Clarity 4

by Loretta Lost

  I think that I must have dreamed about my unborn sister for many years. I wonder if that was somehow really her, there in those dreams. I wonder if she was as sad as I was that we never got a chance to grow up together. That's something that Carmen and Helen had. I observe Carmen for a moment as she flirts with Owen. I never knew that the sisters were so close, but it seems like there is a lot that I didn't know.

  Even though they've been distant these past few years, when the shit hits the fan, Carmen is there for Helen.

  I wish I had a family like that.

  Suddenly, I notice that Carmen is rising to her feet and leaning over Helen's bed.

  "Hellie?" she's asking softly. “Can you hear us?”

  My eyes snap down toward Helen’s pale face. Her lips part slowly and move soundlessly before she is able to form words. I hold my breath, hoping that she will wake up.

  Please. Please let her wake up.

  I tightly grip the sides of my chair, unsure of whether I should stand or remain sitting. I am worried that if I do anything wrong, it will somehow jinx her recovery.

  Please let her be okay.

  The wounded girl’s breathing is short and shallow. “Carm?” she finally croaks out.

  “Hellie!” the blonde woman exclaims. “Thank god you’re awake.”

  Leaping out of my chair, I move to Helen’s side in an instant. I am reaching out to touch her cheek when I pull myself back. My fingers ache with the desire to touch her skin, but I feel somehow afraid and hesitant.

  “Winter,” I whisper, touching her shoulder lightly instead. I have to assure myself that she is real. “You scared the hell out of me. Don’t ever do that again.”

  “What happened?” she asks without opening her eyes. “Where am I?”

  I am so overjoyed that she sounds coherent. I finally have hope that the injury hasn’t caused any serious brain damage. “You were in a car accident,” I explain to her. “We’re in Pennsylvania.”

  “What?” she responds, flinching a little at my touch. “Who are you?”

  Chapter Seven

  Helen Winters

  A groan escapes my hoarse throat. My skin is numb and my thoughts are fuzzy. I shift around uncomfortably. It feels like I am lying on a hard, wooden plank—I might even be at sea, for I think I am being tossed around on massive rolling waves. There is also some kind of wire or perhaps needles sticking into me, and I am yearning to rip them out of my veins. I feel like this must be what Frankenstein’s monster felt like when he was first awakened.

  My sister’s soft voice pulls me out of my drunken haze, and the sound gives me a great deal of comfort. I try to respond to her, but I feel like I am fighting my way to the surface of quicksand. God, how much did I drink last night? I gasp for breath before I am able to form words. “Carm?” I finally manage to croak.

  I hear her exhaling in relief. “Hellie!” she exclaims softly, her voice breaking with emotion. “Thank god you’re awake.”

  I swirl my tongue around in my mouth, trying to determine what potent substance knocked me out. I can’t find any residue of alcohol, and I am about to ask Carmen what she slipped into my drink when I notice that someone else is touching me. I must be in a room, in a bed of some sort, and there are people standing on either side of me. A large hand presses against my shoulder, and lightly brushes against my cheek.

  “Winter,” the man whispers.

  The deep and throaty way he says the word sends a shiver through my body. I am suddenly certain that I am aboard a pirate ship and this man is the captain who has abducted me. He must be trying to sell me back to my father for a thousand gold pieces. This can only mean one thing: I must have gotten drunk on pirate’s rum.

  “You scared the hell out of me,” he continues in a low timbre. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  I have no idea why this sexy-sounding stranger is ordering me around. What did I do? My immediate desire is to do it again just so I can annoy him and hear him get frustrated some more. But I realize this is probably due to my inebriated or drugged state. I have to focus on the task at hand: how am I going to escape from the pirate ship and save my sister?

  “What happened?” I demand of either my sister or the masculine stranger. “Where am I?”

  “You were in a car accident,” says the stranger with the deep baritone. “We’re in Pennsylvania.”

  “What?” I am a little disappointed. I was really hoping for somewhere in the Caribbean, or off the coast of Somalia. “Who are you?”

  There is a silence in the room, and it worries me. I can’t remember how I got here. If I wasn’t abducted by pirates, then none of this makes any sense at all. Unless—is my sister in some kind of trouble? Is she in massive gambling debt, and decided to sell me to the mafia or something? The man with the deep voice sounds way too nice to be a hardened gangster, but he could just be their PR person. “Carm?” I ask frantically, reaching out to try to touch her. My hands instead collide with the rails of the bed. Why does the bed have rails? I gasp a little with pain as I realize just how sore my whole body really is. What did the mafia do to me? “Where’s Mom and Dad?”

  Carmen hesitates before responding. “Dad’s across the street in a hotel... but Mom’s dead.”

  “Dead?” Oh my god. It really is the mafia! I fumble around madly, reaching for Carmen’s hand. “How?”

  “She died in an accident...”

  I try to wrap my head around this. Maybe we crossed into a part of town where kids were street racing at breakneck speeds? “With me?” I whisper. “Today?”

  “No,” Carmen says softly. “She died three years ago, Helen.”

  That can’t be possible. Three years? No. How does that make sense? I don’t remember this. Mom was here just yesterday. But when was yesterday? I remember studying for midterms... Tightening my grip on Carmen’s hand, I shake my head in denial. “No. No. Mom can’t be gone. Carm, I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything.”

  “Winter,” says the gentle male voice. “Can you open your eyes? I want you to look at me.”

  I cautiously turn my head toward the sound. He might not be the captain of a pirate ship, but he still seems rather interesting. “Are you calling me Winter?” I ask shyly. Maybe he’s an escaped convict who was imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. Bank robbery or something equally cinematic. Maybe he just regained his freedom, and I’ve been helping him dodge the law ever since. But why don’t I remember any of this? “My name is Helen. Who are you?”

  He pauses. “Please try opening your eyes, Helen. It’ll all make sense in a minute. You just need to look at me, and I’m sure you’ll remember.”

  “But I’m blind,” I say softly. I begin to feel dizzy, and I lose my ability to grip Carmen’s hand. I take several deep breaths before I am finally able to follow the man’s instructions. He sounds so authoritative that I feel compelled to comply. Maybe he’s a police officer and I’m in some kind of trouble? That’s exciting. I’ve never been in any kind of trouble. Prying my eyes open ever-so-slightly, I gasp at the blinding light that pours into my skull. I close them immediately to shut it out, but curiosity forces me to try again, more carefully. I am stunned to see shapes and figures in the room. People? I have never known what a person looks like. The figure closest to me has a slender shape compared to the other two, and I figure it must be my sister.

  “I can see,” I whisper in amazement. I study the female shape with curiosity. “Carm,” I mumble softly, “how the hell can I see?”

  No one responds for a moment, and this sends me slightly into a panic. Maybe the commanding man is a priest or rabbi who managed to pray over my useless eyes and invoke some kind of spiritual healing. A holy man! That makes so much sense. Or does it? I am having difficulty catching my breath, and I need an explanation.

  “I’m your eye doctor,” the man explains slowly. “My partner and I performed a surgery to help you see a few months ago. He’s here, too. Do you remember Owen?”

  “Hey there,
little lady,” the man called Owen says. “Surely you remember this handsome face of mine?”

  “No,” I whisper frantically, disappointed that none of my thrilling theories are turning out to be accurate. “I don’t—I don’t know. Your faces are blurry. I just... I don’t know.”

  The confident man touches my shoulder carefully, and looks into my face. “Are you sure you don’t know me, Helen? I’m also your boyfriend.”

  “My boyfriend?” I repeat in surprise. Okay, that’s pretty cool. Not as cool as a pirate lover or escaped convict, but I am intrigued. I look at my sister to confirm that the man is not lying, and I can see her moving her head in a nod. So that is what a nod looks like. It is so much easier to communicate when you can see the other person’s body language. But my vision is becoming blurry, and my head is really beginning to ache. I’m not sure what happened to me, but it does not feel great.

  “Hellie,” Carmen says, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder gently. “I need you to focus for a moment. It’s about Grayson. I just... I just need to know what happened last night.” I see her lips curl upward in what appears to be a sad smile. “I won’t be upset, I swear. I just really need to know. Did he say or do anything? I don’t care how messed up it is. Do you have any clue why he did what he did? What were his last words? Please. It’s killing me.”

  “Grayson?” I repeat sleepily as I narrow my eyes in confusion. The name sounds familiar. Was he a prison guard, or a swashbuckling buccaneer buddy of mine? I stare up at the ceiling blankly for a moment before my eyelids begin to grow heavy. “Sorry, Carm,” I say with exhaustion as my head falls to the side. “I don’t know anyone named Grayson.”

  Chapter Eight

  So, I have a boyfriend.

  That's new. I am more than a little surprised and excited by this information. Twisting and turning in bed, I try to get into a comfortable position. I have been waking up periodically, and having conversations with the doctors and my sister and father. It looks like I’m going to make a full recovery physically, and the only issues are the memory loss and fogginess. The physical pain is negligible since the nurses have been coming around often and keeping me jacked up on painkillers. I’m actually feeling pretty good—somewhere between floating on a lazy river and sinking into a kids’ bouncy house. Unfortunately, I'm also feeling restless and starved for information.

  How on earth did I happen to get a boyfriend? And he's a doctor?

  You would think that the strangest part of this new world I've woken up to is the fact that I can see. However, I find it much more frightening that I am so out of the loop and confused about everything that has happened for the past three years. It was nice to know that I wasn't alone, but I wish that I could feel connected to any of the people who have been waiting on me. It was comforting to have conversations with Carmen and my father, but they felt like different people than close-as-hell family members I used to know.

  Carmen is pregnant, and Dad is having heart attacks?

  Who are these people?

  I can't believe Carmen got married. There is a strange tone in her voice when she speaks, but I don't want to question it. It's obvious she's hiding something from me. And what about Dad? He sounds like the years have broken him in half. I barely recognize the charming gentleman who used to tell me stories when I was a little girl.

  I feel like I've been in a coma for years, and they just went on living their lives without me.

  From what I hear, I might as well have been. Apparently, I disappeared to become a solitary writer living in the woods. Why would I do that? Why would I abandon my family?

  I guess losing mom must have affected us all in different ways.

  Stretching slightly in bed, I ignore the pain in my joints. I wish more than anything that Mom was here now. I wish that I could hear her voice. It feels so strange and alien that she’s gone. I feel like she was only here yesterday. I have the urge to pick up my phone and call her to come and get me and take me home, and it seems impossible to believe that she won't be waiting there on the other end of the line.

  What if everyone is lying to me?

  What if this is all some big practical joke, or something like the Truman show?

  I could have just gotten drunk or high at a campus party and passed out, and ended up in the hospital. In order to teach me a lesson, Mom must have written this skit for everyone to play out, and given them lines to memorize. Only Mom would think of this epic way to teach her college-aged daughter the folly of drinking too much at fraternity parties.

  Groaning, I shift my body to the side and try to grasp a hold of the phone on the table beside my hospital bed. At least, I think it's a phone. I've never seen one before, but I imagine that's what a phone would look like. Squinting to make out the numbers on the keypad, I find it strange that I can see the digits at all. I lift the receiver and place it on my shoulder before reaching out to punch in my mother's cell phone number from memory.

  A strange static-y noise fills my ears with a screech.

  "We're sorry. The number you have dialed is not in service. Please hang up and try your call again."

  My nose wrinkles as I put down the receiver. It seems like a lot of work for my mother to disconnect her number just for the sake of a stupid prank. And I'm not one-hundred percent sure, but I think Carmen is actually pregnant. Part of me still wonders if I could lift her shirt up and rip off a fake belly, but I am beginning to realize that this isn't a joke. It actually has been years since the Carmen I remember seeing yesterday existed. My sister isn't the same bubbly, carefree girl that I used to know.

  Too much has changed. Too many little details are so perfect, and everyone tells them in such a serious manner. I haven’t been able to find any discrepancies in their stories.

  This can only mean that there are just as many details I don't know. Details that they don't feel comfortable sharing with me yet.

  Now that I've had my mind wiped, everyone I love has become a stranger.

  But I have a bad feeling that this will go both ways. If I've lost everything that I learned over the past three years, then I won't be the same person I was yesterday.

  Does everyone I love consider me a stranger?

  I am distracted from my paranoid thoughts when I hear the door creak and footsteps as someone enters the room. I haven't gotten used to using my eyes to determine who's approaching, and I have memorized the sound of my alleged-lover's footsteps.

  "Hello, Boyfriend," I say in greeting.

  "My name is Liam," he reminds me.

  I shrug as I try to sit up in bed. "That's not important."

  "Well," he says with a chuckle. "So what is important, Helen?"

  "I have a lot of questions for you," I inform him, wagging a finger menacingly, "and you're going to answer them all honestly. None of this 'being gentle' bullshit that everyone else is doing. Can you do that? Can you be rough on me?"

  Liam clears his throat. "I would prefer to wait until you're a little more healed, personally."

  "That's strike one, Boyfriend," I inform him casually. "If you piss me off two more times, I'm going to find a new and improved boyfriend who will be honest and straightforward with me."

  "Whoa," Liam says softly. "Helen, you've changed."

  Yep. That's what I'm afraid of. Helen circa 2012 does not compute with Helen circa 2015. However, I don't have the time to get all sad and mopey about this. Things change. People change. I'm going to be my sharp, challenging, slightly bitchy self, and Liam is going to have to deal with it. If he doesn't like what he sees, he can get lost.

  "Why did you call me Winter?" I demand.

  He hesitates. When he doesn't speak for a moment, I decide to pry open my eyes to peek at him. Wow. Something about the lighting catches his face just right, and I can see the outline of his chin. If this is what men look like, I would have spent less time studying and more time making out under the bleachers in high school, like my sister.

  "When you left home three years ago, you
decided to change your name to Winter Rose," Liam explains. "It's your pen name, and you usually like to be called that instead of Helen."

  "That's so cheesy," I say, wrinkling my nose in distaste. "Winter Rose? I sound like a freaking Disney character. I always thought that I would write under a name with more gravity, or even a man's name. Something like Cecilia Albright or Aaron Woolf.”

  “I really liked Winter Rose,” Liam says, sounding a little hurt. “She was a really great girl who wrote some really great books.”

  “Well, she’s not around anymore,” I inform him bluntly. Then I knit my eyebrows together in confusion. “Or she isn’t around yet.”

  I am under the firm opinion that a man who doesn't like the version of you that existed three years ago won't like the version that will exist three years into the future. I think that no woman should rely solely on what a man claims to feel 'now.' When it comes to relationships, the past is paramount to understanding the future.

  I scoff at myself in annoyance. “Either way, I can’t believe I wrote under such a silly name.”

  “It’s not silly at all, Helen,” he says, moving to my bedside. Liam places a book against my hand, and guides my fingers over the raised lettering on the cover. “Do you remember this?”

  My breath catches in my throat. Even though I can see the outline of the small rectangular book against the white sheets, Liam is kind enough to know that a previously-blind person would rather understand through touch.

  “Blind Rage?” I ask shyly, based on the lettering.