Dark & Light

~Chapter Nineteen~

(I thought the emotions you can just feel pouring through this music blended well with the emotions within this chapter, so make sure to play it as you read ;))

Paige's POV

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Sitting by, looking at him. Drifting off into nightmare-wafted sleep. Awakening by the sound of his changed voice, meeting his face that expresses so much confusion, fear, and hurt.

While he is confused, I understand everything. When he fears what he does not know, I reassure him, but I am aware of the awful truth. When I can see hurt stab him on the inside, I hold his hand, understanding too keenly what he only vaguely has recollected.

That's been my life for seven, ten, fifteen days. Repetitious, never-ending.

Retrograde amnesia.

That's what Chris's brother caused with a savage blow to Chris's head. Now Chris has an amnesia that makes you forget particular memories of the past, while remembering only fractions of others. The result being a person with an entirely broken down, bewildered identity.

The endless cycle of watching him wake and then go back to sleep as I stay nearby, somehow stops, since Chris is taken to a mental rehab facility, where the 'professionals' keep telling me he'll get better, he will be okay, he will remember. "Eventually, hopefully,...one day."

I don't believe them. I just believe in Chris. I can only hope his wasted form will somehow regain life, that his brain will take a turn for the better and start making sense of his past and present, so he will have a future. With or without me, I don't even care at this point. I just hold on to the vague hope he'll come back. Maybe I'll see him whole, at peace, if not happy, once again.

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Its been several weeks since I've visited Chris. The doctors tell me its best if I don't see him until he's began to recover further. That I will simply be a cause of confusion for him if I visit, since he doesn't remember me fully.

Actually, he doesn't remember as me as me, at all.

I'm so empty inside now it almost doesn't seem to matter. Even Jack, flirtatious, annoying Jack has tried to offer his condolences, as if Chris has died or something. Maybe he has. What's left of a person without a trace of memory of past love or pain or anything at all?

A bare shell.

That is what's left.

There's nothing really keeping me here where I've lived for so long anymore. I haven't been able to make it work. Chrissy doesn't fully get what's going on, so she let me go from working at the coffee shop. I feel sick inside all the time, can barely eat anything, and I just don't want to go on living.

I know that deep inside, I need to do something.

Leave.

I don't want to stay here. I've graduated from high school. I don't have a job. I need to move on, somewhere. I've given up on Chris entirely. I kept calling to ask if he had improved for awhile, begging to see him.

The answer would always be the same, using different word forms.

"We are sure he will start responding soon."

"We're trying some new things this week."

"Soon, you can visit, dear."

The different responses all mean the same thing: that the Chris I know is gone, forever. He may be able to form new memories, but he doesn't have his old ones, he won't remember me, and he'll be better off without my troublesome presence in his life. Having a depressed girl in the mix with everything else he has to deal with simply won't help. And I can't stay around and wait for news that simply refuses to come.

So when I board a bus for the airport that will fly me to Los Angeles, I know its for the best. There's nothing I could do by staying; in fact, the doctors were right-I confused and bemuddled Chris more than was necessary just so I could be near the person I needed so badly.

This morning was the last time I'd stare mindlessly out of my bedroom window, looking at the rain that's poured incessantly down for weeks now. It started about the time I truly realized that it would take Chris years, if not forever, to recover. Something ironic about that.

The rain is still pouring when the bus stops, jolting me back in my seat and awakening me from my thoughts. Slowly I grab my backpack, put my hood over my head, and walk down the bus aisle, then down the steps of the bus. Outside, its pouring in torrents. I squint to see farther, and see the airport check-in building in the distance. I start walking towards it mindlessly.

When I'm about half way there, I can feel my feet lose traction while walking and I fall on the slippery cement. On my knees, as the rain pours on me, I look to the sky, closing my eyes.

A strange thought occurs to me as I stand, frozen and helpless in the rain. I saved Chris, in a way, by death by calling out to God for help, weeks before, just as the rain began to fall. Hoping against hope he'd live, that God was out there, that would God listen to my frantic pleas. The truth was, God had saved him...but not in the way I had prayed...not in the way I expected, at all.

I open my eyes, and look around me.

Through the loud patter of the heavy rain, I hear a voice. When I lift my head, I see the shocking sight of the one who spoke my name.

Stooped over, messed hair, strangely bright clothes, flying in the wind of the storm. Staring. Befuddled. With the look of one once a beloved friend, now turned familiar stranger.

The stranger takes a step closer, and then says three words that shoot alarming panic, daring hope, and unstoppable fear into my heart.

"I know you."

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Hello lovely readers! Thanks so much for reading this chapter! I do apologize for the cliffhangeri-sh ending here, but I promise I will be back Monday with an update! ;) Make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts on this update and vote if you liked it as well. (:

XoXo,

Veronica