“Graduating from university.” I wanted to pat myself on the back for not adding,which I’ve already told you, at the end of my sentence.
“And after the black out?”
Shifting on this couch was useless, because I was never going to be comfortable in this doctor’s office masquerading as a friend’s living room. “My first solid memory is in my old apartment, before I moved. I was on the phone with my marketing firm’s HR, arranging an interview. Everything in between that is…blurry.”
Some memories filtered by, stained and cracked. Of course, I could never be certain what was real, and what I simply wanted to cling to and say I remembered. In one of my foster homes, after my parents died, I used to tell teachers the plot to a movie I memorized was my life story. I wouldn’t be surprised if that same attitude came with me to adulthood.
Sometimes, I thought I could remember a small apartment and a green kitchen. Other times, I thought I almost grasped the edges of a man’s photograph, blond and handsome. Obviously, he hadn’t lasted, if he wasn’t there when I started over.
“Good. Now we have a timeline. This is where I think we should start.” Sitting up, Kathy leaned close, like she was a friend sharing a juicy secret. “I want you to lie on your couch or your bed, wherever you’re comfortable, and I want you to just let your thoughts drift to waking up in your apartment that day. Then, you’re going to try and stretch back five more minutes. Can you remember five minutes before being on the phone? It’s going to take practice, but the second you have something I want you to cling to it for all it’s worth. If you remember making a cup of tea, try andtastethat tea. If you remember the window being open, could you feel a breeze? The brain is a muscle like anything else. Maybe we just have to train yours a bit more.”
“Maybe.”I wish.I tuned out the rest of Kathy’s monologue, recognizing that she wouldn’t be of any use to me in this situation. Five minutes wasn’t going to change a damn thing when I was missing years.
Sure, remembering that chunk of time would help me in the long run, maybe. But right now, I needed a quick fix, and Kathy’s solution didn’t sound fast at all. I needed something to help me sleep, because I didn’t have months or years before Harry made his decision.
She smiled the entire time she talked, and I nodded, pretending I was paying attention. I handed over my credit cardat the appropriate moment, and shook her hand when I was supposed to.
When I finally stood on the street, alone with my thoughts again, I wanted to scream. Useless. Kathy had been fucking useless. Friends were unreliable, and isolation had been the norm since I was young. Just like with everything else, I was on my own.
Maybe it was better that way.
Chapter
Five
BLAIRE
Breathe in.
It always began like this. I’d get home, my brain still focused on work. Dinner would be made in my sparse kitchen—fewer things meant fewer places to sanitize underneath. I’d eat alone at my dining room table, looking out at the world through my living room window, imagining what it would be like to be one of the people below. I bet their chests weren’t tied into knots, ribbons of arteries and veins slowly wrapping around their lungs. One, then the other.
Breathe out.
I’d eat my food slowly, one bite at a time, as if by delaying dinner, I could delay the dread that awaited me when the sun went down. As if by scrubbing my dishes by hand, I could stop the world from turning. There was only so long I could outrun the night.
It didn’t matter how long I stretched out my evening routine. The sun would always start to set. Darkness always began to creep in from the left, spreading out its fingers from the single potted plant next to the window, slowly overtaking the empty end of the sofa.
The flickering of the first solar-powered nightlight signaled the start of the routine.
Breathe in.
Sometimes, I imagined that if I stared hard enough at the dusky skyline, I could prevent the night from flooding in. Other times, I saw it for what it was—a ruse. A game I could play with myself.
Eventually, I’d get to my feet. I’d shut the curtains, pulling them tight. The lights would be turned on, in order. The living room first. Then the hallway. To the kitchen. The small bathroom, still lacking those white tiles I’d dreamed the night before. Finally, I’d turn on my bedroom light.
After, when I’d finally given up the fight against my aching eyelids, I’d turn them all off in the same order.
Breathe out.
Tonight felt different.
I closed my eyes, trying to focus on what the psychologist told me, even though I assumed it was useless. Reaching back as far as I could, I stretched for the first five minutes of what I’d forgotten.
But there was nothing there, nothing but blackness, doubt, and a lingering feeling of guilt that made me sick to my stomach.
Harry’s words still swirled in my brain. I had a limited opportunity if I wanted to advance, and I wasn’t going to waste it.
I thought back to my hastily written plan to get my life back on track.
