Indulgence (217 page)

Moments pass as I wait for the stranger’s reaction. But the
man stands still, expressionless. I wonder why he does not take another bite.
He suddenly flings the fruit to the ground and drops to his knees. I gasp in
horror. The stranger falls to his hands as he tries to catch his breath. The
serpent slithers down the tree so quickly that I can only see a black blur. It
approaches the man and says something to him, but I still can’t hear anything.
The serpent draws back like it is going to strike. Why would the creature do
this? Not in this garden, this is paradise! As it prepares to strike, I notice
its eyes. The black beady eyes are now red, the same crimson color as the
marking on its head. They glow like rubies, casting rays of light just like the
fruit. The creature’s mouth curls back, revealing a pair of long, thin fangs
that are dripping with what I presume is venom. The creature moves swiftly and
strikes the man on the throat. The man lies on the ground, writhing in pain.

“What in the hell,” I shouted as I jolted awake, my
breathing labored and my heart pounding. I felt sweat on my brow. The dream
frightened me and left me with so many questions. How could my perfect paradise
turn into something so horrible? Who was the man in my dream and what happened
to him? What was the conversation between the serpent and the man? And why had
the serpent bitten the man? All of these questions ran through my head as my
eyes adjusted.
Where am I
, I wondered.

I could tell I was lying in bed but it wasn’t my own. The
mattress was less pillow top and more like a vinyl padded cushion. I could
smell copper, antiseptic and stale air. Stark fluorescent lights overhead hurt
my eyes. Through the blurriness I could see that the walls were a bland yellow;
I definitely wasn’t in my bedroom. I heard the ticking and beeping of machines,
and I was apparently hooked up to them by something stuck in my wrist and taped
to my chest. A TV hung on the wall, and I used it as an object to refocus my
vision. It was set on a news station, the volume muted. I could decipher pieces
of the closed captioning; something about a car accident in Tennessee. An
entire family of six was killed. Someone who looked like a nurse fluttered
about the room.

“Where am I?” The nurse walked to my bedside. Her name badge
read Marlo.

“Allison, you’re okay,” Marlo replied, her voice soft and
soothing, almost reassuring. “You’re in the hospital.” Marlo held my gaze and I
felt my anxiousness fade away, as if her eyes were pulling it out of me. She
was a pretty woman, tall and thin with thick wavy red locks that flowed to the
middle of her back. Her eyes were most captivating. They were a beautiful shade
of lavender, deep and intense in color, with gold specks. They reminded me of
irises that bloom in early spring.

“I’m in a hospital? What happened?” I asked in disbelief as
I tried to sit up. Marlo gently but firmly pushed my shoulders back toward the
mattress.

“You’re at Medina Memorial Hospital. You were in a pretty
bad car wreck a few nights ago, but you’ll be fine.”

“Car wreck?” I tried to think back to a few days ago, but my
mind was a blank slate. There was nothing there. I couldn’t recall anything…not
what I had been wearing, or where I had been going or even the accident itself.

“Yes, and you are very lucky. You’ve been unconscious for a
few days but you didn’t break any bones and there was no internal bleeding.”

“Accident,” I whispered to myself, still in disbelief and
still trying to recall something.

“Now that you’re awake, let me get Doctor Frid so that he
can examine you.” Marlo turned towards the door and before exiting added, “And
you also have a visitor.”

I didn’t fully grasp Marlo’s last words. My mind was still
wandering, searching for a memory to fill in all the blanks about the accident.

“Wait,” I half shouted, but Marlo was already out the door.
“Where’s Matt?” I whispered to myself. Surely the visitor she mentioned must be
Matt. He would definitely be here at the hospital waiting for me to wake. It
wouldn’t be like him to not be here by my side, unless…

No, I couldn’t think of that. Matt must be with the doctor.
I was sure they were discussing my injuries and what I needed to do next and my
follow up doctor appointments. Matt was here, I was sure of it.

The doctor knocked on the door and stepped inside. He was an
older gentleman with salt and pepper hair. He wore thin spectacles that sat on
the edge of his nose and the requisite white lab coat and stethoscope. A hospital
tag hung around his neck identified him as Doctor Jonathan Frid.

“Good morning, Allison,” he said, “How are you feeling?” He
reached into his lab coat searching for some instrument I was sure he was going
to inspect me with.

I looked at him and back at the door and wondered where my
visitor was.

“I’m fine. Where’s Matt?”

Before the doctor could speak, the door cracked open. I
strained my neck to see who it was. It wasn’t Matt; it was my best friend
Jenna. Panic set in over me.

“Would somebody please tell me what is going on?” I said
through clenched teeth, tears welling up in my eyes. “Where is Matt?”

“Allison, please take it easy,” the doctor said. Jenna
walked over to the other side of the bed, opposite Doctor Frid. “You were in a
serious accident and I need you to stay calm.”

My eyes flitted back and forth between the doctor and Jenna.
They exchanged a glance that made it apparent they knew something I didn’t.

“Oh God,” I said. “He was in the car with me, wasn’t he? Was
he hurt? Is he okay? Is he…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I couldn’t bring
myself to say the word.

I fell back in the bed, covered my face with my hands and
sobbed uncontrollably. Through my bawling, I could make out bits of the
conversation going on around me.

“I guess it’s confirmed,” Jenna stated. “She doesn’t
remember making me her emergency contact, or…”

“Yes, she has memory loss,” Doctor Frid interrupted, cutting
off Jenna’s statement.

“How bad do you think it is?” Jenna asked the doctor.

“Hard to say until she calms down…”

“Should we say anything about…?” Jenna’s voice trailed off.

I stopped sobbing long enough to choke out, “Would someone
please
tell me what is going on? What are you talking about?”

Jenna pulled a chair up to the side of the bed and handed me
some tissues. Her face was blanketed with concern. She looked different to me.
Her brown hair was shorter than the last time I saw her, which I couldn’t
recall when that was.

“Ali,” she started in a soft tone, almost a whisper. “Matt
died three years ago.”

I froze. My tears stopped as did my breathing. My heart may
have even stopped for a second. I stared into Jenna’s dull brown eyes,
searching for answers or some explanation. I had no idea what she was talking
about. Matt didn’t die three years ago. I forced my mind to go back in time and
thought about where was I three years ago, where Matt was and what possibly
could have happened to him. I could picture our house, with the cream and brown
front, and the yard with the woods all around. I could see my Jeep and a
motorcycle. But I couldn’t see Matt.

“I don’t believe you,” I whispered.

Jenna grabbed my hand. “Ali, it’s true, he was at work and…”
I tuned her out.

I forced my mind to think about my accident. Surely if I
thought about it hard enough, I would recollect something. Jenna continued
talking. I could hear her murmurs, but I couldn’t hear the details. I had to
think hard, bring something out from the depths of my mind.

And there it was – a brief flash. It was instantaneous, but
it was what I was looking for. I could see me sitting in my Jeep with Matt in
the passenger seat, rain beating down on the windshield. As quickly as I saw
it, it was gone. But it was vivid and more importantly, it was real.

“No, you’re wrong,” I shouted. “Matt was with me! I was
driving and he was in the passenger seat. I just saw it! I
can
see it.
He was with me!”

Jenna stood up still holding my hand. “Ali, that’s not
possible.” Her eyes were filled with sympathy, her face with concern. She
slowly shook her head from side to side and she seemed pretty convinced she
knew what she was talking about.

Doctor Frid spoke. “No one else was with you in the car,
Allison. I read the response team report; you were the only passenger.”

“No, no, that’s not true! Matt was there, I’m telling you!”
I felt myself coming unglued, launching into hysterics. Tears flowed freely.
“Why won’t you believe me? He
was
there!” I shouted. The machines behind
me beeped at a frantic pace.

“Nurse! Nurse,” Doctor Frid yelled. “Please give her
something to calm her down.”

A different nurse, rotund with tanned skin and dark hair,
entered the room. I backed myself into the bed trying to escape the needle
headed in my direction. “No, I don’t need a shot; I need to see my husband!
Somebody please tell me where he is!” I felt the shot of whatever the nurse
poked into my IV start to work its magic. I was calming down, but my mind was
still racing for any memory of me and my husband that would prove Jenna and the
doctor wrong.

“Where’s Matt?” I asked Jenna in a sleepy voice.
“Where…is…Matt?”

I drifted off to sleep.

It wasn’t a bad dream; this was my new reality. I had hoped
to open my eyes to Matt lying next to me, but instead, I woke up still in the
hospital. The prior day’s events came crashing down like a boxer’s left hook to
the jaw. I had been in an accident. My husband was dead.

My head and eyes were killing me; it felt like I had cried
all night. I rolled over and found Jenna sitting on the couch in my hospital
room. “Hey,” she said, and walked over to the side of my bed. She gently
brushed the bangs out of my eyes.

“Hey,” I muttered back.

My last memories rushed back into my conscious with a
vengeance. I couldn’t believe Matt was dead. It didn’t seem possible, but the
alternative was also unlikely; Doctor Frid and Jenna wouldn’t lie to me about
something like this. My heartbeat quickened and my breath shortened as I became
more alert. I tried to compose myself, to hold it together in front of Jenna; a
shot of whatever the nurse gave me yesterday would really help right now.

“How are you doing?” Jenna asked.

“About as okay as can be expected, I suppose.” I shifted my
position in an attempt to depress the anxiousness I felt creeping up on me.

“The doctor said you can go home today.”

“Yeah? Great,” I responded flatly.
And what exactly would
I be going home to
, I wanted to ask. I wasn’t in any hurry to rush back to
an empty house.

“Jenna?” I asked. “Is it true? About Matt?” I couldn’t help
myself. It seemed so unreal that he could be gone. Maybe if I asked the
question again I would get the answer I wanted.

Jenna glanced out the window, then back at me, and sighed.
“Yes, it’s true. I wouldn’t lie about something like that.”

That wasn’t the answer I wanted.

“Then why don’t I remember? If he’s gone, why can’t I recall
what happened? Why don’t I remember his funeral?”

“The doctor said you hit your head pretty hard in the
accident. He suspected you would have some memory loss, but he wasn’t sure how
bad it would be.”

“Hmm.” I supposed that made sense. I lay there for a few
minutes taking in the gravity of my situation. My husband
was
gone. What
would life be like without him? I apparently knew the answer in the depths of
my memory since I’d lost him three years ago, but it felt like I was living
through this for the very first time. “What about the vision I had last night
of me and him in my Jeep? I was driving and he was in the passenger seat; it
was dark out and it was raining heavily. It was so vivid, so real.”

“Doctor Frid said that could be your mind recalling some
other time the two of you were together.”

Tears welled in my eyes and I scrunched my face in an effort
not to cry.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Jenna said, and sat on the edge of my bed.
“You’re going to be okay. You’ve managed without Matt for the past three years;
you’ll get through this too.”

“Yeah, but Jenna,” I said, tears streaming down my cheeks. I
could taste the salt at the corner of my lips. “It feels like I just lost Matt,
like right now or yesterday when you told me. I don’t remember how he died. I
don’t remember the funeral. I don’t remember the past three years without him.
It’s like my mind is this big black hole and everything you are saying is new
to me. Hearing the news last night, or yesterday, or whenever it was, was like
hearing it for the first time.”

“I know, Ali,” Jenna said quietly. “Maybe when we get you
home some things will start to come back to you. Let me get Doctor Frid so he
can clear you for discharge.”

I was escorted to Jenna’s car in a wheelchair. It seemed
unnecessary but the nurse insisted it was hospital policy. Besides my
tear-induced headache, I felt amazingly fine. I didn’t have any scratches, sore
muscles or broken bones.

The crisp October air greeted me as I was wheeled outside. I
pulled my sweater tighter in an effort to keep me warm. Sunlight filtered
through a sea of gray clouds. It wasn’t enough to warm me but it nonetheless
shocked my eyes. The combination of fluorescent hospital lighting and hours of
crying had taken their toll, and my eyes were not prepared for the natural
light. Jenna offered up her sunglasses and I quickly put them on as the nurse
helped me into the passenger seat.

We sat in silence as Jenna drove. I tried to wrap my head
around the last three years’ events.

“Can you tell me what happened?” I asked.

Jenna glanced at me. “According to the police report, you
hit your brakes hard, even though you didn’t have a stop sign. You flipped
through the intersection and landed in a ditch.”