Wide Awake (2 page)

That stopped everything for me.

"What do you mean?" I whispered.

She frowned and glanced back at the man. He frowned, too. "What do you remember about your accident, sweetheart?"
I shook my head. "I don't remember anything." I thought hard. Actually, that statement was truer than I had intended it to be. I couldn't remember…anything. I sucked in a breath. "Who are you? Do you know something about my…accident?"

The woman's devastated face told me she knew everything, but there was apparently something I was missing. She threw her face back onto my bed and sobbed so loudly that the nurse came in. She looked at the man there. He glanced to me, a little hint of some betrayal that I couldn't understand in his eyes, before looking back to the nurse. "She must have amnesia."

The nurse ignored him and took my wrist in her hand to check my pulse. I wanted to glare at her. What the heck did my pulse have to do with anything at that moment? "Vitals are stable. How do you feel?" she asked me.

How did I feel? Was she for real? I rasped out my words. "I feel like there's something everyone isn't telling me."

She smiled sympathetically, a side of wryness there. "I'll get the doctor."

I looked up at her. She was short and petite, her blond hair in a bun and her dog and cat scrubs were crisp. I watched her go before looking to the man again.

"I don't understand what's going on. Did I…" A horrifying thought crossed my brain. The gasp I sucked in hurt my throat. "Did I kill someone? Did I hit them with my car or something? Is that why you're all being so weird?"

The man's own eyes began to fill then. I felt bad about that. I knew it was my fault, I just didn't know why. He rubbed the woman's back soothingly. He shook his head to dispel my theory and took a deep breath. A breath loaded with meaning and purpose. "Emmie…you were in an accident," he repeated once again that I was 'in an accident'. OK, I got that. I wanted him to move on to the part that explained the sobbing woman on my bed. He continued after a pause, "You were…walking home from a party after the football game. Someone…hit you. A hit and run, they said. The person was never found. They left you there and eventually someone else came along and helped you. But you'd already lost a lot of blood and…" He shook his head vigorously. "Anyway, you've been here for six months. You were in a coma, Emmie."

I took in a lungful of air and uttered the question that I somehow knew was going to change my world. "Why do you keep calling me Emmie?"

He grimaced. "That's your name. Emma Walker. We always…called you Emmie."
"My name… Emma," I tasted the name. "I don't feel like an Emma."

He smiled sadly. "Oh, baby. I'm so sorry this happened to you."

The woman raised her head. "Emmie." She tried to smile through her tears. "Try to remember," she urged. "Remember what your favorite color is?" She nodded and answered for me, "Pastel Pink. That's what you were thinking, right?"
Pastel pink was the last color I would have ever picked. She tried again. "Or purple?"

Uh... "Are you sure I'm Emma?" She started to sob again and I felt bad, I did, but I needed answers. "Who are you?"

"We're your parents," the man answered. "I'm…Rhett. And your mother is Isabella. Issie…" he drawled distractedly.

"Rhett?" I asked. "Like in
Gone With the Wind
?"
He smiled. "That was your favorite movie when you were little."

I closed my mouth and felt the weight bear into my chest. I wasn't me. I had no idea who I was. These people claimed to know me and be my parents, but how could I just forget them? How could I forget a whole life?

I tried really hard to remember my
real
name, my
real
life, but nothing came. So, I threw my Hail Mary, my last attempt to prove that I wasn't crazy and didn't belong to these strangers, however nice they may be. "Do you have some pictures? Of me?"

In no time, two accordion albums were in my lap - one from the man's wallet and one from the woman's. I picked up the first, trying to sit up a bit. The man pressed the button to make the bed lean up and I waited awkwardly until it reached the upright position. I glanced at the first photo.

It was the man, the woman, two girls, and a boy. They were all standing in the sunlight in front of the Disneyland sign. The man was wearing a cheesy Mickey Mouse ears hat. I glanced at him and he smiled with hope. I hated to burst the little bubble that had formed for him, but I didn't recognize any of these people. The pictures proved nothing. "I don't know any of those people."

The woman seemed even more stunned, if possible. She stood finally and turned to go to the bathroom. She returned with a handheld mirror. She held the picture up in one hand and the mirror in the other, and I indulged her by looking. I have no idea why I was so dense to not understand what they had been implying, and what I had so blatantly missed.

I was
in
the photo.

I looked at the mirror and recognized the middle girl as the girl in the mirror. I took it from her hands and looked at myself. I turned my head side to side and squinted and grimaced. The girl was moving like I was, but I had no idea who she was. She looked as confused as I felt. I looked back at the picture and examined…myself. She was wearing a pink tank top with jean shorts. Her hair was in a perfect blonde ponytail and she had one hand on her hip and the other around the girl's shoulder. One of her legs was lifted a bit to lean on the toe.
Cheerleader
immediately rambled through my head. I almost vomited right there. "I'm a cheerleader?"

"Why, yes," she answered gently. "You love it."

My grimace spread. "I can't imagine myself loving that. Or pink."
It hit me then. Like really sank in. I had no idea who I was. I had forgotten a whole life that no longer belonged to me. I felt the tear slide down my cheek before the sob erupted from my throat. I pushed the pictures away, but kept the mirror. I turned to my side and buried my face in my pillow, clutching the mirror to my chest. My body did this little hiccup thing and I cried even harder because I couldn’t even remember doing that before.

The man and woman continued to stand at the foot of my bed when the doctor came in. I looked at him through my wet lashes. When he spoke, his voice sounded familiar. "Emma, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but it appears that you've developed amnesia from your accident. We’ll have to run a lot of tests, but the good news is that in more cases than not, the amnesia is temporary."

I jolted and wiped my chin clear of tears. "You mean I could remember one day?"

"That's right."

"Don’t get her hopes up," I heard from the doorway and turned to find the man-boy. My heart leapt a little. He was the only person that I remembered. Well, from when I woke up at least. He felt like some awkward lifeline I needed to latch onto. He shook his head. "Every case is different. She may never remember anything."

"Mason," the man yelled, making me jump at the volume of it, and shot daggers at him across my bed, "this doesn't concern you."

"She's been in my care for six months," he growled vehemently and then glanced at me. He did a double take when he saw that I was awake and looking at him. I had no idea what the expression on my face may have been, but he softened immediately and came to stand beside…my parents.

"Isabella. Rhett," he said and nodded to them as they did in turn. He was on a first name basis with my parents. He wasn't wearing scrubs like the nurse. He was in khakis and a button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled almost to his elbows. His name tag said "Mason Wright - Occupational Therapy". He looked at me with affection that showed the truth behind his words. "I'm Mason, Emma. I've been doing all of your physical therapy while you've been…asleep."

"You look a little young," my mouth blurted. I covered my lips with my fingers, but he laughed like he was embarrassed.

He swiped his hand through his hair and glanced around the room. "Yeah… So anyway, I'll be continuing your care now that you're awake. You'll have some muscle atrophy and some motor skills that will need to be honed again." I nodded. "But, from what I've seen from working with you these past months, I'll think you'll be fine in that department."
"Working with me? Like moving my legs while I was asleep?"

"Mmhmm. And your arms, too. It keeps your muscles from completely forgetting what they're supposed to do." He smiled.

I wanted to smile back at him, but feared that I didn't know how with this face. Plus, my body was exhausted just from this little interaction. He must have seen that, too, because he turned to the tall man who had yelled at him before. "She needs her rest."

"I know that," he said indignantly. "However, the news crew will be here later on." He turned a bright smile on the woman that was supposed to be my mother. "She'll do an interview with them and tell everyone all about her ordeal. I'm sure you could even get a deal on a big story to the-"

My father spoke up, putting a protective hand on my foot. "You set up an interview with the press the day she wakes up…and didn't even get our permission first?"

They all kept talking around me. Mason started defending me along with my parents. The man apologized half heartedly and I assumed he was the head doctor or some hospital administrator from the way he was acting.

My mind buzzed and cleared in intervals. I lost all track of time and eventually just turned to let my cheek press against the grainy pillow. My throat hurt from the tubes that had been keeping me alive.

Only to wake up to a reality that was more fiction than non.

My eyes still knew how to cry though and I tried to keep myself quiet as I let the tears fall. I thought I'd definitely earned them. Eventually the room quieted and the lights were turned off, all but the small lamp beside my bed. The phone on my bedside stand had a small list of numbers, for emergencies I assumed, but the name on the top of the card was what caught my eye. 'Regal City Hospice'.

Mason had been right. I wasn't even in a real hospital. They hadn't expected for me to wake up.

I wondered if that fact had put a kink in someone's plans.

Useless Fact Number Two

You burn more calories sleeping than watching television
.

The television was on. It woke me with screams and I looked up to find some women yelling at each over a scrawny man. Jerry Springer was still going strong after six months apparently. Six months…

I tried not to cry again.

It had been over a week since I woke up. My body was alive, but my brain just shut down. It was as if I was still asleep, but aware of what was going on around me. My eyes were open, and I just lay there and tried not to remember that I
couldn't
remember anything. My parents told me I was nineteen years old. I'd had a birthday only a week after the accident. Nineteen years of my life were gone, as if they never happened.

After they told me, I just turned on my side and refused to move. Refused to participate. Refused to be the person they told me I was. It made no sense. I could remember who Shakespeare was. I could remember what eight multiplied by eight was. I could remember what happened on September eleventh and the Twin Towers. So why couldn’t I remember what color hair I had, or who my friends were, or even my own name?

The days blurred, the minutes pressed into hours.

The doctor came in and yelled at me, told me I was being a child. The police still had yet to 'interrogate' me, he said, like getting run over was my fault. My parents defended me, said that I'd been through enough. They begged me to eat and when I didn't, they had someone come in and put cloudy liquids into my IV to sustain me. I knew I was reacting. Whether it was
overreacting
or not, I wasn't sure. But wasn't I due a little bit of that after everything I'd been through?