I Forgot // Olli Määttä

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"How is it going?" Olli asks, FaceTiming me on my break from today's internship. I sigh, ruffling my straight hair.

"It's alright...I've seen, um, a few children today," I begin, not sure if I should continue. He just watches me curiously, so I do. "They have cancer, and they're not expected to live more than a year." My breath hitches at the end of my sentence, and I sense his heart's nearly stopped for a moment by the way he looks at me.

"How ol-old are there--I mean, they?"

"4 and 6." I hear him sigh, shaking his head to keep from getting any more emotional. "Do you have any good news?" I ask timidly, and after a few moments he finally smiles again.

"I'm back on the ice," he finally pulls the phone farther away from his face, and I see that he's helmet-less in CONSOL Energy Center in full practice uniform. The season's ended, so I don't know how he got in there. Nevertheless, I see a few guys in the background. One notices Olli, quietly zooming over as we talk.

"Hey Rosa!" Flower chirps, leaning on Olli's shoulder as he waves at the camera. Olli was momentarily scared out of his mind, and I laugh and wave at the goaltender.

"Hi, what's up? Why are you guys at the rink?"

"We're celebrating the first day Olli-bear can take some contact in practice, so even though there's no more practices for a few months we organized one for him."

"That's so sweet," I smile, and my boyfriend blushes. "They love you, munchkin."

"It's Munchkin!" Flower shouts, skating away to the others. I hear faint laughter, and Beau's faint addition of,

"Munchkin, can you pick up some donuts for us on your way back to Dunkin'?" Olli's face goes even redder, and I laugh and wave him off.

"Go have fun with your friends," I say. "I gotta go."

"Goodbye Rosa."

"Bye Olli...I mean Munchkin." He sends me one last wink before I end the call, standing up as my new instructor, Dr. O'Reilly, walks in the room.

"Rosa Saunders?" I stand up, and he beckons me over. "I heard about your, ah, special case."

"Oh?"

"You suffered amnesia this past summer, correct?" I nod, a sad look coming over me. "Well, we have a few patients here who have the same thing as you, but instead of two years being forgotten, it's a greater percentage of their life. Here are their reports, you can read them when we visit them." Talking about my condition is hard, but maybe seeing others will get me to loosen up a bit.

"This is Jessie," O'Reilly tells me. A young girl about my age, maybe still a high schooler, smiles and waves at me. Without a pause she begins to talk to him about things from the early 2000's, and I conclude she must have lost a lot of memory. Just like O'Reilly said.

After we visit the other two patients, I have some time to think before I hand in my report. It's all finished, I just need to ponder something. There has to be some technique to get me and these people back our memories. There just has to be.

And if there isn't, then I'll make one.