Splintered Memory

by Natascha Holloway

  Emily had waited a long time to be with Matt, and when she had finally gotten to be with him the circumstances had been trying at best. She’d stayed by his side throughout the last seven months, even when he’d treated her so abhorrently that she should have walked away.

  She’d stood by him as his long suffering girlfriend whilst he’d slept with anything and everything that was female at the hospital and had a pulse. She’d endured the mocking looks from the nurses, those that he had and hadn’t yet slept with, whilst she’d treated his patients and charted for him when he’d been too drunk or drugged to do it himself.

  Emily had, with the help of Nurse Willis, prevented him from being fired and stopped from ever practicing medicine again. She’d been the one to go with him when he’d finally agreed to see Oak for help, and she’d been there for him when he’d come home from rehab.

  She’d been the one that had borne the brunt of his anger as the effects of the cocktail of drugs that he’d been taking had worn off, and she’d been the one that had held him as he’d sobbed over Charlie and had woken up in the night crying out for her. She’d been the one to help him put himself back together, and she’d been the one to keep him alive when he had all but lost the will to go on.

  As she lay there thinking about what she’d been through with Matt in the past seven months, she felt angry that Claire even had the nerve to call her. She hadn’t been around through any of it. She hadn’t seen the effect of Charlie’s amnesia on Matt. She hadn’t had to pick up the pieces of what had been left of him when Charlie had walked away. So whilst Claire might think that she had the right to read her the riot act out of some longstanding friendship obligation to Charlie, she wouldn’t be scolded or seen off by her.

  She’d earned her place in Matt’s life. Oak and Nurse Willis had acknowledged this, and so had Matt’s closest friends. Claire could either acknowledge this too, or she could go to hell Emily thought.

  Matt snored lightly and Emily snuggled up closer to him. He was hers now, and she would fight tooth and nail to keep him. She reassured herself with the knowledge that he wouldn’t walk away from her. He knew as much as she did that without her he would have lost his career, the life of an innocent patient, and maybe even his own life.

  She knew that he was grateful to her for everything that she’d done for him, and she wasn’t above using that to her advantage. Yet she knew that she wouldn’t need to. Matt was too honourable a man to turn his back on her after everything that she’d done for him, and she was happy with him. They were happy together.

  It had taken her seven months to re-build what Claire’s best friend had broken, and it hadn’t been easy. Whilst he’d been in rehab she’d boxed up and moved out from his home everything that could possibly have reminded him of his wife, and when he’d come back home she’d moved in without invitation. It had been taken as a given between them, that she needed to be there to look after him.

  She kissed Matt’s chest and smiled. She didn’t know what Claire wanted, but it also didn’t matter. Matt was with her now, and there was nothing that Claire could do about it.

  Claire

  She banged loudly on the door in front of her, and she waited for someone to answer. She’d spent over two hours on the train from London doubting whether her decision to come was the right one, but now that she was here she knew that it was.

  “Claire,” Rich said sounding shocked and looking astounded to see her on his doorstep.

  “Move Rich, I need to come in and it’s pissing down out here,” she said pushing past him and then heading straight down the hall to kitchen that was at the far end of it.

  “What are you doing here?” Rich asked Claire as she stood in his kitchen dripping.

  “Yeah I’d love a towel, thanks Rich, and can you stop staring at my chest please?” Claire asked whilst un-sticking her light blue top which was clinging to her cleavage.

  Rich smiled at her and then disappeared from his kitchen, and Claire heard him go upstairs. When he came back into the room he threw a large blue towel at her, which she caught and then began drying her hair with.

  “Where’s Bex?” Claire asked.

  “Dress fitting with the bridesmaids,” he answered embarrassedly.

  “Oh chill out Rich, like I give a shit that I wasn’t asked to be one of her bridesmaids. Although I am a bit surprised that she didn’t ask Charlie,” Claire said.

  Rich shifted uncomfortably and said; “she did initially, but after Charlie left… and with Matt being my best man... she didn’t think it was such a good idea anymore. Charlie didn’t seem to mind though,” Rich added as though an afterthought.

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Claire said taking some enjoyment in Rich’s obvious discomfort at her comment. “Anyway, I’m not here about the wedding,” she continued.

  “You’re not going to boycott it cause you’re not a bridesmaid are you?” Rich asked.

  “What?” Claire said slightly thrown by his question.

  “You’re still coming?” Rich asked. “To my wedding,” he added as Claire continued to look at him as though he was speaking in a different language.

  Claire put down the towel that she was holding and said distractedly; “yeah okay Rich whatever, the wedding, yeah I’ll be there that’s fine.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Are you on something?” Rich asked.

  “No I’m not on something,” Claire said. Yet as Rich went to say something else she said; “just shut up Rich. I’d forgotten how annoying you are. God, I can’t get a thought in edgeways.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Look,” Claire said sitting down on a stool by the breakfast counter; “I need to talk to you about Matt.”

  “Oh god,” Rich said sitting down opposite her. “You’ve heard about Emily haven’t you? Whose mum told you?”

  “Yes I’ve heard about Emily, but no one’s mum told me. Charlie did,” Claire said meaningfully.

  “Who told Charlie?” Rich asked sounding shocked that any of their parents were that callous.

  “No one, she saw for herself when she watched them coming out of her and Matt’s house hand in hand,” Claire said trying to gauge Rich’s reaction to each part of her sentence.

  Rich looked at Claire ashamedly and said; “Matt wouldn’t have wanted her to find out like that.”

  “Yeah well we can get to that later,” Claire said. “But first of all I want to know from you, just what the hell he’s playing at?”

  “Oh now hold on Claire,” Rich said defensively. “You haven’t been around. You weren’t around when Charlie was at home after the accident with no memory. You didn’t see what any of it did to him, or has done to him. So I think it’s pretty out of order for you to just rock up here and start judging him.”

  “No judgment Rich I promise, but I need to hear things from your perspective. How bad were things? How bad has it been for him?” Claire asked.

  “Why? Why do you need to know any of that now? It’s in the past and he’s moved on, and I for one am glad for him because he deserves it. Charlie won’t care anyway. It’s not like she can remember their life together,” Rich said; “and I’m sure she’s moved on too.”

  “She does care,” Claire said.

  “She left,” Rich responded.

  Claire saw that Rich was eyeing her just as warily as she was eyeing him. She knew that similarly to how they were both sat on opposite sides of the breakfast counter, they were also both about to take opposite sides of this conversation. He’d defend his best friend, and she’d attack for hers.

  “She left because she didn’t remember anything,” Claire said.

  “What and things have changed?” Rich asked spitefully.

  “Yes actually Rich,” she said; “things have changed.”

  “What? Like the fact that you’re her best friend again,” he countered.

  “No,” Claire said; “like the fact that she can remember what you two did in the school games shed.”


  “So what,” Rich said. “She has one memory, and you’re here trying to drag Matt back through the hell that he’s only just about recovered from.” But Claire could hear that his voice was shaking. He was obviously shocked by what she’d just told him.

  “It’s not just one. It’s all of them. She remembers everything. She came back here with her dad to tell Matt a couple of weeks ago, and what does she see? Not a husband pining for his wife, but a man that looks like he’s got no troubles in the world. From what I heard,” Claire said; “he was just merrily strolling out of his and Charlie’s home with Emily in tow. It hardly sounded like he was in hell to me Rich.”

  Rich stared at her with his mouth gaping open, and she noticed that it made him look much less attractive than he normally did.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Claire said; “I’d say.”

  “No seriously,” Rich said; “shit.”

  “What?” Claire asked not understanding.

  “We can’t tell Matt”, Rich said.

  “The hell we can’t!” Claire said angrily.

  “No, we can’t. Look if you want to know what it’s been like for him, I’ll tell you. But when I’m done you’ll know why we can’t tell him,” Rich said; “and then you’re gonna have to tell Charlie.”

  “If the reason’s valid enough Rich,” Claire said eyeing him warily; “I’ll tell her anything.”

  Rich took a deep breath, and then he began. “After the accident we were all fools. We convinced ourselves that if the doctors were cautiously optimistic, Matt included, then there was no reason why we shouldn’t all be optimistic too. Charlie would be fine. She’d come home, and everything would just go back to normal. I think we were all just a little bit relieved you know, that she was alive and not brain damaged or paralysed or anything.”

  “Not brain damaged?” Claire asked Rich with a raised eyebrow.

  Rich tutted before saying; “you know what I mean Claire. She could talk and had all her faculties and stuff. Anyway, we all assumed that she’d be fine. I don’t think any of us thought about the amnesia or the effects of it on us, or on her, or on Matt. I’ve got friends now, who can’t believe that I’ve still got friends that I’ve known since infancy. They think it’s amazing that my best friend and fiancée know everything about me. A lot of them are jealous that I’ve got these long standing relationships, and to be honest if they hadn’t pointed this out to me then I don’t think I’d have realised just how lucky we all are.”

  “The point,” Claire asked unkindly.

  “The point,” Rich said shortly. “Is that we’re so accustomed to having each other know what we’re talking about all of the time, that our conversations take on a format that other people who haven’t grown up with us can’t follow. What’s weird though, is that Charlie knew this. Before the accident she’d been really conscious of it, especially when she’d been trying to introduce Emily into our group.”

  Claire scowled at the mention of her name.

  “All I’m saying is that it’s weird that she recognised it, and then became a victim of it. When she came out of hospital we didn’t adjust. We treated her the same way as always. We talked to her the same way, and teased her the same way, but she wasn’t the same and most of the time she looked awkward or uncomfortable. She tried to fake it, and with Rach, Ben, Nick, and Bex, I think it worked. But I know her better than they do,” he said; “and I think I know Matt almost as well as he knows himself.”

  “Okay,” Claire said; “so things were tough.”

  “No,” Rich said irritably. “They were way beyond tough. Charlie couldn’t look at Matt, and she didn’t go near him. God, you of all people know what they were like together Claire. It used to drive us both nuts. They couldn’t help but exchange glances. If he wasn’t looking at her, then she’d be looking at him. You remember how they moved together, and how touchy feely they were with each other right?”

  “Yeah of course,” Claire said.

  “How about the way that he used to stand behind her, wrap his arm around her waist and pull her tightly to him so that he could kiss her neck?” Rich asked, and Claire nodded and smiled reminiscently.

  “I think I’ve seen him do that to her at least a million times, but not once after the accident. Even the way that they’d always sit together changed. You know how he’d normally always sit and bend one of his legs, so that whichever knee was nearest to her was upright in the air so that she could lean against it and wrap her arm around it?” He asked, and Claire nodded again.

  “Well after the accident they didn’t sit like that. Everything changed. She wouldn’t go near him,” Rich said; “and when he did gravitate towards her you could feel the tension in the air.”

  “I didn’t know,” Claire said guilty.

  “No, you didn’t. If you had Claire, you of all people would have found it as strange to watch as I did. What was worse was that Matt couldn’t talk about it. Not even to me. He just worked and spent time with Charlie. But the more time he spent with her, the more distant he became with the rest of us. We were losing both of them,” Rich said; “and it really freaked Bex out.”

  “How did it affect her?” Claire asked barely containing the impulse to roll her eyes. It was typical Bex to want to make a melodrama out of something that had no affect whatsoever on her life.

  “Come on,” Rich said urging her to see reason. “We’ve all grown up around this perfect relationship. We’ve set it as the benchmark. The only thing the two of them ever argued about before the accident was you. Seeing their relationship falling apart wasn’t particularly nice to be around. What was worse was that it made you question everything about yourself, and your relationships as well. What if it happened to me? Would people be able to stay around me, still recognise parts of myself that I couldn’t? What if it happened to Bex? How would I cope? Would I be able to stay with her?”

  “Would you have left Bex?” Claire asked sounding a little shocked that Rich had contemplated doing this if he and Bex had been in Matt and Charlie’s position.

  “Yeah, I think I would,” Rich said honestly; “and I told Matt the same thing. Six months is a long time to be with someone who can’t remember anything about you, or a life you shared together. Matt was becoming a shadow of himself, but do you know what’s awful? Do you know what keeps me awake at night feeling endlessly guilty?”

  Claire shook her head.

  “I chose Matt over Charlie. I picked sides. I could see that being with her was killing him. The situation was eating away at him, at his soul, and it seemed to me that we’d already lost Charlie. She wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t the Charlie that we’d all known. So I told him that I’d leave her if I was in his shoes, but knowing that it’s probably what I said to him that led him to go home and end things with her keeps me awake at night. The idea that I’m the kind of person that abandons friends when they need me the most,” he said sounding choked; “makes it kind of hard to sleep.”

  “I know all about abandoning friends,” Claire said; “and I know all about being kept awake by it.”

  “Matt’s never told me what happened at the end before Charlie left, but I honestly thought them being apart would help him. But how wrong was I?” He asked rhetorically. “After she went Matt completely fell apart. I hadn’t realised, but his whole life had been about Charlie. I don’t think he actually knew how to get a long in a world where she wasn’t a part of it. He started drinking heavily, and he started prescribing himself pills to take. He stayed out most nights, and he slept with woman after woman. You wouldn’t have recognised him. I didn’t. His life was a shambles, and like her or not Emily stepped in and saved him.”

  “Saved him? What literally speaking, like from an overdose or something?” Claire asked.

  “No,” Rich said; “but I don’t doubt that it would’ve come to that. I think he hit a point where that’s what he wanted, but Emily got involved before it came to that. Thank God. She also stuck by him when he
treated her like shit, and she protected his medical career by all accounts. She got him into rehab, and she got him clean. I know what you’re thinking by the way, why didn’t I help? But he wouldn’t let me Claire. Nick and Ben came up to stay to try and help as well, but he refused to see us. He just stayed indoors getting high, or hiding at the hospital getting high.”

  Claire was shocked. She’d had no idea how bad things had gotten after the accident, and she couldn’t believe what had happened once Charlie had left.

  “He’s okay now,” Rich said regaining Claire’s attention; “but it’s thanks to Emily. They also seem happy together. He’s back on form, and everyone’s friendships with him are mended. Their relationship looks pretty solid as well from what I’ve seen, and she looks after him. She’s given us the old Matt back, and he’s happy again, and I can’t ask for anything more than that.”

  “Does she make him happy the way that Charlie made him happy?” Claire asked even though she was afraid of hearing the answer.

  Rich smiled and then said truthfully; “I can’t answer that. The only person who’d know the answer to that is Matt, and I doubt he’d ever tell us. But as I say they seem happy together, and I’m just grateful to Emily for getting Matt through everything in one piece.”

  “Okay grateful yes and I can see why you like her. It sounds like we’ve all got a lot to be grateful to her for, Charlie included. None of us would’ve wanted to see any harm come to Matt, and Charlie would’ve been beside herself. But Charlie’s better now, she’s back. She’s Charlie again. Surely they’ve earned the right at another shot at happiness together?” Claire asked.

  “Okay so she remembers what they had, but do you really believe that they can go back to that? Both of them are carrying scars from everything that’s happened, and Matt’s are pretty brutal. I’m not sure that they can go back, or what the fallout or potential damage would be if they tried to. If you want my opinion, we say nothing to him and you tell Charlie not to say anything to him either. If you tell her that Matt’s happy,” Rich said; “I know she’ll accept that.”