Page 65 of Undefeated

“Love ya, bro,” Ripp said as he held his fist over the bed.

I clenched my hand into a fist and pounded it against Ripp’s hand. He pounded against mine in return.

“Alright, let’s do this,” Ripp said as he put his arm around Kace.

“Take care of her, Ripp,” I said as the turned toward the door.

Ripp turned his head, looked over his shoulder, and said what I expected.

“I got this,” he smiled.

I got this.

Ripp was better at being a friend than most people are at being family. We are stuck with our family - we don’t get to choose them. We choose our friends, and I was certainly glad I chose Ripp. As I lay in bed, I wish I could have chosen my family. I reached up to my neck to make sure my dog tags were gone.

I never wanted to see them again.

The doctor ran every type of test he could to determine if there was brain damage. After all of the tests resulted in negative, I told the truth about what I knew regarding my collapse. I didn’t know what caused it, but I knew to some degree what I felt immediately before it had happened. Additionally, I could clearly see the differences in myself afterward.

Some strange combination of Kace seeing her mother, the crying, and emotion triggered a nightmare while I was asleep in the living room. When Kace and I walked into the bedroom, I felt strange. When she opened the footlocker, something inside of me snapped. My head filled with the memories of my childhood, depicted as a dozen little movies all trying to play inside my head at once.

It was more than I could make sense of, but any fool would have been able to understand the content of the memories. They were all the same.

My father was beating my mother.

I’m not certain if I chose at some point in time in my life to rid myself of these memories, or if my brain naturally did it to try and let me live in peace. I know that for my entire adult life I have not been able to recollect my memories of childhood. I attributed that lack of memory to the fact that we shuffled around from house to house when I was a child.

I know now that the lack of memory had nothing to do with moving from home to home. Now, as I lay in the hospital bed, I was beginning to recall memories of my entire childhood.

And I didn’t like any of it.

My father was a savage.

My mother left when I was a child. Now, I know why. No differently than Kace and her mother, she was abused by her spouse – my father. I have spent my late teens and entire adult life standing up for every woman that has been abused, and now I have a clear understanding why I have felt such an attachment.

I wanted to vomit.

As I tried to make sense of what was developing in my head, the door opened.

“Dekkar? Shane Dekkar?” the doctor asked.

I sat up in bed, “Yes sir.”

“How are you feeling?” he asked as he approached the bed.

“Fine sir. I’m a little confused. I have new memories running around in my head and it’s strange, really strange. Hard to explain,” I responded.

“The human mind is a fabulously complex piece of equipment,” he stated as he leaned closer to me and looked into my eyes with a light.

“Well, I have a thousand questions,” I said as I tossed my legs over the bed.

“I’m afraid I probably won’t have any of the answers you’re looking for. I’m a family practice doctor. You’re going to need to talk to a psychiatrist. We’re going to want to keep you here until tomorrow, if that’s alright with you. I think it will be best,” he said as he leaned away from the bed.

“Well, I have some questions about not so much why this happened, but what to do now?” I asked.

“Again, I’m not going to be a big help. Actually, I really won’t be any help at all. There are considerable improvements that a psychiatrist can make, but we’ll address that tomorrow. Get some sleep and we’ll talk in the morning,” he said as he approached the foot of the bed.

“Improvements? I don’t want improvements. I need this to stop,” I pleaded.