Clouded Memories

The hospital gave everyone a nervous feeling in the pit of their stomachs; they were all watching the scene unfold inside the confined hospital room from behind the door’s small window. The group received quite a few annoyed glances from the numerous doctors and nurses that were trying to rush by them in the seemingly endless corridor. However, they returned their full, undivided attention back to the room as the doctor sighed and sat down on his stool and scooted closer to the panicky girl on the hospital bed.
“Jordan? Jordan, please look at me,” the doctor said, pulling the shaken up girl from her thoughts as she turned her head up to look at him. “I need you to pay close attention to what I’m about to tell you, alright?” She slowly nodded, furrowing her eyebrows with worry. “When you were at your dorm at college for the first time with Micaela, which was in September of 2011… that was almost four years ago.” Jordan’s expression changed from worry to shock as the words left the doctor’s mouth. “Please stay calm as I tell you the rest, okay?” She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, slightly nodding. “Alright, well, over those past four years, you made a lot of friends…,” he made a gesture towards the door where Jordan noticed six or seven heads trying to peak through the small window in the door; her eyes began to water when it dawned on her that she finally made a lot of friends and she couldn’t even remember their names. Then the doctor pulled her from her thoughts again as he continued what he was saying, “… From what I can tell, you don’t remember them. However the good news is, since you do have some memory from right before the crash, you don’t have amnesia, which is permanent. You have a TBI; that’s short for a traumatic brain injury, which means that you will have terrible migraines for the next few months and you don’t remember much now, but over time, you should gain all of your memories back.”