Amnesia

by Andrew Neiderman

  She kept her hand out. He considered it and thenhe touched it and she closed her fingers around his. He lowered his head.

  “I’m very tired,” he said.

  “I understand.”

  “And very shaken.”

  “Of course you are,” she said, pulling him toward her. He didn’t resist.

  She sat up to kiss his lips and then his cheek. He closed his eyes. He was warmed, the tension receding. He sat beside her, and she undid his jacket and pealed it away, undid the buttons on his shirt, and helped him get undressed. The music continued, and when he gazed around, it seemed as if all the women in all the lascivious pictures had turned toward them and were smiling more.

  Her body was so warm, so soft and wonderful against his. She drew his face toward her breasts, and he kissed her and held her.

  “You’re really going to have our baby? That’s not another lie?”

  “Yes, I will have our baby. Thank you for that, Aaron,” she said.

  “I heard the other child’s voice, heard her calling to me.”

  “Shhh,” she said. “Don’t talk about it now, Aaron. Don’t think, don’t remember, don’t try to do anything but be happy for a little while longer.”

  “What’s going to happen to me?” he asked, looking into her beautiful eyes.

  She smiled. “You’re going to make love to me for the last time, Aaron Clifford,” she said and brought her lips to his chest, moving down over his stomachuntil she was kneeling over him, her nose nudging his genitals, her tongue tantalizing him.

  “I’m dreaming,” he muttered to himself.

  “Yes,” she said. “Dream on and on.”

  She mounted him and moved slowly, drawing him into her, drawing pleasure from him. He looked up at her and then he reached to take her at her hips and hold her.

  She smiled. “What it could have been, Aaron,” she said. “What it could have been.”

  She moved faster, driving him toward an amazingly long orgasm that made his head spin. The spinning grew faster, deeper, until he felt as if he was falling through space with nothing upon which to grab. He was helpless, drifting toward the darkness below.

  “Megan!” he screamed. “Meg . . .” He fell farther and father, deeper and deeper, until when he opened his mouth to scream again, he didn’t know what name to call for a moment. Then it came to him and he screamed at the top of his lungs, or at least it seemed he was.

  “Diana!”

  It felt comfortable, familiar. There was no longer any hesitation.

  “Diana!”

  His whole body shook. Something was squeezing his shoulders.

  “Diana! Diana!”

  “Mr. Martin,” he heard. It sounded as if he was in an echo chamber. “Mr. Martin.”

  His eyes fluttered and then opened, the focus slow to come.

  He looked at a round-faced woman in her mid to late forties. She was wearing a nurse’s uniform with a identification tag that read, RN: Block. She was leaning over and had her hands on his shoulders.

  “What?” he said and gazed to his right when he heard a lab wagon being wheeled past the door of the waiting room. It had the feel of being very, very late. There was no one else in the room.

  “You were shouting at the top of your voice. I’m sure it was just a bad dream, Mr. Martin. I was just coming down to get you.”

  She stood up, smiling. “The doctor wants to see you. It’s about your daughter.”

  “My daughter?” He sat up quickly. “How is she?”

  “He has good news for you, Mr. Martin. He sent me to get you. Would you like a glass of water first?”

  “No, no, I’m all right,” he said and stood. “What time is it?”

  “It’s fourA.M.Dr. Longstreet was in the operating room until three and then made her rounds, otherwise she wouldn’t have been here,” the nurse replied. “We would have called her, of course, and then you. It’s been a long, dreadful four days for you, I know.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  They turned down another corridor and headed toward the Intensive Care Unit of the Beth Israel Hospital in New York City. He could see Dr. Longstreet standing outside the door, speaking to a special-duty nurse. The nurse nodded and walked away, and Dr. Longstreet turned to greet him as he approached.

  “Mr. Martin,” she said with as wide a smile as hehad thought possible on the forty-five-year-old doctor’s taut, thin face, “Tammy’s come out of the coma. The pressure is relieved, and I believe she’s going to make a full recovery.”

  “Thank God,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “She’s quite groggy, but she’ll recognize you.”

  “I’ve got to tell my wife,” he said.

  The doctor’s smile diminished.

  “That might take a bit longer, Mr. Martin. The important thing now is to have patience and understanding.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know.”

  Dr. Longstreet accompanied him into ICU and to Tammy’s bedside. The four-year-old had her eyes open.

  “Hi, baby,” he said and leaned over to kiss her cheek.

  She smiled. “Hi, Daddy. Where’s Mommy?” she asked in a voice so weak it made his eyes tear.

  “She’s coming soon,” he said after glancing quickly at the doctor, who nodded. “You feel better, honey?”

  She closed her eyes and then opened them. “I want Sophie,” she said.

  “Who’s that?” Dr. Longstreet asked.

  He laughed.

  “That’s her rag doll. She’s had it since she was two and she named it Sophie. Don’t ask me why. Neither my wife nor I have any close relatives named Sophie.”

  Dr. Longstreet smiled and nodded.

  “The more I work with children, the more I’m convincedthey dwell in a world of mystery,” the doctor said.

  He looked at her with surprise. She actually sounded human. Vaguely he understood that doctors probably wanted to remain as cool and aloof as they could until a prognosis was clear. If they became too involved in each and every patient, emotionally involved, they couldn’t survive their own work and responsibilities.

  “That’s for sure,” he said.

  “You ought to get some real rest now, Mr. Martin.”

  “I will. I just want to sit with her a while and hold her hand.”

  “Of course, but when you go to see your wife, you want to be as fresh and bright as can be. It will help.”

  “I understand. Thank you.”

  “It’s a pleasure when this sort of result occurs,” she said, gazing at Tammy.

  He nodded.

  “I’ll be in early in the afternoon tomorrow,” Dr. Longstreet said.

  She started away.

  “Thank you,” he muttered toward her, but she kept walking.

  He sat beside the bed and held his little girl’s hand, watching her breathe and occasionally open her eyes to look around. Whenever she turned to him, she smiled and he smiled and his heart felt as if it were returning to full strength, warming, pounding his blood back into his body, resurrecting him from his own private death, a death that was born in his own sense of fault.

  After all, he had taken his eyes off the road just as that pickup truck came out of the driveway, its driver not bothering to look right. They had little chance.

  Now Diana was in a state of shock upstairs in her room. She blamed herself more. She had undone Tammy’s seat belt and permitted her to crawl into the front.

  Still, he knew he had been driving too fast, and he should have been more alert.

  Reliving it was almost as painful as it had been to see it all unfold: their little girl smash her head on the windshield, the screams, the blood. . . . it curdled his stomach now. Would he ever be able to forget it all enough to stop the nightmares?

  “Mommy,” Tammy muttered. “I want Mommy.”

  His chest ached. “She’ll be here soon, honey,” he said. “She’ll be here soon.”

  He rose, determin
ed.

  I’ve got to bring my family back from the land of the dead, he thought, and headed out of ICU.

  At a pay phone just outside the unit, he called Diana’s mother. She had told him not to worry about the time. She wasn’t going to be doing much sleeping these nights anyway. She lived alone in an apartment not far from their home. Diana’s father had died just last year, but her mother was a very independent woman, strong, still working three or four days a week as a real estate agent.“It’s Bob,” he said when she answered, sounding fully awake. “Tammy’s come out of the coma. The doctor says she’s going to be all right.”

  “Oh, how wonderful, dear. How wonderful!”

  “I’m going up to see Diana.”

  “Yes, that’s good. I’ll be there as early as I can,” she added.

  “The doctor wanted me to go home and get some rest first, but I can’t.”

  “Well, take care of yourself, dear. You’ve got to be even stronger now.”

  “I know. How are you?”

  She laughed. “Just like you to ask. Don’t worry about me, dear. Just worry about your girls.”

  “You’re one of my girls,” he told her, and she laughed.

  Amazingly, he felt revived. Two or three hours’ sleep over three and a half days was all he had managed, and that only because he passed out from time to time. At the moment he thought he could run a couple of miles. After he hung up, he started toward the elevator with a determined gait.

  The floor was only dimly lit now. He walked past dark rooms filled with patients either asleep or tossing and turning with real mental anguish. At his wife’s room the private-duty nurse he had hired for the first week at least sat thumbing through a magazine. When she had been recommended to him, he had first thought she was too old, but the doctor had such high praise and she did impress him with her competence quickly.

  She looked up as he appeared in the doorway.

  “Mr. Martin,” she said, rising. “Why aren’t you home, getting some rest?”

  “My daughter,” he said, choking on the words.

  “Yes?” She looked as if she was holding her breath, her right hand pressed to the base of her throat.

  “She’s come out of the coma. She’s going to be fine.”

  “Oh, how wonderful, Mr. Martin, but I’m not surprised. You had the best doctor in the city on this case.”

  “I think so,” he said, nodding. He looked at his wife.

  Diana’s normally radiant blond hair was now spread around her face on the pillow, looking more like drab strands of broken thread. Her face was still quite ashen, making the cleft in her chin look deeper, darker.

  “How is she?”

  “Unchanged, I’m afraid.”

  He nodded. “I want to talk to her now. I want her to know about Tammy.”

  His nurse nodded.

  “I don’t think she’s really asleep anyway. I think she’s just drifting through some vast mental space, stunned and confused.”

  “Yes,” he said, looking at the older woman as if for the first time. She seemed to possess such wisdom, such a quiet awareness like the awareness of someone who had lived centuries and knew just what the next moment would bring.

  “You can take a break, Mrs. Domfort,” he told her.

  She smiled. “Okay, Mr. Martin.”

  She patted his hand and walked out of the room, pausing to look back and smile at him before he pulled his chair closer to the bed.

  He could lean over and kiss Diana’s cheek. Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open.

  “Honey,” he said in a soft whisper. “I have good news. Tammy’s going to be all right. I just came from her bedside. She’s out of danger, Diana. She’s going to get better and be fine.”

  His wife stirred but didn’t open her eyes.

  “You’ve got to get better quickly, Diana. She’s already asking for you. I need you; she needs you. Please try, honey. Please.”

  He took her hand and gently squeezed it. She didn’t stir.

  “I know what you’re doing,” he said in a deep whisper. “I wanted to do the same thing . . . run away, forget, block it all out, find some way to make it go away. It doesn’t, Diana. You’ve got to turn and face it. You’ve got to come back to us.

  “We made a mistake, a terrible mistake that might have caused us the deepest, most horrible tragedy of all, but we’ve been given a second chance, honey. Don’t turn away from that. Please. I couldn’t go on without you beside me.”

  He pressed his forehead to her hand and closed his eyes.

  “I love you,” he said. “Tammy needs you.”

  He waited. She didn’t stir. After another long moment, he took a deep breath, rose, leaned over to kiss her cheek, and then started out. He would go home now and get some rest and hope, he thought.

  Just as he turned, he heard her call him.

  “Bob!” she cried in a voice almost inaudible. He spun around.

  Her beautiful hazel brown eyes were open.

  For him, it was as if a curtain of black steel had been raised and all the memories of his love and his family came rushing back on stage, just waiting for him to rejoin them.

  He returned quickly to his wife’s side and held her.

  Somewhere, in the back of his mind he had the thought that he had almost lost far more than any man could hope to have.

  . . . epilogue

  suddenly he stopped walking. The realization that he didn’t know where he was going struck him like a blow to his head. In fact, the feeling was so similar, he actually combed his fingers through his hair and over his scalp to see if there were any wounds, bumps, or blood. He looked at his palm and then turned his hand and saw it was clean.“What the hell . . .” he muttered.

  Two rather attractive flight attendants walking by turned to him. One smiled, the other looked a little annoyed. They were pulling their small carry-ons and walking toward the arrival exits. He watched them leave as if by doing so he would learn where he was to go, too. The annoyed one looked back at him as they passed out the door. She shook her head and muttered something to her fellow attendant.

  He turned to look back at the escalator pouring travelers continuously down to the baggage level and arrival doors. Many were smiling, the faces radiating with the relief that comes from getting to their destinationssafely, anticipating being welcomed by loved ones or associates, a tangible end to their journeys in sight.

  He was immediately envious of each and every one of them.

  Whom was he supposed to meet? Was he supposed to meet anyone? Where had he come from and where was he going? Should he go to the baggage carousel?

  He spun around, searching for a face that was brightening at the sight of his, but all he saw were more people rushing around and in between each other, charging toward their destinations. A mother went by ordering her children to stay close. A chauffeur met an elderly lady who looked so weighed down by her jewels and furs, he wondered how she could make even her small steps.

  People hugged, ran into each other’s arms, shook hands, kissed cheeks, handed pieces of luggage over to welcoming friends and relatives. The world around him was filled with social and familial warmth and especially the kind of security that resulted from finding a friendly, loving companion happy to see you, greet you, take you into his or her world.

  He felt none of this warmth. In fact, he was struck with a terrible chill. It nearly made his teeth chatter. The more people greeted each other around him, the more isolated and alone he felt. He brought his hand to his eyes and rubbed his temples. He took deep breaths and waited for some sensibility to return to his brain that for now felt filled with smoke, waves and waves of empty smoke.

  He tried to retrace his steps. He vaguely recalledbeing on a plane. He left it and went through the gate and then he started toward the baggage carousels, and somewhere just at the top of the escalator, he lost it, lost his sense of direction. He was filled with the sort of panic someone might have if he or she suddenly realized they
had arrived at the wrong city, taken the wrong plane, made a terrible mistake.

  “This is crazy,” he said aloud and shook his head vigorously, as if he believed it was some sort of pinball machine that could be jolted into a sensible pattern of lights and bells. He saw a transit policeman looking his way, probably wondering why he was standing in the same spot for so long while people rushed by on all sides.

  Maybe I should sit and think, he mused, but realized there wasn’t any place nearby to do that. Should he go back? he wondered. But go back where? Back to the arrival gate? Was someone supposed to be there? Who?

  “Something wrong?” someone asked him, and he turned to see a good-looking young blond man in a gray pin-striped suit carrying an attaché case. “I couldn’t help but notice how you’ve been standing here.”

  “Yes,” he said eagerly. “I can’t believe this. I don’t even know how to say it, but just as suddenly as I stepped off the escalator, it seems, I’ve forgotten where I’m going and who, if anyone, is coming to greet me.”

  The young man smiled calmly.

  “Had some drinks on the plane?” he asked.

  “A few, I guess. Yeah, now that you mention that, Idid. I was in first class, and you know how they keep pouring them in first class.”

  “Yes,” the young man said, laughing. “What’s your name?”

  “What?”

  “Who are you? Maybe if you give your name to the desk up there, they’ll announce your arrival, and whoever is supposed to meet you will be here in minutes.”

  He stared at the young man.

  “Something wrong with that idea?”

  “No, but it just occurred to me that . . . I don’t know who I am. I can’t remember my name.”

  “Don’t panic,” the young man said calmly. He set down his attaché case. “You’ve got to be carrying some identification on you in order to have gotten on a plane. Check your wallet.”

  “Right,” he said. “Right.”

  He dug into his inside pocket and brought out his wallet, opening it like someone who expected to find a winning lottery ticket inside. Then he turned it about and read his pictured license.