Anterograde

by Kallysten

  “I’m sorry,” she called out, “but we can’t wait any longer. I’m starting to scrub in now.”

  The door swung shut again. Eli covered himself, motioning for Calden to do the same.

  “If she’s scrubbing in,” Calden said, sounding as though he were musing aloud, “and if she’s telling us, it means I’m due for surgery. Correct?”

  Eli nodded and told him what he knew, including the part about Calden probably choosing to fall asleep so that he’d be allowed to perform the surgery.

  What he didn’t say, what he couldn’t have said because he simply didn’t know, was that the girl, even with her face half covered by an oxygen mask and her hair hidden in a cap, could have passed for Riley’s twin more than Calden himself could. Everyone in the operating room who had ever laid eyes on Riley could tell that, at the moment Calden saw her, he saw someone else lying there, someone he’d never had the opportunity to even try to save. And everyone who watched him work alongside Samford for the next four hours could tell that he’d have given anything, done anything to save the patient.

  Samford called time of death just a little after six in the morning. She left the room first, looking older than Eli had ever seen her. The nurses and anesthesiologist followed. Calden remained, standing over the bloodied body of a woman he’d never met until that day. Coming up behind him, Eli laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, causing Calden to startle.

  “How long?” he asked for the third time that night, his gaze never lifting from her bloodied body. “How long was I asleep?”

  Eli tightened his hand and tried to guide him away. “Calden…”

  Calden refused to budge. “How long, Eli?” he snapped, and his voice echoed in the deserted room.

  “An hour,” Eli answered with a sigh. His hand slid down to Calden’s arm, hoping the touch would help anchor him. “You’d been awake for close to five days. You needed the rest.”

  Without warning, Calden wrenched his arm free and strode toward the door. Rather than pushing it open, however, he punched the wall next to it. Something inside Eli ached as though Calden had just struck him.

  “You said I still save lives.” Calden’s voice was utterly blank, his eyes flat and empty. “How can I do that, how can I do anything if I fall asleep when I’m needed in the OR?”

  “You do help.” Eli took Calden’s wrist, raising his hand to check the damage. Just bruising. “You save lives. But you’re not God, not any more than you were before June. You’ve got a diary. A record of your most interesting patients. Let’s go home and you can see—”

  “Yes, home,” Calden said, turning away and pulling free from Eli. “There’s nothing to do here. No point in staying.”

  He stepped out. Eli watched him go, aching for him, unsure what to do to help. When he followed, he found an exhausted-looking Langton in the hallway.

  “Is he okay?” he asked, briefly resting a hand on Eli’s arm.

  “He’ll be fine,” Eli murmured. “Once he forgets, he’ll be fine.”

  At the end of the hallway, Calden’s silhouette had stilled. He wasn’t looking back, but he was clearly waiting. Eli said his goodbyes and went to him, trying not to wonder if things would have been different if he’d remained at the hospital with Calden, if he’d awakened him as soon as he’d arrived, if…

  Calden would forget, and as Eli had said, he’d be fine.

  And Eli would be fine, too, because blaming himself wouldn’t help Calden in the least. But damn, sometimes he wished he could forget, too.

  (next chronological chapter)

  July 5th

  Calden flicks through the handful of post-it notes again, scowling.

  “Is that all?” he sneers, directing a frown toward Eli.

  “That’s all of it, yes,” Eli confirms, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “Is there something else you want to write down? I’ve got a block of sticky notes here.”

  Calden scoffs, though he doesn’t reply. Over a month has passed, and all he has is this: a few squares of paper with random notes in his handwriting. One of them warns him not to criticize Eli’s cooking.

  Another, more interesting note, dated of only a few days ago, mentions that he shouldn’t discuss his illness with Eli as Eli blames himself for what happened. That’s good to know, if wholly incomplete: why on Earth would Eli blame himself? And how can Calden fully understand what happened if he’s not allowed to ask questions?

  “Why am I writing these?” he asks, dropping the stack of sticky notes on the floor and flinging himself down onto the sofa. “It’s ridiculous! Why would you make me do that?”

  This time, it’s a full glare he directs at Eli, who rolls his eyes in reply.

  “As if I could make you do anything,” he says, exasperated. “You thought it’d help. We watched this movie together. The character has the same condition you have and he manages it with notes, pictures, and tattoos and—”

  “You made me watch a movie in which tattoos play a role?” Calden interrupts. “And you say you can’t make me do anything!”

  Eli takes in a deep breath. His lips tighten to a thin line for a few moments.

  “You decided to watch the movie,” he finally says. “I researched anterograde amnesia and saw specialists praised the movie as a fairly accurate depiction of what it’s like, and when I mentioned it, you decided to watch it.”

  Calden throws his hands up. “Why would I do that? I know what it’s like!”

  His voice rises as he speaks, and he ends up on a shout. He’s not mad at Eli, per se, just at the whole situation. He woke up two hours ago to find Eli waiting for him in the living room, and the pleasant surprise of seeing him quickly faded. It’s not his fault, Calden knows that, but as the bearer of bad news, he’s an all too convenient target. And presumably, a frequent target, too; Eli watches him with the same sad resignation in his eyes as when he first told Calden about the amnesia.

  “Of course you know what it’s like,” Eli says, and his voice takes on that soothing, ‘I’m a doctor and I will fix this if you let me’ tone Calden knows very well even if he never bothered developing it himself. “We’ve been trying to find a way to make things easier on you when you wake up, and the sticky notes were an attempt at that. Clearly it’s not working.”

  The last is said with that same resignation again, and that’s wrong, that’s so completely wrong that it makes Calden angry again. Eli shouldn’t sound like that, like life has dealt him an insurmountable blow—especially since Calden is the one with an incurable ‘condition.’ Eli is stronger than that, a rock, unmovable, indomitable. Or at least, that’s what he should be. Seeing him like this makes all of it even worse.

  Unable to face the pain on Eli’s features, Calden turns around, pressing his face to the back of the sofa, presenting his back to a world he wants no part of.

  “Think of it as an experimental treatment,” Eli continues. “It failed. Figure out why, and how to improve it so next time it works.”

  The armchair creaks softly when he stands. He crosses the room, briefly resting a hand on Calden’s shoulder before walking into the kitchen. The spot where he touched feels warm long after his hand has retreated.

  An experimental treatment, Calden repeats to himself as he listens to the oddly comforting sounds of Eli making coffee. Yes, it helps if he thinks of the notes that way. He now knows that they’re frustrating rather than helpful because they follow no pattern, are by necessity too short, and he can hardly add to them on those ridiculously small squares. The medium is clearly ill-fitted for the desired effect, but keeping notes does seem necessary. Eli can tell him what he needs to know, but he depends on Calden’s questions, and some questions Calden doesn’t care to ask him, not when they’re likely to bring back that resigned look Calden already hates so much.

  “Sit up. I made coffee.”

  Calden does sit up, though he doesn’t take the mug Eli hands him and instead stands, going out to his office across the hall. He starts riffling through
his desk drawers, pulling out stacks of papers and medical journals he leaves on the floor in haphazard piles.

  “What are you doing?” Eli asks with a sigh from the doorway, but already Calden has found what he wanted.

  He sets the spiral-bound notebook on the desk, opens it flat and rips away the first few pages—staff meeting notes, taken back in the days before he realized the depth of Petters’ idiocy. He hardly needs those anymore. It still leaves him a hundred or so pages, more than enough. Next he finds a couple of pens and returns to the sofa, his dressing gown flaring behind him, Eli following with a mug of coffee in each hand. He asks something about the coffee, but Calden is too focused on what he’s doing to actually hear the question.

  Thinking about the situation, it doesn’t take him long to identify the thing that frustrates him the most. He understands his diagnosis, but he knows very little about how it came to be. At the top of the first page, he writes, Illness and treatment. He skips a couple of pages. The next topic is just as obvious. Living conditions, he writes, but what he means—and he’s sure he’ll know it next time he opens the notebook after waking up—is Eli. The how and why of Eli living with him. How not to bring that resigned, defeated look back to his face.

  There’ll be more, no doubt, but this is a good start.

  He looks up from the notebook to find that Eli has left the mug meant for him on the coffee table before sitting back down in his armchair with his own.

  “New experimental treatment?” Eli asks in between two sips.

  Calden nods impatiently as he turns back to the first page. He’s about to start asking questions when something occurs to him. This notebook, if it works, will serve as an annex to his mind, storing what he can’t recall any other way. But there are many things in his mind he wouldn’t care to share with others, and presumably it will be true for this, too.

  “I need a promise from you,” he says, annoyed that he even needs to ask. “You can’t read this. It’ll only work if I don’t have to be concerned about my thoughts being read by others.”

  Eli doesn’t question this, or the purpose of the notebook. He only gives a slight nod. “If you want my word, you have it.”

  It’s silly, of course. If Eli breaks his promise, Calden is not likely to know it, nor will he even remember asking Eli for his word. But Eli will remember, and his moral compass was always without fault.

  For the next hour or so, Calden asks Eli details about his illness, its treatment, his stay in the hospital, all the things Eli didn’t explain when Calden woke up. Eli looks increasingly pained, but he answers every question.

  “Why didn’t you tell me all of this when I woke up?” Calden asks as he looks up from writing in the notebook. “You just gave me the overview, and that wasn’t anywhere near enough.”

  Eli shrugs, then glances away. “I’ve done it before. You don’t seem to like being given too many details all at once. You seem calmer when you get to ask the questions rather than when you’re just given answers.”

  Calden thinks about it for a moment. No, that’s not it. It’s all information, and he doesn’t think he would mind if it was dumped on him rather than parceled out. The issue, he thinks, is the tightness at the corners of Eli’s eyes. It’s that note that warns not to discuss the illness with him. It hurts Eli to talk about this, and it hurts Calden to see him in such discomfort, especially since he doesn’t understand its cause.

  “Why do you mind telling me about all this?” he asks abruptly.

  Eli gives him a grim smile. “Why do I mind telling you the same thing day after day?”

  Is it the repetition? Calden considers that, but quickly dismisses the notion. Eli would have known what he was agreeing to when he moved in.

  “There’s more to it,” he says decisively. “What else bothers you?”

  The smile grows grimmer still. “What else?” he asks quietly. “Every day I get to tell my best friend, the most brilliant man I know, that part of his brain is locked away and inaccessible to him. And every day it feels like telling Van Gogh he’s not allowed to paint anymore. How could I not be bothered by it?”

  Calden’s mouth opens, although he has no idea what to say. He closes it again and looks down at the notebook, flipping to the second page. It’s still blank. Even with what Eli promised, Calden doesn’t dare write what he wants.

  Eli still thinks I’m brilliant.

  “I’m terrible with a paintbrush,” he says, glancing up, and is glad when Eli relaxes a tiny bit. “But I’ll perform surgery again. There’s no reason why I wouldn’t.”

  He wishes Eli’s small nod and his murmured, “Of course,” didn’t seem like tokens offered to appease him.

  He needs to find a way to fix things, he decides, so that this whole process goes faster and more smoothly, and so that Eli doesn’t have to tell him again, doesn’t have to hurt himself, over and over. The notebook will help, but will it be enough? He might not always have it with him, and besides it might take a while to read as it grows longer, while Calden knows quite well he can get impatient if he doesn’t get the facts he wants right away. He taps the pen onto the notebook, thinking. After a while, he asks, “That movie that started the notes. What was it? Do we still have it?”

  Five minutes later, Eli has popped a disc in the reader and the title credits roll up on the television. Calden stifles a sigh, preparing to be bored.

  By the time the end credits start, he has to admit that it wasn’t that bad. If anything, the dual timelines helped make the storyline a little less dull and predictable. And while the notes idea didn’t help, maybe something else would…

  Shutting off the television, he leans back on the sofa to think, to weigh the pros and cons. For one thing, needles are involved, and while Calden is hardly afraid of those, the connotations are less than helpful in his present state of mind. There’s also the fact that he was always loath to mark his body in such an indelible manner. One small way in which he and Riley were different…

  “So?” Eli asks, coming back into the room after he begged off from watching the movie again. “What did you think of it?”

  He didn’t want to watch it, Calden realizes, because the subject hits too close to home. And that’s the only pro Calden needs.

  “I am going to get a tattoo,” he says, sitting up.

  Eli looks at him with unmasked surprise. “You are? Huh. Last time you scoffed at the mere thought of it.”

  “Last time,” Calden retorts, “I thought sticky notes would be enough. Clearly I can be wrong.”

  If nothing else, the admission draws a small smile to Eli’s lips. He has always enjoyed hearing Calden admit he was wrong. Nice to see that this, at least, hasn’t changed.

  “So what are you going to get?”

  The answer is easy. “My diagnosis. On my arm, where I can see it easily. From now on, rather than telling me, you’ll direct me to look at my arm, then at the notebook. I will still have questions, but they should be less numerous, making the waking process easier for both of us.”

  Eli mulls over that for a moment and finally gives a small shrug. “Well, I hope it works because it’s rather final. Maybe you could just write it in marker, see how that goes for a few days?”

  “No. I’d know it’s only temporary and I’d question why. It has to be permanent.” After a second or two, he adds, “And it has to be in my own handwriting.”

  He tries to imagine it—imagine himself waking up, finding Eli in his house again, being told to look at the words on his arm… Or maybe he’ll see the words first and have time to come to grips with that reality before he talks to anyone. Either way, it should be better than, “Please sit down, Calden. We need to talk,” offered with a painful smile.

  An hour later, they’re at a small tattoo parlor across town, and if the owner looks a little perplexed by Calden’s request, he agrees easily enough. While he prepares the stencil, Eli says, sotto voce, “This is just a one-time thing, right? You’re not going to have bits and pi
eces tattooed on you every time you wake up like in the movie, are you?”

  Calden shakes his head. “Of course not. But it might not be the only tattoo. Something else might be important enough.”

  “Something else,” Eli muses aloud. “Like what?”

  Calden shrugs and looks away. “No idea,” he lies.

  Something like, You told Eli and he never wants to see you again. His stomach twists unpleasantly at the thought. He was so close to telling him, but now, it feels like it would be a mistake. Ever since he woke up he’s been trying not to think about it, but it looms over him. He missed his chance.

  “Okay,” Eli says slowly. “You got a promise from me today. Your turn. Promise you’re not going to cover yourself in tattoos.”

  Calden isn’t going to do that, but he wonders why Eli would care if he did. It’s the ‘promise’ word that bothers him most, though.

  “There’s no point,” he says, more coldly than he meant to. “Even if I promise, I’ll forget.”

  “But I’ll remember,” Eli replies without missing a beat. “And I’ll remind you.”

  Calden considers him for a moment, but before he can ask the question burning on his lips, Leon is ready for him. Calden keeps quiet as the stark black lines of his own handwriting appear on the inside of his arm. He’s still quiet when Leon explains how to take care of the tattoo so the skin will heal properly; Eli listens closely enough for the two of them. Only when they get into the car to go back home does Calden finally ask, “How long until you tire of it?”

  To his credit, Eli doesn’t hesitate, nor does he ask what ‘it’ is exactly.

  “About as soon as I’ll tire of breathing,” he replies evenly.

  Somehow, Calden breathes more easily after that.

  (next chronological chapter)

  October 29th

  Eli’s coffee had long since grown cold, abandoned on the corner of his desk. He’d only taken a couple of sips from the bitter roast the nurses favored and brewed in their break room, too lost in his thoughts to even wish for sugar or cream. Thankfully, he could adjust work schedules with only a fraction of his mind on the task.