Anamnesis: A Novel (12 page)

There she is again, the redhead. We’re
friends, in this hell together. Today she has bandages on both crooks of her
elbows. They were taking blood. Or putting something back in.

We sit in the cafeteria. The windows are
barred with wire mesh outside. There aren’t many of us now, but there’s still
her. The girl is pretty and smiles at me, tells me it was just the usual. She
sits stiffly in the metal chair. We will be out of here soon, she says. We’ll
be better. We can restart.

I don’t tell her we’ve been here much
longer than she thinks, though I’m not sure how long. We’re not going to get
the money they promised us. We’re not feeling any better. They’re hurting us. We
didn’t sign up for this.

The shadowy tendrils of dread spread
throughout my body as I realize we have been here for a very long time. Lights
dim around me and I can’t breathe. There’s something in the air, it’s making me
tired. The girl’s head is rolling around as though she is stunned, until
finally she slumps forward and hits her head on the table. When I lift her up
by the hair, she is a blond with a different face. I know this woman. I know her.

A man in a yellow hazmat suit with a
plastic shield instead of a face is painting acid onto my body. It is burning.
I picture it eating through my muscles, my organs, my bones. The acid will melt
me. He tells me to focus on the pain. Is it familiar? How badly do I hurt? On a
scale of 1-10, 10 being you want to kill yourself.

Yes, I’d like to kill myself. I want to
die.

When he’s done, he gives me an orange
bottle of pills. They will make me feel better when I wake up. Take them
whenever I hurt. When I wake up.

But I
am
awake? Aren’t I?

I
lie on my
stomach, head turned to face the wall, remembering the dream. The sheets were
damp from my breath, my drool. My body warm and tingly from the benzo and
bourbon. I didn’t want to move. It was easier to stay there than do anything.
Anything at all.

Since I woke up on Alki beach, I’d had the
dreams. It didn’t take long before I realized they were fragments of memories
from whatever happened to me. None of them ever made much sense. I used to
think there were clues in them. That I’d see the face of a doctor and find him
in real life, get answers. That the redhead was my lover, or at least some
hallucination I made up to keep me happy. The only thing truly real in the
dreams was the memory of the pain and suffering I underwent. For seven years I
thought the dreams were the worst part of my life. Now I had something new
competing for the title. The agony I felt that I’d pushed the only person away
who wanted to help me. Sure, I didn’t know
why
she was hell-bent on helping
me. But she was.

It had been two days since Olivia gave me
the folder with my alleged true identity. I had the content of the two pages
memorized. My name was William Grigg, age twenty-nine. I was reported missing
by my parents seven months after I would’ve gone into the Whiteout trials. They
said I voluntarily admitted myself into a trial for a new drug that helps addiction
rehabilitation that was to last six months during which they could have no
contact with me. Seven months later when I didn’t return, my parents started
asking the pharmaceutical company what happened. They were informed that I
voluntarily and suddenly removed myself from the program. My parents tried to
initiate a lawsuit against the company, but I was an adult when I admitted myself.
All participants retained the right to leave the trial. They didn’t break their
end of the agreement.

The second page had a log of each time my parents
inquired about the case. They did so twice a month for two years after their
initial report. Then they stopped. I wanted to be angry at them; why did they
stop looking? Why couldn’t they find me? A tiny voice kept reminding me that
they
did
look. They
did
try. God only knows where I was while
they were looking. Probably somewhere they’d never find me.

Much to my surprise, reading about William
Grigg, my old self, wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. William wasn’t me;
not anymore. It felt like I was reading about a different person all together.
I mostly took the information objectively. Now I knew my real name. I knew
where I was born, my birthday.

Olivia was right. I knew she was. I’d been
running from this. While I still believed her path would lead us to answers
faster, investigating myself was for my own good. It’s what I promised myself
I’d do after Skid died. It would’ve made him proud. Plus I had a feeling I’d be
on Olivia’s bad side for a long time—fuck, maybe forever—and decided I’d use
the time to discover my old self.

But first, that meant getting out of bed.
Not an easy feat. I’d been lying there for four or five hours since I woke up.
I heard the familiar noises of the workday ending. Traffic, honking, the buses’
brakes squealing. People walking the streets. The library was going to close in
a few hours. If I was going to go do the credit check Olivia carried on about,
it had to be soon.

I took a deep breath and pushed myself up
into a cross legged position. My head swam, and my vision dimmed. After a
second, I reoriented. The mess from the Chinese takeout was still on the table.
The studio smelled like soy sauce. With every ounce of energy I had, I swung my
legs off the bed and walked to the bathroom to relieve myself, grab a shower,
and swallow an Adderall.

My hope of the shower waking me up was
futile. Instead I felt more relaxed. Hot water beat down on my skin, massaging
and soothing me. I kept at it until the hot water ran out. To combat the
malaise, I went to my coffee maker and got it brewing while I found clothes and
shoes.

I drank the pot of coffee by the window
facing the street so I could watch the people go by. Dinner consisted of a
handful of stale fortune cookies to keep my energy up. They tasted like
cardboard but were sweet and went well with the coffee. The stimulants started
to kick in and I finally felt like I could be awake long enough to get the
library work done and maybe sell some of Donovan’s inventory.

Shit. Donovan. He’d been calling on the
hour again. The man liked to micromanage, even worse now since I had the
Whiteout to push. I gulped down the remaining coffee and set out on the short
walk to the library.

It was cold outside with icy rain that
wanted to be snow but was thwarted by the nearby sea. The hem of my jeans was
soaked by the time I got to the giant Seattle public library. I wasn’t the worst
off in the area. Homeless congregated inside and out of the library. I
recognized some of them. They gave me knowing looks and nods.

I waited twenty minutes before a computer
freed up and typed in my password and library card number by memory. After
searching a few options, I found a credit check website that seemed adequate. I
typed William Grigg’s social security number and other information in and hit
enter.

Olivia was right. Before me was my living
history. There were two locations. The first was my parents’ house which I
learned was in SeaTac. There was a huge gap of time between then and an
apartment in Ballard. After that, there was nothing.

For what it’s worth, my credit score was
terrible.

I found a piece of scrap paper by the
printers and wrote down the address, then searched for it in Google maps.
Nothing stuck out. The location meant nothing to me. I dug further and found
the name of the apartment complex and searched that specifically.

There was an official website, some bad
reviews. Management never addressed an ant problem in building C, lights were
never replaced in the parking lots. A sister apartment building farther north
popped up in the search.

And an article. It was archived on a local
news website. I opened the link. In huge black type was the headline,
Promising
music student commits suicide at Ballard Heights.
The article didn’t have many
details, but it seemed like a straight forward suicide. A young man named
Andrew Cole hung himself. His roommate had moved out shortly before the death
which was hypothesized to have increased Andrew’s feelings of depression and
anxiety.

I scrolled past the article and found a
video of the news channel segment on it. I hadn’t brought headphones but I
clicked the play button anyway. A pop-up offered subtitles which I accepted. A
demure woman stood in front of an apartment complex. It was classic grayish
Washington weather. Behind her an apartment was closed off with yellow crime
scene tape. She repeated the same information that was in the article.

I paused the video. One thing it had that the
article didn’t was a perfect shot of Andrew’s apartment. 1B. That number, 1B,
was the apartment I lived in. For a brief moment I thought it could be a
coincidence, then I double checked my living history dates. I lived in 1B when
Andrew killed himself.

“Oh fuck.” Beside me a middle-aged man
scowled at my curse. I glared back until he finally looked away.

I hit play again to finish out the
remaining thirty seconds of video. An older couple came on screen. The text on
the bottom said they were Lenora and Richard Cole, Andrew’s parents. They spoke
about the tragedy of their son’s death and how they would just like to mourn in
peace.

Sure. That’s why they agreed to a news
segment; not because they wanted to mourn in peace, but because they wanted
their twenty seconds of run time.

I typed their names in Google and spent
the next twenty minutes scouring the internet for anything. She had a Facebook
account that was private. Eventually I found a church blog that had an old post
for an evening social hosted by the Coles. Lenora’s number was at the bottom,
asking for members to call with what they’d bring to the event.

It would be surreal to call these people
out of the blue and ask if they knew anything about a guy named William Grigg. Fuck,
what else was I supposed to do? I felt compelled to contact them. If they had
nothing, fine. It wasn’t a setback seeing that this was a shot in the dark. If
I
had
been the roommate, they might tell me something useful about
myself. I jotted down the number with plans to call after I left the library.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I
wanted to search my parents’ name, but something held me back. After this many
years, they’d moved on. Why wouldn’t they? I willingly submitted myself to
tests for drug rehabilitation. I’d been a drug addict. That meant I caused them
pain. They’d been living their lives without me, probably happier. Who was I to
waltz in, the clusterfuck of problems I am, and put myself in their lives? I
was still a mess, still addicted to drugs, and would still be a problem.

The self-help books would tell me I’m
worth it. That it was low self-esteem making me think I didn’t deserve
happiness or second chances. Fucking self-help books. The evidence was always
stacked against them.

Screw it. It didn’t do anyone any harm for
me to just look. I typed in my mother’s name. There were plenty of Rachel
Griggs. Even taking into account she’d look older than in my memories, none of
the work or social profiles were her. My search for my father, Samuel, yielded
the same results. I added words like ‘death’ and ‘obituary’ as search terms.

Nothing.

Disappointed, I logged off my library
account and went outside. A few men I saw earlier approached me for some oxy,
which I obliged once we found a more discreet spot. I tried pushing some bennies
on them, but they weren’t interested. If I really wanted to sell all my stock
quickly, I’d go to the overpass. If the sea of tents was there, I’d have my
inventory gone in a heartbeat. Not for optimal price, but at least it would be
gone.

First, the phone call. I got my clamshell
piece of shit cell out and typed in Andrew’s parents’ number. On the third
ring, nerves almost got the best of me. Then a soft woman’s voice came on the
line and I knew I had to follow through.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Mrs. Cole?”

Hesitance on the other end. “Yes, who is
this?”

“My name is Donovan Holloway.” I smashed
the first two names together that I could think of. “I went to school with your
son Andrew.”

“Oh, I see. You know, Andrew…”

“I know. I’m sorry to bring up painful
memories. That’s why I’m calling though.” I took a breath. My brain was on
autopilot trying to find an excuse. I should’ve thought about it more before
calling. “Me and a few others wanted to do a memorial for him.”

“A memorial? It’s nearing nine years since
he died.”

Shit. “Yes. This is for next year. Ten
years is the right time for a memorial we thought. We’ve been thinking about it
a lot.”

On the other line, she sighed. She sounded
relived. “Andrew didn’t have too many friends. I’m sure he would be so happy to
know people still have him in mind after all these years. What is it you need
from me? Photos and such?”

“Photos would be great. I was hoping to
get a few words from you about your son, things like that.” The words came out
before I really thought about what I was doing.