If I knew what being a grown-up was all about, I’d have milked every second of my youth. I’d have watched a little less TV, for one thing. And ignored more requests for help around the house. Not that chores are bad, but my sister had consumed the equivalent of both our childhoods in chore avoidance. Wistfully, with perfect hindsight, I thought in that moment that I’d have found this very playground and a game like this. One boy in particular looked back at me furtively, pretending not to notice me just a stone’s throw away. He was red-faced in the cold, and his head seemed to be popping out of his coat from the immense pressure his collar exerted. When someone would charge at him, he would dodge and fall, then scramble up and quickly look back to see if I was still there. And I was, stepping a little closer to the low fence without even thinking about it, dazed, sad, lost again, looking around me to see that this place wasn’t home, not anymore, not hearing even the raucous rising tide of their voices when they shouted something I never heard. Until it was too late.
“Look out!”
There was only a wailing in the distance, like a siren, getting closer and closer and closer. Until I figured out it was my own voice.
25.
who are you? take two
Eyebrows. Eyebrows were everywhere. Arched and in different variations of concern, above eyes I didn’t recognize, set in faces I didn’t know, peering at me through a funnel. The walls of the funnel were dimly white and soft blue, and pain was everywhere, throbbing in the faces that seemed more startled by me than I was by them.
“Honey, honey?” someone said, but it sounded more like “hoingy, hoingy.” “Baingy, baingy,” another voice said—“baby, baby” apparently—and “Norggin, norggin?” which I couldn’t make out. Other variations on that pleading, nothing I could decipher. I reached up to poke the water out of my ear but couldn’t move my right arm. Then I realized I couldn’t see my right arm. Or feel it.
I looked around through hairline slits in my eyelids at the five people behind the faces, one in a white coat, and I had no idea what any of them were doing there—save for Whitecoat, who I assumed was the boss. The TV mounted in a corner and barely visible to me was playing a scene in a room with a bed and white and blue walls and people all around peering at the person in the bed, which made the situation all the more surreal. A hospital room in a hospital room. And a white coat that contained a doctor.
“Her CAT scan shows no internal bleeding,” Whitecoat said quietly, probably so that I couldn’t hear (but I did, the water seeming to clear out of my ears somewhat), to some of the other people as they looked at me with their arms tightly crossed and thumbs pressing up on their chins, “which is lucky since she was hit in the occipital region.”
“Which is what?” a narrow woman said. “What does that mean?”
“That means it’s not as protected by the skull,” explained Whitecoat.
“But she’s okay?” asked a skinny guy with a vein sticking out of his forehead and a T-shirt that read: WHO WOULD JESUS SUE?
“Well, that’s relative,” said Whitecoat. “She didn’t suffer a hematoma, but what’s happened is called a coup-contracoup injury. That happens when the brain is shaken from the back to the front and then back again.”
“Jesus!” said Jesus Litigator aptly.
“But, as before, there’s no discernible brain damage and I would deliver a very positive prognosis, except the—the lack of response, is . . . troubling . . .” Whitecoat trailed off.
Narrow Woman stood there, shaking her head.
“I just . . . It’s remarkable,” Whitecoat then said to no one. “The coincidence . . . and I’ve seen reinjuries before, but I’ve never seen one like this before.”
“Meaning?” a little voice said.
“The course of the condition is always unpredictable, but this really amplifies the butterfly effect,” he replied. “We’ll monitor closely, but there’s really no telling where this will go.”
“Well, what does this mean?” asked Narrow Woman, a tiny thing in her early fifties who looked like she spent every waking hour with a personal trainer. Her hair was short and highlighted, and she was wearing what looked like a cashmere track suit.
There was Other Woman—just as tiny—who looked almost identical to the first woman, only this one was much younger, college age. It was frightening how much they looked alike. I figured they must be related. Then there was a man behind them, older, with thinning black hair that swept in every direction around his head. He hung back, but his eyebrows and eyes I remembered most, because they were squinting and he never seemed to look away. He was taller than them (which wasn’t hard because they were extremely small people), and he was the only one who smiled at me when the three of them first walked into the room and joined Whitecoat.
“So wait—what happened?” asked Younger Clone.
“She’s got amnesia,” said Smiling Man.
“I know, Dad,” the girl said as she rolled her eyes.
“No . . . again,” the father clarified.
“So . . . then what did she forget exactly? The last month? Is it possible Jordan will forget that she’s forgotten everything and just be normal?” That was the mini-me again.
Nobody had addressed me directly yet, so I tried to speak up. At first it was a terrific struggle to separate my tongue from the roof of my mouth, like separating a stack of magazines that have dried together after a spill. After clicking and murmuring for a while, which made them hush and lean closer, I managed a whispered word.
“H-ha-hi.” They all looked at me. I looked at the tiny woman, who leaned closest. “Who are you?”
“Here we go again,” said the young one.
“I’m your mother,” said the narrow woman in cashmere. “This is your sister, Samantha, and this is your father.” I scanned the three of them for something familiar, but I felt nothing. I had no idea who these people were. I wondered if I looked exactly like them too.
“Mirror?” I asked. Both my supposed mother and sister reached into their handbags, pulled out matching compacts, and thrust them toward me. I looked into the one closest, which was my mother’s. I looked nothing like these people. I mean, not at all.
“You’re my family?” I asked. I was lying in a hospital bed so I couldn’t tell exactly how tall I was, but looking down at myself I guessed I was at least a little taller than these women, who were like five feet, five foot two maybe. And they looked like they never ate. There must have been some mistake.
Then another guy walked in who everybody seemed to recognize. Everybody but me, that is. He was good-looking in a studied, Men’s Fitness sort of way, tall with a jutting chin and dark hair that was brushed up like surf. This guy was wearing a baseball hat, riding askew on that rising wave, and while I knew nothing about him, his look told me at the very least that he wasn’t too much for individuality.
“What’s he doing here?” asked Jesus T-shirt Guy.
“Well, I called him from the car,” my mom said. “Hi, sweetie,” she said to him and then turned to me. “Jordan, this is Dirk.”
I said nothing but looked at his smiling face. Sorting out the roles was tough work, with my mind not locating names, not recognizing faces, not doing much of anything at a grade level above second or third. Someone was a love interest, though it was dislocating to know that I might be intimate with someone without any memory of it. Very strange sensation. Best I could figure out, the Jesus guy was maybe my boyfriend or husband or brother. I wasn’t making any moves until I found out which.
“Hi, Buttercup,” Dirk said.
Then another guy walked in.
“What are you doing here?” the mother person hissed at him.
“Todd called me,” he said, looking at Jesus Shirt. I guessed that my brother’s name was Todd. I looked in his direction.
“Todd?” I asked.
“Yeah, Jordy. I’m here,” he said. He was shaking. He must have been a really good brother, I thought. He seemed to care more than the rest of my
family.
“What did you do this time,” said my sister to the new guy, “club her?”
“Sam, they told us—she got hit in the head by a baseball from some kids playing across the street from her,” Todd said.
“You have no business here,” the mother person said to the new guy. “Please leave.” He looked really bummed out. He turned to my brother, Todd, and pulled him aside.
“Listen, it seems like she’s in good hands, so I’m gonna take off,” he said.
“All right, man,” my brother said.
“I’ll come back when it’s a little less crowded.” My brother nodded in understanding at the guy my mom hated, and he left. It was all very confusing.
“So she got amnesia . . . again?” asked Dirk.
“Yeah,” said Todd.
“So she doesn’t remember anything from before?”
“No, Dirk. That’s what amnesia is.”
“And since the last time, everything that happened since then?”
“She doesn’t seem to remember much of anything,” my father said.
* * * * *
After everyone had left it was just Todd and me. He kept looking at me with this really weird look the whole time everyone was there, like he was trying to ask me something or tell me something. But I had no idea what he was getting at. And frankly it was making me nervous. So nervous that I decided to close my eyes and go to sleep because I just couldn’t deal.
When I was asleep I dreamed that I was at a dance club where everybody seemed to know me but I didn’t know them. Everyone there was familiar with one another, and they were all dancing and trying to get me to join in. For whatever reason I was vehemently, almost violently opposed to the idea. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t know how to dance or if I was against dancing or maybe a combination of both—but I was being tugged and pulled in different directions and I was fighting it like crazy. I was yanking myself away from the octopus-like arms when I turned so quickly I woke myself up, with a plastic tube draped across my face.
Todd was still sitting there, watching me.
“Hey,” he offered up.
“Hey,” I said, a little embarrassed, wondering if I’d drooled. “I’m sure watching me sleep must have been thrilling.”
“I’m just glad you’re okay . . . sort of.”
“You’re sort of glad that I’m okay? Or you’re glad that I’m okay, but I’m only sort of okay?”
“The second one,” he said. And then he did that thing again. He kind of squinted and looked hard at me, like he was trying to decipher something.
“What?!” I finally asked. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
“Is this real?” he asked. “I mean, I think it is. I just need to make sure. It’s just so weird! I mean, what are the odds?”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“Is this for real?” he repeated.
“Is WHAT for real?” I said.
“Do you really not know?”
I didn’t know what the hell he was getting at, so I just stared back at him. I figured that since he was the only one still there out of all of my family that I should probably appreciate his presence, but I still thought he was totally weird.
“Okay, this is going to sound really strange,” he said.
“Okay . . . ?”
“Brace yourself,” he said, and looked sideways and at the door to my room.
I crossed my arms over my chest and grabbed my shoulders. “Braced,” I said.
He looked sideways one last time before he said in a hushed tone, “Up until a day or so ago, you had been faking amnesia.”
This, of course, was the most ridiculous thing I’d heard so far—even more ridiculous than my being related to the two very small women. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“It’s true. I was the only one who knew. It was a crazy plan you had, and I, being your best friend and all-around great guy—”
“My best friend? You’re not my brother?” I asked, now even more confused.
“Your brother?” he said, cocking his head backward like it was a revolting suggestion. “Who said I was your brother?”
I thought about it and realized that nobody had actually introduced him that way. “Nobody, I guess. I don’t know . . . I just assumed.”
“Seriously?” he asked, not waiting for a response. “That’s priceless. Even your subconscious writes me off as a nonoption.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s my own personal nightmare. But we were talking about yours.”
“Oh. Yeah—I really didn’t want to dance. Wait, had I told you that?”
“What?” he asked. “No. Dance?”
“Never mind,” I said. “It was my dream. But I get it. You were talking about my real-life nightmare.”
“Right,” he went on. “Anyway, I was helping you.”
“Helping me . . . ?”
“Fake the amnesia.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why would someone want to fake amnesia? I mean, this isn’t a whole lot of fun. Does it look like I’m having a good time here?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“So why would somebody want to do this on purpose? Or fake it even?”
“It was a do-over,” he said, trying to rationalize his crazy story. “You wanted a do-over.”
“That’s very weird,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know if I believe that.”
“Trust me. Yes, it was weird, but what goes on in that little head of yours, that’s God’s own private little mystery, and once you set your mind to something—that’s it. I tried, believe me, but there was no talking you out of it.”
“Why would I want or need to do that?”
He sighed and paused. “You didn’t like the way your life was going.”
“Was it that bad?” I asked. “I mean, what was I . . . some kind of loser?” I tried to wrap my head around the whole idea of someone wanting to fake amnesia and I couldn’t. Any scenario I came up with was so bleak that it just didn’t seem to make sense. Especially considering all the nice people that came to see me in the hospital. It seemed like I had a good enough life.
“No, you weren’t a loser, but . . .”
“But?”
“You never stood up for yourself. You definitely didn’t make the best choices in the guys you dated. You weren’t crazy about your family. You were unhappy at work . . .”
The idea of it just seemed so completely strange to me. He could tell I found the suggestion completely freakish, so he brightened suddenly.
“Anyway, you did it! You turned everything around. And it was working. Things were going really well for you.”
I was sure that he was a nice guy, this Todd, but I just didn’t want to hear this stuff right now. I didn’t know him from Adam. I didn’t know me from Adam. I certainly didn’t know Adam. And what he was saying was making the whole thing even more confusing. I really just wanted to go to sleep and wake up and have my memory back and not have to deal with this crap.
“I’m a little tired now,” I said. “Do you think we could talk some other time?” He looked crushed. I felt bad for him and sorry that his story wasn’t resonating, but I just couldn’t buy it. It was preposterous. And more than I could handle at that particular moment.
“Sure,” he said. “You get some rest. But do me a favor . . .”
“What?”
“Don’t say anything about what I told you,” he suggested. “As weird as it sounds, you wouldn’t want anyone else to know about it. Trust me on that one.”
“Okay. Whatever you say. Bye.”
“Bye, Jordy. Feel better.” And he started off. But before he left, he looked at me like he was trying to will me to remember him or remember anything. When I kind of raised my eyebrows at him, he stopped and left. I felt bad for him. He might have been a great guy—he did say he was my best friend—but best friends don’t count for a lot when you have
no idea who the hell they are. Plus, he’d just totally freaked me out.
* * * * *
“Hi, beautiful,” the good-looking one said as he leaned in and kissed me on my forehead. Dirk. My mother had called him Dirk the day before.
“Hi,” I said back.
“It’s Dirk, remember?”
“You were here yesterday. I remember seeing people here yesterday. That’s unfortunately all I remember.”
“I’m your boyfriend,” he said as he took my hand in his. “Is this okay?” he asked, referring to holding my hand.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s nice.” So that solved one mystery. The handsome one was my boyfriend.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Better, I think. I don’t know how I felt before. I still have a headache . . .”
“That’s to be expected.” He had the sweetest expression on his face. I wanted to touch his cheek but didn’t feel I knew him well enough.
“It’s pretty universal to hate being in a hospital, right?”
“Definitely,” he reassured.
I frowned. I wanted to say something about not liking the helplessness and the uncertainty and all the attention, but I honestly couldn’t find the words. I wanted to point at myself and say, “See? This is how I feel,” and hope people could fill in the blanks themselves.
“You’ll get out soon. And I’ll take you home. Don’t worry about a thing. I’m gonna take care of you. Like always.” Like always. That sounded nice. That was the first comforting thing I’d heard since I’d woken up in the hospital.
“I’m sorry, Dirk,” I said. “I feel guilty not remembering you. You seem so wonderful. I’m sure you’re a really great boyfriend.”
“You never had any complaints.”
“Then I must be really lucky.” He smiled at me, and I could see why I would have fallen for him in the first place. He had a killer smile. It was confident and, yes, a little cocky, but he gave off the sense that he belonged to me so I had nothing to worry about. I couldn’t fathom why Todd had told me I had bad taste in men. He was probably just jealous. Then a blond girl walked into my room.
Forget About It Page 26