Back upstairs, Liz stood by the door of their bedroom looking at the perfectly made bed. Still feeling that there was something strange about Matt’s words earlier.
You don’t have to think of it as our room…at least not yet.
Maybe she was overthinking it, but the last part of the offering seemed forced. As if to appease her. It could have been a natural heightened sense from having amnesia, but she paid very close attention to every word she heard, continuously searching for either a trigger or new information.
Liz needed more proof. She ran back down to the den and aggressively searched between each precisely lined up album filled with what felt like someone else’s memories.
“Finding everything you need?” Matt’s voice sounded from the entryway to the den.
She jumped back, pulling her hand to her chest and found him leaning against the doorstop.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said flatly, stepping into the room.
What did he expect? She stepped back quickly as if she was caught going through someone’s personal belongings.
“No, its fine. I was just flipping through some books.” She turned away and faced the bookshelves, realigning the books to the way they were. For some reason, he was making her uneasy. She suddenly felt him come up behind her, but she didn’t turn around. His arm circled around her to tug on the book she didn’t realize she was still gripping and pushed it lightly back into place. She turned to look up at him.
“I think I know the one you’re looking for,” he said after a moment. “Come with me.”
Back in the upstairs bedroom, Matt pulled out a small, blue glass box.
“I forgot to give these to you when we came home last night.” He pulled out a silver band and a teardrop diamond engagement ring. “They gave them to me at the hospital as part of your valuable belongings.”
Liz stared at the shiny items her husband held out for her.
Matt gently placed them back in the box. “I’ll just keep them here for you.” He pulled out an oversized glossy photo book that was stored in the top drawer of the mirrored dresser. He walked over to the loveseat and motioned for her to sit beside him.
After a few pages of stunning and carefully posed images of the two of them on their wedding day, her husband looked at her with hopeful eyes and that only frustrated her more. She shut the book abruptly and pushed it away.
Matt leaned further back onto the seat and watched her, patiently. Almost as if he had been expecting this reaction.
“I’m sorry, I…I feel like…a stranger who is keeping your wife locked up somewhere and insisting on living her life. And this is so unfair to you…to have to go through every detail with me...” She supposed she was waiting for him to object to everything she was saying. But she got nothing.
His silence was now deafening her. She was sure he was listening, but he wasn’t responding. In fact, for a man filled with so much emotion and love for her, he appeared unaffected.
He pulled himself off the cushioned chair and stood. Liz looked up and watched him as he took slow undeliberate steps around the white rustic table in front of them. He seemed to think for a minute, his expression slightly conflicted. He finally approached her slowly, kneeled beside her and took her hands. His felt so warm.
“Liz. You are not a stranger to me. You are my wife.”
Stating facts. Not exactly reassuring.
He glanced down at her cold hands. Rubbing them slightly. “We’re going to make this right,” he breathed. “I promise.”
* * *
That night Liz laid in bed. Not because her head hurt, or because she was uncomfortable with her accommodations. But the unshakable feeling that something wasn’t right.
While she was looking at the carefully arranged photo albums in the den earlier that day, she witnessed their time together from younger years in grad school, up to probably just less than a year ago. They looked happy together, photos of them laughing and dancing, romantic vacations, nights out with friends. They seemed like a fun pair. And desperately in love, she could tell by the way he looked at her in most of those photos. She smiled to herself, remembering some of her favorites, and then all at once, burst into uncontrollable tears. Because nowhere in the pictures, did she witness a similar persona of the man that’s been caring for her since she woke up from her accident.
Chapter 15
MATT
Matt splashed cold water on his face for the fifth time that morning in the guest bathroom. He was almost ashamed to say he had a rough night. It took everything in him not to run into the bedroom the night before when he heard Lizzy sobbing. He had stood and paced, fighting with himself. When he finally made it to their bedroom door, it appeared as though she had finally fallen asleep. He hated letting her cry herself to sleep like that.
But what was he supposed to do? March in there, pull her into his arms and hold her until she felt safe? How was he to justify not kissing her or sleeping in the same bed? It wasn’t right on so many levels to lead her on like that.
Was it?
Just before her accident, Matt thought he’d made a solid decision on where they stood in their marriage. He needed to cool off and think things through, rationally. The night after their argument, he had given moving out serious consideration. Liz might have been right. The lie. The deceptive, cruel and humiliating lie was unforgivable. Could he kiss an innocent woman and deceive her just the same? What would be the difference? No. He convinced himself he couldn’t do it. Not until Liz was back from wherever she went.
Who knew how long that could be.
He needed Liz back. He needed more than anything to talk to her. He was finding out what it was like to live without her and hated every minute of it. He couldn’t deny what the woman sleeping next door to him was saying the night before, about keeping his wife locked up somewhere and insisting on living her life.
Talk about hitting the nail on the head.
But it was still Lizzy. It was still her and he needed to bring her back.
He remembered Dr. Tai giving him some signs to look for. Things that help trigger memories. He wished he wrote them down. What Matt was trying not to remember were other things that the neurologist had told him. Conditions that go along with head trauma that may contribute to the “temporary disorder”.
Matt peeked into the bedroom where Liz was still sound asleep. He glanced around the room that had remained practically untouched the past few days.
Normally, their bedroom was very much ‘lived in’. Various pieces of women’s clothing would be tossed over the loveseat and bed. Shoe boxes piled up outside their walk-in closet, for when she struggled for a specific pair. And his most favorite, endless amount of make-up artifacts scattered over the top of their shared dresser.
Now, other than the slippers and her white terry bathrobe neatly draped over her side of the bed, everything appeared as neat as the day she arrived.
Deciding it was better she stayed asleep, he quietly slipped past their bedroom and hurried down the stairs and out the front door. He slipped out his phone and dialed the number he’d stored.
“Hi, yes this is Matthew Owen. Is Dr. Tai in this morning?” he pushed the evaluator button without waiting for a response. “Until noon? Great.” He didn’t care about his pre-scheduled appointments. “No, that won’t be necessary, but please let him know that I am on my way and will wait for him to speak with me between his patients.” Matt was not taking no for an answer.
Nearly two hours later, Matt sat on one of the bright orange chairs, deciding that pacing wasn’t going to help, but it only agitated him more. Matt stood immediately as the doctor he’d been waiting for emerged from a nearby exam room, scanning the open waiting area and nodded when he found Matt.
Matt cleared his throat. “Thank you for meeting with me on short notice.”
“Of course. Is Liz feeling okay?”
“She’s physically fine. The headaches seem to be getting better…”
Matt couldn’t put to words what he needed to talk to the other man about. Personally, Matt had a strong dislike toward doctors. He viewed most of them as people with a certain level of education required to prescribe medication. He stopped seeing them as professionals with the intention of helping people a long time ago. But now, he was desperate for insight. And guidance.
When he realized Matt wasn’t finishing the thought, Dr. Tai nodded understandingly and glanced down. “The problem isn’t physical, is it?” he narrowed his eyes.
“No.”
The doctor pulled them to a corner away from the reception desk. “I remember asking if there was a traumatic event before the accident which is sometimes a factor in trauma memory loss and might affect the recovery,” he paused and waited.
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not talking about Elizabeth specifically, but there are patients with head trauma—or without—who experience traumatic events and end up with some form of amnesia.” The doctor took a breath. “And although they may be actively and desperately trying to recall memories, the reality is…the brain is fighting back.”
Matt frowned. “How?”
“They may not wish to remember,” he answered thoughtfully.
Matt’s mind was pulled somewhere other than where he was standing. He couldn’t move.
Dr. Tai pulled out a pamphlet from his oversize coat pocket and handed it to Matt. “On the far-left panel of this pamphlet, there’s a list of triggers to different types of memory loss. Unfortunately, the treatment doesn’t go very far for many of them,” he added. “The best one for Liz is time and patience.”
Matt stared down at the list. Re-reading many of the words that stood out.
“Other than the obvious head trauma that occurred at the crash, is there anything on this list that could have been a factor in her memory loss?” Dr. Tai asked after a few moments of silence between them.
Matt was at a complete loss of how to answer the well-meaning doctor.
He couldn’t blame the man for shooting off an extensive amount of information and possible elements. It was what doctors did. They recite facts and statistics. And it rarely helps when they insist, as Dr. Tai had, that they’re not talking about your case, specifically. A brain that was fighting back was no doubt something the doctor was considering.
He glanced back down at the list. Now with blurred visions. Visions that instigated him, as if intentionally. Showing him nothing but what couldn’t help his current state. A shocked Liz standing out on the porch next to his brother. Her heart pounding a million a minute when he’d questioned her. Pressured her. Accused her. All of which could easily now be considered a “factor”.
He was certain that the patient doctor assumed he was speaking in a language that Matt hadn’t understood. But his words and every word on the cursed list…now drilled a permanent hole in Matt’s head. Each one finding a way to connect to Liz. The before Liz. The now Liz. How the possibility of every move he’d made or kept himself from making that fateful morning led to her suffering. He traced a shaky thumb over the colorful glossy booklet. Everything moved slow in his reality, while a live horse race was happening in his mind.
Matt swallowed. “Could we talk about acute emotional distress as a possible factor?” he asked with a hoarse voice.
“Certainly. Step into my office.” The doctor motioned.
Chapter 16
LIZ
For the next few days, Liz was getting irritably used to her zombie life. This couldn’t have been how they lived every day. Matt would spend a few minutes with her in the mornings before going to work. They’d have breakfast together on their balcony, and then he was off. He was always up before her and halfway through whipping something up for them by the time she’d get downstairs. She wondered if he would come wake her if she decided to sleep in one day. She hadn’t tried it in the past four days that she’d been home for fear of missing him entirely.
Liz was tired of waiting around to get her memories back, and sincerely hoped the life she had with Matt was better than this. She finally made her own plans.
There was a knock on the door. Liz pulled it open and beamed. “Hi.”
Marcus smiled shyly and stepped in tentatively. He looked around, almost as if he’d never been there. Liz frowned and then grinned at him.
“He’s not here. Don’t worry.” She closed the door behind him.
“Huh? Oh, Matt. Right, I was just wondering if he was home.”
Liz led him to the den.
She laughed. “Come on, Marc, it doesn’t take a genius to see you two don’t get along.” She glanced back at Marc to see him narrow his eyes and crick his neck. Whatever that meant, she didn’t have time to press now.
“Anyway, look at all this stuff I found so far.” She waited until Marc looked at the oversized coffee table in the den. “Maybe you can help me figure some of it out.”
He rubbed the back of his neck again. “Um…Matt didn’t want to help you with any of these?”
“I asked him, but he said I never really talked about much of this stuff with him.” she lied. Liz wanted to hear about her past from her brother, the one person she’d felt more connected to than anyone else.
He snorted. “Just because I’m not the one with the head injury, doesn’t mean I’ll remember all this stuff.”
She felt a pang of disappointment at his lack of interest in helping her. She picked up a small stack of photos and spread them out in her fingers like a deck of cards.
“Here are my graduation pictures. And there are so many of you and me,” she said proudly, pointing at images where she was practically suffocating her brother in a hug.
Marc grabbed them slowly, without looking up. “Oh. Wow, yeah.” He flipped through and then tossed them back on the table.
Liz held up a small metal frame. “These are our parents?” She knew they had to be. She was instantly drawn to the couple in the picture.
“Yes.” Marcus barely glanced at the photograph Liz held up.
“They look so happy,” Liz wondered, thoughtfully.
“They were,” her brother confirmed, looking anywhere in the room but at the photo.
She was upsetting him. She immediately regretted bringing this up. Maybe her selfish need to remember was only making him have to relive losing their parents.
“Marc, I’m sorry. This was a bad idea. I should have guessed this would be hard on you.”
“What? No. I’m fine. I just wish I could help.”
“Well, maybe you can tell me what this is?” Liz pointed to the figurine in the emerald green gown. That had come to mean a lot to her. And she didn’t know why.
“I think Matt gave you that.”
Liz frowned. She hoped this object would have been something that held more meaning. Like an heirloom that was passed on, but it didn’t look that old. “I wish I had more old stuff in the house but I couldn’t find anything other than these few things.” She pointed to the mess.
“Maybe there’s something at your place?” she asked, hopeful.
Marcus shifted and frowned. “Umm...you know, I live in such a small space, I couldn’t have kept it all…” he trailed off.
“Oh.” Liz frowned and focused on the tossed photo of her parents.
Marcus watched her for a moment, then reached out and put his hands on her arms. “But there is one place we can go.”
Thirty minutes later, Marcus rolled opened the metal door of an enormous storage unit. Unlike the long, well-lit hallway they’d just walked through, the heavy-duty steel room construction was dim and had only a single uncovered lightbulb. Boxes upon boxes of treasures were stacked up in the front, nearly covering the furniture Liz could tell was hiding in the back. The room truly had to be the biggest the facility owned.
Liz treaded carefully, glancing at Marcus behind her. She roamed through, pushing aside some boxes. Stopping beside a big, polished wooden chair, she ran her finger across the arm rest and rubbed off the fine, g
rainy dust with her thumb.
“Wow,” Liz whispered.
Marcus shrugged and followed behind Liz. “Yeah, we just didn’t want to let some of it go.”
Liz pulled the chair to a pile of boxes and sat down.
“Here, let me.” Keys dangled from his hand and he swiftly ran his hand across the seam of the first box.
As they went through the boxes, Liz found all sorts of treasures. A pair of white and gray bunny bookends, a dozen Precious Moments figurines, and at least two small wooden boxes of silver coins and medals. It was odd that the contents didn’t seem to have any type of category. Everything seemed like it was thrown together without thought.
“What’s this?” Liz pulled out a vintage hand-held radio device or mini television. She held it up to him.
Marcus rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh wow. Ha. That’s an old mini travel television. You used to sneak into my room after everyone’s gone to sleep and we’d stay up and watch shows under the covers.” Marcus blushed and reached for his keys. Liz smiled up at him, while he distracted himself opening up another box.
“Let’s see what else we’ve got here,” he offered. “Ah, here’s something you’d find interesting.” He pulled out a red shoe box. The cover was creased and slightly crushed on top.
“What’s that?”
“It’s your sacred box,” he grinned, teasingly.
“I have a what?”
He shrugged. “It’s just stuff that’s important to you that you kept in one place.”
Liz took the box and flushed. “I’ll just look at this later.” She placed it on the floor.
They couldn’t go through all the items in one day. By the time Marcus was rolling down the gate to their unit, Liz was relieved to leave. There was only so much she could take in one visit. But she planned on coming back when she had a clear head and go through this stuff again.
Remember Me Page 8