Chapter 5

A Chapter by FoxgloveLove

It's been an hour since I saw myself, the reflection of a face that should have been mine, but wasn't. The nurse left to give me some time to calm down, although I still don't think I can wrap my head around this situation. It can't be real, can it? Even if I assume that the calendar is some kind of elaborate joke, there's no way I can explain this face. Was it surgery? Maybe some futuristic medical technology that allowed me to swap my mind with someone else's? Heh, yeah right, as if they'd care that much about some enlisted grunt who got blown up 25 years ago.

But then there's that name: Alex Henderson. Hearing that name was like having a bucket of ice water dumped on my head. It doesn't make the situation any less confusing, but I know it has some kind of significance to me. Even if I were to assume that what the nurse is saying is true, then how do I have such vivid memories of my entire life as Tyler Linebaugh? I remember everything about my past: my childhood, middle school, high school, all the way up until I joined the Army. There's no way you could have a dream that lasts an entire lifetime; I've never even heard of such a thing.

The nurse finally makes his reappearance, with his clipboard and a cart full of medical gadgets. I wonder what kind of surprises he'll have for me this time.

"I'm glad to see that you're feeling a little bit better now. I was worried about how you would handle seeing yourself, but I felt it might be for the best to help you realize what's going on," he says in his disturbingly relaxed voice. Honestly, it kind of bothers me how calm he is about this situation, as if it's hardly anything out of the ordinary.

"Easy for you to say," I mumble.

His carefree smile drops for a moment, but quickly returns a moment later. For some reason, it's a little satisfying.

"I'd like to perform a sort of memory test with you, just to check your ability to recall certain items from your personal experience. It'll help us determine how you're holding up mentally. Don't be alarmed if you don't remember something, not all of the items may be things that you are familiar with; in fact, there may be a number of things that shouldn't be familiar to you at all. Would you be willing to give it a try?"

Maybe what's bothering me is just the fact that his gentle voice doesn't match his muscular appearance at all. That must be it. He looks like he'd be at home gunning down terrorists, but instead he's wearing a nurse's getup and talking to me like I'm a lost kindergartner.

"Sure, I guess I don't see a problem with it. Not like it's going to make things any weirder than they already are."

He reaches down to the cart and picks up a stack of cards with pictures on them. Now that I notice it, actually, the things on the cart aren't any kind of medical equipment, it's just a bunch of random crap. I suppose that's just all stuff for this memory test.

He holds up the first card. "Can you tell me what this is? And please, try to be as specific as possible."

It's pretty obvious, since I carried one everywhere I went for the last couple years, so I reply, "Yeah, it's an M4 Assault Carbine."

He puts that one down and holds up another. "How about this?"

"That's a Stryker, one of our armored vehicles," I answer.

He continues going through a few more cards, all military-related things. I name it all off easily, since I've been working around this stuff for a while.

"Alright, now we're going to move on to some new things. Can you tell me what this is?" He holds up a picture of a laptop computer.

"Yeah, that's a laptop."

He holds up another. "And this?" For the first time, I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at. It's just a small, rectangular thing, only a couple millimeters thick, with a smooth, glassy surface on one side and a single button.

Well, the last set of cards were all alike, so I guess it's probably some sort of newer technology, so I simply answer, "Umm... it looks like some kind of computer thing... maybe." I second guess myself at the last second, and now I sound like an idiot.

Without telling me whether I was right or not, he simply writes something down and moves on to the next card. As I thought, the rest of it is all tech stuff. Most of it I recognize, but there's a few things in there that I don't remember seeing at all.

He finishes showing me the last card in the stack and puts it down. "Well, it seems like your memory of your life as Tyler is still quite good. Now, we're going to move onto something else. Again, don't worry if you don't recognize something, this is all simply part of the test. Now," he picks up the first new set of pictures, "can you tell me what this is?"

The first picture he holds up is... a sewing machine? I respond with that. The next picture after that is... a wooden hoop, like something for embroidering. Wait, why do I know that? I've never embroidered a single thing in my life. Well, maybe I just saw it online or something...

...

We finish off all the cards, and I feel a little surprised at how much of the things I actually remember. He puts all of the cards back on the cart, and then he pulls a small box from the bottom of the cart and sets it on the bed next to mine.

"There are just a couple more items I'd like to show you," he says, "and then we'll be all finished up with the test. I'm happy to say that you've done quite well so far, much better than I would have expected."

"I guess so, I think I'm just as surprised as you are." I honestly don't know how I remembered half the things I did, but I just seemed to know what they were instinctually.

The nurse pulls a piece of cloth out of the box and holds it up. It's a simple cotton cloth with a small design of different colored threads embroidered onto it. "Do you recognize this?"

"Of course I recognize it, I made..." I stop in the middle of my sentence. I slowly reach out and take the cloth in my hands, examining it.

If there were ever a moment in my entire life where I thought I felt déjà vu, it was absolutely nothing compared to this sensation right now. Had you asked me ten seconds ago whether I had ever embroidered anything, I would have simply started laughing at you. Yet now, as I sit entranced by this nostalgic design, I can feel as if I had been here in this bed only yesterday with a needle and thread, stitching away without a care in the world.

The nurse, seeming satisfied with my reaction, brings me back to reality as he begins to speak again. "I have one final item I'd like to show you, and then we'll be done."

As he turns back to the box he had pulled off the cart, I hear a beeping sound coming from the wall by the door. I look over and notice there's a phone on the wall. The nurse walks over to the phone and picks it up. "Yes? ... Right... I see... Very well, I'll head there right away," and he hangs up.

He walks back to the box and sets it on the cart. "I'm sorry to have to cut this short, but it seems I'm needed elsewhere at the moment. If I have a chance, we can come back to this later."

Before he walks out, he takes some more embroidering material off the cart and sets them next to me. "If you'd like, I can leave this here for you."

I'm not really sure how to respond, so I simply say, "Thanks..." in a weak voice.

I take back what I said earlier, I am way more confused now than I was before, which is kind of amazing if you think about how crazy the day has been. It's hardly been a few hours since I woke, the sun still shining high in a cloudless blue sky, and yet the number of shocking revelations I've experienced continues to grow. I can only imagine what that 'last item' the nurse was about to show me could've been.

I gaze at the embroidery materials he left by me for a moment. I suppose, whether I actually knew once upon a time how to embroider or not, I don't really have anything else to do right now. I pick up the needle and slip the end of the thread through the eye.

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