Blank Slate Kate

Chapter 23

I don't see Jake until Thursday, and by then I'm sadder than the eyes on my bear.

Monday morning I wake up from a fitful sleep feeling miserable for no apparent reason, and though I'm still exhausted I can't go back to sleep. When I eventually get up I can't make myself eat, and nothing seems to matter. I see Doctor Ferraro on Tuesday, then call Wednesday morning to book another session later that day, but she can't fix me because she can't give me my memories back.

We talk over and over about Ryan and Jake and who I want to be and what will happen, and there are no answers. I hate not having answers. Ryan says we'll start over if we have to, but I don't even know if I should want that.

I told her before about Ryan's affair but we discuss it again, and she agrees that it might have made my depression worse but doesn't accept that I was driven to the point of needing ECT by an affair, no matter how awful it must have felt to be cheated on. I don't quite accept it either, but I don't know what else could have happened. Again with the lack of answers.

Doctor Ferraro wants me to see a psychiatrist so I can start taking anti-depressants but I don't want to. It feels wrong to drug away my feelings. I know I did it for years but I don't remember and I don't want to do it now. I am desperately looking for a connection to Ryan or to some other thing that will bring back my lost years, and I'm afraid the drugs will block that. When Doctor Ferraro concedes that they will dull my emotions, that in fact that's part of the point of taking them, I know I'm making the right choice.

But it's so hard. Hard to feel the pain, and hard to hide it from the world.

At least, it feels hard to hide, but I see Hannah a few times that week and she never notices a thing. She asks me, when we have coffee Monday afternoon, why Jake had seemed mad at me at Starbucks. I claim not to know, and she shrugs and says, "Artists and their moods," as if that explains it. It doesn't, of course, but I don't want her to know so I'm glad she dropped it. We chat about her business and her steadily growing client list, and she is light and happy and seems to think I'm the same.

I'm not. I feel like I'm sliding down a steep ramp into darkness. I try to cheer myself up, during the sleepless hours I spend alone, by reading jokes on the Internet and playing with Bubbly Words, but the jokes don't seem funny and the game just frustrates me because I know it's got my secrets locked inside.

Donna's secrets. If I unlock those, will I still be Kate or will I be Donna or some mix of the two? I desperately want to get my memories back and am also terrified of what will happen when I do. If I do. I don't even know whether to hope I do.

I cry myself to sleep Wednesday night, and am lying in bed the next morning around eleven trying to gather the strength to get up and shower, though it all seems so pointless, when my phone rings.

"Hey, Kate."

"Jake. Hi."

He clears his throat. "I'm sorry. I was a jerk on Sunday."

I'm not sure what to say to this so I say nothing.

"It's just weird, you know?"

"Totally."

"I like you," he says, the words exploding from him. "And then I see him hugging you and holding your hands and stuff, and I don't like it. But he's your husband so he has the right to do it. But I still don't like it."

"Oh," I say stupidly. I thought he was feeling weird because I offered him money. I didn't expect him to admit to feelings for me. I still have them for him, I think. But I'm starting to have some for Ryan too. My life is more screwed up than the twistiest soap opera.