Life as I Know It

by Melanie Rose

  I found myself thinking that he must have made an exceptional—if rather geeky—medical student with his enthusiasm for knowledge, but the facts were sobering when I remembered that the lightning had actually hit me at those speeds.

  “In some cases this spark can generate a temperature of thirty thousand degrees centigrade, Lauren—about six times hotter than the surface of the sun!” He finished with a flourish.

  The look he then bestowed on me was one of thinly disguised fascination, as if, after discovering and recounting how powerful lightning was, he was surprised to find I was still breathing.

  “So, you’re telling me I’m lucky to be alive,” I commented quietly, watching his eyes for confirmation.

  Dr. Shakir inclined his head with a small dip that I took to be affirmative.

  “Although the scorching to your head appears superficial and the burns to your back and shoulder will heal without skin grafts, we must be careful about infection, which is why you have an antibiotic dressing on your shoulder,” he explained. Pulling his notes together he raised his eyes briefly to mine.

  I looked at him suspiciously. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “The shock of the lightning bolt stopped your heart for a while. You went into cardiac arrest. We had to shock you again to bring you back. Once we’d got you back with us we concentrated on rehydrating you. That’s just normal saline in the intravenous drip you have there. Then we dressed the burns. After that it was just a case of waiting for you to wake up.”

  “To see if I was brain damaged,” I said, shaken that I had actually needed to be resuscitated, and again watching for his reaction.

  “I would like to schedule you for a head MRI scan,” Dr. Shakir continued smoothly, ignoring my comment and studiously avoiding my gaze. “But in the meantime you will have to trust me that you are the mother of those children and the wife of Mr. Richardson.”

  I looked at him skeptically. He was hiding something, I was sure, but there didn’t seem much else to say. I glanced toward the door and remembered with a sick feeling deep in my stomach that the family out there was waiting to visit me.

  “Please, I’m very tired,” I pleaded, fighting down the panic that was rising in my chest. “Could I rest before I see… anyone?”

  The doctor paused as if considering my request, then nodded briefly and left. I lay back against the pillows as the door closed behind him, sifting through my memory for any clue to this unknown family of mine, while the heart and blood-pressure monitors bleeped on beside me. The frustrating thing was that, despite everything the doctor had told me, my memories seemed perfectly intact—they just weren’t the ones I was supposed to be remembering. After half an hour of alternately dozing and agonizing over my predicament, I heard my purported husband at the door asking to be let back in. Part of me was curious to see if he still thought I was his wife. I hoped he’d take one look at me and declare that he’d made a terrible mistake, but something deep inside told me that was a vain hope.

  To stall for time, I brushed my hair carefully with a brush I was told belonged to me (even though I’d never seen it before in my life), then I sat up rigidly in the narrow bed and waited apprehensively for the stranger to come in.

  The man who came toward me was slim and tall, maybe a bit over six foot. He had reddish-brown, slightly wavy hair and freckled skin. He was wearing a black polo-neck shirt under a tweedy jacket, but he didn’t look professor-like in it. I wondered vaguely what he did for a living and it occurred to me that it was strange I was supposed to have picked this man for a husband, when redheaded men had never appealed to me in the least.

  As he approached, I realized with a sinking heart that the charade was still on. He bent to kiss me, but I turned my head away and he straightened quickly, his face flushing slightly.

  “I’m sorry,” I said firmly as he pulled out a chair and sat down next to the bed. “But I have no memory of you.”

  He stared at me, and I could see he appeared to be fighting some internal battle. After a moment he seemed to come to a decision.

  “Dr. Shakir told me you’ve lost your memory, sweetheart. I was hoping he’d got it wrong.” He sighed deeply, then forced an uncertain smile and held out his hand formally to shake mine. “I’m Grant,” he told me. “Grant Richardson. I’m thirty-seven years old, and we’ve been married for ten years.”

  His grip on my fingers was cool and steady, but somehow the smile seemed unsure. I suppose it was a lot to come to terms with, finding his wife had lost all memory of him and their life together. I knew I was certainly finding the whole situation bizarre, and my heart went out to this stranger. If I was struggling to get my head around what was happening, what must it be like for him?

  I didn’t know what to do. I could hardly say, “I’m Jessica, nice to meet you,” so I looked away from him to a point halfway along the wall to where a cart stood stacked with medical supplies, and said nothing while he continued to hold on to my hand.

  “Have you got any questions for me?” he asked gently. “Isn’t there lots you want to know?”

  I had questions all right, but they were more along the lines of “What the hell is happening to me?” than the sort he would be expecting me to ask.

  “Lauren?”

  Sighing, I realized that I was going to have to play along, if for no other reason than in the hope of getting some answers to this nightmare. I withdrew my hand firmly, then asked, “How old am I then?”

  My voice sounded petulant even to my own ears, and his smile wavered momentarily as the depth of the problem came home to him. I shook my head and he sighed and ran his tongue over his lips, somewhat fearfully.

  “You’re thirty-five, Lauren. We married when you were twenty-five and I was twenty-seven. We were—still are, very much in love.”

  “When’s my birthday?”

  “The nineteenth of June.”

  “No, it’s not,” I told him firmly. “I was born on the twenty-ninth of April. I wouldn’t have forgotten a date as ingrained in me as that!”

  Grant avoided my eyes and shrugged. “It’s only a small detail, sweetheart.”

  “Okay, then,” I said, taking a deep breath and trying to pull myself together. “How old are these children of ours?”

  “Sophie’s eight, Nicole is six, and the twins are just four.”

  We sat in silence while I contemplated the hideous possibility that I was the mother of four children. I’d had very little to do with children in the past. My job as a legal secretary was with a small law firm, where I did far more than just typing reports, legal papers, and documents onto the computer. I also assisted one of the solicitors by researching areas of law for cases he was working on, took dictation, and transcribed records, proofread letters and legal documents, and, more interestingly, went to court, police stations, and client meetings to take notes.

  Aspiring to become a solicitor myself in the near future, I had been about to embark on a law degree and didn’t have much time to myself, let alone to consider marriage or children.

  The memory brought me up short. Perhaps it was time to tell the truth. “It’s not that I’ve lost my memory,” I tried to explain to the man beside me. “I have memories—it’s just that they’re different from the ones you say I should have.”

  “We should ask Dr. Shakir about it.” Grant eyed me suspiciously. “There may be some medical condition that has sparked unreal memories in you.”

  I remembered the notes I had transcribed the last time I had been in the office, and realized that I could recall them almost word for word. I pictured my boss’s diary, where I had entered the times and dates of his appointments with clients and his court appearances for the following week. I could even remember what I’d had for supper on Friday evening after getting in late from work.

  “My memories are real to me,” I told him.

  Grant shook his head tiredly. “I don’t know, Lauren. This is hard for me to take in, too. I’ve been awake all night, waiti
ng for you to come around. And the children are missing you, they’re really confused…”

  He broke off, giving me a sideways glance, and I noticed him anxiously twisting the wedding ring on his finger. I looked down at my own left hand, which because of the pain in my shoulder had been tucked under the covers. While he watched, I peeled away a corner of the white hospital tape that was holding the drip in place, exposing my ring finger. I gasped. A thin gold band gleamed back at me.

  This was one hell of a dream, I told myself, hastily covering the ring over again with the tape. But dream or otherwise, I hadn’t missed the signs of anxiety in his demeanor when he’d mentioned the children.

  “What else?” I queried. “About the children? You were holding something back then.”

  “I was going to add, ’especially Teddy,’” Grant said quietly.

  “Teddy?”

  “Edward, the younger of the twin boys,” he explained. “There were complications at their birth. Toby was breech, and took a long time coming out. Teddy didn’t get enough oxygen to his brain while Toby was being born. He’s got… learning difficulties.”

  I pondered this last piece of news with a sinking heart. I might be experiencing a vivid dream, but I was still here, living this life until I awoke, and it seemed to be getting more complicated by the second. How could I be capable of being a mother to all those children? Especially a child with special needs. What sort of wonder woman had this Lauren been? I hoped I would wake up soon, because if Dr. Shakir was right and this was somehow real, I seriously doubted that I would ever be able to match up to her.

  I suddenly felt very tired. Something in my face must have alerted Grant, and he stood up quietly. “I’ll take the children home,” he said, stooping to plant a kiss on my forehead. This time I didn’t turn my face away, but he must have seen the flicker of apprehension in my eyes because I saw the sorrow etched upon his face.

  “I hope the children won’t be upset not to see me,” I murmured guiltily.

  “They’ll cope for now,” he answered firmly. “We all will. Look,” he added, “can I bring them back this afternoon, when you’ve rested?”

  I nodded, wishing I had the courage to refuse him, but it seemed so petty when the children were obviously missing their mother so much, and anyway, I told myself, I might have woken up by then.

  As the door closed behind him, I lay back against the pillows with a groan. “You’d better be wrong, Dr. Shakir,” I mumbled to the ceiling. “I’m Jessica, not Lauren. I’ll wake up soon and prove I’m still me.”

  Grant returned later with a huge bunch of flowers that the nurse put in a large vase next to the small vase containing the flowers one of the girls had brought me earlier. Nurse Sally, as she liked to be known, had extracted the flowers from the child before the family had left, promising her I would get them.

  “Sunflowers, my favorite!” I exclaimed when Nurse Sally had left us alone together.

  Grant looked intently at me, hope lighting his features. “You’ve always loved them,” he whispered, taking my hand. “Do you remember that monthlong vacation we took in Provence, before we had the children? Those fields of towering sunflowers seemed to go on forever and we filled all the jars and vases in the villa with them.”

  “I love sunflowers in my real life,” I replied stubbornly. “The life where I’m not married and have no children.”

  “Stop it, Lauren,” Grant said, abruptly letting go of my hand. “There is no other life!” He closed his eyes for a moment, as if to contain himself, then opened them again, and even though I hardly knew him I thought he looked drained and weary. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m struggling with this as much as you are. I don’t know what to do.” He sank down onto the visitor’s chair and ran a hand tiredly over his eyes. “I can’t bear it that you don’t remember us,” he said quietly. “All those years, all the experiences we’ve shared, the loves, the sorrows, the energy we’ve put into our children. If you don’t recall any of it, it’s as if it’s all gone, it might as well never have happened. I feel like I’ve lost you.” He leaned toward me, but I instinctively pulled back from him and he regarded me with haunted eyes. “I love you, Lauren. When they called to say you’d been rushed in here, and that your heart had stopped, I thought you were dead. Have you any idea how that feels? I thought I’d lost you forever, and I realized I couldn’t bear it. When the doctors said you’d live, I was so, so grateful. But you’re not really here with us, are you? I’ve lost you after all.”

  I stared at him in dismay, not wanting to hurt this stranger, but unable to help him, either. It was bad enough that I’d unwittingly arrived into this nightmare; now I had this man’s distress to cope with, too. Why wouldn’t I wake up? I’d never dreamed so long and so realistically before. Once, when I’d eaten a particularly hot curry when out with my girlfriends, I had dreamed strange haunting dreams on and off all night, but never anything like this. How long would it last?

  I looked into his tortured face, saw the tears not far away, and realized that while I was here I was going to have to deal with the situation as best I could.

  “I’m sorry, Grant. I didn’t want any of this to happen,” I told him quietly. “It isn’t anyone’s fault. I understand that you want things to be like they were before, but they can’t be. I don’t remember being your wife. I don’t want to be Lauren. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

  He stared at me with tear-filled eyes, then rose from the chair and came to perch on the edge of the bed. He took my hand in his and squeezed it, and it took all my willpower to leave it where it was.

  “You’ll stay with us, though, won’t you?” he asked. “You won’t leave us?” I was still desperately contemplating my answer when the door opened and Nurse Sally shepherded the children into the room.

  “Mummy!” they shrieked, bounding toward us.

  “Careful now,” Grant admonished them, rising awkwardly and sniffing back his tears as the children climbed around us on the bed. “Don’t forget Mummy’s not well.”

  Feeling as if I were watching myself in a strange play, I let Grant introduce the children to me. The children had been told I’d lost my memory and seemed to find it amusing that I didn’t remember who they were.

  “Sophie here brought you the flowers,” he told me, smiling proudly at his elder daughter.

  “Thank you, Sophie,” I said, taking in the long chestnut hair so like her father’s, the frank green eyes.

  “Nicole made you the get-well card.”

  “It’s lovely,” I told her with a smile. “You got my hair just right.”

  “It was what it looked like when the lightning got you,” she answered. “It stuck up just like that and sort of glowed.”

  I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach.

  “You saw it?” I asked in dismay. “You saw the lightning strike me?” Nurse Sally’s question about who I’d been with at the time of the accident echoed in my ears.

  Nicole nodded. “It was awesome!”

  “Nicole!” Grant scolded his daughter. “Don’t make it sound as if you enjoyed seeing Mummy getting hurt.”

  “I saw it, I saw it,” cried one of the twins as he jumped at the end of the bed, narrowly missing my feet and causing waves of pain to shoot across my back. “Mummy was on fire!”

  Grant looked as if he were about to chastise the boy I assumed was Toby, when a sorrowful little voice from the corner piped up. We all stopped talking as the second twin repeated sadly, “That isn’t Mummy. My mummy’s gone, and she’s here instead!”

  chapter two

  A hushed silence filled the room. We all turned to where a small redheaded boy stood eyeing us from the doorway, tightly holding a soft, brightly colored ball.

  “What did you say?” I asked softly.

  “Mummy’s gone. She caught fire, and now you’s here. I want my mummy!”

  And Teddy began to cry.

  I realized I was clenching my hands together so tightly that the
beautifully manicured fingernails were digging painfully into my palms. My breath, which had left my body in a rush with Nicole’s revelation, was having trouble drawing back into my lungs. The fact that it seemed Teddy could see me, Jessica, and not his mother changed everything.

  The boy’s comment had first filled me with a sick kind of dread that this wasn’t just a ghastly dream after all—but in the next heartbeat I felt the beginnings of hope. I wasn’t alone anymore in this strange place where everyone insisted one thing while I believed another. This small child saw past the outward appearance of his mother’s body and into the person inside. I wanted to hug him for joy.

  “Come here, er… Teddy.” I reached out a hand to him. Some instinct told me to take things very slowly.

  He eyed the offered hand suspiciously but I gave him an encouraging smile as he inched a step or two closer before stopping. Realizing he wasn’t going to come any nearer, I fixed my eyes on his. Something in his expression warned me to be as honest as possible with him. “You’re right, Teddy. I’m not the same mummy as before. I don’t know what’s happened…” I ran my gaze over his confused, tear-stained face and felt a gamut of emotions run through me. I felt a deep sympathy for him, gratitude, and a mixture of relief tinged with fear for myself at his reaction. Struggling to find the right thing to say to comfort and reassure him, I shrugged and ended helplessly, “It’ll be all right, Teddy. Everything will sort itself out, you’ll see.”

  Teddy wiped his nose on the cuff of his blue sweatshirt and sniffed loudly.

  “Don’t be so silly, Teddy,” Grant said, going over to the boy and picking him up. “Come and give Mummy a kiss.”

  Grant lifted the boy onto my lap, and I reached out to pat him awkwardly.

  Teddy twisted his shoulder away from my touch and scowled at me.

  “Teddy!” Grant admonished him, giving me an apologetic glance.