Heath and Chloe’s duplex perfectly defined them. It was simple, uncluttered, yet warm and inviting. Sweethearts since freshman orientation, it was hard to discern which pieces belonged to him and which were hers.
“Elaina.” Chloe emerged from the kitchen with a frilly apron around her waist. The pretty blonde wrapped her in a tight hug. “I know you’d rather have razor blades under your fingernails. Thank you for trusting me,” Heath’s fiancée whispered in her ear.
“I may ask for those razor blades later,” she whispered back with a laugh before breaking the embrace. “What can I help with?”
Before Elaina could escape to slice, dice or julienne, an auburn-haired man entered through the swinging kitchen door with two glasses of wine in hand.
“This Bordeaux aged perfectly.” The words rose and fell on his English accent. He paused and his cheeks reddened to the color of the wine. “Oh, hello, you must be Elaina. I’m Harry.”
Harry handed her a glass of wine and leaned forward in an attempted kiss on the cheek, which she blocked with a shake of his free hand, but not before she tried to offer her cheek and instead collided with his forehead.
“Hi, yes, I’m the girl who was raised by wolves.” Elaina took a long drink of the wine. If she was going to blush relentlessly, she might as well have a decent buzz to go along with it.
Embarrassed chuckles quickly turned into awkward laughter.
She took another drink and let her gaze dart around the living room, bouncing from a vase of peonies on the mantel to photos of Heath and Chloe before resting on the large mirror, reflecting an image she barely recognized.
Not only had Elaina put on a dress, she’d taken the time to bring out her forest-green eyes with makeup, and tame her long curls to frame her face. She had to admit, she cleaned up pretty well.
Too bad Seth isn’t here to see it.
She frowned into her reflection above the fireplace. Why in the world had she thought that?
Elaina was supposed to be on a date with Harry. There was no room for Seth and his hurricanes-are-cooler-than-tornados nonsense.
“Dr. Harrington Preston, this is the future Dr. Elaina Adams.” Bless Chloe and her proper Southern upbringing. “Heath, please help me in the kitchen.”
Elaina and Harry each took another sip of wine, their eyes working overtime to avoid each other.
“So, come here often?” she asked, hoping to break the silence.
“Uh, no, it’s my first time, actually.”
Her mouth twitched, eager to call out that his sense of humor needed tweaking, but good manners cautioned against pissing him off before entrees were served.
“That was a joke, wasn’t it?” he mumbled into his wine.
“A really bad one.” Elaina took a seat on the couch. “Scientists aren’t necessarily the funniest people on the planet.”
Harry collapsed next to her. “And Brits have their own wonky sense of humor.”
They took another sip in unison.
“It’s my first time, too,” she said. “I mean, I’ve been here a million times, but I’m not some special charity case. Despite the atrocious manners and inappropriate jokes.” She looked at the nearly empty glass of wine. “Then again, maybe they keep me around for the entertainment value.”
“Well, you look very nice this evening. The wolves would be proud.”
Elaina laughed and studied Harry. His auburn hair had the first strands of gray dotting his temple. Rather than age him, it added to his British-ness. The camel-colored sport coat brought out the gold flecks in his hazel eyes.
Their shared nervousness melted the tension in the room and they chatted idly about his adventures in American driving.
He was handsome, in a very upper-crust, patches-on-his-elbows and a pipe-in-his-mouth way. She tried to stay focused on his eyes, but hazel gave way to blue. His auburn hair faded to blond. His British accent sounded wrong in her ears, like it should have been from the south.
Dammit. She didn’t invite Seth on this date. Why did he keep popping up?
She drained the last of her wine to keep the internal scowl from leaking out.
Relief softened Chloe’s face when she called them to dinner. There was no doubt, that in addition to putting the finishing touches to the meal; her friends had been strategizing how to repair their disastrous matchmaking effort.
With plates full and glasses topped off, the foursome spent the first several minutes of dinner complimenting the roasted chicken and grilled vegetables.
“So, future Dr. Adams,” Harry said, setting down his fork. “I hear you like to live dangerously.” The second glass of wine had melted away his stiff upper lip, making room for his British charm.
Elaina’s own second glass of wine coated the defensive wall she usually put up around flirtatious guys. It would be a slippery slope, but she deserved a joy ride every now and then. Plus, it’d be just what she’d need to shove Seth back into his box in her mind. “No need for the formality. You can drop the future and just call me Dr. Adams.” She put down her own fork and leaned toward him. “It’s only dangerous if you aren’t careful.”
“And, you’re careful?” A serious note underscored his question, a bit of fear mixed with awe. “I mean, a strong gale could carry you off to Oz.”
“Well, the flying monkeys should be very, very afraid.” She tilted her head in his direction and lowered her voice.
Harry leaned in, the wine on his breath tickled her nose. “And for some reason, I completely agree with you.”
Two sets of clearing throats broke the spell cast by the wine and the Brit’s seductive talk of Elaina’s favorite movie.
“You work with Chloe at the clinic, right?”
He nodded, swallowing his food before speaking. “Yes, I’m collaborating on a project to study the effects of memory re-writing drugs and therapy on PTSD patients.”
“What Dr. Preston isn’t telling you,” Chloe chimed in. “Is that he practically wrote the book on this practice in the UK. So by collaboration, he means he’s teaching us.”
“It’s nothing new, really. Psychiatrists both here and abroad have been experimenting with Rententamine for a couple of decades now.”
Elaina propped her elbow on the table with her wine glass in hand. “Generations of twenty-somethings have turned to this right here for memory rewriting.”
Three pairs of blinking eyes stared back at her. I’m 0-2 on jokes tonight.
“That was much funnier in my head,” she said to her glass. “What kind of patients do you see?”
“The best candidates are veterans returning from the frontline, but really anyone who has been in a catastrophic event. Car crashes, assault victims, or, as you and Heath can relate to, storm survivors.”
His words made the hair on Elaina’s arms stand up, as if a chill blew through the room, but heat flushed through her. Was she having her own clashing of frontal boundaries? Was her nervous system having the hiccups? She was no biologist, but she was doubtful that nervous systems hiccupped.
“How does it work?” Heath asked.
“Today, we’re finding that the perfect dose of the drug with specific and targeted therapy can render the fear moot,” Harry said. “It isn’t so much re-writing memories. That’s a fallacy that clung to the treatment since its early days.”
“How was it used then?” A voice that sounded very much like Elaina’s asked, but she didn’t remember the words escaping her mouth. She watched Harry’s mouth move. His bottom lip was thicker than his top, making his face look a little bottom heavy.
“Everything from milder uses to more extreme doses combined with intense therapy.”
“To do what?” Her words were listless, yet sharp.
His eyes shot from hers to Chloe’s, as if silently begging his colleague to save him from the crazy blind date interrogating him. “You have to understand, that we don’t use those methods today, and don’t condone how they were used in the past.”
Elaina took a d
eep breath. “To do what?”
Harry let out an exasperated sigh. “The brain isn’t much different than a hard drive. In some cases, it can be completely wiped clean of memories, and then fed new experiences in its place.”
“It was all done for the greater good, right?” Heath’s question was meant to lighten the mood, but she couldn’t help but shoot a glare in his direction.
“Sure, but it wasn’t permanent. Sometimes those deleted memories start bleeding through. Like an old TV stuck between channels. And when they did, it sent those patients into madness. A depression so deep that some of them couldn’t climb out of it.”
The floor swayed beneath her feet and her stomach turned in on itself, forcing the wine back up her throat, burning her as she fought to swallow it back down. “Excuse me,” she croaked, her fingers against her mouth to hold everything in. Elaina ran through the living room, burst through the front door, stumbled down the front steps before falling to her knees and vomiting in Chloe’s potted geraniums. Another tide of nausea rocked her body, forcing her to drape herself over the plant.
Once she’d emptied her stomach of the evening’s contents, she sat back on her heels. The full moon poked through a high cirrus cloud, silvery light shone down on the dark red stains ruining her dress, and illuminating the clearest thought she’d had in weeks.
The scenes that flooded her mind; they weren’t made up visions, or images conjured by a head injury.
They were memories.
Her memories.
That someone tried to steal from her.
Another spasm twisted her stomach, forcing Elaina to double over.
If she couldn’t find out what they held, and why they were taken, it could very well kill her.
13
Elaina’s eyes ached from the blue-white light of her laptop. Her phone had finally quieted after hours of incessant phone calls and texts from Heath and Chloe. She only responded after her partner had threatened to call the police for a welfare check.
The first websites she found pretty much said the same thing. Rententamine was used as Harry said. Coupled with intense therapy, it would render patients numb when faced with fear-inducing situations.
Then she found the darker sites, the ones that questioned the drug’s initial use and called for its discontinuation. These websites told horror stories of people who’d lost all memory of their previous lives. In some cases mothers shunned their children and husbands left their wives. A person’s whole essence was gone.
She sniffled and pulled her covers over her head.
Nimbus joined her in the cotton-sheet cocoon, panting but lying by his owner.
Elaina was going to spend the rest of her life there. Under the sheets, away from people who’d watched her puke her guts into a potted plant, without friends who tried to set her up with handsome psychiatrists who told her things that lived deep inside her. Most importantly, if she stayed locked in her house, in bed and under the covers, she’d never have to see her mother again.
Her mother.
Or, more accurately, the woman who raised her.
The websites got darker as she’d delved deeper into research. Some sites alluded to brainwashing techniques and hinted at the use of children as test subjects. Horror stories filled page after page of people becoming institutionalized or committing suicide once the drug wore off.
Elaina’s stomach turned inside out. Was that in her future? Would she slowly go insane or would it happen all at once? Or, had it already begun and there was no way back? Would she’d even know if she lost touch with reality? Had she already?
She kicked off the sheets and grabbed a notebook. She needed scientific detachment to determine what was reality, and what was potentially a false memory. A sharp line bisected the page. “Real” topped one column, “Lies” the other.
Her adoption had never been a secret. It went in the “Real” column. Her mother’s reaction about being in a tornado went into the “Lies” column.
The image of being found in the rubble flashed across her mind. Where did that go?
Elaina closed her eyes and her hand drifted to the “Real” column.
She paced her bedroom until the sun rose, rubbing her temples begging her mind to go all the way back, to her earliest memory, but it was like a child’s toy chest, half memories jumbled together with others.
Was her third birthday confused with her sixth? Which Christmas did she get the bicycle? When did she get her ballerina necklace?
Nimbus got up from the bed and looked out the window. He glanced over his shoulder, wagging his tail. His wise brown eyes bore into hers, as if saying ‘Come on, let’s get some fresh air.’
Elaina grabbed a pair of workout shorts and one of her favorite T-shirts, ‘I’m Only Happy When it Rains.’ It was the perfect shirt to wear on what most people would call a beautiful spring Sunday morning.
She needed a good thunderstorm to clear away her bad mood.
“Come on, Nim,” she said, grabbing his rarely used leash. “Let’s go for a run.”
She yanked her front door open, and took a step right into the chest of Dr. Harrington Preston.
He jumped back, lifting the two cups of coffee high overhead.
“So, you drew the short straw, huh?” Elaina crossed her arms and leaned against the doorjamb.
Harry shuffled on his feet and handed her one of the cups. “Something tells me you take your coffee black.”
Elaina accepted the peace offering. “We were going for a run.” She looked down at his sneakers. They were the kind one would wear to brunch or the farmer’s market, not to run off the anger of finding out her whole life might be a lie.
“Would you settle for a walk instead? I’d like to talk with you.” His voice was firm, clinical. The flirtatious inflections from the evening before were gone. He was all business.
Nimbus led the way. His yellow body wiggled as he greeted every tree, person, sign and blade of grass.
They walked in silence for the first couple of blocks.
The coffee warmed Elaina’s soul and calmed the cyclone of thoughts swirling around her mind. A light northerly breeze danced on her skin, the perfect balance to cool the warm rays of the sun.
She stretched to look up. High cirrus clouds were smeared across the blue sky. They were usually a sign of fair weather, but every now and then they indicated a change coming.
“One of these days I’m going to learn to keep my big mouth shut,” Harry said.
“You’re saying that to the girl who barfed in the geraniums.”
He laughed. It was a nice sound; warm, joyous, relaxed.
They walked past a father and son playing catch in the front yard.
Nim danced his front feet, his tongue hanging out in excitement at the chance that a stray ball could land in his direction.
“How certain are you?” Harry’s words were so low Elaina had to whip her head to the side to make sure his lips were moving.
“Would you call me crazy if I said very and not really at the same time?”
One side of his mouth tugged up into a smile. “Are you asking for my professional opinion?”
She took a long sip of her coffee. “I was adopted.”
“At what age?”
Elaina chewed on the inside of her cheek as she tried to remember. She couldn’t remember ever having the talk about the details of her adoption. She’d never brought it up, never wanting to risk hurting her mother’s feelings at insinuating that she wanted something different.
“I always assumed as a baby.”
“Could you ask your mum?”
Elaina shook her head. Before she asked about the storm she would’ve brought it up without a second thought. Now, she feared what her mom would say more than she worried about her reaction.
What if Connie told her an obvious lie? Could they go back? What would happen to their relationship? Truth or lies, Connie was the only mother she had.
They turned the corner and arrived a
t the neighborhood park. It was what had attracted Elaina to this neighborhood. A jogging trail wove through the trees, picnic tables lay beneath ancient oak trees and playground equipment filled the air with laughter.
This patch of green was heaven on earth. A place where young and old alike could be children.
“Maybe I can help,” Harry said. “Will you share what you saw?”
She took a seat on the vacant swing set, pushing herself in haphazard circles with the toe of her sneakers. How much could she tell him?
Would patient confidentially apply to the blind date who’d drank too much and embarrassed herself? Or, would he share everything with Chloe and Heath? If that happened, would Heath then tell Dr. Pierce she wasn’t fit for fieldwork?
No, Elaina couldn’t take the chance of being sidelined. Not this soon into tornado season. Not this close to finishing her dissertation.
“I’ve made enough of a fool of myself in front of you.” She drained the last of the cup. “I’m sorry about last night. But hey, you have a great story to tell everyone. I think Nim and I are going to have that run now.” She pushed off the swing and walked toward the trail. The rustling leaves above her head applauded her decision.
“Elaina, it will happen again,” Harry called out. “There’s a trigger. If you don’t want my help, that’s fine. I understand. But you have to know that this will get worse, not better.”
She dropped the empty coffee cup in the trash bin and turned back to study him. If she were someone else, someone who didn’t make awkward jokes or run toward tornadoes instead of away from them, they could be happy.
The man sitting in the swing with the sun glinting off his auburn hair deserved someone who didn’t mirror his patients.
“Thank you for the coffee,” Elaina shouted. She and Nim jogged out of the park and down the street.
His four legs trotted at a comfortable pace, but she wanted to run faster.
It wasn’t to run away from the handsome Brit who could entice her to share secrets, or seduce her into a safe, boring life.
She ran because he was right.
There was a trigger.
It would happen again.
Vortex Page 8
