A Five-Minute Life

by Emma Scott

  I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry this happened to you.

  “I’m n-not sure what you mean.”

  “Most people would say, ‘Hello, Thea. How are you, today?’”

  “Okay.”

  “Wrong. Three huge mistakes in that sentence. One: using her first name implies you know her, but she don’t know you, so that upsets her. You gotta call all residents by their last names. It’s polite and respectful, too.”

  I nodded.

  “Two: never ask how she’s doing. She don’t know. She has no idea how she should be feeling in the few minutes since she ‘came awake’ again, so don’t ask.”

  Came awake again. I still couldn’t grasp having only a few minutes’ worth of consciousness.

  “Three,” Alonzo said, “never use words like today or this afternoon or good evening or Merry Christmas. She don’t know one day from the next, one minute from another. No sense of time. When she asks, ‘How long has it been?’ she means since her accident.”

  “Two years,” I murmured.

  “Yep,” Alonzo said. “And reassure her that the doctors are working on her case. No more than that. If she talks to you, listen. If you get in trouble, redirect her to whatever she’s doing. Like her art. She can hold a conversation for longer than a few minutes if she’s occupied. When her attention is pulled—bam. Reset. You got all that?”

  I nodded, but my expression must’ve given me away.

  Alonzo leaned back in his chair. “Spit it out.”

  “How can she live like this?”

  “Quite happily. Calmly. And it could be worse. A fellow in England’s only got forty-five seconds’ worth of memory. Miss Hughes can go as long as seven minutes before reset, but that’s not usual.”

  “How does that happen?”

  He tapped a finger to his skull behind his ear. “A truck plowing straight into your gray matter will do the trick.” He held up his hands at my sharp glance. “I don’t mean to sound cold, but that’s just what happened. Our job isn’t to ponder it or feel sorry for Miss Hughes. We don’t waste time talking ourselves into thinking she’s fine just because she looks high functioning. She’s got permanent brain damage, but she’s not suffering. She don’t know what she don’t know. Our job is to take care of her and keep her calm. Okay?”

  A thousand questions crowded in my mouth and I couldn’t get out a single one. I recalled our conversation yesterday. The best I’d had in years and then… gone. Erased. And Thea—Miss Hughes—living only a few minutes at a time. For two years now.

  Alonzo stared me down. “I know it’s hard to take, son, but that’s the reality.” He tapped the file folder. “Come on. We got twenty-five more residents to talk about.”

  We went back to work, going through case files, but I could hardly concentrate with Thea sitting behind me. The desire to talk to her was like a hunger in my gut. I didn’t talk to anyone and now I wanted to sit down across from her and demand to know if she was suffering. Was she happy?

  Don’t be stupid. It’s none of your business. Do your job.

  After the case files, Alonzo went out for a smoke. Mr. Webb and his nurse left, so I cleaned up his jigsaw puzzle. My eyes kept stealing glances at Thea.

  She smiled as she worked. Maybe Alonzo was right. Maybe Thea’s amnesia kept her from the horrifying reality of her situation. She didn’t know what she didn’t know.

  But what if she did?

  Thea looked up and gave me a friendly, polite smile. Then her entire face froze. I froze too, watched her reset. Her clear blue eyes clouded with confusion and she leaned toward me from her seat.

  “How long has it been?”

  I glanced around for Rita but the only other person in the rec room was the duty nurse watching a soap opera on a small TV propped on her desk.

  I took a step toward her.

  “How long—?”

  “Two years, M-M-Miss Hughes.”

  Fuck, there it is.

  Thea didn’t seem to notice the stutter. She nodded, her hunched shoulders easing back down. “I had an accident,” she said. “You’re the first person I’ve seen since I came back.”

  I took another step toward her. Inhale, exhale. “Came back?”

  “I’ve been away for two years. But I’m back now and the doctors are working on my case.” She looked at my nametag. “Jim.”

  “Jim Whelan,” I said.

  I have a feeling about you, Jim Whelan.

  I silently willed Thea to remember, for recognition to light up her eyes. For her smile to turn familiar and warm as she recalled our conversation yesterday.

  She held out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Jim Whelan. I’m Thea Hughes.”

  Chapter 3

  Jim

  She’d introduced herself to me three times now.

  Three of hundreds to come, if not thousands. Her brain was damaged. She’s not going to magically remember you.

  It was hard to believe her amnesia was so severe, when she sat there looking this vibrant and sharp. I recalled Alonzo’s instruction to redirect her after a reset and glanced down at her work. She’d drawn a pyramid. On closer inspection, she’d built one out of words. Strings of words written in ballpoint pen, colored over with Magic Markers.

  “That’s really good,” I said. More than good.

  “Thank you,” Thea said, frowning at the paper. “It’s okay but there’s something missing. It feels…”

  “Small.”

  She glanced up at me with a wry twist to her lips. “Are you an art critic, Jim Whelan?”

  “N-N-No, I just meant—”

  “I’m teasing,” she said with a sigh and turned back to her drawing. “It is small. I wish I had a canvas as big as a wall. And paint to last me for months.”

  “That’s exactly what I meant,” I said, still standing over her awkwardly. “Your talent is bigger than paper and pens. Grand Canyon-big.”

  I hoped the cue from yesterday would spark her, but Thea blushed and grinned playfully at me. “I take it back. You can critique my art any time you want.”

  The moment caught and held, and again, I saw the depths of Thea Hughes. Miles instead of minutes.

  “Jim?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re staring at me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t mind being stared at by you. You have kind eyes.”

  Déjà vu to the fucking extreme.

  I felt my skin burn hot and redirected my own damn self away from her. I craned a little lower to read one of the word chains comprising a slope of her pyramid.

  Carried buried bury born torn mourn moan loan alone lone lonely lonely lonely

  “What do these mean?” I asked, tapping a finger over the words. “If you don’t mind…?”

  Thea cocked her head at the words as if they were foreign to her. “I don’t know. I wrote them before the accident. Two years ago.”

  “You drew this two years ago?” I felt I was on shaky ground, testing the limits of her understanding and possibly setting her off.

  She nodded. “I must have. But now that I’m back, I can finish it.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Thea’s brows furrowed, and she tucked a lock of blond hair behind her ear as if puzzled by her own words. “It sounds strange, doesn’t it? I’ve been away for a long time.”

  “It’s what happened.”

  Her smile was grateful. “That’s a good way to put it. I feel like…”

  “Like what?”

  “Like there’s more to it, but whenever I try to remember more, there’s nothing. I don’t even remember how I got here, to this table. With you.”

  I had no words that could help her understand. I hardly understood her situation myself.

  “But I know the doctors are working on my case,” she said. “I’ll let them worry about it. I’m just happy to be back.”

  “Me too.”

  Thea’s smile grew more brilliant, and she picked up her ballpoint pen ag
ain. “Tell me about yourself, Jim. And sit down, for crying out loud. You’re hovering.”

  I glanced around for Alonzo, but he was nowhere in sight. I sat down across from Thea, telling myself I was only doing my job.

  “That’s better,” Thea said, beaming. “What do you do?”

  “I’m an orderly.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where at?”

  Alonzo might tear me a new one for talking to Thea mere seconds after telling me not to fuck up and say the wrong thing. The rising anxiety brought out the damn stutter.

  “At the B-B-Blue Ridge Sanitarium.”

  Shit.

  Thea glanced sharply at me, then her gaze softened. “Do you have a stutter, Jim?”

  No one had asked me in years, I’d kept it hidden so well. Humiliation dug deep claws into me as I inhaled and exhaled. “Sometimes. It shows up when I get n-nervous. Or pissed off.”

  “You don’t look pissed off.” Her brows rose and her smile turned sly. “Do I make you nervous?”

  Christ, was she flirting with me?

  Thea patted my hand. “Don’t be. I don’t bite… hard.”

  A flush of heat on my skin where her soft fingers touched me quickly became a jolt that surged through my arm, my spine, down to my groin.

  She’s a resident, for fuck’s sake.

  I gently pulled my hand away.

  “I heard that line somewhere. A movie, maybe.” She cocked her head. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

  “Not much.”

  “Because of the stutter?”

  I nodded.

  “My sister says I never shut up.” She laughed and shrugged. “Guilty as charged. I say what I mean because life’s too short, right?”

  Now she leaned closer to me. The scent of plain, industrial soap wafted from her warm skin.

  “I’m just going to come out and say I have a feeling your stutter is not the most interesting thing about you, Jim Whelan.”

  I stared. No one had said anything like that to me before. This girl was a magnet of push and pull—drawing me in, though I had to keep a professional distance. She was direct as hell but smiled at me as if there was a secret between us that only we knew. She was here, but any minute now, she’d be gone.

  And this moment, right here, right now, never happened.

  I cleared my throat. “I wouldn’t call it interesting.”

  Thea rested her chin on her hand. “Did you have a hard time with it growing up?”

  “You could say that.”

  “I’m sorry. You probably don’t want to talk about it. I only brought it up because I don’t care.”

  “Don’t care?”

  “If you stutter. We all have something, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We do.”

  “Don’t let it stop you from talking to me. I like talking to you, Jim.”

  “I like talking to you too, Thea.”

  Her name came so easy to me. An inhale, and then a soft exhale with my tongue behind my teeth. No effort. No force. No stutter.

  The moment grew warm and long, then shattered like glass as the rec room door opened behind me. Thea glanced over my shoulder and her beautiful smile collapsed. Her expression turned blank and her entire body stiffened, her hands trembling slightly. The ballpoint fell out of her fingers and rolled toward the end of the table. When it clattered to the floor, Thea snapped out of the rigidity, and a jubilant smile broke over her face.

  “Delia!” She jumped up from her chair and ran past me.

  I let out the air trapped in my lungs and got to my feet. A woman in a navy suit with dark hair pulled into a severe bun had walked in with Nurse Rita. Thea threw her arms around the woman’s neck, nearly knocking her off her feet. Delia’s lips pressed together hard. Over Thea’s shoulder, the woman’s eyes met mine and I quickly busied myself gathering Thea’s pen off the floor.

  “You’re here,” Thea said. “I’m so happy to see you. How long has it been? Where are Mom and Dad?”

  “It’s been two years,” Delia said. “Mom and Dad are on their way.” Her tone was weary, as if she’d answered these questions a thousand times. She probably had.

  “Let’s sit,” she said, moving her sister back to the table.

  I stood frozen, waiting for Thea to see me and remember we’d been having a conversation. She had to remember. No one had amnesia this badly. Alonzo had told me a bunch of bullshit. This was a prank on the rookie. Initiation for all new orderlies.

  Thea finally tore her adoring gaze from her sister and looked at me with polite curiosity.

  “Oh, hi,” she said, her gaze darting to my nametag. “Jim? This is my sister, Delia.”

  I stared.

  Gone. It’s all gone.

  Just like our conversation in the foyer the other day. Vanished. Like it never happened.

  Delia cleared her throat, a hard sound that yanked my attention. “Can I help you, Jim?”

  “Jim Whelan is our newest orderly,” Rita said, moving to stand next to me.

  Delia looked me up and down with shrewd, dark eyes. She was the exact opposite of Thea in every way—stiff, cold, and tight-lipped, with a stony dark stare. Though she likely wasn’t more than a few years older than me, something had stolen the vitality out of Delia, so she looked like someone who’d aged a decade in two years.

  She lost her parents and her sister’s in a sanitarium. Give her a break.

  I offered my hand. “Hello, Ms. Hughes.”

  She glanced at my hand as if I’d offered her a dirty diaper.

  Thea laughed. “Delia, you’re such a crank.” She took my outstretched hand and gave it one, hearty pump. “Thea Hughes. So nice to meet you.”

  That’s four.

  I let go of her hand but kept staring into her eyes, searching for a sign this was all bullshit. Thea was acting. She wasn’t delirious from an injury or wracked with Alzheimer’s. I recalled my Grandpa Jack’s vacant gaze from his deathbed. How his memories floated in and out, and once they were gone, they were gone. It had been obvious something inside him was broken and falling away. Thea was young and beautiful and perfectly healthy.

  Except she wasn’t.

  “Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Thea said, laughing while Delia’s cold stare pierced me.

  “I’d like to be alone with my sister now,” Delia said, pulling out a chair at the table. “I’m sure you have work to do?”

  Thea shot me an apologetic smile and wiggled her fingertips at me in a little goodbye.

  Rita pulled me away from the sisters. “Don’t take it personally. Delia’s like that with everyone. And thanks for keeping Miss Hughes occupied. How’d you do?”

  “I can’t fucking believe it,” I murmured.

  “I know. It takes some getting used to. It feels like she’s faking, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Her being high functioning almost makes it worse.”

  “I think she had a small seizure.”

  “That’s to be expected,” Rita said. “They’re called absence seizures. They don’t hurt her.”

  “Do they happen a lot?”

  “Not too many now. It used to be worse. When she first arrived, she was panicked. Seizures every day, all day. Screaming and hysteria, the poor thing.”

  “S-S-Screaming?”

  Rita nodded, not hearing my stutter. “The reset would hit, and she didn’t know what was happening. Imagine coming aware in the middle of taking a sip of water or taking a walk outside. Or waking up, not knowing if it’s morning or night. But she’s been at Blue Ridge two years now, so she’s grown used to it.”

  “So she does remember where she is.”

  “No, honey,” she said. “She can’t remember anything. Most of what she says is out of habit.”

  “Does she remember you?”

  Rita shook her head. “Nope. She doesn’t know my name. Or her doctor’s name. She eats in the dining room every day, three times a day but couldn’t tell you where it is. She can’t make her own w
ay from this room to her bedroom. If you turned her loose outside, God forbid, she’d be lost within minutes. But she knows routine. We’ve been careful to build a sameness into her days, and that’s grooved itself into her subconscious. Consistency keeps her calm.”

  I shook my head slowly. “Unreal.”

  She put her hand on my arm. “I know it’s hard to understand, but the brain is an amazing mechanism with billions of outlets. When they’re damaged, the results can be random and fascinating.”

  I didn’t find Thea’s situation fascinating.

  Fucking horrifying, maybe…

  Thea suddenly jumped out of her chair. “Delia!” she cried. She bent over her sister, hugging her tight. “I’m so happy to see you. How long has it been? Where are Mom and Dad?”

  “It’s been two years,” Delia said. “Mom and Dad will be here soon. Tell me about this pyramid.”

  Rita leaned in. “She’s redirecting Miss Hughes to the drawing to keep her from asking about her parents, the poor thing.”

  “Does she do the same Egypt stuff every day?”

  Rita nodded. “Every day.”

  “What’s the deal with the word chains?”

  “They’re extraordinary, aren’t they? The detail. Miss Hughes is a talented artist.”

  “Do they mean anything?”

  “Her neuropsychologist, Dr. Stevens, says they’re echoes of her life before her accident. She attended an art college and was considered one of its best and brightest, according to Delia.” Rita quirked a funny smile. “However, Miss Hughes sometimes claims that she was an etymologist.”

  “A what?”

  “Someone who studies the origins of words,” Rita said. “Dr. Stevens says it’s a confabulation. That Miss Hughes made it up. He thinks it’s her poor brain trying to create a history for herself because she has none.” She glanced at the cubby full of drawings. “Almost time for a clean out.”

  “You just throw them away?” I asked.

  “What else can we do with them?”

  I didn’t have an answer, except that the art was too good for the trash. Thea was too good for Magic Markers and scratch paper.