Amnesia

PROLOGUE

Taryn’s thick lashes fluttered open. Flashes of bright white light strobed before her as she strained to focus, but her eyelids were too heavy to lift all the way. The room went dark.

“Taryn,” announced a man with a thick accent, his deep voice a blend of panic and fatigue.

“Can she hear us?” asked a woman.

Taryn tried to open her eyes again. This time she could barely make them flutter.

“She blinked!” the woman exclaimed. “She’s trying to look at us! Taryn, can you see me?”

“I don’t think she can,” the man said.

Taryn’s body tensed at the sound of those words. How could someone else decide what she was capable of? It didn’t make sense.

“Why not?” the woman seemed to ask for both of them.

More than anything, Taryn wanted to see the strangers that speak before her. Wanted to study their faces while identifying each character in their kind voices. Wanted to come to life and explore the world she feels she’s just been born into. But she couldn’t move.

The man spoke in mutter’s. Taryn could barely make out a word he said.

The woman started to cry, her gentle sobs no longer sounding relieved.

“It’s okay,” the man cooed. “She’ll be completely stable.”

“It’s not that,” she inhaled sharply.

“Then what?”

“She’s so beautiful and full of potential, and it…” she sniffled. “It just breaks my heart that she might have to live…you know…”

“Things won’t be like this forever,” the man said. “Times will change. You’ll see.”

“How? Who’s going to change them?”

“I don’t know. Someone will…eventually.”

“Well, I hope we’re around to see it,” She said, sighing.

“We will be,” the man assured her.

Taryn desperately wanted to know what about these “times” needed to “change.” But asking became unimaginable as her energy was drained completely. Feeling both light-headed and impossibly heavy at the same time, Taryn floated deeper into the darkness, settling in a place where she could no longer hear the people around her. She could not recall their conversation.

All Taryn could do was hope that by the time she woke up, that thing the woman wanted to be “around to see” would be there. And if it wasn’t, that Taryn herself would have the strength to get it for her.