There was an urgent thing I was supposed to remember. Really, really important. I’d been in the middle of it before I ended up here. But no matter how hard I forced myself to think, no matter how desperately I clawed at the edges of my memory, I couldn’t grasp it. It slipped away every time, like water through my fingers.
Eventually I stopped trying. I let myself lie back and float, imagining I was in an ocean. The darkness became water, cool and soothing. The silence became the soft sound of waves. The weightlessness became the gentle sway of the tide, rocking me back and forth with an invisible breeze.
I liked picturing it this way because when I did, I felt a presence with me. A person in the ocean too, holding me, their arms wrapped around me in an embrace I couldn’t see but could definitely feel. I didn’t know who they were. Couldn’t put a name or a face to the warmth that surrounded me.
But I knew I wasn’t alone.
The voices that spoke to me remained unrecognizable, which made me sad in a way I couldn’t explain. These people clearly knew me. They called out to me with emotion in their tones, with love and fear and desperation. And I couldn’t remember a single one of them.
Still, I felt safe here. Warm. Calm. Even happy, in a strange, detached sort of way.
Why would anyone want to interrupt that peace?
***
I swayed with the breeze, letting the imaginary ocean carry me.
“Lina.”
The voice cut through the darkness, clearer than the others had been. Was that my name? It felt right. It felt like it belonged to me.
“Baby, please come back.”
The voice cracked on the words, rough with emotion I could feel even from wherever I was floating. A man’s voice. Deep and familiar in a way that made my chest ache.
“The doctor says you’re healed already. Says you should’ve woken up by now.” A pause. A shuddering breath. “Please, don’t leave me.”
A sob reached me then, broken and raw, and it broke my heart. I wanted to go to him. Whoever he was, whatever he meant to me, I wanted to reach out and tell him I was here, I was okay, I just needed more time.
But my body wouldn’t cooperate. I tried to move toward the voice, tried to push through the barrier, and I sank again. Deeper into the dark. Further from the surface.
Not yet, my mind whispered. Not ready yet.
***
I’d had a lot of time to think while floating in this void. Too much time, maybe. But without memories to occupy me, without a sense of who I was or where I’d come from, all I could do was examine the fragments I had left.
Three things. I knew three things for certain.
One: I had people waiting for me. Important people. People who loved me and needed me and were calling out to me from the other side of this darkness. I couldn’t remember their faces or their names, but I knew they existed. I knew they mattered.
Two: I’d lost people when I was young. A teenager, I thought. The memory was gone, erased like everything else, but the feeling remained. A wound that had never fully healed. A grief that had shaped me into whoever I’d become.
Three: I was tied to a person. Spiritually. Connected in a way I didn’t fully understand and couldn’t begin to explain. There was another person living inside my heart, their presence woven into my very being. The warm sensation I’d only felt in my imaginary ocean now followed me everywhere, constant and comforting.
I didn’t know how that worked. Didn’t know if it was normal or supernatural or just a side effect of whatever had put me in this darkness.
But I didn’t want to lose it. Even when the emotions that flowed through that connection were heavy with sadness and desperation, even when I could feel whoever was on the other end suffering, I held onto it. Because sometimes the sadness would shift. Become love. Become hope. Become a quiet, steady determination that made me believe everything would be okay.
That made everything worth it.
I just wished I could see them. The person at the other end. The one who was holding me even from the other side of consciousness.
***
A wail pierced my ears.
High and thin and insistent. A baby crying. The sound cut through the darkness with a clarity that nothing else had managed, reaching deep into my chest and wrapping around my heart.
