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“Almost twenty-four hours, Waters—”
“They’re going to kick you out if you don’t—”
More muffled voices, some shouting from further away.
“She’s my wife!”
The curtain flew open, several rings ripping from the rod as fabric fluttered limply to the ground.
Aster Bishop stood there, blond hair in wild disarray. He struggled against Roy, whose nose was bleeding. Bishop looked like he wore some of Roy’s blood on the front of his otherwise crisp white shirt.
Security appeared behind them, dragging Bishop out of the room. A good thing too, since he’d clearly lost his faculties. Maybe he was the one who needed the neurological exam.
“She’s my fucking wife!” Bishop shouted again as security hauled him away.
Roy sheepishly met Molly’s gaze. Aside from the blood trickling down his face and his golden-brown hair looking messier than usual, he appeared otherwise unfazed by whatever had just happened with Bishop. Between his strong posture, steady hazel eyes, and slightly crooked nose from a formative T-ball incident, Roy’s arrival brought the familiarity and comfort Molly desperately needed.
“Uh. Hi, Molly.” He glanced around as if seeking direction or permission to speak.
“Roy,” Molly began, voice shredded by panic. “Why was Aster Bishop screaming bloody murder about his,” and the word almost strangled her as she said it, “wife?”
Roy’s eyes blew wide.
Dr. Maybe-This-Is-All-a-Nightmare sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose as if this was but another ridiculous series of events on an already unruly day. “That’s what we were getting to,” she said. “There were two questions you got wrong, Molly. You are twenty-seven years old. And your name is Molly Graham-Bishop.”
Six years had passed without her knowing it. Six years they said she’d forgotten.
Sedatives ultimately came into play when she insisted, loudly, that there was no way in hell her name was Graham-Bishop, and that Aster Bishop, of all people—arrogant, awful Aster Bishop—was her husband.
She wasn’t wearing a ring, so obviously it wasn’t true. Never mind the logical part of her brain that suggested any personal effects had likely been taken from her for safekeeping.
The next few days passed in an anxious blur that yielded no real answers. Her team of doctors, a carousel of names and faces she simply didn’t have the energy to remember, sat with her, irritatingly calm, and explained her diagnosis, her care plan, her limits, and what she could expect in the coming months. They walked her through concerning evidence of physical trauma on the crown of her head, scans that showed hemorrhaging in her brain, and asked her yet again if she felt safe at home.
It seemed like an asinine question when they were telling her in the same breath that she’d lost a significant chunk of long-term memory. How on earth would she know?
They gave no easy solutions. They tempered her hope with maybes, possibilities, and potentials. They spoke of no absolutes and offered very little confidence, leaving Molly with the sense that when she got her memories back, if she got them back, it would be a long and difficult road to navigate.
“The brain is both very powerful and very delicate,” one of her many doctors had said.
“I don’t want another useless platitude.”
“Mrs. Graham-Bishop—”
“It’s just Graham,” Molly snapped.
“We can’t control how the brain recovers from traumas like this. All we can do is closely monitor your progress.”
“I’m hoping for something a little more proactive than that.”
His smile shifted closer to pity than kindness. “Why don’t you try resting for a bit?”
When their advice wasn’t to manage difficult news one chunk at a time, it was to sleep. Rest. Recover.
As if a nap might easily reconcile her past with her present when she had to contend with anomalies like Aster Bishop.
He entered her room slowly, trailing several paces behind a particularly chipper nurse with the brightest green eyes and prettiest lashes Molly had ever seen. While the nurse began measuring Molly’s vitals for what felt like the thousandth time in the last several days, Bishop stood in the doorway looking spectral.
Aster Bishop embodied an uncanny valley in a way Molly hadn’t known was possible. Here was the haunted adult version of a boy she once knew. There was no denying that Bishop had grown into his features. The sharp, pointed angles in his face, shoulders, and arms she remembered from their contentious time in high school together had smoothed, broadening into a man’s frame. Less sharp, more refined. She’d caught glimpses of the beginnings of this in college but had tried not to waste her attention on anything Bishop was getting up to, dubiously evolving handsomeness or otherwise.
