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“What?”
“Your name, what is it.”
“Hope.”
“Hope?”
“Yeah. My dad and his sisters are kind of strange. They all chose to name their kids in a type of theme. Dad named me and my two sisters Hope, Faith and Charity.”
“Your Mom didn’t mind?”
“Mom never worries about much. She’s kind of…self-involved.”
“Good you had your Dad...”
“For a while, yeah.”
“He’s dead?”
“He passed away a few years ago. I miss him, he was an amazing man.”
“Do I have parents? Did you call them? Fuck! This is so… it’s a mess,” I growl out with a breath that hurts to take. My head is still throbbing. I lay back against the pillow, and I don’t know what kind of man I was before, but the one I am now, has the strangest urge to slam my fist over and over into the wall until something—anything starts to make sense.
“I… there’s no one for me to call, Aden. I’m sorry,” she says, her face down, refusing to look at me. Probably because she doesn’t want to hurt me by explaining I have no one in the world… Well that’s not exactly true. There’s her. Apparently I have Hope… my wife.
“What kind of themes were your cousins named from?”
“Well Aunt Edna never had kids. She’s the one I…we inherited the motel from. My Aunt Ida Sue though, she had enough kids to run her own football team.”
“She did?”
“Yeah. She named her sons after colors and her daughters after flowers.”
“Flowers could work…but colors? That seems a little out there.”
“That’s my Aunt. There’s Gray, Green, White—you’ve met him, Cyan—”
“Cyan? That poor sap,” I mumble trying to imagine going through life with that name.”
“Yeah, and then there’s Black and Blue, the twins.”
“Now you’re just busting my balls.”
“Afraid not. I told you my Aunt is very…colorful—pun intended.”
I shake my head, but immediately regret it as pain radiates at the base of my spine and neck.
“Mother-fucker,” I mumble under my breath.
Hope jumps up and comes to my side. She puts her hand along the side of my face, brushing against my beard and pushing the hair from my face. It’s a soft touch, one I have to admit feels nice.
“You need to lay your head back and try to rest.”
“They told me I can’t sleep yet,” I joke.
“You can rest. I’m sorry, Aden… I really am,” she says and she sounds so sad. I lift my gaze to look into her eyes.
“How long have we been married?”
“Uh…well... that’s been a recent thing really.”
“It has?”
“We… well we didn’t like each other a lot.”
“In the beginning?”
She shrugs, but doesn’t really answer.
“This is so frustrating,” I growl, my eyes closing as I lean back, feeling hopeless.
“You don’t remember anything?” she asks.
“It’s so weird… I mean I look at the television and I know it’s a television. I look at the phone or things around the room and I instantly know what they are. I can remember the taste of a good steak and I remember smells I love. I can even remember that I despise the taste of tea. Yet…the rest of it… all of it, that’s all just…blank.
“And you can’t remember me at all?” she asks, and I hate that I have to tell her no. I can’t remember being married, but I imagine the last thing a woman wants to hear from her husband is that he remembers nothing about her.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, feeling stupid, but not knowing what else to say.
“Don’t worry about it,” she whispers, her hand brushing my face again. I close my eyes again and just try and breathe through the roaring ache of pain in my head. As I inhale, I catch a scent in the air above the disinfectant of the hospital.
“You smell like vanilla,” I tell her.
“Huh?”
“You smell like vanilla. I don’t know why, but I can remember that as my favorite scent.”
“Oh… it’s my bath crème and lotion…” she answers. I open my eyes to see shock on her face.
“It’s nice.”
“Uh…Thanks. You rest, I’m going to go talk to the doctor and see if I can do anything to help you.”
“Okay. Thanks… Hope.”
She doesn’t answer and a minute later I hear the door close. I instantly miss the scent of vanilla. I may not remember being married, but apparently I can remember the sweet smell of my wife.
My wife…
That sounds strange as hell.
Everything does.
twenty-two
hope
I did a bad thing… but I’m not a bad person.
I keep repeating those lines over and over. I’ve done it for the two days that Aden has been in the hospital. It doesn’t help. I go home after leaving him here every night, feeling horrible. It’s made worse because Aden has actually been kind of nice to me. I mean, he has his moments, but for the most part he’s been nice.
Nice.
Daria thinks I’ve lost my mind and I have to agree with her. Still, it’s nine in the morning and I’m getting ready to leave and go pick Aden up. Today is the day he gets to come home from the hospital and I’m already a bundle of nerves.
