Page 4 of Help Me Remember
I’m lost. I can’t see.
My heart is racing, and I try so hard to see anything around me, but everything is dark and something is squeezing my chest.
The panic threatens to overwhelm me.
Immediately, my lids open, and I turn frantic eyes to my brother’s best friend as I struggle to draw in air.
Oh God. Something is wrong with me.
“Take a deep breath, in your nose and out your mouth,” he says, the calm voice trying to soothe me, but I can’t.
“Wh-what don’t I know? Why am I here?”
Holden’s jaw clenches as though he’s trying to keep from saying something. The sound of the beeping behind me quickens. “Was I in an accident?”
“Not an accident, but something did happen. I need you to calm down, Brielle. Focus on my voice and breathing.”
A new anxiety swirls in my stomach. If it wasn’t an accident, then what? I can’t calm down. I can’t stop this intense panic that is building with each second. “What happened?”
“Brie, stop,” Holden tries to say again. “You have to relax or I am going to have to give you something.”
“No, no, because . . . I don’t remember why I am.” That leaves me with more questions and possibilities. If it wasn’t an accident, then someone did this to me. Someone hurt me. I just want to know who and why. I start to shake, knowing that the tears I saw on my mother and sister-in-law’s faces are an answer to a question I don’t want to ask. Addy loves me, I know she does, but her reaction when I . . . when I said my brother’s name—
The machines monitoring me start to beep even faster. I know Holden is talking to me, but his words are swept away by the sound of my ragged breathing and the thunder of my pulse in my ears.
Isaac.
I said his name, and Addy shattered.
Something is really wrong.
Oh, God.
I can’t. I need to know. I look to Holden again, my heart pounding in my chest as I force out the single word. “Isaac?”
“Brielle”—Holden grips both arms, staring at me—“try to focus on me and take a slow breath. It’s okay.”
It’s not okay. I can’t remember why I’m here. I don’t know what happened, and the harder I try to remember, the more frantic that beeping gets. My vision starts to fade a little, and Holden barks something at the nurse.
I’m too caught up in the spiral of thoughts and desperate need to fill lungs that refuse to work to pay attention to what he’s shouting.
Then, after a minute, calmness floods my veins and I close my eyes, drifting off to sleep.
* * *
I’m in some sort of weird twilight. I can hear voices close to me, as though they’re right next to me, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t drag myself into consciousness.
“What do we tell her?” Addison asks.
“Nothing,” my mother offers. “They were very clear that we aren’t to influence any of her memories. We need to be patient and allow things to restore on their own.”
“She’s going to be devastated.”
“Yes, she will, but we’ll be here for her.”
“I’m not sure how we do this.”
Someone pushes hair off my face, and then my mother says, “I don’t either. It’s as if this is a nightmare that just keeps getting worse. I just keep hoping that when she opens her eyes, she recovers everything, and then at the same time, I almost hope she never does.”
