As I Wake

by Elizabeth Scott

  The pain in my head eases while we wait for the doctor, only coming back when I try to picture the Jane I saw—the other one, the younger and sadder one—and what was around her when she left, what took her away.

  Dr. Jabar, the neurologist, is pleased by what’s happened, and makes me tell him everything even though Jane is practically vibrating with joy and the need to talk about it. I do, even though it makes my head hurt again, and at the end I look at Jane and realize I still can’t call her Mom in my head even though I remembered her.

  I don’t know why I can’t say that word.

  “Ava’s case is most interesting,” Dr. Jabar tells Jane. “This memory, today, is a good sign. You know, the only thing remotely unusual about any of the scans we did is that we found evidence that Ava had a mild case of rickets as a child. That’s unusual these days, but no cause for amnesia.”

  “Rickets?” Jane says. “What’s that?”

  “Lack of vitamin D,” Dr. Jabar says. “It used to be more common before the vitamin was added to milk. Did Ava not like milk as a child?”

  Jane nods, looking anxious, and Dr. Jabar says, “That’s not so unusual. My own daughter refuses to drink milk or eat meat of any kind.” He shrugs. “But usually sunlight provides enough vitamin D, so, I’m wondering, was Ava very sick as a child for an extended period of time, perhaps? An illness that required her to stay indoors?”

  The walls around us, neutral-colored, soothing, turn gray, and the windows that let in the sun go dark, framed with wire.

  I am so tired of the dark and the gray and the walls that never ever end. And I am cold, so cold. I look around, desperate, alone, always alone and knowing I have to get out, that I can’t be here, I won’t be here, not now, not ever, I have to get out, I will get out, I will. I have—there is something I have to do. Like there is something—someone I have to find. It gives me—in the dark and cold night, when I’m shivering, I tell myself I have to leave. Not just because I want to, but because I have to.

  Because I will.

  “Ava?” Jane says, touching my hand and I shake my head, pain sloshing around inside it, pushing back and forth from my eyes to the base of my skull. But the walls aren’t gray anymore and I’m not alone. I can feel Jane’s hand against mine.

  “Are you all right?” Dr. Jabar says, and when I nod, says, “Good, good,” and then launches into a discussion about my brain.

  “Can I get some water?” I ask Jane, because my head hurts and I don’t care about my brain, not when it hurts like this, and Jane nods and smiles at me.

  I get up and walk out, heading through the main part of the office, where all the patients wait.

  In the hallway, I wander around, half looking for a water fountain, half just not wanting to go back and look at him. Dr. Jabar’s office is in a building full of them, the hallway covered with doors that look the same except for the names printed on them. I bet all four floors are just like this one.

  I find a water fountain hidden in a corner. It doesn’t work, only hisses when I press for water. The ladies room is right next to it, just behind me.

  In the bathroom, I wash my hands, then cup water into them and drink. When I look at my face in the mirror, I don’t recognize it, it is alien but familiar in a way that twists my stomach. I turn away quickly, heading for the door.

  As I leave, someone comes in, moving fast and bumping into me, and then I’m back in the bathroom, staring at a guy who is standing pressed against the door. Standing staring at me.

  He is my age, and thin, with desperate brown eyes, and when he talks his voice is so thick with fear I can almost taste it. “Ava, are you okay? Tell me you’re okay. I didn’t know this would happen, I swear and now—”

  He crosses to me, moving closer, and I can only stare, trapped by the fear and longing I see in his eyes, but the knowledge there, the knowledge of me and a million other things.

  He knows me. The Ava I am.

  He knows me.

  And I—I know him.

  I know him from the attic, but in a blinding, crippling flash I see him looking at me in a desert, I see me looking at him in a hallway, I see us looking at each other, both dressed in long robes while fans flutter around us.

  I have always known him, and I stare, waiting.

  “I found you,” he says, his voice easing, and reaches a hand out toward my face, to touch me, and I, despite what I just saw, what I know—I take a step back.

  He stops then, surprise on his face, and says, “I’m so sorry, I know you must be angry but please, I didn’t know this was going to happen, that she would do this. You have to know that. You have to . . .” He trails off, looking into my eyes like he should see something there, and then he is shaking his head, leaning forward and saying, “No, no, no,” in a broken whisper, pressing his hands against his legs.

  He looks at me then, pleading on his face, on the curve of his lips, and I turn away, racing for the door. The mention of she has made me feel bad, so, so bad.

  Like I’m dying bad.

  Like I-know-something-that-I-can’t-see-bad. I clutch my stomach.

  When I reach the door, he says, “It’s me, Morgan,” his voice whisper-soft, like a prayer, and behind the pain in my head something sparks open, shaking free.

  Morgan. MORGAN, 56-412, and I know that, I know those numbers, I know the word. The name. The place. We have always known each other but now I see the attic.

  “I—” I say and then I am there.

  I’m in the attic, pulling my headset off as I turned to see the voice I know but the face I should never see, the face that should never see me, and there he is, 56-412 looking right at me, brown eyes, short brown hair, my age and as surprised as I am, I see it in his eyes, he has eyes you can see everything in, and I say, “Morgan,” my voice as quiet as the ghost I am supposed to be.

  “Ava,” Morgan says, and I am back in the bathroom now, mirror in front of me, reflecting sinks and toilet stalls and shimmering within them a tiny wooden room with an orange chair waiting. Two rooms, two places, except I have a feeling that if I looked closer I would see more rooms, more places, more of me and him.

  Of us.

  I blink, scared but not, awake like I haven’t felt since I first woke up in Ava’s house, in Ava’s bed, and look at him.

  “I didn’t think it would be so hard to find you,” he says. “I didn’t even think I’d make it here. There isn’t a me here so I’m not supposed to be here. Also, everything is very strange, not at all like home and—” He blows out a breath, looking off to the side and then back at me as if he’s afraid I will vanish. There are freckles on his face, a tiny patch on his nose, and there are shadows under his eyes, deep and dark. A cut on his neck. Shadows of bruises on his jaw, faded faint yellow-green. I want to touch them, smooth them away.

  I want to touch him.

  He’s looking at me as if the whole world waits for my next breath, with an intensity that makes my heart pound and my palms sweat and then he smiles, a sweet curve of his mouth, and my breath catches, but then I freeze because there is something about it, something beyond it that I know, that makes my mind go blank with fear and pain. I shrink back and the room is a dream, the orange chair is a dream, I remembered Jane, I was here, I am here.

  I look at him, and then I close my eyes. Maybe I’m crazy.

  Maybe I’m scared.

  “Ava,” he whispers, pleading, but I keep them closed. I have to find out what is real. I have to wake up for real.

  “Hey,” someone says, and I open my eyes slowly, knowing Morgan will be gone. It is not his voice I just heard.

  But he isn’t gone, he is still here, still looking at me. He is here and the only change is that now a security guard is too, peering at my face and pulling Morgan’s arms tight behind him, so he can’t touch me. Can’t reach me.

  I don’t like that.

  “Are you all right?” the security guard asks and I stare at him blankly because I thought I was dreaming when I closed m
y eyes and fell into the attic, into listening, into hearing that voice. Hearing Morgan.

  I stare and Morgan says, “I’m sorry, Ava, I’m so sorry, maybe if there was a place here for me things would be better, maybe you and me—” and then jerks his arms free, the security guard stumbling back, saying, “Hey!” and grabbing at empty space as Morgan pulls the bathroom door open and runs through it.

  The guard runs out into the hall, leaving me standing there in the bathroom. In the mirror I see my face, my open eyes.

  I close them. After a moment, the door opens again. “Ava?” Jane says. “Oh, Ava,” and her voice is shaking and she is shaking, and the security guard is saying, “I’m so glad that woman called and said she thought she saw something, I’m so glad I got here—wait, hold on. Jerry, what do you mean you don’t see him? He ran down the stairs, how could you not see him?”

  “You’re all right?’ Jane says, touching my arms, my face, my shoulders, and I draw back, nodding, thinking of him looking at me. Of me looking back.

  Of how I remember something other than that brief, strange glimpse of a faraway, different Jane and me.

  I remember him.

  I remember Morgan in a way I didn’t—can all that I saw be memories?

  I know at least one of them is for sure.

  I know that I am from a place that is like this one but different, so different.

  But how did I end up here?

  And what did Morgan mean when he said there wasn’t a him here? How can that matter?

  I don’t know. I just know that Morgan—that I know him.

  I know him better than anyone here.

  21.

  JANE FOLLOWS ME around when we get back to the house, asking if I need anything. Something to drink? To eat?

  “I’m fine,” I say, sitting on her sofa and trying to think—to remember—even though it makes my head pound so hard spots of yellow and red dance in front of my eyes.

  I’m not from here. That’s the drumbeat of words in my head, pounding along to the pain in my skull.

  I don’t belong here. I’m not the Ava who’s supposed to be here.

  I’m from somewhere else.

  Somewhere that isn’t here.

  “I have to check my work voice mail, but I’ll be right in the kitchen,” Jane says. “Call me if you need anything.” And then she stands there, hovering, waiting.

  Looking worried.

  “I really am fine,” I tell her, the words coming out poorly, shaking, and she looks like she wants to cry and hug me. In the end, she settles for squeezing one of my hands, gently, and saying, “Anything, okay?”

  Anything. Tell me why I’m here. Tell me where I came from. Tell me why I remembered you, but a different you.

  Tell me who I am.

  I get up, head for the front door. Jane comes out from the kitchen, hand over the phone. “Ava?”

  “I need to—I want to go out,” I say.

  “Out?” Jane says, worry in her voice. “But what if the boy from before . . . ? You have to stay on the porch, all right, Ava? And you should leave the front door open too. You have to stay safe.”

  I nod and walk outside. Jane sounds so scared.

  I look back in the open door. Jane is peering into the hallway, glancing at me as she talks on the phone.

  She hadn’t said anything as the security guard walked us out of the bathroom, and when he asked her, gently, if she knew “the young man,” she shook her head, looked bewildered and terrified.

  “Why did he come here?” she’d said. “What did he—why did he come after Ava?”

  When she said that, I wondered what had happened to her Ava. Why she—I—whoever I was—woke up knowing nothing.

  What if it wasn’t an infection no one had noticed?

  What if it was something else?

  Jane had asked me if I knew him—Morgan—on the way home, her hands holding the steering wheel so tight they were stone-white, bloodless looking.

  “I—I’ve never seen him here,” I said, because I hadn’t—not here, not in this place—and I didn’t think what was in my strange, empty but not empty head would count.

  But it did. It does.

  “I was so scared,” Jane said. “I can’t bear another—I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  Now I look at her, watching me, and wave, to show I am all right. That I am here. She relaxes, a little, and after a few minutes, turns away frowning and holding the phone like she can only hear it twisted a certain way, walking back into the kitchen as she does.

  I look around. The lawn; the grass I stood on that first night, it still looks the same. The street still looks the same. It looks like the moment when I realized I didn’t know where I was. That I don’t know who I am.

  My skin goes cold suddenly, goose pimples rolling up my arms, and I watch a car turn into the driveway, rolling to a stop just out of sight of the front door. Just out of sight of Jane.

  I start to turn to call her, but then the car door opens and Clementine gets out. My heart starts to beat fast, skipping and stuttering in my chest, and when I try to look away from her, I can’t.

  When she smiles at me, the goose bumps grow sharper, and a chill races up my spine.

  “Stopped by to give you this,” she says, and hands me a box with a pie in it.

  I turn away and she leans over, places it next to me on the steps. She smells strange. Cold. I didn’t know cold had a smell but it does, a bitter chill that makes my insides sting.

  “You look tired,” she says. “Has anything . . . stressful happened to you today?” There is a note of something in her voice, under the sugar-sweet softness of her tone.

  She sounds . . . worried.

  I look at her now, watching her face. “Like remembering who I am?”

  “Well, that’s a given. You’re supposed to do that, right?” Clementine says with a smile that pulls at something inside of me. That reminds me of something. Someone—

  I don’t know.

  I can’t remember, and my head is starting to ache again.

  “Why are you making my head hurt?”

  Clementine blinks at me, looking surprised, but then says, “Headaches are normal for people who’ve—”

  “It only happens when I think about certain things. People.”

  “That shouldn’t be happening,” she mutters, but before I can ask her what she means, Jane says, “Clementine?” coming to the door. “I thought I heard a car. What are you doing here?”

  “I just stopped by to see how Ava is,” Clementine says, picking up the pie and giving it to Jane.

  “You shouldn’t have done this,” Jane says, and she sounds very nice. Very polite.

  She also sounds like she means what she said, that she doesn’t want Clementine to have come here.

  I look at her and see that she doesn’t like Clementine. I watch how her eyes move, how she blinks.

  I see she is afraid.

  Why?

  “Oh, it was nothing,” Clementine says. “I just—well, you know how talk gets around the hospital and one of the nurses at Dr. Jabar’s called over to get some records sent and said that there was some sort of problem with Ava today.”

  “Not with Ava,” Jane says. “Ava’s fine.”

  “But I heard that—”

  “My head hurts,” I say to Jane, cutting Clementine off. “Can we go in?”

  “Oh, honey, of course,” Jane says, relief in her voice, and holds the door open for me as we walk inside. I look back before it closes and see Clementine still standing there watching us. Watching me.

  She came here because of what happened at Dr. Jabar’s today.

  Because of Morgan. I know it. I know it.

  She wanted to see if I’d seen him.

  I think she wants to know if I remember him.

  Why?

  22.

  THAT NIGHT I sit on the floor of Ava’s room, going over the furniture with my fingertips in the dark, waiting to remember it. It’s st
arting to feel familiar, but that isn’t memory.

  My mind has nothing but blankness behind a few bits and pieces of things that don’t add up. I remember Jane, but a different Jane, a Jane that left me, was taken away.

  And Morgan. I remember him, this afternoon. The dreams I’ve had, the attic and the cold and him.

  They aren’t dreams. I want to think they are, I want to think they have to be—this doesn’t happen to people, they don’t wake up and find themselves somewhere else but they aren’t dreams.

  They’re memories.

  They’re memories and if Morgan is real, and here, then how can I remember him—and me—somewhere else? Not to mention how I saw us in all those other times so fast, like there has always been him and me.

  Like we have always found each other.

  I don’t know how.

  I just know what I saw. What I felt.

  I walk out into the hallway. I know its darkness now too, and head for one of the closed doors, let myself into Ava’s bathroom.

  I like Ava’s bathroom best out of every room in the house. I like her large white shower, her broad sink. I like the bottles and jars of lotion she has, like opening them up and sniffing them even though I can’t bring myself to use them, find myself clutching the large bar of soap she has in her shower each time I use it as if I have never seen it before.

  I haven’t, not that I remember, but shouldn’t I be used to soap? Shouldn’t I not be so amazed by how it is so large and all mine?

  I fall asleep in there, holding one of Ava’s soft, thick towels and a jar of mango-ginger body lotion, and wake up to see Jane looking at me, her face lit by the hall light and the sun that cuts through it from the open door of Jane’s bedroom.

  “Did you sleep in here?” she says.

  “I—” I say, and sit up, my body stiff from being curled up on the floor. Somehow, it feels more familiar than waking up in the softness of Ava’s bed. “I guess I did.”

  Jane sits down next to me, touching the bottle of lotion.

  “I keep telling Ava not to waste her money on things like that, but she . . .” She trails off.