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“These diagnostic questions are only meant to establish a baseline.”
“A baseline for what?” Molly asked. Her skin felt alive: a flock of birds, a swarm of insects, a school of fish.
“I know this is frightening,” the doctor said, glancing to a machine by Molly’s bed. “Let’s try focusing on one thing at a time. Just one thing. Can you try taking a deep breath for me?”
Molly tried, truly she did, but her exhale sputtered.
“You’re alright,” the doctor said. And suddenly, a hand rested on Molly’s forearm. Warm, light pressure through a thin hospital blanket. “But you’ve had an accident.”
When she didn’t continue, Molly asked, “An accident?”
Molly realized she was shaking. Never in her life had her body ever genuinely, uncontrollably shook.
“What kind of accident?” Apart from the fear and the confusion, Molly felt fine. Fine enough, at least. Fine enough not to require a hospital.
“Your imaging shows evidence of brain trauma. Two small bleeds, which we technically call strokes, that happened sometime yesterday morning,” her doctor said, pausing before she went on. “I need to ask, do you feel safe at home?”
Thoughts caught on brain trauma, Molly barely registered anything else.
When her doctor (Moore, maybe?) repeated the question about safety, Molly nodded.
“Yes, of course. I’m fine.” Because she was fine. Perfectly fine. Completely and totally fine. Aside from the splitting headache.
Her doctor’s features remained neutral. “You have no reason to feel unsafe? Physically or emotionally in danger?”
“I—no. I’m fine.” Alannah was a great roommate and one of her closest friends. And Pawntès, the world’s clingiest cat, was only a danger if he decided to smother her in her sleep.
Dr. M made another note on her screen. “I’ve already put in a request with neurology for a more comprehensive workup. But I’d like to go through a few more questions right now, if that’s alright, and see what you can answer correctly.”
“I can answer them all correctly.”
“Let’s not worry about—”
“Should I be worried?” Molly’s hot panic vanished, leaving something cold and vacant in its place. Terror.
The reassuring touch on Molly’s arm remained. “You’ve experienced a brain injury. Thus far you appear to have fared incredibly well. We haven’t noted any paralysis, and your speech and motor skills appear unimpacted. But we’re still evaluating you for side effects, which can include memory loss—”
“Memory loss?” The words felt leaden on Molly’s tongue.
“We hope only temporary. The mind is a powerful and adaptive thing, but it can also be unpredictable. Let’s focus on what you do know. One thing at a time. We are in Connecticut.”
Cold terror clashed with a renewed surge of hot panic, two sides of the same terrible coin.
Her doctor—Dr. Misfortune, it seemed—continued, “You were partially right about your name being Molly Graham. Your intake information, however, has you listed as—”
A roar from beyond the curtain cut her short.
“Where the fuck is my wife?”
Muffled voices. Something that sounded like a struggle.
“Get off me, Waters. I’m not waiting any longer—”
Waters? Roy was here? Molly’s heart leaped at the thought of her best friend.
She’d hit the jackpot at eight years old when moving from Arizona to Connecticut meant becoming neighbors with Roy. Unfailingly patient, he regularly let his new neighbor pester him with passages from her favorite books. In exchange, Molly hit more balls around more fields than she ever would have of her own volition, but Roy, even as a kid, was excellent at fairness, and that had made for an easy friendship.
If anyone could make this confusing mess less horrible, it was him. He was a notoriously gentle bad news deliverer, and Molly had made him open all her college admissions letters just in case. If she had to receive bad news, she wanted to hear it from him.
