What She Forgot
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Synopsis
The accident took two lives. But it also took Hannah's memory . . .
Waking in the hospital with zero memories after a car accident that killed her mysterious passenger and the other driver, Hannah finds herself suddenly thrust into a life she doesn't recognize.
Doting husband. Two beautiful daughters. PTA meetings . . . it all feels foreign, and while her husband and doctors assure her she's recovering well and the memories will return, she's not so sure.
As she struggles to search for herself, she discovers strange inconsistencies—things that make her question everything she's been told.
When her memories finally return, will Hannah's past spell disaster for her future?
Contains mature themes.
Release date: November 4, 2019
Print pages: 250
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What She Forgot
Cole Baxter
Chapter One
It was a lovely dream.
The constant beat of a restless sea as waves gently lapped on a sandy beach filled my ears.
The feeling of heat from the bright sun warmed my entire body. But a discordant beep of a reversing truck somewhere behind me was irritating my ears.
Beep. Beep.
The noise continued. I tried to look around to see how much longer it was going to go on, but I couldn’t see it. How far did that damn truck have to reverse? No matter where I looked, I couldn’t see it, but it surrounded me, the high-pitched whine filling my ears, my senses. I could feel myself becoming irritable. It was taking me away from where I felt I’d been for a long, long time.
Then I opened my eyes.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The sound was speeding up, which confused me.
It wasn’t the only thing that confused me.
Why was I staring at white false-ceiling tiles? It looked like a checkers or chess board but with just one color. How would that work? Where were the pieces? Why couldn’t I move? How could I win the game if I couldn’t move my arms and hands? What kind of stupid place was this?
I want to go back to my dream.
“Hannah? Mrs. Jolley?”
A smiling face came into my field of view, looking down on me from a few feet away. The beeping got faster, louder. I wanted to put my hands over my ears to make it stop, but when I tried to move them, something stopped me. What the hell is this place?
I tried to talk, to ask the face who the hell she was and where the hell I was. Nothing but a scratchy growl came out of my mouth.
“Here, take a sip.”
I felt something small and narrow being pushed between my lips. A straw. I sucked and felt cool, fresh water begin to fill my mouth before the straw was taken away again.
“Not too much. Take just a little at a time. Hi. I’m Jolene. Do you know where you are?”
I flicked my eyes around. All I could see was the all-white checkerboard ceiling and tubes, wires . . . things . . . sticking out of me.
I shook my head quickly.
Warm, friendly, deep-set brown, smiling eyes looked down on me. The uniform . . . a nurse. Blue scrubs. What the hell?
“You’re in the Spring Fountain Hospital Center.”
“Hospital?” I croaked the word. Speaking felt like an effort and made my throat rasp and forced me to swallow, even though it hurt like hell.
The face nodded, making it go blurry like a stop-motion animation, but only for a few moments. I finally managed to focus my eyes on her face again.
“Yes. Listen, Hannah. I need to just sit you up a little, okay? Just a little, until you have a chance to come around properly.”
Come around from what? What the hell had happened to put me in a hospital?
I nodded, but it made my neck hurt.
“That’s it. Just do everything really slowly. Okay, you ready? I’m going to sit you up with the bed. It will make a noise, so don’t be scared.”
The nurse, Jolene, reached out of my line of sight and did something because the head of the bed began to tilt up, forcing me to sit up. It was agony. The muscles in my back were stiff and felt unused. I just wanted to lie back down and doze off back to my dream.
“There,” Jolene said. “That will do for now. Listen, Hannah.”
I looked up into those beautiful, heavenly, friendly eyes.
“Don’t try to move just yet. I told the doctor that you were coming around, and he’ll be here to see you soon. You understand?”
I nodded again, but just barely. I didn’t understand anything that was happening to me. Nothing about it made sense.
“You want some more water?”
“Mmm.”
I watched this time as she picked up a glass and brought it in front of me, holding the plastic straw to my mouth. I sipped, reveling in the coolness of the crystal-clear water.
“Take it easy. That’s it. Not too much.” The straw slipped out of my mouth again. Jolene looked down at me with a stunning, perfect white smile. “You just take it easy, now. Don’t try to move just yet, then once the doctor has been to see you, we can start to get some of these wires off you. How does that sound?”
“Great.” My throat was sore, and the voice coming out of me sounded like a four-pack-a-day smoker. It didn’t sound like my voice, but when I tried to think what my regular voice sounded like, I couldn’t. There was nothing there, no memory of how I sounded before whatever had put me in hell.
“Okay. Stay put. You need anything else for a minute?”
I nodded mutely.
“What is it, Hannah?” She leaned in a little, still treating me to her dazzling smile.
I swallowed, then licked my dry, chapped lips, trying to moisten them with my still oddly out of control tongue.
“Who am I?” I asked.
Jolene’s smile slowly faded away.
***
“Hannah?”
I woke up with a start at the sound of a male voice.
“Sorry, Hannah, I didn’t want to make you jump,” the voice said. “Hannah, I’m Doctor Patel. I’ve been looking after you since you got here. Nurse Rigby let me know that you’re awake, so I wanted to come and introduce myself. You’ll be seeing a bit of me for the next few days.”
“Okay.” I licked my lips again. They were as dry as ancient parchment.
“Can you pick up the glass? If not, we can get you a cup to drink from.”
I tried to move my arm. Then I realized why I couldn’t. It was tucked under the blankets that were over me. Slowly and carefully, I dragged my hand up the bed until it flopped out and lay loosely on the top of the bedclothes. I tried to lift it again, but it just wavered around in midair. No control.
“Here.” The doctor started to lean over.
“No, let me try,” I said hoarsely.
He leaned back upright.
I looked at my hand and then at the glass. The water in it was catching the bright lights, making rainbows glint inside. The equipment stand behind it looked strangely distorted. The lights on it flashed, making more twinkles of color in the clear liquid. Then I looked back at my hand, concentrating, trying to remember how to reach for something. With what felt like a huge effort, I managed to raise it off the bed and twist my arm so it was heading toward the glass, but my hand hit the side of the table and it dropped away over the side of the bed as if it had a life all its own.
“Nurse, can you get Mrs. Jolley a cup, please?” the doctor said.
I glared at him.
“Baby steps, Mrs. Jolley. Baby steps. You’ve been awake for thirty minutes. Give it time. Your body has to remember a lot of stuff.”
I looked back at the shining glass. The glints of light might as well have been colorful stars in a midnight sky. Unreachable.
“So, what do you remember, Hannah? Do you know why you’re here?”
“No.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Hospital.”
“Good.”
I thought it might have been good if only I had any idea where the Spring Fountain Hospital Center actually was.
“Do you remember what happened?”
I searched back in my mind, but there was nothing there, just blackness and noise.
“No.”
“That’s okay. Try not to get upset. It’s very normal in your kind of trauma case to have a loss of memory.”
“Trauma?”
“Yes. You had a car accident, Hannah. You came into the ER here—”
“ER?”
“Emergency Room. It’s where we bring patients who are injured to treat them in an emergency.”
Makes sense.
“So, you came into the ER unconscious but with no major injuries. You had cuts and bruises, but we couldn’t find any serious injuries on you, but still, you were unconscious. That was in July.”
I was confused. There was a miniature Christmas tree on a side table between a couple of chairs that were against one of the walls of the room. I turned my eyes to it.
“Do you know what that is?” Doctor Patel had followed my eyes.
“Christmas tree.”
“And do you know when Christmas is?”
“December. December twenty-fifth.”
“Good. So, can you work out how long you were out for?”
I couldn’t. It made no sense. Nothing made sense.
“No? Okay, well, you’ve been here in the hospital for six months now.”
“Six months?”
“Uh-huh. Six months, and now you’re awake. It’ll be a fine gift for your family this Christmas.”
I could feel my brows screwing up. “Family?” I have a family?
“Yes. Your husband is on his way right now. I believe he is bringing the children too, but on another day, once you’ve had a chance to reorient.”
“I have a family?”
“Yes, you do, and a beautiful family it is, too. They have spent a lot of time here the last six months. Listen, I don’t want to overtire you. Try to get some rest.”
He stood up from the bed, and without thinking, my hand landed on his arm. “Doctor?”
He looked down at my hand, then back to me, smiling a big smile. “Yes, Hannah?”
“Who am I?”
The smile gradually diminished. He lifted my hand and tucked it back under the covers. “Get some rest, Hannah. We can talk again later.”
***
I woke up again to the sound of low, rumbling voices. They were distant, as though whoever was talking was miles away, even though I could still hear them. I could only make out an odd word, although I recognized Doctor Patel’s voice from our short chat earlier. “Amnesia,” I heard him say. I felt like I should know what that meant, but I couldn’t remember. “Trauma affecting her,” he said. “Will take some time. Don’t overload her because . . .” His voice faded away into a jumble of meaningless words.
Another voice. Not Jolene, the nurse. Male again.
“Will she know me?”
I didn’t hear a reply.
The room returned to silence, all but the constant beeping of the machines I was wired to. It was infuriating, and every time I started to let the anger bubble up to the surface, the steady beat began to increase in speed.
Doctor Patel’s face appeared in front of me again, still smiling but with a hint of concern in his eyes.
“Hannah. Good news. Rick is here.”
He must have noticed the look of blank non-understanding on my face. I shrugged to emphasize the point that I had no idea who Rick was.
“Rick is your husband?” he said, making a bland statement of fact into a question to which I couldn’t provide an answer.
He turned away.
“Rick? Why don’t you come on over?”
I allowed my eyes to flicker away as the sound of the machine’s beeping grew in intensity.
I watched as a man tentatively approached the bed. He was tall and looked like he took good care of himself. His jeans and T-shirt fit him well, showing off a chest that had obviously been gym-honed.
When our eyes met, his face lit up in a smile that bloomed then faded away like a hibiscus flower.
He must have seen the lack of recognition on my face, and I felt sorry for him. He had been waiting for me to come back to life for six long months, and I had never seen him before, according to what was currently passing as my memory.
“Hi, honey,” he said.
I didn’t know how to reply. I made do with a sharp nod.
He looked pleasant enough, no hard scowl, no edge to him, but he looked tired. His face showed dark patches beneath his eyes and was covered in a light stubble that looked like he just hadn’t shaved rather than as some kind of fashion statement. His skin was tanned, almost as if he had just been on vacation.
I had absolutely no memory of seeing that face before, yet according to the doctor and Jolene, who was also in the room, he was my husband.
I waited for a flash, some kind of epiphany of posing for happy photographs by the side of a lake somewhere, but there was nothing. Not a thing.
I couldn’t help it. Tears began to flow. Jolene passed me a piece of paper towel that she ripped from a dispenser on the wall, and I dabbed away at my face while trying to regain some kind of control over my heaving chest.
“Happy tears?” Doctor Patel asked as he patted the bed beside him for the man who was my husband to sit down.
I could see hope rising in Rick’s face as he sat down next to Doctor Patel.
I shook my head. With a wavering, high-pitched voice, I said, “No. No. Not happy tears.”
Both men’s hopeful faces fell slightly, making me feel even guiltier that I just plain did not recognize the man who purported to be my husband.
Doctor Patel pushed himself up off the bed and stood facing where Rick was sitting.
“We’ve already talked at length about this, Rick. There is nothing unusual in memory loss after a trauma. Often, we find that over the course of a few months, particularly when a patient gets home, somewhere comforting and familiar, that this type of memory loss generally begins to reverse. More and more comes back to the patient as time goes by. Now, I’m going to leave you here. I have patients to go see to, but if there are any problems at all, Nurse Rigby will be at the nurse’s station, just outside.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Rick said in a voice that was fluid and languid at the same time, like a slow-flowing river on a summer’s day. It was deep and filled with barely suppressed emotion.
The doctor flashed an insincere-looking smile to us both, then turned and walked away, leaving me alone with Rick.
I wondered if there wasn’t some kind of protocol to follow about that. As far as I was concerned, this man could be absolutely anyone. I’d seen no ID. I didn’t know who he was, but by the same token, I didn’t know who I was either.
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