Page 17 of Amnesia

Surely if I suspected the flexing of a man’s jaw would cause my tummy to quiver and understood a summer sky was blue and the midnight sky was black, then there was so much more buried inside me.

Right?

I had no idea. The things I was thinking could just be common knowledge, things my brain didn’t feel necessary to dump. I was overwhelmed, and it embarrassed me. I’d walked a few feet down the hall for crying out loud. I saw one person. One. Yet here I was trembling in my bed as if I’d seen a ghost, trying to figure out the meaning of life.

The door opened slowly. Eddie poked his dark, curly head inside. A little bit of my anxiety melted away. Enough so I was able to breathe.

“Still okay if I come in?” he asked.

I nodded.

I liked the way he didn’t stride right in, allowing the heavy door to slam behind him. Instead, he slid in, turned around, and guided the door shut softly. My eyes couldn’t depart from him even when he was turned away. Eddie was lean and long. His shoulders were broad, but they would have to be to support his height. He was dressed in a pair of faded jeans that were frayed at the hems, like he’d owned them a long time and barely wore shoes so they dragged the ground.

His shirt was navy blue and written on the back in white were the words “Loch General.” I had no idea what that was. There was also what looked like a picture of the Loch Ness Monster. The shoes on his feet were plain sneakers, all white with some blue stripes down the sides.

He ignored the rolling stool all the doctors used, instead reaching for the chair against the wall, and dragged it over beside the bed. It was like he planned to stay a while. The chair was more permanent than the stool. With a heavy sigh, he sat down, leaned back, and propped his shoes on the side of my bed.

“Your shoes are dirty,” I said, glancing down at the soles.

He made a small laughing sound and grinned. He had an ornery grin, the kind that said he got away with basically everything. Eddie pulled his feet off the blankets and made a show of kicking off the shoes. The sound they made on the tile was distinct. When it was done, his feet reappeared on my bed, this time covered in white socks.

“Better?” he asked, not bothered in the least.

I nodded once. “Much.”

He smiled again, and even though I barely knew anything, I understood the twinkle in his eyes was something rare. Something pure.

“So how are they treating you in here? How’s the food?”

I had a severe case of amnesia. He’d pulled me out of a lake, half dead. He’d obviously been waiting almost three months for me to wake up. And now his first question was about the food?

“Don’t really have anything to compare it to.” I tapped on the side of my head and shrugged. “‘Course I would think there has to be something out there better than soup and Jell-O.”

“Depends,” he remarked casually, tucking his arms against his middle. “Is it red or blue Jell-O?”

My lips curved upward. I wasn’t really used to the action. But I went with it. It was kind of nice. “Green.”

“That’s just unacceptable!” he said in mock outrage. When he sat forward, his sock-covered feet dropped off the bed. “How dare they serve something so foul!”

A sound came out of me. It was a laugh. I was laughing.Now I know what that sounds like.

Covering my mouth as if I were embarrassed to be happy, I added, “But nothing is worse than the banana they tried to make me eat.”

Eddie’s eyes lit up with amusement, but he shook his head and scowled. “Green Jell-Oandfruit? I’m gonna give the first nurse I see a piece of my mind.”

I stuck out my tongue. Just thinking about that mushy yellow thing made me recoil.

Eddie chuckled, and thoughts of food faded from my mind. We stared at each other for long moments. The air around us seemed to shrink, or maybe my skin just felt momentarily tight. Reality crashed into the humor we shared, and a lot of the questions in my mind came to the surface.

Quietly I asked, “Where am I, like what state?”

His eyebrows shot up his forehead. “No one told you?”

I made a face. “They haven’t told me much of anything. They think I’m too delicate.”

His feet returned to the mattress when he lounged backward. “You’ve been through a lot.”

“None of it I can remember.” Was I allowed to be upset over things I couldn’t remember? I knew I wasn’t unaffected… But it was hard to feel like I was.

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