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Terror washed through me.
“I’ll get the doctors,” she told me, straightening, and I made another sound that made me even more terrified. I didn’t want to be alone. I’d been alone so long, drifting through that darkness.
I tried to grab her wrist, and the tubes connected to my arm yanked painfully against my skin.
“It’s okay,” she told me, her eyes wide with concern. “You’re alright.”
“What?” The word didn’t sound quite right either, my voice rusty from disuse.
“I don’t know what happened to you, exactly,” she said, sounding sympathetic. “You were hit by a car.”
I tried to remember being hit by a car. I tried to remember anything. But my head ached painfully, and there was nothing in my mind but shadows, the way we half remember bits of a dream.
“Hey there.” A doctor came in, tall with curly hair pulled back from a lean face. “Welcome back.”
There must have been a dozen other people who followed her into the room, watching me. As if I were some kind of medical oddity. A sense of panic washed over me.
Why couldn’t I remember anything?
“You’ve been in a coma for a month,” the doctor told me gently. “It’s going to take some time to get used to being back in the world with us. But you’re going to be alright.”
“Who’s—” I frowned. “I don’t remember anything.”
The doctor exchanged a meaningful glance with another doctor, which made me want to scream. “You’re experiencing post traumatic amnesia,” she told me. “Your memories will probably come back eventually… at least, most of them.”
Most of them?
“I’m fine.” I tried to push myself up to sit, but my arms felt weak and boneless.
I felt like I had to get moving, to find out what had happened to me, to find out who I was.
“No, you’re not,” the doctor said gently. “But you will be.”
The doctors put me through so many tests until I was exhausted. They explained that along with the loss of memory, my dreams would feel real and confusing. It was terrifying to know I was alone with no one to help me plant my feet on solid ground. No one to tell me who I really was. No one to help me sort dreams from reality, fantasy from fiction.
I fought sleep, terrified of the dreams, terrified of the dark pool. I tried to focus on the sound of the hospital outside my door, the clatter of trays being taken down the hallway, the voices outside.
But in the end, sleep swallowed me anyway.
I woke up the next morning to streaming sunlight and a familiar, cheerful voice. “But the thing is, I don’t think that was even the worst date I ever went on!”
Without being prompted by her friend, she went on, “Okay, it was pretty bad. But there was the guy who took me out running, which is like the worst date. And then lunch, where I made the mistake of going to the bathroom, and he ordered for me—prune juice and kale salad. And then he started preaching to me about the benefits of prune juice, in extraordinary detail… I mean, at least I like eating chips.”
My voice was so rusty when I tried to say something that I almost gave up, horrified by how weak I’d sounded.
But she rushed to me, looking delighted.
“You’re awake! Sleeping Beauty!”
“How… did you find… prune man? Did your… sister strike again?” The words burned in my throat after having been intubated.
She let out a hearty, surprised laugh. “You heard all that?”
“I don’t… have a choice… eavesdropping.”
“You weren’t eavesdropping,” she told me.
I looked around for the other nurse who had also kept me company. “Where’s…”
