by Lena North
He walked off, and I turned to Dante.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Nellie,” he murmured.
“Before the age of ten. Nothing.”
“Oh, baby,” he whispered and caressed my cheek.
“If it’s retrograde amnesia, then those memories are gone forever, with a ninety-nine percent certainty never to return,” I told him.
“We’ll get all the experts you need. There must be –”
“Don’t you understand?” I interrupted, and his brows went up. “If I have amnesia, and if I can announce it publicly somehow,” I murmured, holding his gaze, “then just like that… I’m ninety-nine percent safe.”
Before he could say anything, Jamie was back, and he’d managed to get me an immediate appointment with the leading brain specialist at Prosper General. We walked back to the house and the thought of never being able to talk about my childhood hurt. I knew my parents would make sure it was re-written to a suitably rosy and fairytalesque version, which was frustrating. I would be safe, though, and losing a few years that hadn’t been all that great was a price I was willing to pay.
Dante was unbelievably tense, and the closer we got to the main house the harder he clenched his jaws together. We met Wilder and Olly as we rounded the building. Olly just glanced at Dante, put an arm behind his back, and started moving him around and away from me.
“Come,” he grunted.
Dante made a sound and tried to turn back, but Olly just kept walking, herding him toward one of the barns, calling out over his shoulder that Wilder would go with me to wherever.
I stared at their disappearing backs, and asked Wilder, “What was that?”
She didn’t reply and looked as surprised as I felt.
“Is there something to punch in that barn? Jamie asked suddenly.
“That’s where we practice,” Wilder answered, and when Jamie raised a brow, she clarified, “Fighting.”
“Good,” Jamie said and opened the passenger door for me. “I am full of admiration for the man, Jinx. I don’t know how he managed to hold it together with all the things we shared, but he did. Calm as you please, holding your hand. Giving you strength when you needed it.”
I stared at him, and he grinned a little.
“I’m not surprised he needs to hit something, and based on the look on his face, I bet he’ll destroy every boxing bag you have in there.”
Wilder started laughing, and as she got in the back seat, she told us, “Oh, he’ll get to hit something even better. Or at least try to.”
“What?” Jamie asked curiously.
“Olly.”
“Fantastico,” Jamie exclaimed, and started laughing hysterically, and he kept laughing every now and then all the way to the hospital.
Then I had an afternoon full of meetings with various doctors, and when we returned, I was exhausted. Jamie and Wilder had stayed by my side all the time, so I never felt uneasy, but they had done a lot of tests, and my head hurt a little more than usual. There would be more in the weeks to come, but the professor had told me that he was quite sure. I even had a paper stating his diagnosis. Retrograde amnesia, just as Jamie had predicted.
Wilder disappeared into the house the second she jumped out of the car, and Jamie drove off. Dante was waiting for me on the porch, with a calm smile, a black eye and a cup of coffee in his hands.
“Dante, really?” I asked, and turned his face around to get better light on the swollen eye.
“I needed it,” he said calmly, but added, “Once I’d worked off most of my anger, it was kind of fun.”
“Really?” I repeated as I sat down next to him. It didn’t sound like Dante.
“You know that I spent two years in the army?” he asked, but since he’d told me as much earlier, he didn’t wait for an answer. “What do you think we do in the army?” he asked instead.
“Fight?” I asked back uncertainly, thinking that surely Dante had done something administrative.
“Yup,” he said.
I stared at him, and he started laughing.
“Just because I’m not hyper aggressive and scowling most of the time like some people,” he said, using his hands to illustrate that he was ironic, “doesn’t mean I’m a creampuff,”
“You’ve spent too much time with Jamie,” I retorted.
“What?”
“Creampuff, Dante? And you used air quotes on me.”
He burst out laughing again and pulled me gently into his arms.
“How’s the amnesia?” he asked.
“Looks like I’ll have that for a while,” I replied with a small grin, but clarified more soberly, “We were right. Retrograde amnesia. Nothing to do and it won’t go away.”
“Oh, honey,” he murmured. “We’ll invent new memories for you, and create others ourselves.”
“Mom and Dad will make up all the memories I need,” I shared.
“That’s very likely,” he chuckled.
We’d talked to my parents the day after I got out of the hospital, and through the call, Dante’s brows had moved so high on his forehead I thought they’d hit his hairline. My parents acted as if nothing bad had happened to me, and they gushed over Dante as if he hadn’t forbidden them to see their only child several times. My mom and dad had a fantastic capacity for rewriting reality to something that suited them, and it was ridiculous, of course, but the way they never held on to any grudges or let anything hold them back was kind of sweet.
There had also been a lightness in Mom’s voice that I couldn’t remember having heard before. She was still exuberant, boisterous, and way too loud, but it seemed less forced somehow, and I knew it was because Dante told them that I didn’t blame them for the things that had happened.
“We’ll come to Marshes in a few weeks,” she cried out. “Your fiancée invited us,” she added, and I turned to look at Dante, who was grinning. “You should have told us you got engaged, and to such a handsome man as well,” she gushed, and I cringed.
“Mom, you know that you’re on a loudspeaker and that Dante is here, right?” I murmured.
“I’m not stupid, Jiminella, of course, I know that. Do you think he’ll mind hearing that he’s handsome?”
“I don’t mind at all, Mrs. Sweetwater,” Dante said calmly, but I could tell that he struggled to hold back a grin, and I glared at him.
“See? Don’t be so uptight, Jiminella,” she chirped.
The call went on for a while longer, but when Dad started elaborating about the kind of carving he was doing for our engagement present, I told them that I had to rest, and said we’d talk in a few days. After a long string of happy goodbyes, I closed the call, refusing to look at Dante.
Then he made a choked sound, and my eyes flew to his face. He pressed his lips together, but it didn’t take long until he lost control over his mirth. Then he laughed and laughed. And laughed.
“They’re absolutely nuts, Nellie,” he said and wiped his eyes.
“Yes,” I said apprehensively.
“It’ll be interesting when they visit Marshes,” he said.
“Oh God,” I moaned. “How could you invite them?”
“Don’t worry,” he assured me, “That kind of crazy is hilarious. Everyone will enjoy their visits. Your dad will have his carvings in every house before Christmas.”
“Oh God,” I repeated.
“But we’ll get our gift first,” he smirked. “I just have to ask, honey. Do you have any idea what a phallic interpretation of the eternal waves will look like?” he asked, quoting my damned father.
“Shut up,” I said rudely, and he started laughing again.
***
I got myself interviewed by a girl from the University newspaper, and the first half hour she asked questions about Dante.
The editorial board had been pretty excited when I let it leak through Hawker’s girlfriend Sloane that I had been diagnosed with amnesia and would be willing to share my experience to help others in the same situation. App
arently, I could choose who I wanted to talk to, and I picked a girl from the lifestyle section, rather than one of the journalists specialized in engineering or medicine. This had seemed logical since I didn’t want it to be too obvious that I advertised my amnesia to anyone who knew about my childhood fertilizer-slash-bomb-invention. I wanted it to look like I was sharing my experience and I also figured a girl who wrote about feng-shui and the best shoes to wear with short-shorts wouldn’t dwell too much on the diagnosis as such.
Dante drove me to the small coffee-shop we were supposed to meet in, walked me to the table, nodded at the girl and went to my condo to pick up a few things I needed. The girl followed him with her eyes until he disappeared around a corner.
“Brother?” she asked hopefully.
I had my hands on the table, and before I could stop myself, I knocked the huge ring on my left hand sharply into the metallic top, twice. I’d tried to take it off several times, and each time Dante had just pushed it back on and told me to keep it a while longer. I should have insisted on not wearing it, but everyone seemed to think that we were engaged for real and as I watched the reporter’s eyes widen I was happy I’d kept it on.
“Oh,” she said but collected herself quickly, although the interview began with her asking a variety of girly questions about Dante's background, how we met, when we were getting married, and if he had any brothers, cousins, or even uncles.
She went on to ask about the accident I’d had in the river, how I could fall off a boat in the middle of the night and my time in the hospital. I answered her carefully, giving away only what I considered harmless facts, but she seemed to have read up on amnesia, and her questions were not stupid at all. I found that I had to focus more than I'd expected.
“Look,” she said suddenly and shuffled her notes around in front of her. “I wasn’t going to tell you…”
I waited patiently for her to continue, narrowing my brows because her eyes had sharpened in a way that told me I might not like what she was about to say.
“This is a job for me, to pay the bills,” she started.
“Okay,” I said. Nothing wrong with that, I thought.
“I figured I’d get a lot of details out of you if you didn’t know…” she paused, took a deep breath and restarted. “I really like clothes, and I’m good at talking to people, so when lifestyle was the only open position, I accepted it.”
“Okay,” I repeated calmly, wondering where she was going with her confession.
“I’m a med student,” she said quietly, and added, “Final year.”
Huh. That was actually a bit of a surprise. Before I could say anything at all, she spoke, in a rushed way as if she was afraid I’d barge out of the coffee shop in a huff.
“It was such a scoop to get this assignment, and I thought I’d manage to pry lots of brilliant details out of you. But I didn’t,” she said.
“No, you didn’t,” I agreed.
“You’re very intelligent,” she said.
I thought about that for a while.
“Intelligence is relative, isn’t it?” I asked back, and when she just stared at me, I explained. “Yes, I’m intelligent. I can solve logical problems faster than you can spell hypothalamus, and I have a near perfect photographic memory, but you have to ask yourself what kind of solution that’s needed for the situation you’re in. Sometimes the intelligence needed is the knowledge of how to pick the right accessories, and what food to serve when you have company. And sometimes simple kindness and a willingness to listen is all that’s required.”
She kept staring at me, and I wondered if she’d lost the ability to understand the complicated language that was plain English.
“What I mean is that I’m intelligent in certain settings, but I’m dumb as a brick in others. You’re in med school, but you also know how to pick the right shoes, and I bet you give great parties. I could have an amazing career in medicine, but I wear sneakers all the time and mostly hang out with my two girlfriends. You tell me who the intelligent one is because I’m not so sure.”
“What?” she breathed, and I realized that she’d expected me to simply confirm how clever I was.
Jesus, I thought. What kind of reputation had I created for myself at the University?
“Well, it’s just my opinion, of course,” I said, and added with a wink, “I haven’t proven it scientifically yet.”
She was about to say something, but her eyes moved over my shoulder, and then they glazed over. I didn’t have to turn around to know that Dante was there to pick me up. Before we left she pulled out a camera and asked if she could take our picture. They had formal pictures in my University file, so I was about to protest when Dante pulled me to his side.
“Sure. Just send us copies if they’re good.”
The reporter smiled so widely I worried her face would split, and while she snapped a surprisingly huge number of pictures, I started calculating how many stitches I’d need to put her back together.
“One more, say cheese,” she virtually shouted, looking at Dante like she wanted to lick him like an ice lolly on a hot summer day.
I wondered that I was even in the pictures or if she used the zoom to cut me out.
“Two hundred and forty-threeee…” I said.
Dante turned to me and raised his brows. “Do I even want to know?”
“Nope,” I replied.
He started laughing, and he was so beautiful. I leaned back a little and laughed back at him.
That was the picture that ended up in the newspaper when the article was published a few days later. The reporter sent me an email, asking if I wanted to read it before it was printed and I told her I did. Then I promptly forwarded it to Dante because I felt weirded out about the whole thing. There had been plenty of articles about me before, but they had never been based on interviews and had always been about my inventions or scholarly achievements.
“It’s good, baby,” he assured me, so I sent a formal approval back to the newspaper.
I got another email, with the pictures she’d taken. She also told me that she didn’t get to set the headline, and warned me that it would likely be stupid. She was not wrong.
“Half her life swept away by river.”
Seriously. That’s what it said. After a stunned silence, I started laughing, and so did my girlfriends. Then I read the article, and I was stunned into another kind of silence.
“Jiminella Nixée Sweetwater, renowned scientist and MD with a reputation for being impatient and difficult to please, was a delightful surprise to me. Instead of the demanding and sometimes condescending woman people had warned me about I met an incredibly intelligent, but soft-spoken person with a humble, down to earth view of herself. I can only conclude that the ones who took it upon themselves to share their view of her with me evidently don’t know Jinx Sweetwater at all.
The reason for our meeting was Ms. Sweetwater’s recent accident, which could have taken her life, and in a way, it partially did. She shared with me that she suffers from irreparable amnesia and have no memories from her first ten years…”
The article then went on to describe the accident, mentioned my plans for the future briefly, and ended with the usual phone numbers for people to call in case they wanted to talk to someone about amnesia and other brain injuries. I was done before my friends had finished reading, so I sat in silence and watched them. Mary was the first one to speak.
“What in the hell did you put in her coffee?”
“What?” I asked.
“Must have been some serious drugs,” Wilder stated with a degree of certainty I found slightly insulting.
“What?” I repeated.
“Honey, we love you,” Mary said, and I smiled at her, until she continued, “But, really? Soft-spoken?”
I straightened.
“Down to earth view of herself?” Wilder howled.
They started laughing, and then Mary choked out, “At least she didn’t call her our –”
S
he had to stop speaking because she was laughing so hard, but Wilder filled in the sentence.
“National treasure…”
I rolled my eyes, pushed back my own smile, and mumbled, “Morons.”
They were funny, and I wasn’t upset by their bantering, but it struck me that my girlfriends didn’t know who I was anymore. They didn’t know how I was changing. The reporter had exaggerated and been sappy about it, but I liked that she’d seen a part of me that I’d paid such a high price to find. I’d make sure Mary and Wilder understood, I thought, and I knew that over time, they’d learn to see that part too.
Then I went back to looking at the picture of Dante and me. We looked good. I decided to have it printed out so I could put it in a frame.
Chapter Twenty-two
Pride
“Can I have a word, Jinx?” Hawker asked, and I turned toward him.
“Sure,” I said and turned off the TV where an asinine man with a weird skin color yelled at some young people for what I felt was no reason at all. I had found his stupidity mostly annoying although mildly entertaining and had continued watching in the hope that it would put me to sleep.
Mac and Wilder walked in from the kitchen, carrying beer, and I stretched my hand out, waving it a little to indicate I wanted one.
“No way. Your mighty brain might pour out if I give you one. You have a hole in your head,” Wilder said and skirted around me.
“Hairline fracture, about the same size as the one you had in your foot a while ago, remember?” I said sourly.
“If you were a goat, I’d recommend you to not drink beer,” Miller said from the door, and I pretended to be offended, but with him being a vet, it was kind of funny.
Olly was right behind him, and then Kit and Byrd walked in.