Page 5 of Remember Me

But Hayes...he didn’t fit. The idea that I had met, fallen in love, and become engaged to him in under a year didn’t make sense to me. Was I that...? The word eluded me. Impulsive, maybe? I didn’t feel impulsive.And I wasn’t going to school — er…hadn’t gone to school — for an M.R.S. degree.

I had no feeling for this man standing at the foot of my bed, except maybe a certain wariness that I accorded to all jocks who liked to bully nerds. I certainly didn’t love him. He was no different than the doctor, who had not stopped droning on while my thoughts wandered.

“...she’ll need to live with someone for a time. Several months, at least. It’s —”

“Where was I living?” I interrupted, tired of being spoken about instead of to.

Hayes cleared his throat. “We were living together. We’d bought a house and were fixing it up —”

“No.”

A faint crease in his brow was TD and H’s only reaction. The man was the definition of stoicism.

“Sorry,” I added. “But I don’t know you, and I don’t think I’m the ‘shack up with a strange man’ kind of girl. We’re going to have to work our way back up to that sort of thing.” Maybe, I added internally.

After a pause in which my mother and Hayes exchanged uncomfortable looks, he nodded slowly. “I understand.”

“You can stay with me,” Mom added. “Your room is the same as it’s always been.”

“Good,” Dr. Chen said briskly. “We’ll be keeping you for at least one more day for observation, but if everything looks good, you can plan on getting out of here the day after tomorrow.”

I yawned. I was exhausted, even if I had spent the last four days in a coma. My brain hurt.

“We’ll let you get some rest, then.”

The doctor placed a hand on Mom’s shoulder to guide her out. She gave me a little wave and a smile filled with worry. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Birdie. Get some rest.”

“Bye, Mom.”

Alone, Hayes and I looked at each other, me with wariness, him with...I wasn’t sure. Frustration, maybe. Longing? I couldn’t read him.

With a sigh he pulled the room’s sole chair closer to my bedside and sat down in it heavily, passing a hand over his jaw. Using the button on my bed, he dimmed the light.

“Get some sleep.”

“But —”

“I’m not leaving, Birdie.”

“Hayes —” I tried again.

“Don’t ask me to leave you. I’ll do anything you want, give you everything you need. But don’t ask me to leave.”

Somehow, I knew he was talking about more than tonight. I rolled over, careful of the i.v. in my arm, and presented him with my back. “You can stay,” I whispered, closing my eyes. “For now.”

“To the love.

My goodness to the love that never stops and comes from somewhere

only mothers have seen and know the secret location of.”

Tyler Knott Gregson

November 15¦Birdie

ISTOOD AT THE STOVE, SLOWLY STIRRING MY SOUP TO KEEP THE MILK FROM STICKING.On the next burner, a grilled cheese sizzled, and I reached to flip it. It was browned to perfection, the cheddar oozing from the seams of the bread.

I turned off the burners, plated the sandwich and ladled the soup into a bowl. It was the first meal I’d made for myself since I’d come home from the hospital yesterday, and so far, so good. I knew, without thinking about it, exactly how to prepare the tomato soup, with a can of milk instead of water and a pat of butter. I didn’t know why I added butter, of all things. It just seemed like the thing to do while I was buttering the bread for the cheese sandwich.

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