A Five-Minute Life

by Emma Scott

  No matter what happens tomorrow, we were happy.

  We had the time of our lives.

  Epilogue II

  Thea

  I open my eyes for the first time…

  “I cannot believe this is real,” I said. “It’s a dream and I’m going to wake up at any second.”

  “I can believe it,” Jimmy said, slipping his arms around my middle and kissing my neck. “You’re a genius. You deserve this.”

  I held the arms holding me and stared around the darkened gallery. It took up an entire wing at the Richmond Museum of Modern Art and was devoted solely to my exhibit. It opened tonight with a gala party thrown by the curator. Art critics called my paintings, “an extraordinary visual journey through the life of the world’s second-worst case of amnesia.”

  Recovered case of amnesia.

  I’d been on Dr. Milton’s Laparin for the last ten years, and aside from one difficult side-effect, I’d stay on it for the rest of my life. It kept me in my life.

  “Are you ready?” Jimmy asked. “They’re opening soon.”

  “I want a few more seconds alone with you.”

  “That works for me. You look stunning.” He bent to kiss my collarbone, across the scar there. “Was this dress expensive?”

  “Why do you ask? Don’t you want your wife to look pretty on her big night?”

  “Just determining how careful I have to be when I tear it off you later.”

  I leaned into his mouth along my neck. “You always know exactly what to say to turn me into a puddle at your feet. And the tuxedo isn’t fair. Excessive, really.”

  I’d hardly grown used to how handsome he was in the suits he wore to work meetings. But a tux?

  Have mercy on my ovaries…

  I grazed my fingers through his hair, admiring my confident, brilliant husband. Jim Whelan, SLP. He’d gotten his degree as a speech-language pathologist and now, at thirty-five years old, he ran his own practice in Roanoke. Every day, he helped children who’d been like him find their voice again.

  My love for him deepened to something I hadn’t thought possible. My Jimmy, who never left my side during eighteen months of post-Hazarin amnesia. Through every hardship since… and every unimaginable joy.

  “I’m so proud you’re my husband,” I said. “I’m the luckiest woman in the world.”

  He gave a small, confused smile. “Are you okay? I mean, I know this is a lot,” he said, glancing around the space, “but for the last few days you’ve been a little…”

  “Emotionally all over the place?”

  He pretended to think. “Yes.”

  I laughed. “I’m just happy. It’s not every day a gal gets everything she could ever want.”

  He smiled and kissed me. “I know the feeling.”

  “Jimmy…” Inhale. Exhale. “I’m—”

  “Daddy!”

  Our two-year-old son, Jack, ran full speed at us in his little suit. Jim bent to scoop him up. I watched my husband hold our son—setting him securely on his hip, his arm holding him protectively, and my heart was full. Overflowing.

  “Hey, little man,” Jimmy said. “How’d you escape?”

  “With my help, as usual. I tried to contain him, but he’s done with us,” Rita said. She slowed her steps for Alonzo, beside her with his cane he used for the arthritis in his knees. “He wanted Mommy and Daddy.”

  “He’s a troublemaker, that Jack,” Alonzo said. “Just like his father.”

  “There’s quite a crowd in the lobby,” Rita said. Ten years had added a few lines around her smile. “This is so exciting, Thea. It feels like a movie premiere.”

  “You look lovely, my dear,” Alonzo said, kissing my cheek. “Your art is going to blow them away. Though some of us knew that a long time ago.”

  “Mama,” Jack said, reaching for a lock of my hair.

  “Doesn’t Mommy look pretty?” Jim asked.

  Jack bobbed his head. “Preee.”

  I took his little fingers and kissed them. “Love you, baby boy.”

  Decreased fertility was Laparin’s lone side-effect, but a big one. It took two and a half years of IVF treatments to give us a viable embryo, which gave us Jack Whelan. The spitting image of his father—sturdy, strong nose, broad mouth, and dark hair. But his eyes were blue, like mine. Rita said he’d grow up to be a lady-killer, but I knew with a father like Jim, he’d grow up to be an honorable man who treated women with the same respect and consideration Jim showed me since the moment we met.

  An assistant from the museum hurried over. “Ms. Whelan? They’re ready to open now and Ms. Takamura wants to introduce you to some people.”

  Eme Takamura was my agent. She’d made it her life’s mission to find unknown artists with unique histories and give them a showcase for their talents. Jimmy and I took a trip to Carnegie-Melon to view the stunning glasswork of one of her former clients, a young man who’d passed away shortly after creating his masterpiece.

  “He had something real to say about life,” Eme had told me. “I feel the same when I look at your paintings.”

  That was all it took to know I could trust her with my work.

  And now the night had arrived. I heaved a breath.

  “Well?” I asked the small group. “I guess this is it. Give Mommy a kiss, Jack?”

  Jack put his wet little mouth on my cheek. Jim leaned over and kissed me too.

  “I love you,” I said, lingering in his kiss.

  “I love you so much,” he said. “God, baby, so much.” He grinned. “I’ve been shot with cupid’s sparrow.”

  I laughed and put my hand over my heart. During my eighteen months of amnesia, Jim had watched all nine seasons of The Office. Four times.

  “Go,” he said. “They’re waiting for you to knock ’em dead.”

  Eme and I gave a guided tour of the exhibit to a group of art aficionados, critics, dealers, and press. Around us, the general public perused at their leisure while attendants circulated with little trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres.

  “This first room is called ‘Desert Spring,’” Eme said. “The artist ready to bloom into her craft.”

  I leaned into Eme. “Bloom into my craft?”

  “Just go with it,” she murmured back.

  “Desert Spring” featured my work from art school—the pyramids and desert scenes, the Nile and the Sphinx.

  Eme led us into the next area, called “Scream.” The drawings of Egypt now scratched out of word chains. My cries for help. There weren’t many—only those Jimmy and Dr. Chen had saved in the weeks before the first stem cell procedure.

  I overheard murmurs of awe and muffled talk as the group craned their necks to read the chains of tiny, precise script. I cocked my head to read one.

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

  My skin broke out in gooseflesh. It’d been so lonely in the amnesia, but those days were harder to remember and fading away with every passing moment with Jimmy and Jack.

  “Next, we have ‘Turning Point,’” Eme said.

  Only one painting was displayed here: the ruined canvas of New York City. A bouquet of skyscrapers sprouting out of Central Park and black swaths of paint slapped across the blue sky.

  I shivered again and said a silent prayer for anyone else who’d suffered assault or abuse or bullying—little boys on playgrounds or women trapped in their own beds—who felt they didn’t have a voice left.

  I see you, I thought and knew Jimmy did too. He’d made it his life’s purpose to give kids their voices back.

  “Thea?”

  I blinked out of my thoughts.

  Then came “Transition.” Here were the Jackson Pollock-like paintings from after the first procedure. A different kind of cry for help lay in the composition. To be free to experience the world and all its colors. Not be contained to a single canvas.

  A dimly lit alcove housed the paintings I made after I went back into the amnesia. All the paintings of New Yo
rk at night as seen from the Arthouse Hotel. A few other canvases showing Times Square in geometric planes of color. Abstract, like photographic flares.

  “This,” Eme said dramatically, “is called ‘Dreamscape.’”

  I grinned. “Subtle.”

  “Shh, they love it.”

  Finally, the last room, brightly lit and the most colorful, was hung with the paintings I made after the second procedure. My best work from the last ten years. No more vast deserts or cityscapes, these canvases were all scenes from our little home in Boones Mill.

  Jimmy on a Saturday morning, sleeping with our infant son on his chest. The two of them with their mouths open in identical expressions.

  Our living room coffee table cluttered with Jack’s toys and my sketches.

  Jimmy’s guitar in the corner of a room, the light streaming in from the window. Always with sunlight pouring in from every window.

  The tour concluded, and the group murmured and perused and snapped photos.

  “Do you hear that?” Eme said. “That’s the sound of your art reaching them and making them want it to reach even further. Well done, my dear. Not that I’m surprised. I have an eye for these things.”

  “Thank you, Eme. For everything.”

  She beamed and took two flutes of champagne off a passing tray. “Cheers, darling.” We clinked glasses, and she took a sip. “Now go find your people while I talk business with mine.”

  I took my glass and rejoined Jimmy, still holding Jack, who stood talking with Delia and Roger.

  I’d long since forgiven my sister. Jimmy took a little bit longer, but he’d come around. Still, the residual guilt was etched into the lines of Delia’s face. Evident in her tentative approach and the stiff peck on my cheek.

  “It’s incredible,” she said. “I’m so proud of you. And I know Mom and Dad would be too.”

  “Thanks, Deel,” I said. “I think so too. Roger, thanks for coming.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” he said, a little absently.

  “How’s the business in Vancouver?”

  He didn’t answer. He turned in a small circle, hands in his pockets, staring at the paintings.

  “Roger, honey,” Delia said mildly. “My sister asked you a question.”

  “Hm? Oh. Sorry, I’m just… It’s mesmerizing. Just… incredible. The evolution of it… It’s as if different people painted them at the different stages, yet it’s entirely unified.”

  “Wow, Roger.” I pecked him on the cheek and whispered, “Thank you so much.”

  “It’s all true. Your work is—”

  “I meant for making my sister happy.” I itched to joke that it was a Herculean task, but I was too full of happiness myself to make bad jokes.

  “Jack’s getting so big,” Delia said. By choice, she’d never had children of her own, but I sometimes wondered if she regretted it. Especially when she was looking at Jack with such longing.

  “Here.” I handed Jimmy my champagne and lifted Jack out of his arms to pass him to Delia. “Would you and Roger watch this little bugger? I need to talk to my handsome husband for a sec.”

  Delia bounced Jack on her hip. “You want to see Mommy’s paintings? Come on. Uncle Roger and I will show you our favorites.”

  She put Jack down and held his hand as they walked toward the “Transition” display. Only a few steps, then Jack was reaching arms up to Roger, wanting to be carried again.

  “We made him,” I said to Jimmy.

  “Yeah, we did,” Jim said. “He’s a little miracle.”

  I nodded, my heart crashing against my chest. “Our life has been filled with miracles.”

  “It has.” Jimmy tried to hand me the champagne. “To you, baby. They love it, don’t they?”

  “They do. But I don’t want the booze.” I sucked in a breath. “Or, moreover, I can’t have it.”

  “Why not?” he asked and then stared, his eyes widening.

  I nodded, tears springing to my eyes that I could finally say the words. “I’m pregnant.”

  He still didn’t move. “What?”

  I bit back a laugh at his dumbfounded expression. “I’m going to have another baby.”

  Jimmy’s brows came together, the struggle of having Jack passing behind his eyes. The glass in his hand shook, and I took it and set it down before he dropped it.

  “How…?” He swallowed. “How did that happen?”

  “Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much, the man—you, in this case—puts his enormous penis inside the woman—”

  Jimmy shook his head, caught halfway between laughter and shock. “Wait, wait, wait. Stop. Go back. Say it again.”

  “I’m pregnant, honey.”

  “But how? And you can skip the X-rated biology lesson.”

  “I don’t know how,” I said. “They said it was next to impossible.”

  “Next to impossible.”

  “That probably wasn’t the official medical diagnosis, but yes… Not impossible.”

  He stared. “I just… I can’t believe it.”

  “Me neither. Although, now that I think about it… Remember that afternoon you came home from work? Jack was napping, and you stormed into the house with hardly a word and took me right then and there against the kitchen counter?” Pleasant shivers danced all over me. “God, just thinking about it…”

  “I remember…” Jim said. “One of my better afternoons.”

  “The best, it turns out.”

  Jimmy’s brows furrowed, and he held my gaze intently, no more jokes. “You’re really pregnant?”

  “Eight weeks. Are you happy?”

  “I’m somewhere beyond happy. But…”

  “I know. I’m scared too. But I have a feeling, down deep, she’s going to be okay.”

  “She?”

  “I think so,” I said. “I think I’m having your baby girl.”

  Jim stared a moment longer, then pulled me to him, holding me with his strong arms. An embrace that never failed to tell me I was protected, safe, and loved. So much love.

  “God, Thea,” he whispered against my hair.

  I pulled away and held his strong jaw in my hand. “You gave my life back to me. Everything I have is because of you.”

  “I can say the same, Thea. You gave me my life back when I’d stopped living it.”

  He kissed me softly, and I leaned my head on his shoulder as we watched our son horse around with my sister—the last of my real family, who I’d love forever, no matter what. Because it felt better to rebuild bridges than it did to watch them burn.

  Jimmy slipped his arms around me, his hand sliding over my belly.

  “Love you,” he breathed into me. “So much.”

  “Love you too,” I said, giving it back. “So much.”

  I was infused with it, so much love for my Jimmy and this life he and I had built, five minutes at a time.

  The End

  Author’s Note

  The science of amnesia in this book is the result of my research of the condition itself, as well as extensive study of the current world’s worst case. I have taken first-hand accounts of what his life is like and applied it to Thea Hughes in order to be as accurate as possible. But I have also taken liberties of the imagination to craft a fictional story. Therefore, the brain science of amnesia is as accurate as can be for a lay person such as myself, while Thea’s five-minute reality, the medical procedures, and medicine featured in this book are entirely a work of fiction, as is Blue Ridge Sanitarium and its standard of care. This book is a marriage of reality and fantasy and should not be taken as absolute medical truth, even though I endeavored to make it feel as real as possible. In short, I’m not a neurosurgeon, though I sometimes play one on TV. ;)

  Acknowledgements

  This book would not exist without the time, love, and support of a great many amazing people.

  To my incredible beta team: Robin Hill, Joy Kriebel-Sadowski, Johanna Louise Weightman, Grey Ditto, Desiree Ketchum, Joanne Ragona,
Terri Potts (The Office, GoT, and Jonathan are for you) and Shannon Mummey. Your feedback has been invaluable, and I love and appreciate you all so much.

  To my author loves, who are always there with their support, love, midnight texts, and unvarnished opinions—Kate Stewart and Kennedy Ryan; I love you both so much. Thank you. #UDunite #TeamHeavy #curbside

  To my tech team, Melissa Panio-Petersen for being everything and everyone to me, always.

  Suanne Laqueur for being the editor of every author’s dreams, and the friend of a thousand lifetimes.

  Robin Hill for all the reasons and a hundred more I haven’t thought of yet. Love you so much.

  Angela Shockley, formatter extraordinaire who puts up with my crazy schedule and makes my books look pretty on the inside and sacrifices her time and sleep to do it. Love you.

  Marla Selkow Esposito for her eagle eyes and who also accommodated me with grace and professionalism. You’re stuck with me now forever, lady!

  Grey Ditto for fixing some major medical boo-boos (though any lingering boo-boos are mine) and for being my on-call nurse out of the endless generosity of her heart. Love you.

  To the readers and bloggers of this community—you ARE this community, and I would not be able to do what I do if not for you. Thank you for being there—in our fictional worlds and outside of them, with so much support and love. You are so appreciated in all that you do.

  And to my husband whose belief in me is unwavering. He is the reason I keep writing, even still. I love you, honey.

  Thank you all and much love.

  Sneak Peek

  Someday, Someday

  A brand-new M/M emotional standalone, coming Fall 2019

  Add to Goodreads TBR here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41450826-someday-someday

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