Blue

Are

Come on. Play it. Play the video above.

My eyes trace over the name "Micah Raven" repeatedly. The colorless eyes in the picture mock my ignorant memory. I reread the article four times before fully grasping its depth. This is what it means to be Micah Raven. She was the identity I was given when I first woke up. That isn't me. My eyes are blue, not colorless.

I silently set the paper back down in my lap as Jen sits back up in her chair. Her eyes study me intently observing my reaction.

"Can you read it alright?" She asks, doubting the permanence of my reading ability.

I nod but this time, it's me who's avoiding the eye contact. Looking at her green eyes is now a dangerous thought. Now, I know how they see me. She sees me as a threat, that's why her hands always shake when she's close to me. She sees me as a murderer, that's why she wouldn't answer my questions truthfully. She sees me as Micah Raven.

"Can I see your mirror again?" I interrupt the silence.

Although Jen's confusion and concern are both transparent on her face, she retrieves the mirror from her bag. Opening the small black square, she holds it out to me with her hands indeed shaking. I grab the mirror from her and look at her green eyes for the first time since I completed the puzzle. I wanted to know how they looked at me.

I hold the mirror to my eyes like I had once done before. I stare at my reflection the way Jen stares at me: in masked fear. I am looking at the woman in the picture, but now her eyes have color. The terrifying idea that she might jump from the glass and place herself in me frightens me. But the even more terrifying idea that she already has is the simple and honest reality.

"My family never brought me a balloon. . . because I killed them," I say, the words sound more foreign than the thought.

Jen's face sinks as the words leave my lips. For a moment, I think they sound just as foreign to her ears as they do to mine. She covers her mouth with folded hands and breathes into them.

"Are you scared of me?"

Jen raises her head from her hands as she digests the question. Her lips purse in concentration at the thought of my pending quality.

"No, I'm not scared of you. I'm scared of her," she says as she points at the black and white picture sitting on my lap.

My stomach spins with an unfamiliar feeling of comfort as I recognize the similarity in her opinion of me. With the absence of my memories, she no longer believes I am the monster written about in the paper, and neither do I. I don't remember what she did, and I don't want to remember. As long as the memories never return, I am free to be who I want to be, not forced to be the identity given to me.

"Me too," I quietly agree before reading the article for another time, reading the same line over and over again:

If Raven is convicted of first degree murder, she will be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Will I have to pay for the consequences of someone else? It doesn't seem fair; I don't remember any of it. Waking up in this hospital, I gained access to a new life—one without the haunting regrets of my past choices. But that new life has already ended before it began. Even if I don't remember anything, everyone else does.

"Jen?" I call her name once more as I set the paper at the end of the bed so it no longer taunts me with its presence.

"Yes?" The all too familiar answer.

"Am I going to jail?"

Her eyes search around the room as if the answer was hiding on the ceiling rather than sitting in her brain.

"I'm hoping we can change that fate for you. Maybe there is a loop hole in the system somewhere for someone who has lost their memories," Jen explains, indirectly confirming my dreaded fate.

"How do we find out?" I ask as the sound of my door violently swings open.

"You don't." Dr. Fell's bites. His brutal remark announces his presence as he dramatically walks straight towards Jen. "You are no longer authorized to take care of this patient," he tells her as the officer who once stood outside my door joins the room for the first time to confirm the statement.

"What do you mean? You can't just do that!" Jen argues, but it's useless as the officer waves her to follow him out to the hallway.

She doesn't comply at first, but the officer makes himself heard as he grabs her wrist and subsequently drags her through the door. All I can offer is silence. Sitting in my hospital bed, too weak to make an effort to help Jen or myself, I just watch. Dr. Fell finds himself standing above the machine next to my bed pressing a bunch of buttons more chaotically than Jen would.

"What are you doing?" I ask as I feel the injection of a liquid enter my system.

"We have to move you to a new location. I'm just giving you some medications that will knock you out for a couple of hours while we do so. You won't feel any pain," Although his words are sincere, they aren't true.

I do feel pain. I feel pain in my head, my legs, my ribs, my right arm, but the worst pain is in knowing what I've done. I struggle to hold onto reality as the "painless drug" fights against me. The edges of the room grow fuzzy as the white walls blend into each other. My eyes drop in exhaustion but my mind won't cooperate. Until it's forced to.