Dissociative amnesia.
“It’s not unheard of following significant head trauma, particularly when the trauma occurs in proximity to acute emotional distress.” She crosses her arms. “Did something happen right before the accident?”
Yes. I was a jackass.
I nod.
She waits.
“I fucked up.”
She nods.
I wait.
She sighs when she realizes I’m not giving her any more information. She’s not the one I need to talk about my screw-ups to. That’s Lucy, my wife, who can’t fucking remember me.
“The brain, under sufficient pressure, will occasionally—not always, not predictably, but occasionally—excise a period it has flagged as intolerable. It is,” she continues, “a protection mechanism.”
Her brain was protecting her against me. Self-loathing and I have become close friends this past week—it settles around me like a second skin, and if I thought I could feel worse, I’d be wrong.
“Will it come back?”
“It might. There’s no reliable timeline. Could be days. Could be longer. Could be?—“
“Could be permanent?”
She meets my eyes. “It’s unlikely. But yes. It’s possible.”
I tuck my hands into the pockets of my jeans as I process this new development.
My wife does not remember me.
She does not remember our marriage, our house, the farmers market, the kitchen table at three in the morning—a married life I spent, most of which I didn’t appreciate and would now,I understand, with the comprehensive clarity of a man who has been awake for four days, give anything to return to.
Her brain has decided I am intolerable.
I cannot, with any honesty, argue the point.
As the day progresses, her family and Dina arrive in a slow trickle. I am jealous because Lucy knows all of them.
She doesn’t know me.
She doesn’t know Percy.
Thankfully, she also cannot remember my asshole brother, stiff and insincere mother, and vapid sister.
They don’t come by. I ask them not to.
“Lucy needs her rest.”
The past four days have brought a sort of détente between Dina and me. Whenever she looks at me, though, she wears a compound expression that I have come to read as “I blame you,”layered over, “But I know you care about her.”
I watch Lucy and Dina from the doorway. I’ve been either inside or at the door, standing like a sentinel, waiting for any instance of my wife recognizing me, even a fraction.
Lucy’s face, which has been carefully composed since she woke—taking things in, not giving much out—opens up with pure joy as she talks to her friend.
I am so fucking jealous, I can hardly stand it.
