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Farrow gives me a warm smile that instantly eases me inside this awful situation. Like my life isn’t imploding before my eyes.
“Can you describe the last event you can recallbeforethe accident?” he asks.
“There was an accident?” I say. “Like a car accident?”
His face tenses. He pauses, assesses, then says, “Before your injury.”
I wrack my brain.Beforemy injury? What was I even doing yesterday? Or was it this morning? How long have I been in this hospital?
Shit.
Um…oh I know! I have it!!
I inch up the bed. Barely budging, but in my excitement, I gain some super strength. “We had family dinner last night,” I say into a confident nod, the words surging out of me. “Mom cooked meatloaf, and Moffy told everyone that Declan is retiring. He’s getting a new bodyguard soon, and he’s completely freaked out about it because Declan has been with him forever.”
Farrow isn’t looking at me. He’s busy typing. I think I aced this. I blow out a breath. It’s okay. I’m going to be okay.
“What time is it now?” he asks.
The draped windows aren’t offering any answers. I search for a clock. Is this cheating? Maybe, but I can’t find a good resource anyway. “Early morning maybe? Seven a.m.?” It’s a wild guess.
“What day of the week is it?”
I bite the edge of my lip. “Saturday.”
“The month? All I need is the date.”
I puff out my cheeks in another breath. Let’s see. I remember Moffy’s 22ndbirthday. It was a few days ago. He was born on July 13th. So it has to be… “The sixteenth.”
Farrow presses the delete button. I swear he does! I blink a ton and press my head back to the fluffy pillow.Calm down.If I freak out, no one will think I’m healthy enough for answers.
I want answers.
“What’s the month?” he asks.
“July.” I imagine opening the drapes and seeing the sunshine and blue skies of summer.
“The year?”
I do mental math and give Farrow the correct year. The best part of this year will be my eighteenth birthday, which can’t come soon enough.
He’s trying to type faster, maybe seeing it’s jolting my nerves. My stomach twists as my confidence begins to wane.
I stare at the ceiling panels. “How hard did I fail this thing?” Maybe I should be asking how hard Ifell.
“This test isn’t a pass or fail,” Farrow says casually. “I’m just trying to determine if you still have post-traumatic amnesia. It’s important we keep track of that because once your PTA ends, we can determine how severe your brain injury is and what kind of care and treatment you need.”
I really like that Farrow is providing info like I’m an adult. Like I can handle this even with a head injury.
He adds, “Your orientation to your own person and to place is accurate. However, your orientation to time tells me that you still have post-traumatic amnesia.”
Time.
How much time am I off by?
He tells me PTA can be retrograde or anterograde. Basically, I can experience memory loss of past events from before the injury or memory loss of future events.
I don’t know what’s worse.
