“What type did I look like?” I ask, after taking a sip of coffee, which, yes, tastes like what you think horse piss would.
She gives me a measured look over the rim of her cup. “The kind who has someone else handle the difficult parts.”
Fair enough. I don’t argue with her.
“So…how is she?”
Dr. Reyes sets her cup down. “The swelling has resolved cleanly. The ribs will take six to eight weeks—she needs to be careful, no sudden movements, nothing strenuous. The lacerations are healing well, better than we expected.” She pauses. “Physically, Fox, she’s going to be fine.”
“And the memory?”
“Retrograde amnesia following a traumatic brain injury is”—she pauses as if choosing her words carefully—“unpredictable. The memories may return gradually. Fragments first, then more. Triggered by something familiar—a smell, a place, a feeling.” She meets my eyes. “Or they may not return at all. I won’t lie to you about that.”
She said that before, so I already know this. I’ve also read everything there is to read about the subject while Lucy sleeps.
“What I will tell you,” Dr. Reyes continues, “is that the environment she goes home to matters. Stress will not help her. Familiarity will. Patience will.”
She looks at me steadily when she sayspatience. I nod. Oh, I’ll be the most patient motherfucker known to mankind.
“She can go home the day after tomorrow.” She smiles when my eyes brighten. “Keep her calm. Keep her comfortable. Let her ask her questions.”
I drain the rest of the terrible coffee.
“Thank you. For all of it.”
She nods once, picks up her clipboard, and heads for the door. Then she stops.
“Fox.” She doesn’t turn around. “Whatever happened between the two of you before, she gets a clean slate now. Whether you deserve one is up to you.”
She’s gone before I can tell her to mind her own fucking business. But, fuck, she’s not wrong.
I stand in the breakroom for a moment, absorbing the buzzing fluorescent light and the smell of burnt coffee and industrial cleaning fluid, and I think about clean slates and what I’m going to do with mine.
I’m going to give myself to my wife and to living a full life.
I’m not going to waste a single second choosing stoicism over honesty.
Sure, I’m taking advantage of her condition. She doesn’t remember what she lost, so I’m handing her back a marriage I wanted to discard, dressed up as one I never once questioned.
This is not a move without risk. I know that.
Somewhere underneath the amnesia, the real Lucy knows. I just need to make sure that by the time she remembers everything, she has new truths she believes—that I love her and that every lie I tell her is one she can forgive.
Alright, Fox, time to get to work, buddy.
Then I throw the cup away and go back to my wife to do that work.
14
CAN I HANDLE THE TRUTH?
LUCY
By the time they discharge me, I have refined my performance considerably.
I have the slight bewilderment calibrated—the soft edges of a woman who is missing two years of herself and is trying to find her footing.
I have the looking-at-familiar-things-as-if-for-the-first-time face, which is unfortunately easy to produce because I am in quite a lot of pain and heavily medicated, and everything does feel slightly like it’s for the first time.
