9
Gavin
My head hurts.
There’s a crowbar in my skull tearing my brain apart. I can’t think it hurts so much. I want to peel the pain away, scratch it out of my head. It’s been like this for two days now, ever since I woke up in this horrible place.
Amnesia. Who gets amnesia? Isn’t that something that only happens in made-for-television movies? The doctors don’t know who I am. No one knows. Not even me.
And the doctors claim I may never remember.
I try not to think about that, because if I do, I feel as if I’m entering a dark, tiny room, and for some reason, that terrifies me.
The doctors also said that my memories may come back all at once, or in a slow trickle over time. But there’s nothing I can do but rest and wait and see what happens.
I don’t know anything about myself. But I do know that I don’t like to wait and I don’t like not moving. Even now, I itch to get up and leave. There’s someplace I’m meant to be, someone I want to see, I can feel it. I just don’t know where or who.
I pray that I’ll remember, or that they’ll find me.
I glare at the woman standing in front of me. She’s not pretty. I don’t know why this strikes me as something I care about, but there it is. She’s not cute.
I don’t recognize her. Not at all.
“Who are you?” I flinch at the noise of my own voice. It feels like nails punching into my head.
She blinks at me. And I decide to amend my earlier opinion. She’s not pretty, but her eyes, her lavender blue eyes, are stunning. She nervously licks her lips, her pink tongue darts quickly over her wide mouth and she looks down at the hospital sheet pooled around my hips.
“Billy,” she says, her voice soft like flowing honey. “It’s me, Jamie.”
I start to shake my head, but then stop. Because that hurts too. I want to say, who is Billy, but then I realize Billy must be my name.
I can’t remember…I can’t…I can’t remember my name.
Billy.
Okay.
Billy is short for William, and when I think William, there’s a whisper there at the edge of my lost memory.
“Who are you?” I ask again.
She clasps her hands in front of her chest, innocent blue eyes wide, frizzy red hair a halo in the hospital light. “Baby, it’s me. Jamie. Your wife. I’m here to take you home.”
My wife? Her face blossoms into a beatific smile, like the Madonna under the shining light of heaven. I can’t say anything, except…
“No.”
Because I don’t know who I am, I don’t know who she is, and I don’t know what’s going on. But I do know one thing. I never would’ve married a short woman with red frizzy hair, a flat chest, unflattering clothes bought off the rack at a discount superstore, and a southern drawl that sounds like it’s echoing off a hillbilly’s mountaintop.
I would never do that.
I don’t know who I am. But I do know that I have a certain taste in women, and this Jamie person doesn’t hit the mark.
At all.
“Sorry. No.”
She grins at me. “Aww. Come on, Billy baby. Gran and the kids are waiting in the station wagon.”