by Emma Scott
“Yeah. I just moved into town and I was—”
“My sister. She’s coming here.” Her delicate brows furrowed, confusion clouding the crystal blue of her eyes. “And my parents. They’ll be here any minute.”
“Okay.” Inhale. Exhale. “I was wondering if maybe, you’d like to—?”
“How long has it been?” Thea hugged herself and looked around as if seeing her surroundings for the first time. Her breath shortened. “I don’t know this place.” Her gaze darted to me. “How long has it been?”
“How long…?” I blinked. “I don’t know—”
“Who are you?” Thea’s eyes were wide now, panic bright in their light blue depths. “How long has it been?”
Did she want the time? I started to check my watch, and then it dawned on me. Like a tidal wave of cold water dousing the tiny, flickering flame between us.
Oh, fuck, you jackass. She’s a patient. A resident.
“How long has it been?” Thea shrieked, her voice echoing through the foyer.
“I d-d-don’t know…” I stammered to the pounding of my pulse.
She took a step back from me. “They’re working on my case,” she said. “The doctors. I had an accident. How long has it been?”
I glanced around the empty foyer, looking for help. “I… I d-don’t…”
“Miss Hughes, there you are.”
I spun to see a small woman with dark hair and eyes in a nurse’s pale blue scrubs striding quickly down the hallway. Relief lanced through me. The nurse shot me a curious glance and gently took Thea by the arm.
“Miss Hughes always seems to find her way to the front door.”
Thea turned her wide-eyed gaze to the nurse, whose nametag read Rita. “How long has it been?”
“Two years, Miss Hughes,” Rita said. “The doctors are working on your case.”
“Right,” Thea said, taking a deep breath and clutching Rita’s arm. “They’re going to figure out what’s wrong with me.”
Rita smiled and nodded her chin at the oil painting. “This picture is lovely, don’t you think?”
Thea relaxed and her smile started to return. “Absolutely. Look at the way the light shines over the curve of the apple.” She turned to me. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
I nodded, staring. “Yeah. Beautiful.”
She beamed and offered her hand. “Hi. I’m Thea Hughes.”
“Jim Whelan,” I murmured. My hand rose on its own and took hers, feeling as if I were having an out-of-body experience.
What the fuck is happening?
Thea gave my hand a strong, one-pump shake. “Nice to meet you, Jim.”
Rita cleared her throat. “You must be our new orderly?”
“I start Monday.”
“I’m Rita Soto.” Her smile was warm. “Welcome to Blue Ridge.” She nodded at the empty front desk with a frown. “I see Jules is on another smoke break. Thank you for keeping Miss Hughes company.”
“Sure,” I said, unable to look at Thea any longer; my eyes ached. “I better go.”
“Bye, Jim,” Thea called. “See you again sometime?”
I stopped. It was the exact question I’d been ready to ask her.
You got your answer, you big dummy. Doris cackled in my head. You’re going to see her every day.
Every. Day.
Chapter 2
Jim
I spent the weekend in a rented U-Haul, making the three-hour drive between my shitty little apartment in Richmond and the shitty little house I’d rented in Boones Mill. After my successful interview at Blue Ridge, George Hammett—my new landlord—practically threw the keys at me from the cab of his truck, then screeched away before I could change my mind.
He didn’t have anything to worry about. I didn’t need much. The house was shabby as hell but livable. During two days of unpacking and cleaning, I managed to not think about Thea Hughes for a grand total of eight minutes.
Fuck me. She’s a resident.
A resident.
Stupid of me to not see it. I should have paid better attention.
What was her diagnosis?
Maybe something minor.
Maybe she was recovering…
Then Alonzo’s words rattled in my head: Everyone here is suffering from permanent brain damage. Our job is to help them adjust to their new reality.
Thea Hughes wasn’t recovering and wasn’t going to get better, and I had to adjust to that reality too. She was a resident of Blue Ridge Sanitarium. I was an orderly charged to take care of her, end of story.
End of our story.
I took my attraction to her—an attraction I’d never felt toward any woman—and shelved it away with the speech therapist dream.
Sunday night, I fired up a frozen dinner in my new house’s old microwave. After, I set my guitar on my lap and played Guns N’ Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine” quietly, so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. I sang about eyes like the bluest sky, belonging to a woman who exuded warmth and safety.
She’s a resident.
I put the guitar away.
Later, I lay in my bed, listening to the crickets grow loud as summer approached while reading my worn out, dog-eared copy of Fight Club. My fingers turned pages I’d read a hundred times, and the dim light made the scars across my knuckles gleam white against my tanned skin. The scars came from countless fights during endless school days. Days when the soundtrack of my life was taunting voices and the rattle of chain-link in the yard where they always cornered me.
I hid my bruised face from Doris as best as I could when I got home, but she always found out.
What happened this time?
N-N-Nothing—
Spit it out, you big dummy!
I did get big. Bigger. Stronger. I lifted weights and started winning every fight. By senior year of high school, no one dared to fuck with me. Including Doris. I moved out of her house the minute I turned eighteen and never looked back.
The scars on my knuckles were badges I’d earned, as was the silence when the taunting stopped. But it lived on in my mind—a poisonous voice of someone who was supposed to watch out for me and tormented me instead.
Watch out for yourself. Keep your head down. Do your job.
Thea Hughes, I thought with a pang in my chest, wasn’t going to be anything but part of my job. I could watch out for her too.
I rolled into the Blue Ridge Sanitarium at 6:45 a.m.
“Happy to have you on the team,” Jules said, shooting me a wink. “Very happy.”
“Break room?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes with a sigh. “You’re no fun. Back there, second door on the left.”
The employee break room consisted of a few lockers, a card table, and men’s and women’s bathrooms. A white uniform consisting of pants and a button-down, short-sleeve shirt was waiting for me in an open locker, along with my badge and nametag.
Just as I’d buttoned up my shirt, a wiry guy entered the break room. He looked to be about thirty, with a full head of brown hair and friendly dark eyes.
“It’s too early for this shit, am I right?” Laughing, he extended his hand. “Joaquin Reyes. You must be the new guy.”
“Jim Whelan,” I said, shaking his hand.
“Good to meet you, Jim. Alonzo comes on in a few hours. I’m going to show you the basics. The layout of this joint, where shit is stored, all that.”
“Sounds good.”
Joaquin showed me around, cracking jokes and flirting with the nurses we passed. I braced myself to see Thea Hughes around every corner but saw no sign of her.
While Joaquin sped around the place like he was born there, I made a mental map: resident rooms and nurses’ station on the top floor.
Therapy rooms and the medicine room on the second floor.
The break room, supply storage, cafeteria and rec room on the ground floor.
Blue Ridge was much larger than the exterior led me to think. The additions built to accommodate the residents had newer paint a
nd prison-like barriers. Like the fence that surrounded the nurses’ station and another blocking off the resident quarters from the downstairs.
“Think of them like child-proof gates,” Joaquin said. “Most of the residents can’t remember shit, and they’ll wander right out the door if we’re not careful.”
“They have amnesia?” I asked, my thoughts darting directly to Thea.
“Some worse than others,” Joaquin said, heading down the stairs. “But Alonzo will tear me a new one if I say any more. He’s in charge of training new hires how to talk to the residents so you don’t freak them out.”
“Yeah, he mentioned that,” I said, remembering Thea’s panic because I couldn’t answer her question, How long has it been?
We arrived on the ground floor, where Joaquin unlocked the door to a cleaning supply closet. “Once a month, the director of the place shows up,” he said. “And we all gotta be on our best behavior. Then there are the doctors.” He rolled out a mop and bucket. “The neuropsychologists come up from Roanoke Memorial to do rounds. Specialists are in and out. Some are decent, but most won’t even acknowledge an orderly’s presence. When in doubt, just stay out of their way.”
I nodded.
Joaquin pressed the mop handle into my hand. “Not a big talker, are you? But you got a phone? If not, we got some old pagers lying around.”
“I have a phone.”
“We’ll get you all the numbers. You gotta keep your phone on you at all times. We’re always short-handed. Lots of turnover. Hours can be grueling. Late nights. All-nighters.”
“I’m on the day shift.”
Joaquin smirked. “Technically. You’ll end up working at least a few night shifts, rookie. Lunch is forty-five minutes unless you’re needed for a resident and, like I said, we’re always short-handed. You do get a fifteen-minute break every four hours. You smoke?”
“No.”
“We’ll see how long that lasts. Orderlies in other facilities don’t do janitor work, but that’s not the case here. We gotta take on multiple jobs.” He pushed the mop and rolling bucket to me. “Mop up the cafeteria, now. Later, you’ll work at the rec room and help supervise FAE.”
“FAE?”
“Fresh Air Experience. It’s a therapeutic way of saying exercise. Residents who are up for it go outside and walk around the grounds. Usually, a nurse is assigned to each resident, but we’re short nurses, too. So either the orderlies help out, or it’s skipped altogether.”
“You mean the residents don’t get to go outside?”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. Most days they do. Other days, it’s just not in the cards.” He peered up at me. “You’ve probably seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest too many times. This is a good place. Everyone’s treated well. The funding’s not exactly pouring in, but it’s better than a hospital. Or a psych ward. Cool?”
“Cool.”
Joaquin narrowed his eyes. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Got family near here?”
“No.”
He leaned in. “Okay, so listen. This job has a way of latching on. I know I said there’s a lot of turnover, and there is. Mostly because decent employees who don’t fuck up aren’t all that easy to keep. But those that stick, like me and Alonzo, we tend to stick. I came here for a summer job. That was eight years ago. Point is, don’t get stuck on this mountain.”
He slugged my shoulder and left me to mop the cafeteria floor. Breakfast was over and the room was empty. Alone, moving the mop in figure eights over the linoleum, I turned his words over in my head.
Don’t get stuck on this mountain.
Getting stuck is what I did best. I’d probably have worked at my last job forever if it hadn’t shut down. I didn’t want much in the world. Just a place where I could work and be of help to people. And no one to bother me.
Being stuck on that mountain didn’t sound bad at all.
While the residents were all at lunch, I cleaned three rooms. Each had its own bathroom and was identically furnished with a bed, closet, small dresser, and a table and chair under a window.
All the doors locked from the outside.
I met Alonzo downstairs in the recreation room that consisted of a nurses’ station, a dozen small tables, a TV mounted on one wall, shelves full of games and puzzles, and a storage closet at the rear. Alonzo had a stack of file folders under his arm and greeted me with an approving look.
“Joaquin tells me you catch on quick,” he said. “Let’s sit.”
We took a table in the corner that had a vantage of the entire space. Only one resident was present—the older man with the dented head. He worked slowly and laboriously over a puzzle while his attendant stood at the station, chatting with the duty nurse.
“You need to get to know the residents,” Alonzo said. “That there is Richard Webb. Mr. Webb to you and me.”
I nodded.
“They each have a nurse assigned to them. Most nurses work more than one resident though, so we step in and help, time to time. But carefully. Be friendly, but don’t talk their ear off.” His eyebrow raised. “I have a feeling I won’t have that problem with you.”
The door to the rec room opened. I looked back and recognized the nurse I’d met yesterday, Rita Soto.
Thea Hughes was beside her.
She wore shapeless beige pants, a plain shirt, and loafers, but she was jaw-droppingly beautiful. A stunning work of art wrapped in a paper bag. Her blond hair fell around her shoulders in soft waves, and she regarded the rec room with bright if hesitant eyes.
Rita led Thea to a table and set her up with paper and colored pens. Within moments, Thea was bent over her work, drawing. Like a child making doodles after school.
“That’s Miss Hughes,” Alonzo said, tapping his pen on the file folders. “Of all our residents, she needs the most care. Which means she’s got the most rules.”
I tore my gaze from her and forced my voice into a neutral tone. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Only one of the worst recorded cases of amnesia in medical history.”
I stared. “Are you sure?”
Alonzo chuckled. “Am I sure? That’s one I haven’t heard before. But I get it. Miss Hughes is young and beautiful and looks healthy as a horse, but that just ain’t the case.”
He shuffled through his files until he found hers, opened it, and spoke in a low voice as he read.
“Althea Renée Hughes, age twenty-three. Two years ago, she was in a head-on collision while driving with her parents. Drunk-driver plowed his pickup truck right at ’em. Parents were pronounced dead at the scene. Miss Hughes was Life-Flighted to Richmond General where she spent two weeks in a coma. They treated her for a broken arm, broken clavicle, broken femur, and internal injuries. But it was her head that took the worst of it.”
I swallowed. “What happened?”
Alonzo read from her file. “Catastrophic brain injury sustained in a motor vehicle accident with intracranial hemorrhage and increased intracranial pressure resulting in trauma and damage to the hippocampus.” He looked up. “In English: her long- and short-term memory are shot to hell. She’s got no memory of her life before the accident and no memory of her life now.”
“What do you mean? No memory at all?”
“She has semantic memory, which means she remembers factual information such as words, concepts, numbers. She still knows how to wash her face, use a fork, put on her clothes. But she has no episodic memory. No personal experiences, events, or details about people or places. Meaning, she knows what a dog is but can’t tell you if she’s ever pet one in her life. Some Egyptian history has stuck with her and so has her artistic abilities, but she can’t tell you where she learned’em.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “But she knows what’s happening to her? She’s aware of…?” I gestured to indicate the room.
“Where she is? What happened to her? What she was doing five minutes ago? Nope. She has a few minutes of cons
ciousness and then she has to start over. She resets.”
“Resets?”
“Yeah, when her minutes are up, the slate gets wiped clean again, so to speak. We call it her reset.”
He’s messing with me. How can anyone survive with only a few minutes of memory?
“That’s crazy.”
“Sounds that way, but it’s her truth. You can hear it happen. She says the same thing, asks the same questions, every few minutes. All day long. Day in and day out. Going on two years now.”
How long has it been?
That was Thea’s reset. I’d heard it yesterday.
“She don’t stray from her script much unless she’s drawing. Or you get her in a conversation,” Alonzo said. “Then she’s good for a few minutes more. And just when you think ‘Hey, this gal’s all right. Why is she here?’ Bam. Reset.”
“What happens?”
“She’ll pause and get all blank and confused. Then start her script over again. When she first came to us and a reset hit, she’d throw a fit. Like a little seizure. Now she only has fits when something upsets her. That’s why we keep her on a strict routine, and you have to know how to talk to her so you don’t set her off.”
Too late.
“What does she think is happening when the reset hits?”
“She knows there was an accident. She knows she was hurt and something’s going on with her brain and the doctors are working on her case. That’s all she needs to know. Her older sister, Delia, is her guardian now. She directs Miss Hughes’ care, and she’s adamant we don’t spill the beans that their parents didn’t survive. No need to upset her. Even if she won’t remember it a few minutes later.”
I frowned, trying to wrap my mind around Thea’s condition. “But… if Thea’s—”
“Miss Hughes,” Alonzo said. “Always Miss Hughes.”
“If she’s taking a bite of food or in the shower and the reset hits, what does she think is going on?”
“She goes with the flow,” Alonzo said. “The brain is a complicated mechanism, but its basic function is survival. The way her docs tell it, Miss Hughes’ memory resets, but she continues on calmly because she’s in this facility, and the facility doesn’t change. Calm is our number one goal. And since you’re so chatty all of a sudden, lesson one: you go up to Miss Hughes and what do you say?”
