Chapter 18
Laird
When I woke up, I knew where I was. It was a nice change from yesterday when I had been panicked and worried. I hadn’t remembered how I had ended up in the hospital but this time, I knew. I didn’t remember the accident, but I knew about it.
It didn’t make things a hell of a lot better. I still felt like I had a horrible black hole in the middle of my life that had sucked up things I should have known. It wasn’t only because I had been told that I had memory loss. I could feel the pressure of the darkness in my mind, the things that fought to get out but couldn’t.
I reached over to the nightstand for the cup of water and found that it was empty.
“Here, let me,” someone said, and I looked up. A woman stood up from the armchair and took the cup, filling it in the basin in the corner for me. I didn’t recognize her, either, but she looked vaguely familiar.
“Who are you?” I asked.
Her face softened, and she looked sad.
“My name is Hilda,” she said. “We are friends. We work at the lodge together.”
“You’re new?” I asked.
“I’ve worked there for the past year.”
I sighed. “I’m sorry. That part is a bit hazy.”
A bit hazy was an understatement. It was lost.
“Don’t be,” Hilda said smiling. I could see how I might be friends with her, but I was also aware of how much I didn’t feel when I saw her. It was nothing like with the redhead who I had had such a strong attraction to, even though I knew nothing about her.
“How are you feeling?” Hilda asked.
“Angry,” I admitted. “I hate not knowing things.”
“That’s understandable,” she said. We sat in awkward silence for a while. I didn’t want to ask about our friendship, and I had nothing to say to a woman I didn’t know.
“Jackson will be back soon. He went to get coffee from the cafeteria.”
I knew Jackson. I had been friends with him since I had started working at the lodge two years ago. Three years, if what everyone else told me was real.
“Is there anything I can get you?” Hilda asked when I didn’t answer.
“Can I ask you a question?” I asked.
Hilda nodded slowly.
“Do I have a wife or a girlfriend?”
“There was someone, but she was quite new. You didn’t tell me much about her, only that you couldn’t stop thinking about her. I don’t even know her name. But Jackson might.”
I thought about the redhead that had been crying next to my bed yesterday. I wondered if it was her. If what I had felt for her was any indication, it could be her.
Jackson walked into the room and grinned at me.
“Hello, sleeping beauty,” he said. “Have a nice nap?”
Thank God, he was acting normal toward me. I couldn’t stand how everyone was crying and being sympathetic and acting like I would break when they looked at me. Jackson walked to me with a cup of coffee, and I took it from him. I sipped it and moaned.
“You have no idea how good this tastes.”
Hilda cleared her throat. “I think I’ll leave you two to it.”
Jackson looked at her, questions on his face, and she shook her head. This was what I hated. Everyone seemed to think I couldn’t pick up on the cues, that just because I couldn’t remember I was suddenly stupid. When she was gone, Jackson turned to me.
“I’m not dead, you know,” I said.
“Yeah, luckily. That was a hell of a fall.”
“I heard. But don’t act like I’m gone already.”
“Sorry,” Jackson said. “It’s hard, you know? A lot of people are worried about you. I was scared you wouldn’t make it. I was first to see you when I saw the paramedics go up. I followed them. I had never seen so much blood.”
“That’s saying something, considering what we see every day,” I said.
Jackson nodded. “My point exactly.”
We sat in silence for a while, sipping our coffee together, and it was like it always was. Comfortable and familiar. I valued that familiarity so much more now that I knew what it was for so many things to seem foreign.
“I talked to Hilda. That was her name right?”
“Right.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s the bartender at the lodge. You had a thing with her for a while but nothing serious. Just fucking.”
I chuckled. “Sounds like me. What about the other one?”
Jackson’s face lit up. “You remember?”
I shook my head. “No, Hilda mentioned something when I asked if I had a wife or a girlfriend. Who is she?”
Jackson’s face fell, and I could fully relate to his disappointment. It was what I felt every time I opened my eyes and everything was still the same.
“Fiona,” he said.
“A redhead?”
He nodded. “She was here with you since they brought you in. She wouldn’t leave your side.”
“She sounds like she cares.”
“She does.”
We fell back into silence. I tried to remember who she was. The name sounded like it should be familiar, but it wasn’t. I wished I could remember something about her, anything.
“How serious was it?” I asked.
Jackson hesitated. “You didn’t know her for very long.”
Why did I feel like it was serious, then? When it obviously hadn’t been? Her reaction when I had woken up, the tears in her eyes, suggested that it had been serious. But Jackson didn’t make it sound like it was.
“How long?” I asked.
“Three weeks or so.”
That hadn’t been long at all. It made sense why I didn’t know who she was, then.
I still wished I did, though.
We talked about other things. I asked about the lodge, about what Jackson needed to do to pick up the slack now that I wasn’t available for a while. He told me about the four-wheeler.
“There’s no way we’re getting that thing fixed. The engine flooded and the axel is fucked. It’s cheaper to get a new one. You officially wrote off a four-wheeler.”
I chuckled. “And everyone thought you would be the first one to fuck it up.”
We laughed together. Everyone had commented on how well I could ride, and we had a running joke about how Jackson compared.
It felt good to talk and laugh about everything I knew and remembered.
“We have a shitty group of hikers today,” Jackson said. “I have to babysit them later. Charlie said he doesn’t think he can handle them alone.”
“Why, what are they like?” I asked. We always talked about the clients, joking about how nice or how horrible they were.
“It’s a group of celebrities from some reality show. We have to host their camera crew as well, and you know how stupid they get because they think they’re the shit.”
I laughed. “I can’t say I’m sad to miss that.”
“Well, I am. Charlie would have asked you to go with him, not me. I think he’s just as sad.”
We laughed again. When we were done, Jackson rubbed his palms on his jeans and looked at the floor. He looked like he wanted to say something.
“What is it?” I asked.
Jackson shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
“Come on, man. If you think it will help?” The conversation had been light, and we had pretended everything was fine. But it wasn’t fine, and we were back to being serious.
“I don’t think it will,” he said. “I think that I shouldn’t bombard you with facts about the past year. A lot has happened, and there’s no reason for you to panic about what you don’t know. Get rest, get better and we’ll figure it out step by step. There’s no rush.”
I nodded. “Thanks, man.” It was great to have a friend like Jackson – not only was it someone I knew, but it was someone I could lean on and trust for support. I knew Jackson had my back.
Not long after, Jackson left. He told me he would be back again the next day. I tried to roll onto my side, maneuvering my leg so I could be comfortable with the cast. When I finally managed to find a spot that worked for me, I sighed and closed my eyes. I was so tired. The medication took a lot out of me, and Dr. Osmond had said the head injury would affect my stamina for a while, too. My body had shut down for almost twenty-four hours when the accident had happened.
Fiona, Jackson had said her name was. I thought about the redhead that had stood next to my bed, looking like her world had ended. I tried my hardest to remember who she was, to find any kind of memory at all.
I couldn’t. All I found was a headache. Slowly, everything faded until the blackness was back. It seemed to be my constant companion, now. I gave in and let myself drift off to a dreamless sleep.