She elbows me.
I lead her to the second pod. “That was my room,” I say, pointing to 210. “And this was yours. 205. We used to stand in our doorways at the top of every hour and wave at each other.”
A nurse in pale yellow scrubs approaches. “You must be Tucker and Ava.”
“Marsha?” I ask.
“Yes. We all thought your story was super cute. We’ve never had this happen on the unit. Do you remember where the disco room is?”
“Maybe,” I say. I feel a little turned around.
“This way,” she says.
“Can I take a peek into an empty room first?” Ava asks. “If you have one. This place is leaving a strong impression on me, even though I can’t remember it.”
“Sure,” Marsha says. “Do you know what room you were in back then?”
I point to 205. “That one. It looks unoccupied.”
We peer inside. It’s almost completely unchanged. The high television. The sofa that converts into a bed. Only the signs on the wall are different.
Ava walks in. “I feel a lot of emotions here. Anxiety. Anger.”
I take her hand again.
She looks down. “You doing that calms me immediately.”
“We did a lot of this in the hospital,” I say. “You called me out as your boyfriend straight away.”
“And here we are.”
I know it’s wise to slow things down. Let her process the parts of her memory that are activating. Sounds. Smells. The emotional history that her brain still connects to this place, even if she can’t pull forward an actual image of it in her mind.
Ava lets go of me and moves through the room, trailing her hand along the bare mattress and the metal frame. She picks up the wired remote that calls the nurse and works the television. I subtly record her walk with my phone.
She seems most interested in looking from the bed to the door. “Did I watch you from here?” she asks.
“You couldn’t see me from the bed,” I tell her. “But maybe you were as anxious as I was for the clock to move so we could see each other again.”
“I’m trying to imagine myself jumping up and racing to the door before my mother could stop me,” Ava says.
“That’s probably about how it went down.”
Ava heads for the door. “So, where is this disco room?”
Marsha leads the way out of the circular ward and down a hall.
“Here we are.” She steps aside so we can enter. “It’s all yours.”
My fingers slide around Ava’s, squeezing lightly. The disco ball sits dark and still in the center of the ceiling. The room is brighter than the first time we were here. A different style of speaker sits in the corner, and the gray floor shines with wax. It doesn’t look like any more people come in here now than when we did.
I pull my phone from my pocket and unlock it. I’m about to head over to the speaker when a familiar voice says, “I can get that.”
I turn. It’s Nurse DeShawn! He’s dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, so he must have come especially for us.
“You’re here!” I say. “How did you know?”
“Marsha wanted to surprise you. I’m one of the few people who have been here that long.” He tilts his head at Ava. “She doesn’t remember, does she?”
