by Mary Jaine
She said it with utter conviction, belief ringing in her voice. I had to admit, it would be easy to love a girl like her, shapely, beautiful, devoted, and possessed of the deepest kind of love and belief.
She dragged her hand across her glorious eyes, and smiled brightly at me.
"Every day I make offering and ask Daigan Bosatsu-Kami to rescue you and show you way home, he is God of travellers and all who lost, and he bring you back! I make offering to ask for help, now I ask again, ask him help you find way back to me! I call mummy, she coming soon, be here few hours time, you must rest now, I will stay with you, I want see your eyes, it been too long since I see them look at me, and now you can see me again!"
She sat on the bed, and without thinking I moved over as much as I could to make room for her. She swung her legs up and stretched out next to me, her eyes fixed on mine as she put her arm across my chest. It felt normal, uncomplicated, to have her here with me like this, and on impulse I put my arm around her. Teruko smiled as she wriggled contentedly.
"So long, my husband, it been so long, I miss you..." she whispered, pulling herself even closer to me, and snuggling her head down against me with a contented sigh. It felt good, and right, and familiar; somewhere a memory was chiming that we'd done this before, and it was good to do it again. After a while I realised she'd fallen asleep, poor thing, she must have been worn out. I felt protective and caring toward her, and a part of me wondered; was I reacting like that because she was so beautiful, and so obviously into me, or was my hidden inner self trying to tell me something about her, and me, about us?
I felt like I was in free fall, there was no-one or nothing to hold onto, perhaps I could start with her, maybe she could help me rebuild the part of me that was missing (which was most of me, I realised. I had my sense of self; I knew there was a "me" to rebuild, I knew my language, I knew I wanted to get out of this hospital soon, and I briefly wondered how I knew what a "hospital" was, when I didn't know jack-shit about anything else...)
I shifted slightly, and Teruko's eyes fluttered open.
"Please to rest, Jakku-san, mummy be here soon, must rest so not fall asleep when she here, she wait and cry for you so much, she want see and talk to you very much!"
Teruko pulled the covers up over me, then sat up next to me, her arm through mine as she stroked my hair. I looked at her and was surprised to see tears trembling on her eyelashes, and without thinking, I reached up and wiped them away with my thumb.
"Why are you crying? I asked her, and she smiled brightly, but more tears gathered in her eyes, brimming and trembling on the brink of running down her soft cheeks.
"I so happy to hear Jakku-san talk, I thought I never hear husband voice again, for so long he still and silent, now he talking to me, eyes still beautiful, still have same smile, so I happy!"
I smiled at her happiness at something so mundane, and again, and even more powerfully, I felt that connection, that sense that we were part of something, sure that this was more than just common or garden attraction and horniness on my part; I knew this girl, I knew her well, I was sure of it! All I had to do was recapture her, maybe if I could, I could find enough of me to recognise myself.
Teruko slid back down the bed to lie against me, her arm warm and comforting around me, the peach scent of her hair suddenly familiar, evoking blurred images of her smiling, standing with wet hair in a shower cubicle, and making me think of...a hotel. Why would I associate the smell of her hair with a hotel room? Was it a real sense-memory, or just random associations triggered by a random stimulus? Whatever it was, there was no escaping the fact that she was soft and warm against me, and another reflex kicked in, obviously so. My body may have been tired-out, but a certain part of me didn't care. Teruko felt it prodding her in her stomach, and she looked up at me and smiled.
"Husband better already! Must rest now, sleep, Jakku-san, mummy come soon, be ready for her, she very happy now, so sad for so long, now she happy again!"
As she spoke her warm little hand stroked my face, smoothed my hair, and rubbed my back between my shoulder-blades, the feeling restful and relaxing, easing me into sleep.
I woke refreshed, Teruko's eyes fluttering open as mine did, and a ghostly half-memory of seeing this before flitted across my mind for a second before it was gone, but once again that sense of connection persisted, more than just déjà vu. I felt something on my wrist and looked, to see my battered old military watch strapped on my wrist, and out of habit I shook and twisted my wrist to seat it more comfortably, while Teruko looked strangely at me.
"Why you do that, my husband?" she asked, and I replied without thinking.
"I always do that when I put my watch on......" before I realised what I'd said. Teruko grinned at me, and lifted my wrist to kiss the watch and the palm of my hand.
"Husband always say this his lucky watch, now I know it true!"
I looked at the watch, at my wrist and replayed what I'd said and done. I'd done it because it was second nature to me; did that mean more would follow? What other habitual quirks and behaviours would resurface? I was excited, in a low-level way. Maybe what Mr. Hunter had said about recovery was already happening; the amnesia really was only temporary, maybe it was already beginning to play itself out. I hoped like hell it was; I really wanted to remember my life, this girl, what had happened to me, everything that was missing before I'd woken up a few hours ago with an indelible blank stretching back in time where my life used to be.
My mother arrived about an hour later; it was a very strange meeting, for me, at least; here was this person I'd known my entire life, and I was struggling to make contact with her, because she was nowhere in my head or current experience. I could see how distraught she was, but there was nothing I could do to ease her distress; she was a complete stranger, and her distress only fed mine. What tipped me over was when she was leaving, she hugged me and stepped back to tip my head up to look into my eyes, her own eyes brimming with tears.
"Jack, my baby, my own little boy, what has he done to you? I thought we'd lost you forever, wherever you are, please come back, darling, please!"
The raw emotion in her voice was too much for me, and I began panicking again as I finally understood what my being in this room meant, how much harm had been done to everyone in my family, even if I didn't know them at all. Teruko hit the alarm button, and a few seconds later a nurse was injecting something into the cannula on the back of my left hand, and very shortly after the room began to go dim as the sedative took effect.
I woke in the bright sunshine of early morning, the clanging of the breakfast trolleys jarring me awake. Teruko was stretched out next to me, her arm thrown across my chest and her head lodged in the crook of my neck. Once again, as my eyes opened, so did hers, and she smiled to see me awake.
"Good morning, Jakku-San!" she smiled, and I grinned back, wondering if they were going to give me any food. Sometime during the night, the feeding tube into my stomach had been removed, my navel sore and itchy where it had obviously been in place for a long time, and I felt ready for some solid food.
I was just drinking-in the sight of this beautiful girl next to me when the door opened and Mr. Hunter came in. After a few pleasantries and the obligatory prods and pokes, he took my pulse, temperature and blood-pressure, and shone a light in my eyes again, before making some notations in the file clipped to the foot of the bed. I asked him what came next, and he paused, tapping his pen on his teeth.
"Right, Jack, I'm sorry, no breakfast for you just yet, we have an MRI scheduled for you for this morning, you can have something after, I've left a note at the Care Station, and you have a CAT scan this afternoon before lunch, and barring any major mishaps or discoveries, I think we may be able to let you go in a few more days; so far, your MRI's have shown no anomalous structures, lesions or anything except the expected scarring, and other than the amnesia and a little weakness from your long immobility, there's really nothing wrong with you, but I want to keep an eye on you f
or a little while longer. Once you leave, the desk will give you a list of follow-up appointments, it's essential you attend here for them."
As he spoke, the orderlies came to take me down for the scan, Mr. Hunter telling Teruko she might as well go home and freshen-up, as I was going to be in Radiology and Imaging for most of the morning, and she couldn't be in there with me. Teruko told me she'd go home, grab a quick shower and a change of clothes, and be back to wheel me down to the cafeteria for a late lunch.
And so it went; when I first woke up, they'd told me they didn't know anything about what was going on with me; ten days later they told me they didn't know anything about what was going on with me, at which point I decided that as I apparently had a home to go to, I was going there. Teruko had been a complete star the whole time, helping me to regain facility with walking and my balance, encouraging and supporting me, soothing me when the periodic bouts of self-pity almost crippled me, holding me tight when I raged at my inability to remember anything about anything, wheeling me around the hospital gardens, and just being there to be the only tether in my free-fall existence, a crutch for me to lean on, and a soothing presence to ease my fears.
I was no nearer resolving who I really was, no memories had returned except ghost flashes and meaningless images of people, places, and things, and increasing bouts of déjà vu, but I was collecting a whole new set, of Teruko, her loveliness, her calm stoic belief I would completely recover, her boundless patience, and, increasingly, thoughts and fantasies of what she would look like naked.
Apropos of which, one strange dream unsettled me, because I wasn't certain it was a dream; it felt more like something that had actually happened, in fact I was certain it was a real memory; if it was, it was a corker, believe me!
In the dream, I was in a room (hotel room? Couldn't be sure...) with Teruko, she was naked, and smelled of peaches. She was caressing me as I reached out for her and then my hand slipped over her back, my index fingers circling her lumbar dimples before sliding down to cup and squeeze and jiggle her shapely buttocks. As we kissed I gently jiggled and bounced her bum cheeks, concentrating on lifting and separating them, sliding my fingers deeper into the cleft between them, until my fingers were tracing over the taut, crinkled little hole concealed between those gorgeous, firm cheeks.
Teruko sighed and climbed onto my lap, straddling me, and slowly sliding down onto me, the tightness making me groan along with the feel of the wet heat enveloping me. She slid up and down a few times, then raised herself up, allowing my erection to slip out of her. She immediately took hold of me and began rubbing the slick head of my cock against her tight little anus, slowly working me into that hot, tight, moist little hole.
At last the head slid into her, her ring immediately clamping down on me, and she began to slowly slide herself further and further down onto me, until she was completely impaled, my cock buried to the hilt in her tight anus. I began thrusting into her, and she responded by pushing back against me, grinding her pussy against the base of my cock and gyrating her hips to work my cock in and out of her tight hot little hole. I lay back and reached out to hold and squeeze her beautiful, firm, protruding breasts, making her gasp and smile as she rode me.
Now she began to move faster, her face flushing, the squeezing of her rectum even more pronounced as she ground and slid up and down on my length until she came at last with a hissing scream, her head thrown back as her anus clamped down on me, her pussy squirting a spray of hot liquid over my lower belly as her pussy quivered against me. Her rectum squeezed and sucked at my cock in time to the fluttering of her convulsing cervix against the thin membrane separating it from her rectum as her orgasm rolled on and on. I came with a loud groan, spunk blasting out of me and into the tight depths of her hot bowels, the feel of my swollen cock wedging tight in her arse and the fluttering of her cervix wringing jet after jet of spunk out of me and into her. I saw stars, my eyesight dimming and my ears popping with the force of my climax as I poured myself into her, and she fared no better, sobbing and gasping with the seismic intensity of her thunderous orgasm.
I awoke from the dream gasping, my heart hammering with the realism of it, the vivid quality of it convincing me it was a memory, but when? Did this mean my memory was beginning to return? And had I done things like...that...with her? Why did I feel a trace of guilt when I thought of the dream, most of it already fading, but the memory of Teruko's face in her sexual ecstasy remaining vivid and lasting.
I'd completely accepted her assertions, borne out by my mother, that she was my intended bride, and I was determined to find a way to remember why I'd chosen her (or if, as seemed more likely, she'd chosen me...), although I was already falling under her spell. What Teruko had stated as a fact when I first awoke was coming about; I was falling in love with her again (or for the first time, take your pick), and it was the only thing stopping me giving up and fading away.
Coming home was an anti-climax; I'd hoped that being surrounded by the familiar would somehow jog things into place, but nothing happened, no sudden flash of returned memories, no emotional reunion, nothing. When Teruko asked me what I wanted for lunch, I had to be truthful and ask her.
"I don't know; what's my favourite lunch?" and the sudden flash of loss in her eyes as I said it reminded me how much she was missing as well, that I had to ask her what my favourite foods were, where the toilet was, what was my favourite shirt, a million things I suppose other people take for granted. I realised that I was missing a lifetime of memories and associations that you don't even consciously think of as memories, just the things that form that great big holographic image of your world in your head. I no longer had that image, or maybe I still did, but it was locked away; either way it made no difference, I couldn't access it anymore.
We sat and ate my favourite pizza, something I had no memory of ever eating before, but it was delicious, especially after the hospital food, which all tasted as though it had been boiled in a sock, and chatted about the hospital, my treatment, how I felt, because we had nothing else to talk about; I had no experiences, no day to talk about, no common experiences to talk and laugh over, something I'd seen people doing during the car journey across London. Young couples with their arms linked, laughing and talking, looking into each other's eyes, a world of shared experience, of a life lived, between them, and all I could do was reflect on my loss of that. I had no single thing in common with Teruko yet, and the barren landscape of my world frightened me.
Teruko sensed that I was becoming morose and self-pitying again, and put down her plate to snuggle up against me.
"I not want you come home to empty house, so you friend Harry and fiancée come to see you later. Harry come to hospital nearly every day, he at school with you, he play sport with you, he is your best friend!"
I was interested to hear that one of my friends would be coming over to see me, maybe he could help fill in some of the blanks for me. As I was thinking about this impending visit the doorbell rang. Teruko jumped up and took the plates into the kitchen, then answered the door, the sound of a male voice and another girl's voice sounding in the hallway. I started to stand up as they came into the sitting room, but the man who came in, a young man about my age, seriously good looking, with chestnut hair falling over one eye, made a patting motion with his hand, instead walking over to shake my hand. The stunningly beautiful young girl with him was obviously of mixed Chinese/European parentage; Harry and I obviously shared a taste for the same kind of girls!
"God, Jack, it's so good to see you up and about!" he grinned, and the girl hugged me, which caught me off-guard a little, patting my back as she hugged me.
We were so worried! Poor Teruko's been wearing herself to a frazzle, sleeping in that awful chair next to your bed every night for the last six months in case you woke up and she wasn't there! How do you feel, Jack? Honestly?"
I looked at both of them as they waited for my answer.
"Physically, I feel fine; a little wobbly now and then
, but the hospital assures me that's purely due to being immobile for so long, and should pass. As for the other thing; I have to be honest, you both seem like really nice people, and you obviously know me well, and I don't want to offend you, but I can't remember either of you at all; hell, I can't remember anything prior to ten days ago!"
The girl, who'd introduced herself as Sai Fong, looked at me sympathetically.
"It's okay, Jack, we're not offended. Harry and I were so worried for you, and for Teruko, she's been almost out of her mind; the only way we could get her to leave and get something to eat, or get some proper rest, was for one of us to wait there at your bedside. We saw you like that, so now that you're back with us, we'll take you as you are; we're your friends, always remember that, and you can't offend us!"
I was almost overcome; tears seemed to come easily these days, had I always been such a cry-baby?
Harry sat down next to me and put his arm around me, hugging my shoulder briskly.
"What Sai says is true, Jackie-boy, we'll be there, and maybe we can find a way to get this fixed together; all your friends are worried sick about you; we're just the tip of the iceberg, don't forget that! If I have to take you every place you've ever been, I'll do that if there's a chance it'll help you regain your memory. I've spoken with Doctor Hunter, and he believes that your amnesia is temporary, and perhaps it only needs one trigger to unlock your memories, we'll look and try anything until we find one, if that's what it takes; you're not alone, old boy!"
Harry spent the rest of the afternoon talking to me about school and rugby, escapades we'd had (which sounded fun, I really wished I'd been there!) mutual friends, general conversation which did a lot to flesh out my world-picture, showing me pictures of us together, I presume in school, pictures of me in a rugby strip, one picture of me holding up a large trophy with him. Harry was good company, and he genuinely seemed to like me, which disposed me well toward him as well.
