, again. Read me.
Calden sits down and opens the notebook to the first page. The first sentence answers the very questions he asked Eli.
I was diagnosed with acute encephalitis on June 2nd.
He keeps reading about the hospital, the treatment, but gets distracted by a note in the margin. It’s still his handwriting, but the ink is blue rather than black.
DO NOT discuss illness with Eli. He experiences residual guilt for not identifying the illness sooner and blames himself for the outcome. 6/29
Another margin note a few lines lower says, Tried to point out it’s not his fault. Poorly received. 7/20
And lower still, Attempted again. Eli still unreasonable. 8/14
All in all, the notes in the margins tell Calden as much as the diary itself. His illness, treatment and recovery take two pages and seven notes. Then there’s a brief explanation of when he can expect to lose his short term memory.
The metaphor is imperfect but still workable. Looking at my long term memory as a hard drive, we can label my short term memory as RAM. The hard drive became read-only following the illness. New information is stored in RAM and can be used while I remain awake. Going to sleep—‘turning off’—wipes the RAM, returning the system to what it was prior to the illness.
A margin note indicates that Calden went as long as nine days without sleep in August. Another note warns that Eli threatened to forcibly sedate him if he ever tries to stay awake longer than two days. The next note announces negotiations were made and when the hospital needs Calden, Eli will allow up to four days provided that he is allowed to monitor Calden’s vitals and told of any hallucination or paranoia symptoms as soon as they occur. Also, if Calden has been awake for longer than forty-eight hours, the hospital will not let him hold a scalpel, only observe and supervise.
There’s no explanation as to why the hospital would even take the risk of allowing Calden to operate, but then such an explanation is unneeded: they’re simply desperate. Under normal circumstances, Calden is sure he’d never have set foot into an operating room again, but the circumstances are anything but normal. This is war. The city is, in effect, under siege. For years, strange creatures the press nicknamed demons have been appearing all over the world and attacking, wave after wave, battle after battle. If not for the fortifications and the soldiers defending them, there would be nothing left of the city. All medical professionals are precious commodities, and a gifted surgeon like Calden even more so.
Another page of the diary is about music, and how Calden has composed two pieces on the piano since the illness, one of which over a span of several weeks. That is a surprisingly soothing bit of information, even if Calden can’t remember either of these compositions.
The next few pages talk about how the people in Calden’s life are reacting to his condition and limitations, with advice as to what to say or not say in order to avoid looks of pity and words of co
mmiseration. Petters, apparently, apologized to him for their years of conflict; that sentence gives him pause.
After that, the notebook is more like the diary Eli called it, describing Calden’s work at the hospital and his most interesting patients. Calden skims through a few of them before flipping further back into the notebook. Many blank pages still wait to be filled, but there is one set of information glaringly missing. Other than margin notes, there isn’t anything in the notebook about Eli, and certainly nothing to explain his presence in Calden’s bed, the tattoos on Calden’s chest, or the ones on Eli’s. There must be a reason for that lack of information. A good one, since Calden has been continuously adding to the diary. The last medical case is dated November fourteenth. Spying his phone on the table, Calden goes to pick it up and checks the date.
November fifteenth.
He wrote that last entry mere hours ago, it seems. And yet, when he goes back to it, nothing whatsoever comes to mind as he reads intently his own descriptions of the last surgery he performed, reattaching a severed hand, or the back surgery he supervised, or the intracranial bleeding he discussed with Caroline after that.
Lying down on the sofa, he rests the notebook on his chest and takes a closer look at his phone. An icon on the main screen is labeled ‘EMERGENCY.’ Opening it reveals a short message.
IMPORTANT. If you just woke up and Eli isn’t with you, call him immediately. If he doesn’t answer, call Lana. Don’t text. CALL.
HS
The signature gives him pause. ‘HS’ was what Riley used to call him. A private joke no one ever knew about. HS, for ‘Hot Stuff,’ a nickname she’d come up with after some idiot girl at school started spreading rumors about ‘Cold Calden’ being gay. Which was true, but at that point in his life the only person he’d told was his twin sister, and when the rumor spread he was so mortified that he faked an illness to stay home, only returning after a pep talk from Riley.