I blinked, trying to clear my sight as she moved back, the sudden light sending pain spearing through my head. I moaned, swallowing. Thirsty. I was so thirsty.
“Water,” I said. Or at least, I attempted to say it. It came out a croak, barely discernible. Someone must have understood, though, because the bed was raised several inches and a straw was brought to my lips. I sucked at it gratefully.
“Birdie? Birdie, sweetheart, oh my God.”
Another woman was leaning over me, and after focusing I recognized her as my mother. “Mom? Where am I?” Looking past her, I saw a man around my age with dark hair and a square jaw that was currently tight with tension. Tall, dark, and handsome. “What’s going on?”
I tried to turn my head and view my surroundings, but the movement intensified the pain and I held still, instead, closing my eyes and lifting a hand to my head. “It hurts.”
“Sweetheart, you’re in the hospital. You were in an accident, but you’re going to be okay. You’re going to be fine.”
“Accident…?”
“Baby, do you remember the accident?” Tall Dark and Handsome, who to this point hadn’t spoken, leaned closer and brushed a hand gently against my hair.
Baby? I stared up at him in confusion. I don’t know you.
His eyes widened and his lips parted, and I realized I had said the words aloud.
Tall Dark and Handsome —TD AND H, I thought — shifted slightly away, a line forming between his eyes. “Doctor, I think —” His voice was sandpaper, as though he hadn’t done a lot of talking recently.
“Birdie, it’s Hayes. Your fiancé —”
“I don’t…” My voice trailed away, and I looked from my mother to Tall Dark and Handsome.
“Just give her a moment,” another voice interrupted. “It can be disorienting after a coma.”
A man in scrubs came to stand beside the bed, rubbing his hands together. The sharp scent of hand sanitizer reached my nose. With subtle authority, he stepped into Tall Dark and Handsome’s space, moving him aside. I saw him blink and scrub a hand across his mouth as he did.
“Hello, Bernadette,” the man in scrubs said with a polite smile. “I’m Doctor Chen. How are you feeling? Follow the light, please.”
He held a penlight in front of my face and moved it slowly in one direction, then the next.
“My head hurts.”
“We’ll get you something for that. Nurse?” A woman, the same one who had hovered over me as I awoke, nodded and left the room. “Do you know where you are, Bernadette?”
I started to shake my head but stopped as I remembered the pain. “A h-hospital, maybe? And my name’s B-birdie.”
“That’s correct. You’re at the UT Medical Center. Do you remember what brought you here?”
Why was I here? There was nothing. I looked up at the ceiling and thought, the activity making my brain hurt. My head hurt? Did brains hurt? “N-no.”
“Has she always had the stutter?” The doctor addressed the question to my mother.
“No. She’s never stuttered.”
Alarm fluttered through me.
“It’s okay, nothing to worry about. Just a side effect sometimes with a head injury.”
“Head injury?” I asked, voice faint.
“Bernadette —”
“Birdie.”
“Birdie.” He chuckled and I wanted to glare. He was being patronizing. A glare would probably hurt, though, so I restrained myself. “Obviously, you know your name. Can you tell me your date of birth?”
That was easy. “December 24, 1998.”
“Ah, a Christmas Eve baby.”
“I brought her home in a stocking,” my mother inserted.
“How about the president?”
“Trump?”
“Excellent. And what’s the date?”
I had to think. I was always terrible at remembering the date. I just didn’t pay attention to it. “Ah…I just finished exams, so December…I’m sorry, I can’t remember the exact date. My school just released for winter break, so close to Christmas.”
“You’re okay, close enough. It’s November twelfth.”
Tall Dark and Handsome looked confused. “Wait. Which exams did you take, Birdie?”
“The usual suspects,” I replied. “English, math, Spanish. Government.”
“High school.”
“Well, yeah. How are we engaged, by the way? This makes no sense.”
He ignored me, turning to the doctor. “Doctor Chen.” He spoke, his voice low and urgent. “She said she just finished up her high school exams.”
“Yes?”
“That was years ago. She graduated from college seven months ago. She is not okay.”
Hours and countless tests later, Dr. Chen determined that I was afflicted with post-traumatic amnesia. I would be able to recall, without any trouble, how to do tasks I’d done most of my life — using the washer and dryer, driving a car, writing the alphabet. I’d be capable of learning new tasks and retaining new memories. I’d remember deeply ingrained ‘memory tracks,’ such as memories of my parents or pivotal childhood events and friends. The longer I’d had the memory, the doctor stressed, the more apt I’d be to recall it. Newer memories, though, such as my entire relationship with Hayes and even my entire college career, were now missing, simply because their memory tracks were fresher. Less traveled.
Whether these memories returned by degrees or in one fell swoop, or if they would remain permanently blank was a prediction Dr. Chen couldn’t or wouldn’t say.
“Brain injuries are highly individual,” he told us. “It’s impossible to say what might take place. All I can tell you on that front is to try to keep from stressing over it. There’s absolutely nothing you can do to make it happen.”
“What can we do to help her?”
The question came from Tall Dark and Handsome. TD and H, otherwise known as Hayes Ellison. My fiancé. I tested the word in my head, and wondered, now that I was a bit more clear-headed, why I wasn’t wearing a ring. A question for another time.
He looked exhausted but was still easily the most good-looking guy I could remember being in the same room with. He was tall and broad, and the muscles moving beneath his clothes made me think he was perhaps an athlete. Not my type at all. Jocks didn’t notice me, probably because I tended to stick to the library and the less populated areas of school.
“Excellent question,” Dr. Chen said, pulling me back to the present. “You can work together to ease her transition back to ‘normal’ life in any way possible. Program her phone with reminders, everyday activities she was engaged in, appointments with directions, names, numbers, et cetera. Leave lists, things she’ll need to re-learn, and things of that nature on post-it notes in locations where they’ll be seen — like a mirror. I’ve put together an extensive packet of information for you both.”
Mom was nodding furiously, Hayes watching me with a brooding intensity I didn’t wholly understand. Was he angry that I didn’t remember anything? Upset that he was bound to an amnesiac?
I didn’t know what to feel. My mother was easy. I remembered her, knew our life together had in some ways been a train wreck. I could remember finding out that she had been unfaithful to my father. It had destroyed us. Destroyed him. He had killed himself months afterwards, and since his death, she’d been oblivious to any but her own needs, her own guilt and sorrow. I had looked forward to leaving home and moving into the dorms at UT. The thought of being dependent on her for anything right now scared the snot out of me.