Remembering You

Waking up

The sirens echoed through my dreams of black nothingness, reverberating off the empty corners of my mind repeatedly with nothing else to stop it. I felt as if I was floating in nothingness, but I couldn't remember how to get back down from the clouds. I peered around in the still, vast plain but saw nothing and felt only an echo of pain as if from a previous life.

Who was I? I tried to think of a name, and a thousand came to my mind, but none seemed to belong to me. I could see the empty space filled with names, giant letters of white brightness stretching out and changing rapidly as my mind tried to process them. The letters got bigger and more scrambled in my desperation to find the ones that meant me.

Johnson?

Mayberry?

Khalifa?

Amberley?

Tristianana?

Was that even a name? I wasn't sure, and panic started to set in.

The names vanished, leaving behind just an abject sense of fear and loneliness. I wanted something familiar, something that I could recognize. I tried to think of family, but nothing came to mind. Literally, nothing popped up. It was as if my life story had been written on a blackboard and then erased by some obsessive fifth grader, leaving an empty slate in its wake. I slowly gave way to the emptiness and waited for my mind to come up with something I would recognize.

"Permanent damage to the hippocampus. Most likely retrograde and anterograde amnesia just based on her last waking," the voice was distant and called to me through the emptiness. It had been what felt like an eternity since the last thought had passed through my mind, so the words startled me out of the calm that had set over me. Retrograde amnesia? That I knew somehow. It was when someone was unable to recall events from the past. Anterograde was when they couldn't make new memories from the date of injury.

The sirens came through again, and the pain intensified in an uncomfortable way. It was me. That's why I couldn't remember anything. I had amnesia. That realization poured over me like a bucket of ice water, and I was startled out of the hazy dream. I woke up sitting straight in bed all at once.

I was in a bright, sterile hospital room. The room held only unfamiliar people, and yet somehow, I knew I had been through this before, even though I had no memory of doing so. The doctor was a tall, handsome fellow, not too old but not young enough to scare me either.

He jumped back, a bit shocked at my awakening, but he smiled pleasantly when he recovered. The nurse who was working on my arm bandage shushed me and patted my back comfortingly. I hadn't realized I was gasping in the air and panicking, but somehow, her calmness helped, and I relaxed, slowing my breath down to a more normal fashion.

"Where am I?" I asked, my voice hoarse and painful as if I had been screaming for hours at a concert.

"I was about to ask you that same question. Do you know where you are? Or what your name is?" The doctor asked patiently, stepping back to give me my space and writing something on my chart.

"No, obviously not. How many times have I woken up before?" I asked, trying to get my bearings.

The room was large and comfortable but sterile. I got the feeling this wasn't the everyday patient room, but I couldn't pinpoint why. It seemed nicer than it should have been. A dark man sat in the corner on a large hospital chair, reading a thick book about infectious diseases. He had black hair and glasses, but he wasn't exactly bad-looking; he was just slightly nerdy. He barely seemed to acknowledge my presence and merely glanced up when I talked, absorbed in his book.

"Several. Do you remember any of the times by chance?" The doctor asked curiously. His name tag said Dr. Throughgood.

"No, Doctor Throughgood. I just heard you talking. Who's he?" I asked pointing with my one good hand to the lurker in the corner. My other arm, the nurse was working changing bandages on. It was very painful and looked a mixture of broken and burnt which I somehow knew was a bad combination for healing. I refused to look at the charred skin, but I could feel the searing pain when she unrolled the bandage.

"You can call me Chase. Your name is Anna. He is your husband. You have a bit of memory loss, but just stay calm. We will get your memory back in no time. You were in a bad car accident," he said with positivity.

"Don't lie to me. I know the chances of getting my memory back are slim with the amount of head trauma it takes to cause retrograde and anterograde amnesia," I said coldly not really caring if I offended him. I would prefer to have it straight and not get fake promises he couldn't keep. He lifted an eyebrow in surprise but nodded, his smile dripping a bit.

"Of course, Anna. Your memory is gone, and the chances of it returning are limited, but not zero. We are here to mainly make sure you don't die from infection from your wound and assess how bad the damage is. Better?" The doctor said, folding his arms slightly less friendly than before.

There was something familiar about him, but that in itself shouldn't be unusual since I had woken so many times before. He seemed familiar in a different way, though. Even though he was being bitchy, I just felt amused by him.

"I knew you, didn't I?" I asked curiously, tilting my head to look at him from different angles. His smile returned brightly.

"Yes, you were one of the doctors on the pediatric ward right down the hall so we worked together daily," he explained, marking something excitedly on my chart.

"Hmm...and you're my husband?" I asked, turning to the sulking man in the corner. He closed his book finally and looked to me darkly with no trace of the doctor's lightness or humor.

"Yes," he said simply.

"I think he's a serial killer," I told Doctor Chase firmly as if my husband wasn't still in the room. My supposed husband scoffed at this but made no move to defend himself.