As I Wake

by Elizabeth Scott

  Ava Hanson, it says. Allergies, none. 56-412.

  “I don’t—I thought—” I say, and the woman who called me Ava, the mother not-mother, says, “Oh, honey,” and starts to cry, big wet tears and hiccuping sobs.

  “Mrs. Hanson,” the doctor says, and the woman shakes her head, says, “I’m sorry,” and moves away.

  Her eyes are full of pain.

  5.

  THE DOCTOR ASKS ME where I live. “Your address,” he says, when I don’t answer.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What were you doing tonight before your mother found you?”

  I force my body to go rigid, to not shake. I force myself to look into the endless dark of my brain and search. “I don’t know.”

  He looks at Mrs. Hanson and I keep trying, looking for something, but there is only blankness because behind the bed and the light, behind Homeway Lane, there is nothing, and all I think when I think “Me” is—

  Nothing. I am a blank, a blur.

  “Okay. Tell me exactly what you do remember,” the doctor says.

  “Double-checking temperature,” the nurse says, moving around the doctor to scan my forehead with a small plastic machine.

  “I woke up in a room and I didn’t—I didn’t know where I was. So I left and I went downstairs, I went outside—”

  “See, she knows the house,” Mrs. Hanson says. “She knows how to go downstairs, and she knew how to open the front door. She’s fine. I’m sure she’s fine. She has to be—”

  “Mrs. Hanson,” the doctor says, so kindly, so evenly, and so full of pity that my skin prickles, and then he turns back to me and says, “Where are we?”

  “The hospital.”

  “And where is the hospital?”

  I stare at him because I don’t know.

  I know what a hospital is, I know what this room means, but it could be anywhere, I could be anywhere, and I don’t know how I woke up in that house or who Ava Hanson is and who her mother is and why I’m here, why I’m supposed to be here.

  The doctor frowns a little and then looks at Mrs. Hanson, the mother who has claimed me. “We’ll need to run some tests.”

  “Temperature’s normal,” the nurse says, and when I look at her she is blurred around the edges somehow, as if she’s here but not here, but then she becomes clear and I see an old woman, grandmother-age with silver hair and hands so thin they are nothing but knotty ropes of veins, watching me, dressed all in white like an angel.

  She is smiling at me, but her smile is like broken glass, shiny and sharp.

  She knows things about me. I can see it, and for the first time since this dream that won’t end began, I know something too. I know she has answers.

  “Where am I?” I say. “Who am I?”

  She points at the plastic on my wrist and says, “Hospital, of course. But soon you’ll be back home. Be back to your old self. You’ll see.”

  “But I—” I say and then stop because she puts her fingers on my wrist and her skin is cold like winter, like her eyes, and I’m not sure what I’m seeing now. I thought she knew things but my head is spinning, painful but not, like it is being looked at from the inside, and—

  “Ava,” the doctor says, and I blink, see him frowning at me. The nurse has two fingers on the inside of my wrist still, frowning as her eyes squint in concentration. She looks different though, younger.

  “What happened to the other nurse?” I say, and she looks at the doctor.

  “There was no other nurse,” he says, and then looks at Ava’s mother. “She drifted away just now, somehow. Her eyes were open, even. We have to run more tests.”

  “But she—she’s here, she’s going to be all right,” Ava’s mother says, her voice rising. “You don’t understand, but if I could just take her home—”

  There is more talking, lots of it, but this isn’t real, it can’t be, I can’t be a blank, unknown and full of darkness. And then I am being gently pushed onto the bed again, the ceiling gleaming down at me, and I don’t know this place but the older nurse knew something, knows me. I remember that. I know it.

  She said I was going home soon and so I will because I will wake up. I will. I have to.

  I close my eyes.

  Nothing happens.

  I just see dark edged with light, sneaking in and flickering green-white while Ava’s mother cries and the doctor talks more about tests and the nurse, the young one, the one who wasn’t here before, says, “I’ll go see if the neurologist is here yet.”

  I close my eyes tighter but nothing happens. I don’t wake up.

  When I finally open them Ava’s mother is looking down at me.

  “Everything will be fine,” she says. “Really, honey, it will,” and the doctor says, “Yes, it will,” and I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who I am.

  But I know a lie when I hear one.

  6.

  56-412 SLEEPS. 56-412 wakes up. I hear it; the stirring, the shifting of arms and legs, the scissoring up from dreams.

  56-412 listens to music. I force my feet to stay still, to not tap along because music doesn’t benefit anyone. It’s hard, though, because I’ve only heard the national anthem and it doesn’t beat in a way that snakes inside you.

  56-412’s phone rings, and the music stops. 56-412 is quiet, but doesn’t answer the phone.

  I listen, I hear the sounds of breathing. In, out, in, out. The phone rings and rings and rings. Why won’t he answer the phone? I can’t believe he has one. The waiting list for one is years. Usually only PDM officials or their families can get one.

  Breathing is regulated by the central nervous system. It happens without thought.

  My feet are cold. I think of shoes, lined with warm fabric. If I do well, if I get permission to shop in a government store, an official store, I can buy some. One day, I might even be able to get on the line for a phone, although if I talk on it someone like me will listen to every word I say. The SAT is always, always vigilant. That was the first thing I learned. We have to keep everyone safe, and everyone has a part to play in that—unless they are trying to hurt the PDM. Hurt us.

  I yawn, rest my head on my hand. Tell myself to keep listening, to stay awake. To wait. Something will happen. I know it.

  I can feel it.

  7.

  I WAKE UP SCREAMING.

  I wake up inside a machine. I can’t see anything, I’m in a tube and its insides are pressed up against me and the noise, so much noise, a harsh rhythmic clanging. I’ve dreamed myself inside a grave, I’ve dreamed myself dead, and I scream and scream and scream.

  I’ve fallen asleep inside an MRI machine. The doctors—I have more now—tell me that. They are looking inside my head.

  They give me something to make me sleep; they have to run these tests and no, there aren’t any phones ringing, they say when I ask. I see them look at each other.

  I see Ava’s mother watching me, hands held out like she’s waiting for me to take them before I close my eyes.

  8.

  WAKE UP.

  I am still in the hospital. Still in a world where everything is a blank.

  But there is a reason for the blankness, for all my confusion.

  I have amnesia.

  I have forgotten myself. The doctors think I might have gotten an infection inside my head, all around my brain, and that’s what made my memory go away.

  There was no trace of an infection in any of the tests they say, but I’m young and healthy and probably fought it off without ever feeling bad.

  I just lost my memory instead.

  I don’t see the gray-haired nurse again, but she’s right, I get to go home.

  Sort of.

  I’m sent away from the hospital, told I’m young and healthy, I’m lucky. I’m told, “Ava, you’re a lucky girl; things could have been much worse; you’ll get everything back; you’ll be fine. Take care.”

  It’s repeated over and over, a song of words, until I find myself outside the hospital, inside a c
ar I don’t know—brown on the outside, brown on the inside, stranger mother, Ava’s mother, asking me if I’m hungry or thirsty or need anything as we drive down streets I don’t know back to a house I do because I’d woken up in it and thought I was dreaming.

  But I wasn’t.

  It’s where I’m supposed to be.

  9.

  AVA HANSON is seventeen. She is a junior at Lakewood Day, which is a private school and expensive, but worth it because Jane, Ava’s mother, wants Ava to get the best education she can, and Ava likes Lakewood Day. Loves it, even. She writes in a messy scrawl, her A huge and the rest of her name almost hidden inside it.

  My handwriting matches hers.

  Ava has always lived with her mother. Her father died before she was born.

  There are pictures of Ava and her mother. Jane shows them to me, shows them all to me, and I watch Ava go from tiny to tall, up and up until Ava stands looking down at her mother, half grin/half scowl on her face.

  I can twist my mouth the same way.

  I look like the girl in the photos.

  I don’t remember anything.

  Inside my head is empty space. I know things; everyday life things, and a few things that make Jane’s eyes shade strange, afraid when I mention them (“Crèche?” she says when I ask. “No, Ava, honey, you were never in one of those. I don’t even know what that is!”)

  I feel things too; hunger and sleepiness and boredom (I don’t care about Ava’s first grade report cards)—and fear.

  Fear is always with me.

  I should remember things. This. Me. (Shouldn’t I?)

  But I don’t.

  10.

  ON MY FIFTH DAY of being Ava, I get up early. I am not sleeping well, and when I do, I dream of the orange chair I saw when I thought I’d woken up but hadn’t.

  I dream of it, and the attic. Of listening to 56-412 sleep.

  My hospital bracelet sits on my dresser. The numbers on it are not 56-412; they are longer, my social security number. I asked about seeing 56-412 but was told I was tired, that stress was making my condition worse. The same thing had happened with the nurse I thought I saw, remember?

  Yes, that I did.

  I was told not to worry, that things would be better soon, I’d remember everything.

  I get up, silent so I can slip away from Jane. From her need, her longing for her daughter. Her Ava.

  I walk outside, and the road looks just like it did the night I woke up wondering where and who I was, dark. I walk away from the sign I don’t know, from Homeway Lane, walk up the road.

  Little bits of rock and grit crunch into my feet. Ava seems to love shoes and has twenty pairs, but all of them have heels that make my ankles wobble when I put them on and so I am barefoot, my feet on the ground connecting me to the earth.

  I need that.

  I look down at the ground and close my eyes.

  After a moment I open them. I see my bare toes on the road. I am here.

  I am not dreaming. This is me. This is my life. But it doesn’t feel right.

  It doesn’t feel like mine, it still feels like a dream I’m in, that I’ve been put in.

  I shake my head, so confused, and when I look up, my heart-stutter stops, my breath freezing.

  The older nurse from the hospital is on the road too, walking toward me, her gray hair haloed by the rising sun. She reaches me easily, walking with long, strong strides. Her shoes are gray like her hair, and crunch into the grit and rocks, crushing them. Her smile is like snow, beautiful and cold.

  “Well, hello there,” she says. “I see you’re out of the hospital.”

  She will not pretend, then. Good.

  “I saw you there.”

  “Well, I would think so,” she says. “I volunteer there, you know. Take people to visit their relatives, walk them to where they need to go, that sort of thing.”

  “You told me I was going home,” I say, and she smiles at me again, her teeth glittering white.

  My head hurts, sudden and vicious pain, again like the inside of my mind is being squeezed. Rearranged. I see a face leaning over me, and the smile, I know the smile, I know—

  “I don’t remember saying that,” she says, and puts one hand on my arm. “You don’t look well, Ava. Maybe you’re—well, maybe you need to relax. Enjoy your life and not worry about remembering it.”

  I remember her hand.

  I know her hand.

  “You—I—you were there, you told me I was going home but you—” I say, and then gasp, the pain in the my head doubling, tripling, turning her into two old ladies, both of them staring at me, both of them watching me, unblinking. One watching me in the dark. One in the light. That smile. Her hands.

  How can there be two of her?

  How can I see them both?

  “Careful, Ava,” she says, and steers me, her hand guiding me, pushing me along, and twigs grab at my skin, pinching it, the smell of forest all around me.

  I don’t see woods, just the road, the streetlight, and the sign, but when I move I have to push the twigs away, push away from the woods—

  And there is nothing there, I am touching nothing, and my insides twist like I am going to throw up.

  “Ava,” I gasp, and she stops, looks at me.

  “We really need to get you home, I think,” she says, and I shake my head, agony because of the pain, a tight squeezing band that throbs from the top of my scalp to the very edge of my jaw.

  It’s like a knife inside me but it doesn’t stop what I see.

  What I know.

  I know a world but it’s not this one, I know I don’t belong here.

  I know something else too.

  “You know my name. You know I’m Ava,” I say, and her eyes go sharp like her smile but she isn’t smiling now, isn’t smiling at all, but only says, “Well, of course I know,” in a patient way, as if I have said something silly, and then waves one arm in the air like a signal.

  But I haven’t said something silly. She knows who I am. She says Ava and I know it. I feel it.

  I remember it as my name. My name.

  And I’ve heard her say it before.

  I try to say something else but the pain in my head gets worse, forcing me to my knees, and I hear the old lady call out “Jane, over here,” and then Ava’s mom is running toward us, I know the way her feet sound, it’s all I’ve heard for days, and then she is here, grabbing my other arm and saying, “Ava? Ava?”

  And then I throw up all over the old lady’s shoes.

  “Migraine,” the old lady says, and smiles—warm this time, gentle, even—at Jane, who has pulled me to her, holding me up.

  “Clementine, I didn’t know you lived around here,” she says, her voice shaking.

  “Oh, I was just out for my morning walk,” the old lady, Clementine, says. “It’s good to exercise, you know. Do you still walk, Jane?”

  “I’ve been busy lately,” Jane says, and her voice is stronger now. Sharper. “I—well, you can see Ava isn’t quite herself.”

  “Oh, she’ll be all right,” Clementine says. “After all, she has her mother to take care of her, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Jane says, and that one word is full of a million things, all of them compressed together and too big for me to understand, and I force myself to stand up, ready to walk away with Jane, but she doesn’t move. She stands there, watching Clementine, who glances down at her shoes, sighs, and then strides briskly away.

  She doesn’t look back.

  “Do you—Do you want to go back to your—the house?” I say after a moment. The pain in my head is letting up a little, the pressure easing into a dull throb.

  I think about Clementine, about how she knew me—knows me—and how my name sounded so right, so true when she said it, and the pain comes back.

  I gasp, fighting it, and I see . . .

  I see myself, sitting down at a desk taking notes as everyone around me whispers her name. “You know what Clementine did to her own child?�
� “Well, her family were traitors, and the PDM has to keep us all safe. She did the right thing.” “I heard they moved her from SAT to the Science Labs but she still has ties to SAT, and—”

  I dry heave, snapping back to Jane as she says, “Oh, Ava, honey, I’m sorry,” and wraps one arm around me, helping me down the road. Helping me back to the house.

  “How do you know Clementine?” I say when Jane has walked me upstairs and to Ava’s room and tucked me into Ava’s bed.

  “You need to get some sleep,” she says. “And I’m going to call your doctors. You—you shouldn’t be like this. In pain.”

  She hasn’t answered my question. I look at her, and she stares back at me, worry creasing her face.

  “I don’t know her, not really,” Jane says. “I see her out walking sometimes, that’s all.”

  “But she knows me, and I know her.”

  “No, that’s not possible,” Jane says, her voice firm. “I’ve never seen you talk to her before today. She’s a little old to be a friend of yours, after all.” Then she kisses my forehead and tells me to rest, that she’ll check on me soon.

  When I am alone I think about Clementine’s smile and how I don’t want to know it. But I do. I know I do.

  The Ava I’m supposed to be doesn’t know her.

  But the Ava I am does.

  I am here, in this world, in this life.

  But I don’t think I’m from here.

  I don’t think I belong here.

  I close my eyes.

  11.

  56-412 is eating noodles. I hear the slurping sound that everyone makes when they eat them and my stomach cramps because I haven’t eaten since before I came here and it was only toast, the heel of an old loaf that hurt my teeth when I chewed.

  56-412 lets out a sigh and stands up. His chair scrapes across the floor. I listen, wondering what he will do now, but hear nothing.

  Three days here, in this attic, in this chair, and there’s been nothing but reading and sleeping and eating and showering and one phone call that wasn’t answered—the intercept never clicked on.