TBI

My head is on fire.

            I try to open my eyes just a little bit, trying to figure out where I am. Immediately, a bright white light blinds me, and I quickly bring my hand to my face, blocking out the offensive light.

There’s something stuck in my wrist. I can feel it burn, and I want to get it out of my skin, but my hands feel impossible heavy. There’s a lot going on around me; I can hear it. But I don’t care. I wish they’d leave me alone.

            I pull the sheets up over my head. Someone tries to yank them down, but I hold fast. I don’t know who these people are, and I don’t care. I just want them to leave. I want to sleep. I want to go home.

            Eventually, they let go.

 

            When I wake up later, the light is dimmer and the noise has gone away. I managed to open my dry eyes, and the gray lights that assault me leave an aching feeling in my hollow sockets. My ribcage feels constricted, like I can’t take a deep breath. It feels like my head has been replaced with a block of ice, and I struggle to move it.

            I can still feel the burning in my wrist. I close my eyes again and try to ignore it. It hurts, but it would hurt more to move to fix it.

            “Sam?”

            I feel like I know that voice. It sounds familiar but…not. It sounds older than I remember. More tired.

            “Sam? Can you hear me?” Someone takes my burning hand in theirs, clutching it, like I’m going somewhere.

            I open my eyes again, blinking as I turn my head. I suck in breath as I see the person next to me.

            I know him. But I don’t. He has less hair than I remember. And it’s a different color than I’m used to. Less brown, more silver. The skin around his eyes has drooped, turning a sickly lavender color.

            “Dad?”

            He smiles in relief. A single tear falls from his eye, splashing on my hand.

            “Oh, Sam…’Grâces soient rendues au Seigneur’…”

            He keeps praying his head bowed. I look around the room.

            “Dad? Where am I?”

            My Dad raises his head, staring at me with his large gray eyes. He sighs and runs his fingers through my black hair.

            “Listen, Sam.” He says softly, looking into my eyes intently. “You fell. You fell down the stairs and hit your head pretty hard. You’re going to be okay, but-“

            “Where?”

            He looks confused. “What?”

            “Where?” I ask again. “Where were the stairs?”

            “At home.” He replies, like it’s obvious. “I was in my office and I heard you fall and…I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do, so I just called an ambulance and…”

            He keeps talking, but I don’t hear. I feel like I’m underwater, and sound is making its’ way through in choppy, short waves and I can’t possibly comprehend what is being said.

            There are no stairs in our apartment. There are a flight of steps down the hall from us, but there’s no way he could have heard me fall if he was inside the apartment. And he doesn’t have an office. He has a computer set up in the bedroom he and Mom sleep in, maybe that’s what he meant.

            Mom. I try to raise my head, look around. She’s not here. Dad and I are the only ones in the room.

            “Dad?” I say, interrupting his monologue. He stops talking, looking a little embarrassed with himself.

            “What is it, Sam?” He asks.

            I bite my lip. “Where’s Mom?”

            His eyes fog over. His lips barely move as he whispers.

            “What did you say?”

            I try to sit up, feeling a little better. I take a better look around the room. There are flowers on a chair in the corner, bright sunflowers and lilies and a group of differently colored roses. A hot pink Barbie balloon dances across the ceiling. A giant glittery heart stands on the floor, saying GET WELL SOON SAM! LOVE, JAKE, YODA, TOM, AND ALICE. “Where’s Mom?” I ask again, feeling like something is missing and I don’t know what. “Who are Jake, Yoda, Tom, and Alice?”

            Dad’s eyes widen. He makes a sort of squeaking sound at the back of his throat. Suddenly, he jumps up and turns around, not even looking back at me.

            “Nurse!” He yells, running to the door. “Nurse! I need your help!”

 

            The numbness in my arms and legs has worn off, but my knees still quiver underneath my body when my Dad helps me out of bed. The nurse insists on pushing me to wherever we’re going in a wheelchair. I try to argue, but nobody listens.

            The room we go to is dark, though there is a small window overlooking a rainy city. A man in a white coat and gray beard greets us.

            My Dad talks to the doctor, the nurse, in a strange language I can understand but don’t know why. I don’t remember hearing it before.

            I sit there, wondering what the hell is going on and when my Mom is going to get here. Eventually, another nurse walks in and throws a folder onto the table. The doctor gets up and starts talking into what looks like a really weird phone on the wall. My Dad continues to talk with the nurse, both paying absolutely no attention to the folder.

            I pull the yellow folder to me and open it. My name is on top of the sheet in capital, bold letters. SAMURU THANOS MANQUANT. I roll my eyes. At least in this weird universe I’ve been dumped in, I still have the same stupid name my parents gave me.

            I scan over my sex, my birthdate, and glance at my age, and the world stops turning.

            Seventeen. That can’t be right. I cannot be seventeen.

            I look at my birthdate again. It reads 4/13/1994. I was born on April 13, so this is wrong. It should say 13/4/1994.

            But that doesn’t explain why my age says seventeen.

            If I’m not seventeen, how old am I?

            I take a deep breath and try to rationalize all this. If I was born in 1994, and I’m seventeen, it would be what? 2011? No way. No freaking way.

            But I can’t remember what year it is. How old I’m really supposed to be.

            I dare to look at the rest. It states I had appendix surgery when I was twelve, and I when I put my hand to my stomach I can feel the faint scar running across my abdomen.

            I close my eyes. I don’t want to read anymore. I want this game to end.

            I open my eyes again and read the rest. Apparently I’m on Cymbalta, Haloperidol, Ambien, and Valium. It lists words that have no meaning. I blink, and the inky letters swim in front of my face.

            A white hand reaches over and quickly shuts the folder. I look up, startled, at the doctor. He smiles too late and slowly drags the folder across the table.

            “Good afternoon, Samuru.” He says, stumbling over my weird name. “I’m Dr. Mengeli. I’m going to ask you a few questions. Would that be okay?”

            He speaks slowly, like I’m an idiot, but I can understand him, though I don’t know how. He isn’t speaking French. I try to think of where I’ve heard this strange, ugly language before.

            I nod weakly. It’s about all I can do. My Dad tells him it’s ‘just Sam.’

            Then I recognize it. English. He’s speaking English. I heard it once when a woman from England came into my preschool classroom and attempted to teach us some English.

            But this English is rougher. Different from what I heard before. Are we in England right now? Why would we be in England? Why wouldn’t I be in a hospital in France? That’s where we live.

            The doctor sits down, shuffling the papers in front of him. “Now, Sam, tell me.” He says, looking up at me through his thick glasses. “What year is it?”

            “2011, isn’t it?” I say, my throat sore. I want some water. I wish I wasn’t here. I wish they wouldn’t interrogate me like I’ve done something wrong.

            Dr. Mengeli looks at my father. “Did you remember that, or did you read the date on your file?”

            I don’t respond. He stares at me like I’m hopeless. Like it’s my fault I don’t know what’s going on. I finally look down.

            Dr. Mengeli sighs. “What is the last thing you remember? Not read about, remember.” He taps his head.

            I bite my lip. “I’m not sure. I think…I think going to Paris with my parents. That’s right. We went to see the Arc de Triomphe and the Notre Dame?” I stutter, speaking the unfamiliar language I somehow know.

            Dad takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

            “The last time…” He says, exasperated, a sigh hidden between every few words. “Your mother and I took you to Paris…you were four.”

            That can’t be right. That just can’t be right.

            “Have you taken him to Paris any time since then?” The doctor says, furiously scribbling in a notebook. Dad nods.

            “I have. Just me. Without his mother.” He looks at me for a long second, and the questions flying through my head threaten to fall out of my mouth. Dad sighs and turns back to the doctor.

            “I took him to Paris every year for his birthday since his mother left us, up until the year we moved to the U.S., when he was ten.”

            What? Mom wouldn’t leave us. Maybe she went back to Japan by herself to be with her family. That must be what he meant. She went back to Japan. So why are we in the U.S.?

            “Sam, could it be possible that you are thinking of a trip you took with your father, without your mother?”

            I shake my head. “No. I remember we went on a boat ride on the Seine…” I said, struggling to capture the fuzzy image in my head.  Dad gets up and walks over to the window. He stares out of it silently. “We passed an Italian restaurant and we could hear accordion music coming from the outdoor dining area. Mom said something about how she always hated accordions. Thought they looked stupid or something.”

            Dr. Mengeli keeps writing. I don’t say anything. Dad keeps staring out the window. I want to yell at him, yell at all these people. I’m not really sure why.

            Eventually, the doctor stops writing. He pulls some papers out of his folder and pushes them towards me. He hands me a pen.

            “Do you think you could do these?” He asks, as if talking to a child. I nod without looking at them. He smiles and goes back to maniacally scribbling in his notebook. I want to see what he’s written, but I’m scared of it too.

            I turn my attention to the sheet in front of me. It’s full of simple math problems a first-grader could do. I scribble in the answers (Should never use a pen to do math) and move on. The problems get significantly harder as I go on, but somehow I know how to do them. I keep going, and the papers turn to science questions. I don’t remember ever learning about the pH scale or about the physics of mirrors, (Real image vs. Virtual image) and that doesn’t even seem to matter. I fix a few paragraphs containing grammar errors (Always proofread) and do some vocabulary.

            When I’m done, the doctor looks at it all and nods.

            I’m shuffled to another room, where they shine bright lights in my eyes and test my ‘alertness’ or whatever. Dad hangs back to talk to the doctor.

            The nurse asks me a few questions that I answer without really thinking. I feel fine. My head hurts, but if I fell hard enough to knock myself out, that’s no surprise.

            I refuse to think about losing my memory. I did not lose my memory. My memory is here. In my head. I just can’t find it.

 

            I want to sleep when I get back to ‘my’ room, but the doctor comes in and tells me what I don’t want to already know.

            Amnesia. I do not have amnesia. Amnesia is something that happens to people in soap operas or in movies. It doesn’t happen to high schoolers. It doesn’t happen to me.

            I sit in a chair and stare out the window as Dad talks to the doctor. The doctor says I should go back to school ‘as soon as possible’ to ‘normalize’ everything. I want to tell him the only thing that will make this normal is if this never happened.

            The doctor makes some crap up about how Dad’s supposed to act around me when I finally do go home, which won’t be for a while because they want to ‘monitor my progress’ or whatever. I wonder where the hell we are in America.

            Finally, he tells us that amnesia is not always permanent, and I might get my memory back at any time. I roll my eyes. Whatever. Not gonna happen. Not with my luck.

            The doctor finally leaves. I resist the urge to flick him off as he walks out the door. Dad drags another chair over to me and sits down.

            “Rough day, huh?” He smiles at his lame attempt at a joke. I don’t respond. He sighs.

            “I’m sorry, Sam. This has to be a lot to take in, but-“

            “Why did Mom leave?” I whisper, not looking at him.

            He doesn’t seem to hear me. “What?”

            “Why.” My voice creeps up in volume, my hands clutching the chair in a death grip. “Did. Mom. Leave.”

            Dad stares out the window. “She got her green card.” He says quietly. “She got her green card a few weeks after we came home from Paris that one time…and she just left. The next morning. Without saying goodbye to you or me.”

            I wrap my arms around myself. He’s lying. He has to be lying. Mom did not abandon us, didn’t abandon me. She wouldn’t do that.

            “Have you seen her?” I make myself ask. “Has she wanted to see me?”

            Dad closes his eyes, not answering me. “I’m sorry, Sam.”

            I exhale and sit back in my seat, staring out the window.
            “Where are we?” I ask. I thought Dad would be relieved I dropped the subject of Mom, but he looks even sadder.

            “Seattle, Washington.” He says. “I was going to move us to Louisiana at first, because they speak French there, but that just didn’t work out.”

            I want to ask him what ‘just didn’t work out’ meant, but I drop it.

            “So, these Jake, Yoda, Tom, and Alice.” I say, pointing to the Barbie balloon. Dad rolls his eyes.

            “They’re your best friends here. You really don’t remember them?” I shake my head. I don’t remember anything about this place. Dad sighs. “Jacob and Yoda- actually, his name is Edward, but I think people have called him Yoda since he was little-are twins. They live next door to us. They mean well, but they’re definitely troublemakers.” Dad rolls him eyes again. “I’m guessing it was Yoda’s idea to get you a Barbie balloon. He does weird things like that.”

            I smile. Sounds like people I’d like.

            “Tom is a math genius. That’s probably how you became friends. He’s a very sweet boy. He’s my favorite.” I roll my eyes. “I don’t really know how Alice fits into your group. She’s very tomboyish, if that helps.”

            I draw my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around my legs. I shiver. It’s cold in this hospital. I want to go home. My real home, with both my parents and no hot water.

            Dad stands up. “I’m going…I’m going to find us something to eat.  I’ll be right back.”

            I nod and watch his reflecting in the darkening glass. He bends over and fishes his wallet out of his coat pocket. He doesn’t look at me before walking away.

            I wait until he shuts the door behind him, then I let myself cry.

 

I think Dad is hoping I’ll suddenly remember everything when we arrive home, but nothing comes back when we pull the old Godmobile (that he must have recreated when we got here, because the Godmobile I remember did not have these nice fake leather seats.) into an unfamiliar redbrick two-story house.

            I suppose it’s pretty. There are flowers planted out front, and a lone maple stands off to the side. I can see a willow tree it the backyard, draping its graceful branches into our neighbor’s pool.

            Red and yellow leaves cover the ground, leaving almost no grass to sight. Murky sunlight filters in through a haze of car exhaust and McDonalds grease fumes.

            There’s a welcome mat on the front step that says BLESS THIS HOUSE. I roll my eyes. Classic Dad.

            I don’t recognize anything inside either. I think Dad is disappointed. He rushes away to tape up my discharge papers and make us lunch. He tells me to go up to my room and take a shower and get dressed. I don’t tell him that I have no idea where my room is.

            I climb the stairs and open the first door I see. The room is painted light yellow and has a dusty rose colored bed shoved into a corner, a white dresser shoved up against the wall. I roll my eyes. Guest room at it’s worst.

            I close the door and open the next room. Bathroom. It’s a nice bathroom, with a full tub and shower. I think of how I don’t smell the best and probably should shower, but I don’t really want to be wandering around looking for my room in the buff.

            The next door has a crucifix and a sign saying BENEDICIMUS DEUM over the wooden frame. I roll my eyes. Dad.

            Sure enough, it’s my room. The walls are painted a boring light blue, and a double bed with a purple patchwork quilt sits underneath the front window. A desk is pushed underneath the second window, one that faces the neighbor’s house. Our neighbor, a fat middle aged guy with a goatee, is raking leaves without a shirt.

            I take a look at the contents of my desk. Textbooks are orderly stacked at the edge. AP Physics, AP Calculus 2, AP Government, AP Spanish 4…

            I don’t read anymore. My head hurts just thinking about the classes I am somehow stupid enough to take.

I have a bookcase, and it makes me smile. Some titles are French, but most are not. I take a book out at random and flip through the pages. Then I wrinkle my nose. It’s just two people arguing about sex and souls. I like this crap?

I shut the book and glance at the cover. Eclipse. I roll my eyes and toss it on my bed. It’s thick and seems to have three partners, and I bought all four of them. I’ll go back and read later. I’m probably missing something.

I go over to look at the door to my (presumed) closet. It’s decorated-no, covered-in photos. Picture of two nearly identical boys, probably Jake and Yoda, making a sand castle. One of the twins, probably Yoda judging by his Star Wars shirt, is standing in front of a pool, holding a water gun in his hands with an insane looking grin on his face, water soaking his dark brown hair and dripping down his face. Jake reading a book in a hammock, scowling as his brother runs past him. Me and a girl, most likely Alice, at some dance she had to wear purple fairy wings for. Someone who could only be Tom, wearing glasses and pretending to chuck a water balloon at the camera.

I open the closet. Pants and dress shirts with a school logo hang neatly on hangers, and sweaters and sweatshirts are stacked on the top shelf.

I close the door and sit on my bed. I’m…boring. I don’t feel like this other me had a personality. I feel like he was just a mold for me to fit into, a mold I am way too big for and know I could never fill.

I lay down, the book falling to the floor. I can’t cry anymore. I cried all I could cry at the hospital. I’m out of tears.

I don’t want to have amnesia. I want to remember. I want to take off my head and find my memory and put it back on right. I want to rip off this blindfold and stop playing this game.

But there is no blindfold. And this isn’t a game.

Author's Note

This is my 3rd (and last) short story for Creative Writing. I had something all planned out for the 3rd story, but Loathsome Stepsister (not to be confused with Evil Stepsister) 'accidently' dropped my computer down a flight of stairs, and a magnet 'somehow' found it's way onto my brother''s computer.
SO, once I retrieved my file from the depths of hell, I realized it was crap. So I deleted it. And wrote this. In one day. Keep that in mind.
And that concludes this chapter of Life and Times of Chihiro.

Reviews

[Richy Moon]

Wow, that was interesting... Really does suck you in to it and very well writen!!