Quiet Questions
It wasn’t defeat that pulled on her will
It was the past that didn’t get its fill
As she tried to forget, she was forced to remember
The memories of yesterday, as they woke from slumber.
Vienna
I shattered. I broke apart and was set free, only to be captured by the darkness I once used to live in. His words pierced me and grabbed me by my soul, holding me captive in his gaze. He touched me, and I detonated into a million little pieces, losing any shred of self-preservation. I hated how conflicted that moment when Kingston had touched me with arrogant intimacy had made me feel. Alive and drowning in dread simultaneously.
Images filled my thoughts as we’d dived deeper and deeper into our passion. I was back in that mystical mansion, happy one moment and screaming the next, reaching into the darkness, needing to be rescued.
Images waged war in my head, fighting for attention. While my body surrendered to Kingston’s every touch, my mind swam between reality and illusions, fighting and seeking a way out. I was sick, sick of this affliction that clouded my life, my purpose, and my desires. And in this sickness, all I could do to feel an inkling of normalcy was run.
So I ran. From the future, from Kingston and his power over me.
Mostly, I ran from myself.
An hour later, I was home. I packed a bag and drove straight to my parents’ house. My mom opened the door. “Vi, what are you doing here? Is everything okay?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.” I hugged her tight. For the first time since after my accident, I felt so lost, so afraid. Tears betrayed me, leaving behind trapped memories, suffocating me.
“Tell me what’s going on!” My mom hugged me tightly, feeling the shivers in my body, feeling the storm in my bones.
I shook my head.
“Is it Kingston? Did something—”
I went stiff in her arms, slowly disengaging from her embrace.
“How did you know it had something to do with him?” I stared into her eyes.
She gave me a soft smile, caressing my face. “You’re in love,” she whispered. “I know how it feels. I felt the same way when I first realized I was in love with your father. Why don’t you go freshen up, and I’ll get dinner started? Tell me all about Kingston then, and we’ll figure things out.”
I nodded, grabbing my overnight bag and heading upstairs to my old room. I stepped into my bathroom, reflecting on how I’d become the person I was today. How my accident had changed me. It had been a long recovery from a severe head injury and the multiple fractures I’d endured during the fatal crash that had killed three people and left four more heavily injured. I’d lived through the aftermath, engulfed in nightmares and headaches that the doctors had said were common after a life-threatening event and head trauma. But instead of recovery, I lost myself.
I scrubbed myself under the hot water, reliving those moments, those gruesome nights following the accident, wanting to find a reprieve and answer to the whys mounting in my life.
I changed in a daze, melancholia swirling around me.
Questions kept building; answers remained elusive.
“Shona.” My father’s voice reached my room. “Dinner’s ready.”
I smiled despite my turmoil, walking out the door and down the stairs.
“Pa,” I whispered, hugging him tight as I reached him, my feet leaving the ground as he lifted me off the floor and made me feel like everything was all right.
“What a surprise to see my girl. I’m so glad you’re here. I haven’t seen you in so long. I missed you, my Shona.”
“I missed you too, Pa,” I said as he put me down and smiled at me.
“I got you your cake, Shona. What’s wrong?” he asked, the moment he saw my eyes.
“Nothing, Pa. Come, let’s eat.” I grabbed his arm and walked into the dining room.
Dinner eased my nerves. The normalcy of our conversation momentarily pushed away my turmoil. We all savored the chocolate cake and sat out on the deck, enjoying the start of summer. No one spoke; we just took in each other’s company and enjoyed the peace.
Finally, my father broke the quiet. “Tell me what’s bothering you, Shona.”
My mom stopped and stared at me, her coffee mug in her hand.
I heaved a sigh. “Lately, it seems like my life is slipping out of my hands.”
“Let it all out, Vienna,” my mom coaxed.
And so I began, telling them everything, from the day I ran out on Jason at the restaurant and why our relationship came to an end, my dreams, the gaps in my memories, and Kingston. All throughout, they listened, sharing loaded glances with each other. The anxiety thickened, raising my doubts. They were hiding something.
“What’s going on?” I looked straight into my mom’s eyes.
She gulped, looking at my dad. He was stoic, his jaw twitching, his eyes filled with fiery concern. Without a word, he nodded, giving consent to my mom. She took a nervous sip out of her mug. “Before I start, you need to know that we did what we did to protect you, to give you a fresh start, free of all the bad things that happened to you.”
My stomach dropped. “Ma, you’re scaring me.”
“It’s time, Katherine, tell her. Shona.” My father put down his glass and looked straight into my eyes, love and concern overflowing. “Whatever your mom says, just listen to her. Don’t judge her.”
“You both are starting to worry me. Please, just tell me what’s going on.”
“Your accident broke us,” Mom started, her voice feeble. Her hands shook. “Those months after we got the call from the hospital that you were fighting for your life were the worst months of our lives. Seeing you that way made us realize how big a mistake we’d made, how selfish we’d become.”
I wanted to interrupt her, try to understand what she was saying, but I stayed quiet, waiting for her to fill in the blanks.
“It took you a month to regain consciousness. Every day after brought a new challenge, taunting us even more for what we’d done. You had so many traumas to deal with. With your physical injuries and your mental state, you were barely recovering. Nights of horror filled the coming months. Your nightmares got worse, stripping you to your bones. I can still remember your screams in the middle of the night.” She wiped her tears away.
I just sat there, my body stiff, my heart beating frantically as I waited with dreadful anticipation.
“You had a head injury, Vienna.”
“I know.” I knew all of this. Why was she telling me things I already knew?
She shook her head. “There was severe damage to your limbic system. At first, they disregarded the option of memory loss when you were able to recognize us, but when they saw your ongoing symptoms of confabulation; they did more tests on you, realizing there was severe damage to both the basal forebrain and the frontal lobes.”
“What does that even mean?”
My mom grabbed my hands as I stared at her, my breathing dying, waiting for her to answer me. “It means you had amnesia.” Her voice cracked.
I laughed. “I know. I blacked out the accident itself. It’s normal with traumas like that.”
Mom shook her head, suddenly sobbing too hard to speak.
Why was she so upset?
“No. Shona, you see,” my father spoke, taking over for my mom, “we got you home, thinking everything was okay with you. Physically, everything was on the right track. With the help of physiotherapy and medication, you were recovering just fine. But when it came to your mental wellbeing, you were having troubles. You were making up memories that didn’t exist, your nightmares felt like a fabrication of imagination.”
“We looked into it and took you to see a specialist.” My mother squeezed my father’s hand for support. “The psychiatrist started to get to the root cause of your nightmares. They analyzed you, asked you questions about your life, year by year.”
I didn’t remember any of this.
“You seemed to remember everything about your life, until…”
“Until what?” I snapped, old haunting emotions rising around me.
“A few months before the accident you went blank. You couldn’t remember. You couldn’t remember anything from the summer before the accident. We were shocked, but the doctors reassured us, told us not to worry or push. There wasn’t any lasting damage. What you had was retrograde amnesia or selective amnesia due to trauma. Your mind couldn’t recover recent memories leading up to the trauma. The doctors said that maybe due to the accident and how gruesome it would’ve been for you, your brain shut down.”
“What did I forget, Mom?” I tried recalling these sessions, but my mind came up short. I couldn’t remember anything they mentioned. I barely recalled the months right after my accident, just glimpses of moments I’d been through.
She didn’t reply, too lost in the memories.
“Mom. What aren’t you telling me? What else did I forget? What happened in those months leading up to the accident?”
“You came home for summer.” My mom choked, tears starting to fill her eyes again. “Gautam, I can’t.”
My father stroked her hand. “It was then we told you we were planning to separate.”
“As in divorce? You’re separated?” Shock shot through my body, and I stood up.
“Sit down. We’re not separated. Your accident put our relationship back in perspective. Shona, please let me finish.”
I stood there, suddenly taken back to that night in New York, my reaction starting to make sense. I’d heard someone talking about divorce, about their parents separating. It hadn’t made sense then, my reaction, but now I knew why. I was feeling the same way right now: alone, scared, angry.
I looked at my dad.
He gave me a sad smile. “You reacted almost the same way you are right now. You didn’t believe us at first but soon you got angry, telling us to reconsider. When we didn’t, you never came around. You left without telling us. It was Alex who informed us that you were planning to stay in England at his family home for the summer, and that he would take care of you.”
It was ridiculous—preposterous. “I went to England?” I pushed my mind to remember all of this, but it came up blank.
“Yes, you were in England for three months.”
I looked at my parents, unbelieving that they would let me go at such a time. “You just let me go across the world?”
“You shut us out, punishing us for our decision. You know how stubborn you can be.”
“We let you go on Alex’s word that he’d take care of you,” my mother spoke again, a film of anger filling her eyes as she continued. “We trusted him. We thought he was truly your friend, but…” She took a breath and wiped off a rolling tear.
“But what?” My mind was going wild, trying to process this new information. What were they telling me? Why couldn’t I remember any of it?
“Those three months were another reason we didn’t tell you about your amnesia and…”
“And what?” My blood was raging in my veins, my heartbeat, galloping.
“You were eight weeks pregnant when you had your accident, Vienna. You lost the baby.”
I cried out, my hands covering my mouth.
Tears filled my eyes. Shock left me still in my seat, as my heart registered the loss I’d endured.
Pregnant? I couldn’t remember it. I couldn’t remember anything, and yet the loss of a child still ripped through my heart and left me broken and bare.
“I don’t know what happened in England, Vienna,” my mom continued. “You wouldn’t talk to us then. You didn’t talk to us for four months straight. You never told us anything that happened there, or how things changed between you and Alex, but when he called two days after your accident, begging to talk to you, I knew he’d done something unforgivable. I knew then that it was his baby, that he’d somehow betrayed you. It wasn’t just the news about us separating that had you so broken when you returned.”
Alex and me? My mind tried to make sense of this information. The idea felt foreign. How could I, when I couldn’t even remember that time? Was my lingering anger toward him due to his betrayal? Had we been together?
“I told him what he’d done was unacceptable. He’d ruined your friendship by crossing those lines. He apologized profusely, but I no longer cared. He didn’t deserve you, so I told him to leave you alone, that you never wanted to talk to him again.” My mom cried, no longer able to control her tears.
I wanted to comfort her, but my own emotions wrapped around me like a boa constrictor, paralyzing me. I remembered the first time I saw Alex after so long in the café. I remembered the guilt in his eyes, the anger that had surged through me. Could it have been because of our forgotten past? Of the forgotten pregnancy?
The idea didn’t sit well with me. Something wasn’t right. I’d never felt that way about Alex. Could something have developed between us in those few short months in England? It was possible…
“I need to go.” My parents felt like strangers to me at this moment, my emotions numb as new information tried to find a place in this puzzle that was my life.
I stood up, ready to walk.
“Where are you going?” My father held my mother as she sobbed in his arms.
“I need answers. I need time to take this all in. I need time to understand.”
“Don’t walk away from us, Vienna,” Mom begged. “Forgive us. Give us a chance to fix this. Try to understand where I was coming from.”
“Katherine, let her go, let her deal with it on her own terms.”
She nodded, burying her face in my father’s chest crying.
“We’re here when you need us,” my father whispered.
I nodded and walked out.
I had two brothers who owed me answers.