Page 15 of Everlasting

“Where isn’t important. You’re safe, for now.” The fact that he had to add the ‘for now’ should have disturbed me, but it didn’t. For some reason, I wasn’t surprised by it. “I’m going to work on getting you healthy again and then we’ll talk about what will happen with you after.” He sighed and then sat himself in a chair I hadn’t noticed beside the bed I was in. “I’m not going to lie, this is not going to be easy for you, but you need to hang in there and keep fighting through it.”

“Why?”

“You ever want to get back home to your family?”

“Family?” I questioned, though I don’t think the entire word managed to escape my body the way I intended.

“Do you know your name?” The man asked, looking at me as if I were a puzzle he was trying to solve. I didn’t answer him. What he had called me moments ago sounded familiar. It felt like mine, but what did I know? “Shit,” the man huffed out when I didn’t answer. He then stood and started looking me over, getting close and examining my head for something. “Damn it!” He yelled and then, before I could question what had him so upset, he took off out of the room.

I caught a few words he yelled at someone, though I didn’t see another person. Maybe he was yelling at the woman who had cleaned up my vomit. “Head injury, memory loss,” and then there were the words that sent cold dread flooding through my system for some reason. “Is it worth it to keep him?”

Was he talking about me? What would they do if they didn’t keep me? Throw me out? Take me to a different hospital? That’s what this room looked like, a hospital room. It definitely smelled like one too. Maybe they would just stop treating me and let me die. I bet I would die quickly. My whole body seemed to be screaming for the promise of peaceful death.

The man didn’t come back the rest of the day. I couldn’t even tell you if the woman came back though. I was lost to the agony and the nightmares.

Days passed.

I felt better.

Stronger.

We began physical therapy for my muscles after I was able to eat solid food again. My constant companion was a nightmare of a woman who loved me. Hated me. I didn’t know. Everything was so mixed up. I had been told that I had some kind of swelling in the back of my head, closer to my neck. It was affecting my memories, but that maybe I would get it all back once all the swelling went down. Things did start coming back. I remembered a beautiful woman with blond hair and a smile that could light up a whole room. There were little girls that drifted in and out of my memory too. Then there was the other woman who usually caused me to wake up in a cold sweat. I didn’t know what to make of it and Durbin, my advisor – for lack of a better word, refused to tell me. He said it was better if I remembered on my own.

“When can I go home?”

“Did you remember where your home was?” Durbin asked with the same cocky grin he always wore when we had this discussion.

“You know I haven’t. Maybe going home would help me remember,” I insisted and not for the first time.

“Maybe going home is the last thing you need,” he countered as he always did.

I sighed and pushed the weights up with my legs once more. They shook with the effort, but it felt good to do so many reps after barely being able to walk into this small gym he had me rehabilitating in. “You really don’t know what happened to me?”

“When you were brough to me, a severely malnourished junkie with a head injury. I wasn’t there to witness how all of that came about.”

I didn’t know why, but something about that whole scenario didn’t sit well with me. Being a junkie didn’t feel right. I couldn’t deny the constant craving I had though, so maybe that’s all I had been and the family I kept dreaming about was just that – a dream.

“How long have I been here?” I asked. It was actually the first time I’d ever bothered to ask that particular question.

“Tomorrow marks 90 days in my tender care for you,” he teased as he bopped me lightly on the shoulder and nodded his head to the leg press that I was working on. “Let’s get you stronger.”

Stronger. That was all fine. I just wanted to get the monkey off my back that kept begging me to find more of whatever I’d been taking before. The bitch of it was, even if I wanted to, really wanted to go back to that stuff, I had no clue what it was I had been taking or why. Sometimes, I got flashes of a woman with a needle, but then the memory or whatever it was would be lost to the fog. I wasn’t sure what the hell to think. Those flashes were usually part of the nightmares that woke me from sleep, which was why I didn’t know how reliable they were.

“I have to go help a friend out for a few days. I want you to keep working on yourself while I’m away, and if you have any questions you can ask Amber.” Amber, that name made my heart twinge. I didn’t particularly like the Amber he was talking about though, so I wasn’t sure why I had that reaction. My response to his announcement never came and finally, the man I’d only ever known as Durbin spoke up again. “When I get back, we’ll see about getting you out of here and back to your home.”

“My home?”

He nodded his head. “No questions right now. I’ll see to it that it happens though. You have my word.”

It turned out that Durbin’s word was not to be trusted because he never returned from that trip. Instead, I was confronted by another man who told me that my journey was almost at an end and I would be going home soon whether Durbin liked it or not. I still didn’t know where the fuck ‘home’ was, but I supposed it was something I would find out soon enough.

Chapter 13

Memories and Remorse

Lucy

Regrets seemed to be the major theme of most of CJ’s letters to me. The regrets revolving around all the things that were done wrong that cost him time with his children were among the worst of it. If I could go back in time and be the man CJ was when he wrote these letters, I would just hold him and let him know that everything turned out all right. I know, that seems weird to say because, truth be told, the CJ was growing old with was at home. The man in question was asleep in our bed only feet away where I could look at him and see that he was safe and sound and not suffering over much at the moment. Obviously, he was in turmoil over coming home empty handed once again, but that wasn’t something he could control either. Some of the things he wrote about in his letters were in control. Though, hindsight had a way of making us believe we’d failed miserably, where in the thick of it, you are blinded by some aspects of life.

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