Page 80 of Amnesty

I was Amnesia now; though after yesterday, I wasn’t sure that name fit either.

I knew things now. Felt things. Remnants of what I used to be. Remnants of who I never ever wanted to be again.

Thank God for Eddie. He was literally the glue for all my cracks. No, it wasn’t his responsibility to fix me. Or heal me. But he helped hold me together until I could heal myself.

Really the only way to “heal” from the terrors I once lived was time.

And one hell of a prayer I didn’t remember any more.

I didn’t know how Sadie could even speak. Or smile. Or do anything other than cry or stare into space. I hated to say it, but the fugue state the widow was in? I understood it now.

It was beyond clear she lived the same kind of hell. That old woman who used to tend to Sadie when she was fighting for her life (from a beating and a miscarriage…gulp) was her. But she didn’t live down in that hole with us.

So where had she been?

How could she sit idly by while two innocent girls were tortured, raped, and locked up?

I wondered if I had been as brainwashed as both of them? Probably. Maybe? I tried to kill myself. Did that mean maybe I wasn’t as brainwashed, that I knew how wrong everything was, how inescapable, so I chose the only way out I could? Death would have been better than living that life.

This amnesia had been a blessing. I was the lucky one of the three of us.

Beside me Eddie stirred. The deep intake of breath and way he stretched up against me made me smile.

The amnesia was perhaps a stroke of luck, but the biggest blessing of all was him. I didn’t know a lot, certainly not a lot of people. Only the few who had reached out to me in Lake Loch. It didn’t matter if I knew one or a hundred people, though, because I understood there weren’t many like him.

“Hi,” he murmured, pulling me closer. I was on my back and turned my head toward his face. He kissed me on the tip of my nose.

“Hi,” I whispered back.

His hands were large. He could easily palm the side of my face in one hand. He never used the fact that he was bigger to intimidate me. Or against me. Instead, he used it to make me feel safe.

Tucking the hair behind my ear, he asked, “You doing okay?”

I nodded slow. “Okay.”

“You stopped shaking,” he observed, hugging me close.

I kissed his cheek and smiled. “Thank you for being here.”

“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

That made me think of the hospital and Sadie. A sick feeling churned in my stomach. I tried to hold it back. “I don’t want to go back there today.” After a brief pause, I added, “Maybe ever.”

“Seeing her is hard.” Eddie understood.

I nodded. “I know she said we were sort of friends.” I shuddered inside, thinking of the way she called me her sister. “And I know we only had each other, but seeing her brings up things.”

“Things that are better left forgotten?”

“I think so,” I whispered.

“I understand.”

“I feel selfish.”

“Don’t.” He pushed up onto his elbow so he hovered above me. “Taking care of yourself is not selfish. It’s human. And frankly, I need you to do it.”

“You do?”

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