My name is Christian.

My name is Christian St. Pierre.

It is nearly midnight as I sit on the veranda. Crickets chirp, and mosquitos buzz, and the noises of the night echo around me, providing a soundtrack for my thoughts. It is pitch black beyond the small pool of light shed by the dim orange bulb over my head. I hold the notebook in my lap, the pen in my hand. I have been writing for hours—my hand aches from it.

I felt that memory bubbling up inside me—I ached with it for weeks, felt it pressing on the insides of my skull, burgeoning against the walls of my soul, and now, finally, it has emerged.

Writing it and then reading it was like reliving it. I was there. I remember the way she smelled, like perfume and arousal. She’d brushed her hair out before she showed up at my office door—I know, because when she brushes her hair out she sprays something on it to give it luster and make it smell good. I know that smell. I know the scent of her perfume, too—it’s light and crisp, with a hint of fruit and a touch of lavender. Her arousal is the sweeter perfume, the more intoxicating scent. I can—I can almost smell her on my fingers, can almost taste her on my tongue.

Christian.

I savor the name. It is mine—I feel this truth in my bones, in my gut.

But what does it mean for me to have my name back? There’s no sudden rush of memory filling in the spaces. I have my name. I have my relationship with Ava.

I know we loved each other desperately, deeply.

But then…why am I here, alone? Where is she? I was shipwrecked; I remember that much. But did she die in that wreck? Or was I alone? If I was alone, why was I alone? Where was Ava? I must try to remember this.

At the same time, I fear to remember.

I fear the truth which lies in the darkness beyond the moment that heart monitor flatlined. My son, Henry, dying—that is the darkness, and what lies beyond it terrifies me. The man it might reveal me to be terrifies me. I almost don’t want to know, but…I must. I must know.

I fear to leave this place, this hospital. Life will begin, once I depart. So far, being here has been a time-out. A reprieve from reality. But once I leave, I will have to reclaim myself, find myself, and accept who am and who I was, and there will be no slowing it, no stopping it. Life is slow, here. It just floats along, outside time. Life has not changed within the bounds of this coastal African hospital for many, many years.

I have convalesced. I am hale. I have my name, which is the key to the rest of me. I cannot, in good conscience, remain any longer.

I am out there somewhere, and I must find myself.

Ava is out there somewhere, too, and I must find her.

---

[November 22, 2016]

“You are sure?” Dr. James toys with his spectacles as he gazes at me steadily. “You do not want to perhaps stay a little longer?”

I shake my head. “I have to go.”

“Why so soon? You only just remembered your name. There is no rush to leave. You are welcome to remain as long as you like.”

“I know. And thank you.” I sigh. “I can’t thank you enough for all you have done for me, Dr. James. You, and all the nurses. But I have to find Ava.”

A nurse appears then, as if summoned by magic, and Dr. James converses with her in Susu. She is one of the nurses who helped care of me ever since I first regained consciousness—her name is Martha. Once Dr. James finishes speaking to her, Martha gives me a rare smile, softening her features, momentarily—she is an older woman, hardened from long years of medical work on a continent forever racked by war and turmoil and death.

“You find her now.” Martha gestures toward the sea, the waves crashing in the distance; it is Martha who accompanied me to the sea, that day. “She out there. You speak her name, all the time. In your sleep, you call to her. You will find her. I see this—I see this.”

And then, with a brusque nod, Martha bustles away, head high, features schooled back into hardened stillness.

“The nurses, they have rumors and they tell stories, you know. They say Martha used to be a witch. A seer. Some say she still is. She live here, in this hospital, for many years. Before I come here, she is here.” Dr. James smiles, as if to silently dismiss the idea. “She is a very good nurse, this is all I know for sure.”

“She is very kind,” I say.

“She knows many things.” Dr. James, I think, is perhaps more superstitious than he’d like me to believe.

“You give credence to what she said?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Who knows? I am a doctor. A man of science.” He waves to the east. “But yet, I grew up out there, far from science and medicine and universities. I have seen things which perhaps even science cannot explain. I am a doctor, but I also believe in life beyond our life.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Dr. James only smiles at me. “I think maybe you do.”

I think of the dreams I’ve had, of Ava—the dream I had only last night, or this morning, early, in the gray hours of dawn, and I nod. “Maybe I do.”

“Will you tell me?” Dr. James sees something in my expression, perhaps, or maybe he is just very perceptive.

“I had a dream.” I close my eyes and tilt my head back, letting the sun beat on my face as the shreds of the dream float through me. “It’s hard to remember it exactly. I was…I was on the shore. Here. Where Martha took me a few days ago. I was on the shore, wading in the sea. It was up to my knees, and the current was strong. The sea was very, very cold. A single gull was flying around overhead, cawing, floating on the currents. The sky was gray, and hard, and I knew it was going to rain. It was just me on the beach. Just me and the sea and nothing else. Like…like there never had been or ever would be anything else—that’s the feeling I had. And the gull, crying and crying …god, I don’t know how to put it. The sound it made was—echoing. But that’s not the right word. Not echoing like off the walls or something, but echoing…through time, or across space. Like, if I was on the other side of the Atlantic, I would be able to hear the echo of that gull’s voice. The sound just…echoed. I don’t know else to put it.”

“I think I understand,” Dr. James says. “I have had a similar dream, once. The day my wife died in the riots, I was in Ghana, doing work for a UN mission. I was asleep, in a hospital, in a chair, after working for forty-six hours without stop. I dreamed of my wife, and then I dreamed of a lion. A big male lion, out in the savannah, sitting in the tall grass. Looking at me and shaking his head. And then he roared at me. Teeth bared, and he had blood on his teeth. That roar, it—echoed, just as you say.”

I nod, glancing at him. “Exactly.” I draw a breath, hold it, and let it out slowly. “In the dream, the sound…shivered, if you know what I mean. It made the air shake. I felt it in my bones, in my belly. And suddenly I was flying across the ocean. Maybe I was the gull, I don’t know. I just know I followed the sound across the sea. It was like I was flying low, like in a movie, you know? Following the surface, so low I could see each wave. So close I could almost feel the waves spraying as they broke on each other. The gull was making that long, keening sound they do when they’re riding a strong wind. I could hear it, even though I knew I was too far out to sea for a gull. But I could hear it. And then I saw her. I saw Ava. She was on a boat, I knew this somehow even though I’d never seen the boat before. I just saw her, curled up under a thin blanket, and she was shivering. I don’t know how I got there, I was just suddenly there, in the room with her. And she was shivering, whimpering. And the gull cawed again, and she sat up suddenly, with a sharp gasp. And for a second, just a split second—I thought she could see me. For a moment, it felt as if I was really there. I almost said her name, but I didn’t. I think she heard me anyway.”

I had to swallow hard against the hot lump in my throat.

“She said my name. She whispered it, and I heard it.” I pause. “I heard her say my name, and the moment I heard it, I woke up.”

“Do you believe in dreams, Christian?” Dr. James asks.

I blink a moment, and then shrug. “Do I believe in dreams? I don’t know. I know I have them. Sometimes they’re more…visceral than others.”

“When I dreamed of the lion, roaring at me with the blood on his teeth, I woke up, and the first thing I saw was the clock.” He toys with the end of his stethoscope. “Later, I find out the very moment I had the dream, the very minute and hour I woke up from the lion’s roar, this was the exact moment my wife was shot here in Conakry.”

“So you believe the dream was real?”

A shrug. “All dreams are real, but does that mean all dreams are true? I do not know. Only that…perhaps dreams can be true. Perhaps…perhaps it is easier to believe dreams are not true, so we do not have to believe in something beyond what we can see and grasp and taste. As a doctor, I know this of myself. But I also know we must believe in the things beyond ourselves. I am just a simple man trying to help whomever I can. I want to think I am just a small piece in a very great puzzle and that maybe, with our dreams, like your seagull and my lion, that we can sometimes catch the most fleeting glimpses of what is…more.”

I rub my forehead with a knuckle. “I honestly don’t know what I believe, Dr. James.” I close my eyes again, as if speaking truth is easier if I cannot see. “It felt real. And…that’s not the first time I’ve had a dream like that about Ava.”

“You miss her. You wish to find her.”

“So…so it could just be my mind creating these powerful dreams, because I miss her so much.”

“Or, it could be something else. It could be that which is more trying to bring you back to her.”

“I have to admit, it’s a very tempting idea.”

“What does it hurt, to believe?”

I shrug again. “If I don’t find her, or it doesn’t turn out right, or whatever…” I hesitate. “If I were to let myself believe and it goes wrong, if she’s dead, or it turns out I was a terrible person, or something…I think my capacity to believe in anything would be crushed.”

Dr. James tisks. “Bah. You are not so much of a coward as that. I know—I, who have lost two wives to death—I know we must continue to believe, even though this world is full of death and suffering. This world is full of shit—” he spits the world explosively, vehemently, “but it is also full of beautiful things. We cannot let shit win out against beauty. Beauty must win. Life must win. Love must win. Or why else do we even try? I know patients will die, so why do I try to save them? Because I believe in life, Christian.”

I only nod.

Dr. James is quiet a while, and so am I, each of us lost in our thoughts. After a time, Dr. James points at me with the arm of his spectacles. “You go west, now?”

“Yeah, I guess so. That seems the best way to go to find Ava.”

“The same fishermen who saved you from the sea, they too go west to find the fish. You go with them.” He pats his knees twice, and stands up, with a gusty sigh. “I will see to it.”

“Really? They’d take me all the way across the Atlantic?”

He shrugs one shoulder. “Your story is something of a fable to them, like a myth they have lived through. They have told this story to many people, and the fishermen around here, it is a small community, a close community of men who are all very superstitious.”

“I wouldn’t think local coastal fishermen would like to cross the ocean,” I say.

“It is asking a great deal of them,” Dr. James admits. And then his gaze fixes on me. “To go west once more, to be alive, to have your name? It is a second chance you have been given, Christian. It is a gift. Do not waste it.”

I swallow hard. “I—I won’t,” I say.

And so, the next day, after I bid goodbye to the nurses, Dr. James drives me to the local port. I embrace him, knowing this man saved my life once, and now he is saving it again.

Dr. James claps my biceps in his hands. “I have done everything I can for you, Christian. You have a chance to regain your life. Or perhaps not to regain it, for it will not be as it was—I think you know this. It is a chance to build it into something new. What you make of your life, now, it is up to you. I say to you yesterday, this is a gift you have been given, and that you must not waste it. I say it again—do not waste this.”

My eyes burn, and my throat is tight. “You—you’ve saved me, Dr. James. I can’t—I can’t thank you enough. I’ll never be able to repay you for what you’ve done.”

“One does not repay a gift, Christian.”

“I just—” I scrub my face with both hands, and then embrace him once more, fiercely. “Thank you, Dr. James. Thank you.”

When I let go, Dr. James backs away, clearing his throat gruffly. “You are welcome.” He shoves a hand into his trouser pocket. “Maybe you send us a postcard here, when you find yourself settled, yes?”

“I will.”

And then, with a wave, Dr. James turns and strides away across the docks back to his car. I have no possessions except a tattered old carpetbag with a few changes of clothing, donated to me by the hospital, my notebooks filled with my writing, some pens, and a card made by the nurses for me, with their signatures and phrases of goodbye and well-wishes in various languages. I carry this bag with me across the gangway from dock to the gently rolling deck of an aging but well-kept fishing vessel. I am greeted in French by the captain, an older man with a gold front tooth and what appears to be ritual scarring on his cheeks. The other crewmen all stand clustered together, staring at me with something like awe and perhaps a little superstitious dread. One man whispers something to the man beside him, and another man makes some sort of gesture with his hands, to ward off evil or to call down good fortune; they rescued me from the sea, and now I’m going back out into it. My rescue was miraculous, so I am either fool, a madman, or cursed.

I can’t say they’re wrong.

But yet, I must go.

I stand at the railing as we cast off and leave port, watching the sea churn, watching the coastline disappear, listening to the familiar clink and grind of a fishing vessel.

I’m coming, Ava.