AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I woke up and started talking.” Alek wanted them to leave. He wanted to hold Ian’s left hand for at least as long as it took to memorize the sensation of their freshly ring-cladded hands joined together.
“Try to think back to the moment you woke up,” Dr. Modorovic said. “Which of your five senses do you remember experiencing first?” She put her hands up. “Don't tell me yet. Just think.”
Alek closed his eyes. He didn’t remember hearing anything, but he did remember the strong scent of Ian—nostalgic, freshly-showered, concentrated. Red cedar and pine. Ancient forests, still and silent.
“Now, I’d like you to recall your first memory of the piano again, focusing only on your five senses.”
Wisteria wafting through the window, his uncle's hands moving fast over black and white stripes…
“Which sense is the strongest in that memory? And the other. You can answer now.”
“Scent.” Alek resented this game. Why couldn’t she tell him everything all at once?
Dr. Modorovic beamed. “Exactly! Very good!”
“What does this have to do with anything?”
“Don’t be a dick,” Ian said from the end of the bed where he stood, arms crossed, with an attentive look on his face.
Dr. Modorovic waved her hand. “It’s fine. I find his acerbic nature endearing.” Alek stuck his tongue out at Ian as she continued, “If we were to rank our senses in order of intensity and importance, scent would likely be near the bottom, butthat’s not to say scentisn’timportant. Scent and memory are closely related. It’s likely that everyone here has had the experience of smelling something and suddenly traveling back in time to the memory associated with it. Maybe it’s the artificial strawberry scent of a child’s toy. Returning to your house after vacation. A particular shampoo used on an important day. One sniff and it all comes back.
“Our sense of smell is connected to the hippocampus of the brain, where our memories are stored. There’s a great deal of research that supports scent therapy for everything from dementia to head injuries like yours, Alek. I think it might be something worth trying once you’re discharged. That is, if your musical ability hasn’t returned by then.”
“I want to start now,” Alek said. “What do I have to do?”
“Alek,” Ian said. “You need to rest. Your wrist needs to be checked. This can wait until you’re feeling better.”
“Ineedto be back to the way I was before.” Ian could fuck right off.
Dr. Modorovic looked between Ian and Alek as if she was trying to decide whose side to pick. She sighed, her gaze settling on Alek. “You’ll need to make a list of scents you associate most closely with the piano. Then Dr. Elias will round up some samples. Once procured, you will smell the samples while recalling a memory of your choosing. It should be a powerful piano-related one. You’ll repeat the process twice each day. In the meantime, you can brainstorm that list while you rest.”
“Piano polish. Loose tobacco. Cedar. Pine. Lemon,” Alek said immediately. “I would like Dr. Elias to go to my home and remove a cutting of flowering wisteria from the front of our house.”
“Fuck,” Ian said.
“Fuck?” Alek asked.
“While I was at the Victorian earlier, I pruned the wisteriaback to the ground, since it was damaged when you… by the… Anyway, it’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“I burned it already.” Ian grimaced. “I’m sorry. I wanted to get it done before you got home. I didn’t kill it. I just pruned it.”
“In four hours you cut down the wisteria and burned it?”
“Well, most of it was already on the ground. I’m so sorry. If I’d known…”
“There’s no need to apologize,” Alek said. “How could either of us have known?”
The entire thing would have been funny if it wasn’t happening to him. It was an almost karmic retribution, cosmic symmetry, some sign that the gods had a sense of humor. Alek’s antics had driven Ian to such rage that he aggressively pruned a house-sized climbing vine, and when that wasn’t enough to erase what Alek had done, he’d burned it, consequently destroying the remote chance of bringing back Alek’s music through some sort of magical sniffing test.
Ringing sounded in Alek’s ears, bringing with it a wave of nausea. He snuck a glance to confirm his barf bag was on the bedside table where the nurse had left it.
“Are you okay?” Ian asked.
Dr. Modorovic looked at Alek closely. The young doctor too.
“I’m fine,” he said sourly.
