Seeing my big strong man scared out of his wits is horrifying. I wonder if I’ve made a mistake, but Mace was right. I couldn’t have done otherwise. I couldn’t have hidden how I’ve aged and the resultant body changes, and soon Liz will notice his. I couldn’t have paraded Cas in front of him, when he last remembers him as two years old. What else could I have done?
“You won’t forget,” I tell him firmly. “The doctor said there’s probably a link between the tumour and the original brain injury. Now that’s gone, there’s no reason to think your faculties will decline again.”
“I want to see Cas,” he repeats.
“I’ll go and get him.” I start to stand, but Liz holds me back. His eyes examining my face, this time, as if memorising it.
“Don’t take long,” he says quickly. “For fuck’s sake, Vanna, come back.”
“Lizard,” I tell him firmly, knowing what he’s worrying about, “you won’t forget me again. I promise.” Hopefully he can’t see my fingers crossed behind my back.
As I go to the door, I hear him say to himself in disbelief, “Twelve fucking years.”
Cas stands as soon as I enter the waiting room. “He remembers? Can I see him, Mom?”
“He remembers, but only up to the start of his last tour. I’ve explained to him Cas, but…”
“He expects a two-year-old.” Cas looks tense. “Mace told me.”
“I’ve told him, Cas. He knows to expect a teenager, but he is struggling with the idea.”
“Does he remember the club at all?” asks Demon, tersely.
I give him a sad look. “I’m sorry, no. Or not yet. But he’s just had a major brain operation, so who knows what to expect?”
“How’s he physically?” asks Beef.
“I’m really not sure,” I tell expectant faces. “Weak. He should be sleeping but he’s afraid to give in. He doesn’t seem able to move his right-hand side, but he’s ignoring that for now. He’s too worried about what’s going on with his head.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Lizard
Vanna’s gone to get my son. The boy I’d forgotten about for twelve years. How the fuck could I do that? Twelve years!
I’m a biker? A member of an outlaw gang? Jeez. If she’d told me I’d flown to the moon, I could just as well believe that.
“You feeling okay, Mr James?” A nurse comes in and checks the readings of the machine beeping beside me. “It looks like you’re becoming stressed. You really should try to get some rest.”
“I’ve forgotten twelve years,” I tell her. “I remember my wife as a twenty-two-year-old, she’s now thirty-four. And I’m apparently nearing my forties. How the fuck do you think I’m feeling? I’m scared I’ll forget even more.”
“Calm down, Mr James.”
“Calm down? How can I fuckin’ keep calm when I don’t understand what’s going on in my head?”
She looks at me for a moment. “I’ll get someone to talk to you, okay?”
“I don’t need fuckin’ therapy. I need to know what’s wrong with my head.”
“I can help you with that,” a deep voice says. “Mr James. I’m the consulting neurologist. I performed your operation.”
“I’ve woken up remembering my wife who I’ve apparently forgotten I had for twelve years, Doc, as well as everything that happened over that time. Am I going to forget again?”
He pulls up a chair and regards me seriously. “I work on brains every day, and things never cease to surprise me. You originally suffered a TBI, a traumatic brain injury. It’s not unusual that triggers a loss of memory. Sometimes it’s physical damage to part of your brain, sometimes it’s PTSD, or simply that you want to forget. For example, if your marriage wasn’t happy, you could have hidden it from yourself.”
“No fuckin’ way,” I tell him. “I love Vanna, and she loves me. We’ve got a son…” my voice trails off. I have a son who I’ve apparently neglected for a very long time because I didn’t know he existed.
“You know we only use a fraction of our brains?”
I recall hearing that somewhere. I raise my chin.
“You’re an interesting case, Mr James. Sometimes memories are still there, but locked away, unable to be accessed. There have been cases of people who’ve forgotten who they are, then get flashbacks and finally remember years on. You suffered a traumatic event and injury to your temporal lobes. If I was a betting man, I’d place money on that being the cause of your initial loss of memory, particularly as I understand that after your original injury your short-term memory was affected as well. That you started to be able to lay down new memories suggests the brain healing itself over time.”
“If I was healing myself, why didn’t I remember my wife and kid before now?”
“Because of the tumour. One the size of yours would have been growing for quite a while. That you remember now suggests its removal, or maybe the surgery I did to correct a small bleed, was the trigger for your memories coming back.”
“So why can’t I remember what I’ve done for the past few years?”
“You’ve just undergone a serious operation on your head. There will be some swelling which will gradually go down. Common side effects include loss of concentration and trouble remembering things. There are definitely physical reasons. I wouldn’t have expected you to wake and be cured immediately. PTSD could be playing a part. You’ve moved on, made a new life, left the old one behind. You feel guilty, so instead of trying to assimilate your fresh memories of your life before, you’re believing you’re back twelve years ago. Sometimes our thoughts take the easiest path.”
“My brain’s fucked.” I take it he’s suggesting that my way of coping is pretending it never happened, instead of admitting what an asshole I’ve been to Vanna and Cas by denying them all these years.
He chuckles. “That’s not a medical term I’d use. Don’t push yourself too hard. I’ll set you up with a therapist, and we’ll work on getting your memories back. You’ll also need to have some physical therapy to help you recover your strength on your right-hand side.”
After giving me a bit of medical jargon about the operation itself, and what I can expect during my recovery, he gets up to leave.
“How soon can I get out of here, Doc?”
“I would hope by the weekend. It depends on how you do.” He opens the door. “Ah, Mrs James. Your husband needs rest. Please don’t stay too long.”
Vanna comes in. “You sure you’re up to this, Lizard?”
“Is he here?” I ask fast. At her nod, I swallow a couple of times. “I want to see my son.”
A boy, no, a young man enters. Well I’ll be fucked. He’s as tall as me. Last time I saw him, he’d barely come up to my knee.
“You’ve grown,” I squeak, then cough to clear my throat, having to ignore the blast of pain which goes through me. Still, I refuse to use the morphine pump that’s beside me.