Chapter 19
Fiona
I tried to bury myself in work and everything I did routinely blurred into one big mess of me trying to keep my head above water. I was emotional because of Laird and because I was pregnant. I had morning sickness which only made me feel more miserable than I already was, and by Wednesday afternoon I felt like I couldn’t deal with it anymore.
It had only been two days, and I was exhausted, drained, numb.
When I finally finished my work for the day and left the office, I called Jackson in my car. I hadn’t been back to see Laird, but I tried to keep updated with how he was doing. I didn’t want him to see me like this, even though he didn’t know who I was. And I couldn’t see him like that, either.
“How is he doing?” I asked when Jackson answered.
“He’s doing alright,” Jackson said. “He’s awake more often, and he’s eating. He doesn’t complain about headaches so much anymore, but that might only be because he doesn’t like complaining.”
“What did the doctors say?”
Jackson sighed. “So far, everything is still pretty much the same. No changes. Nothing new to report.”
Which meant he didn’t know who I was, yet. To Laird, I was still a stranger.
“He is still pretty out of it.”
“Should I come down tonight and pay him a visit?”
“I don’t think so,” Jackson said. “It’s tough on him. Rather stay away. If he remembers you, I’ll call.”
I frowned. “Are you sure it’s better if I stay away?” I had thought maybe seeing me would help.
“I think he needs less stress and more rest. He’s already exerting himself.”
“Right,” I said. “Okay.”
When we ended the conversation, I started my car and pulled into traffic. Jackson’s words stayed with me. He’d said I should stay away. Why was that? I understood that it was confusing for Laird not to know everyone that came to visit him, but he had only lost a few things. He still knew Jackson, as far as I could tell.
I had the awful feeling that Jackson was trying to keep up apart, that he wanted me to stay away from Laird for good. It shouldn’t have been up to him. I should go to the hospital, do what I wanted to do and see Laird.
But if he didn’t know who I was, what was the point? What would I gain by pushing this? He didn’t know me. I didn’t know if he would ever remember me. Was it the right thing to do to force this, to make him know who I was again? Maybe it was better to let fate play out. I had thought that being together with Laird was my destiny, but it hadn’t been true. All that was left now, it seemed, was to move on. It felt awful, but what choice did I have?
I spent Wednesday night trying to forget. I made dinner because I had to eat for the baby’s sake. I still wasn’t hungry, but I had to take care of myself if I wanted to make it through the next nine months of pregnancy. I watched television to try to distract myself from the thoughts mulling around my mind.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t forget about Laird. I didn’t know what to do. A part of me said I had to let him go. The fight wasn’t worth it. We had had a magical time together, but aside from amazing sex, I knew nothing about him. I knew superficial things like what he liked and what he was aiming for, but I didn’t know who he was on the inside when everything was stripped away and the rawest version of Laird was showing. I didn’t know for sure that we would have been perfect together, after all.
All I knew was that we had been perfect, then. And now it was all gone.
I wished I had someone I could talk to about it. I wished I still had my mom. I was pregnant and it was something I would have wanted to share with her. I was heartbroken and I wanted her to grieve with me. I was lost in my mess and I had no way out. The only person I could turn to was Jamie.
Maybe it was worth it to talk to her about it. Even if I broke down. Even if it made me more miserable.
So, on Thursday I asked her if she could go out to lunch with me. We walked to a café on the corner, and I ordered juice I didn’t drink and a salad I didn’t eat.
“What’s wrong?” Jamie asked. “You haven’t touched your food.”
I sighed. “Where can I start. I don’t even know how to talk about it.”
“Just start from the beginning.”
I took a deep breath. “Laird was in an accident.”
Jamie’s eyes widened. “Is he alright?”
“Physically he’s fine. He has a broken leg. But he has memory loss. He doesn’t know who I am.”
“What?” She looked as shocked as I had felt when I’d found out.
“Yeah, I know. It’s crazy. I hadn’t ever thought something like this would happen to me.”
“Wait, what does he know and what doesn’t he know?”
I explained to her what had happened, how much he’d lost. Also, that the doctor didn’t know if Laird would remember everything after losing a few memories or if he would keep forgetting short-term things.
“The brain is so complex that apparently, it’s the one thing no one has figured out yet. Head trauma is a huge mystery, and no one can tell me what will happen or give me any kind of hope or answers. All they know is what already happened.”
Jamie shook her head. “I can’t believe this,” she said. “It’s like a movie.”
I nodded. “All of it. Even meeting Laird, the sex, the baby and our instant connection. I’m starting to wonder if the universe is playing a cruel joke on me.”
“Don’t look at it like that,” she said. “See it as good that he’s still alive.”
“That’s great, Jamie,” I said. I didn’t mean to sound as sarcastic as I did. “But he doesn’t know who I am.”
“I was just trying to be positive,” Jamie said softly.
“I know,” I sighed. “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how hard this has been for me.”
“I can imagine. I’ve seen how down you are, but I didn’t know it was this serious. What are you going to do?”
“That’s the thing,” I said and pushed the lettuce around on my plate. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t know for sure that he will remember who I am. If he doesn’t, I can’t expect him to do what we had said we would do before. If he doesn’t know who I am, why would he want to be with me?”
Jamie nodded. “I get what you’re saying. It’s a hell of a predicament, especially because you’re carrying his baby.”
“Oh, God,” I said. I had known it all, of course, but now that Jamie had put it into words like that I was hit again with how messed up this whole situation was and what a bad place I was in. “What would you do?”
“Can I be perfectly honest?” Jamie asked.
“Please,” I said. I needed to hear some voice of reason, something that would give me a way out of this darkness.
“I think you should move on. I think you should let him go.”
I had thought the same thing so many times, but when Jamie put it into words, the sound of it hit me like a physical punch. I had a pain in my chest, and I felt like crying. Again.
It sounded wrong to ditch Laird. But what would he be doing to me? It wouldn’t be his fault if he didn’t know me or about the baby, but still. Wasn’t he checking out just the same?
Jamie and I talked about other things. I couldn’t talk about it anymore, not without getting too emotional, and I was in public. My friend understood. We caught up on other things until it was time to go back to work. When we left, I had a strange resolve that settled in my gut. If Jamie thought I was giving up so easily, my friend didn’t know me nearly as well as she thought.
When I had decided to give up it had been a thought. It had taken me hearing it from someone else to realize that giving up wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t know how I was going to fight for this, yet. What I did know was that I couldn’t just walk away.