12 Seconds (#1 in Military series)

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

 

“As you can see from this scan,” Dr Barter tapped the end of his pen against the image of her post-op brain, “You suffered a major trauma to the medial temporal lobe, this section just behind and above the ear,”

Julia found her hand involuntarily rising to rub against the area beneath her hair.

She gasped when she felt the skin was rough and lumpy.

Dr Barter looked at her with sympathy before returning to the screen where he now pointed to a small white cluster on the screen, “And this,” he sighed, “is the clot that restricted blood flow to the area of the brain responsible for our memories,”

Julia’s hand dropped back to her lap as she looked at her father; it had been his idea to come here today but Julia had wanted to know.

She wanted to know what she could do to get her memories back; she just felt like a piece of her was missing without those memories.

“Now the brain is still being mapped and discovered,” Dr Barter returned to his seat behind his desk, resting his elbows against the surface and looking at them with those calm and reassuring brown eyes that Julia was thankful for right then.

“But all in all,” Dr Barter looked over his shoulder at her scan, obviously seeing something that Julia wasn’t, “You were very lucky only to forget that small, localised section of your memory,”

“Lucky?” Julia scoffed under her breath and Dr Barter had the decency to look embarrassed.

“I’m afraid to say that it barely took . . . twelve seconds for you to lose your memory of being a marine,” Dr Barter sighed with disappointment.

“Twelve seconds,” Julia whispered as she got to her feet and walked up to her scan, glaring at the meagre brain clot that killed off her memory. Twelve seconds to forget nearly five years of her life.

Julia felt like wrecking the joint right then.

“Now, your father says that you’ve been having dreams?” Dr Barter pulled her back to the desk and Julia sat down, not sure what to think right then.

“Y- Yes,” Julia nodded her head.

“What are you dreaming about?” Dr Barter pulled out a notepad and Julia felt like she was being studied but she told him about the explosions and her name being called by an ominous voice nonetheless.

“That’s understandable,” Dr Barter murmured, “These things your experiencing were already being transferred into your long term memory when you brought here and you developed the clot. That’s why you’re starting to remember these things,”

“Remember?” Julia jolted her head up with hope, “Do you think it’s possible that I will remember everything?”

Dr Barter looked across at her father with controlled shock before turning back to Julia, laying his pen down, “Julia, you have to understand me, it’s very likely that you will never regain your entire memory from before the accident,”

Julia felt her hopes crashing and burning at her feet.

“The most you can hope for is small flashbacks; snippets of conversations but even these will feel strange to you. As if you’re watching them on a movie,”

“But what if I want to remember?” Julia rushed, “What can I do to make myself remember?” Julia was almost pleading with them.

“Trying to force yourself to remember- I advise against it. Strongly,” Dr Barter sat up straight, turning back into the professional doctor, “It can be very damaging to flood your mind with memories and it could even revert your amnesia,”

“You mean . . . I could forget again?” Julia frowned. She bet her mother would love that.

Dr Barter’s lips pulled back into a thin line, “I advise that you take it one day at a time, things will come back to you but, like I said, you will never regain your entire memory of what happened.”

Julia nodded her head when it felt like he was waiting for a response.

“Now, I can set you up with some local guidance councillors and even an amnesia support group-”

“-Amnesia support group!?” Julia scoffed, “You’re kidding me right? How do they even remember they’re part of a support group? Do they write it on a sticky note attached to the fridge!”

Julia jumped to her feet and headed for the door as she heard everything she didn’t want to hear.

She wanted to hear that, yes, they could bring her memories back. That she would be able to remember meeting Marc, her time in Afghanistan and her friends.

“Thank you, doctor, I’m . . .”

Julia heard her father apologising to the doctor on Julia’s behalf but she couldn’t stay there; surrounded by people staring at her with sympathy.

Racing through the city hospital corridors, the walls feeling as they were collapsing in around her, she raced down the stairs, through the reception and into the cool air of the car park.

Julia’s lungs were thankful for the fresh air as she walked back to their car; the looks people were giving her slowly slipping away as she waited for her father.

When he returned he was carrying a handful of leaflets.

“I’m not going to any support group!” Julia snapped as she clicked her seatbelt in and waited for her father to start the car.

“You don’t have to go,” Her father told her as he reversed out of the parking space and started the two hour drive home back to their quaint little village where everybody knew what had happened.

For two years everybody knew about ‘poor little Julia with no memory’.

Julia could only imagine the things they had been saying behind her back.

The rest of the drive home descended into silence; Julia wasn’t mad at her father . . . at least, not as much as she once did.

She was mad that she hadn’t figured it out sooner herself and wasted two years of her life.

And now she had to come to the realisation that she may never remember what it was like to walk along the sands of another country with the knowledge that she was doing what she loved or that she was doing it with the man she loved at her side.

That was what cut the deepest that she would never remember what it felt like to love someone.

Julia believed in love- or at least, she thought she had, and yet she had forgotten about the ‘love of her life’ because of a simple cluster of cells in her brain!

Julia didn’t know but she did know that she wanted to remember.

“How did it go!?” Her mother came rushing out of the kitchen the moment she heard the key slide in the lock.

“I’m going to bed,” Julia muttered, unable to even look at her mother right then as she trudged up the stairs.

“I’ll bring you some sandwiches and-”

“-No!” Julia shouted down the stairs at her mother before she slammed the door shut and grabbed her laptop off the side immediately.

The support group Dr Barter had suggested had gotten Julia thinking. What if there were other people like her?

Maybe they could tell her how they got their memories back?

Powering up the internet she brought up the internationally used search engine ‘Google’.

Typing in various search words she eventually settled for the words ‘amnesia’, ‘marine’, ‘wounded’ and ‘recovery’.

Skipping past the stories of charities supporting wounded ex-servicemen, Julia was about to refine the search when she spotted something.

Clicking on the link a new window popped up and Julia looked upon the government webpage with a newfound spark of hope.

She knew her mother wasn’t going to like it but that only made the prospect more intriguing and desirable.