As You Were (4 page)

Did he say my brain was on vacation
?

“...time. Do you remember anything before the accident?”

She concentrated on this, and tears came to her eyes. “No.”

Brittany’s head began to swim again, and all she wanted to do was sleep.
No more questions, no more thinking...
just sleep...
She closed her eyes and a tear released and moved down her cheek.

Tru’s parents were on a cruise to Greece for the holiday, and she didn’t see the point in ruining their vacation with the recent turn of events in her own life. They wouldn’t be back until after New Year’s Day. Her mother could hear something in her voice, though, and she only half-lied by telling her she was just tired.

She was tired. The street maps, photocopied telephone listings, and gas credit card receipts lay in a pile on the kitchen table where they had been gathering for the last week. Thursday she had tossed them there, prepared to give up the ghost, for only a little while. How many more police stations would she call, how many more salvage yards would she have to wander through, praying to find Brittany’s car, and praying not to find it?

The Nissan had been a gift from her only surviving Uncle. Her previous car’s transmission was sounding the death knell anyway so the timing had been perfect. Her Uncle had been a hermit, and Brittany was the only visitor he ever got. The neighbor-lady had contacted Brittany when her uncle passed away, and had told her that her Uncle would want her to have the car. She hadn’t had a chance to switch the title into her own name.

With all the computerized information, Tru could not fathom why nothing turned up in the uncle’s name. It was as though Brittany and the Nissan had been abducted by aliens.

6

BRITTANY MADE HER WAY BACK TO HER ROOM, moving carefully down the corridor, and saw the officer at the nurse’s station. The nurse pointed to her, and the officer moved in her direction.

“Miss...
uh, you’re Brittany?”

“Yes.”

“I’m investigating the accident...
can I have a few minutes with you?”

He was young, a bit nervous. They had assigned a rookie. An obvious illustration of where

her case fell on the list of priorities. “Sure.”

He took her arm at the elbow and walked slowly beside her until they came to her room and

she sat on the bed.

“We found a gray Nissan in the river near Gunnison. I’m assuming it’s yours?” He dropped

his memo pad and picked it up quickly, leafing through until he found his page again. “Sounds like it, but really, I can’t tell you what my car looked like.”

“The nurse briefed me on your condition...
but can you recall anything that might help?” She folded the bedding back and climbed in. “I can’t even remember my last name, officer.” He released a resigned breath. “Well...
the license plate was missing, and there was no

identification inside. We ran the VIN number and it was registered to Henry Long. Does that

name ring a bell?”

Her eyes moved left to right, reading something inside her mind. She shook her head. “I’m

sorry, I can’t remember.”

Nodding, he checked his notepad.

“Did you talk to him?”

He pressed his lips together, sheepishly. “I went to the address, and the house was being

renovated by the owner. He said that Henry Long had died a few months earlier.”

Brittany knew she would normally feel remorse or grief, but had no feelings attached to

Henry Long. “Can’t you find out who his relatives are, and maybe find out who I am that way?”

“Well, that’s what I thought. I spoke with a man across the street, and he told me he had seen
a woman fitting your description several times, visiting Mr. Long. But he said that Henry Long
had no relatives that he knew of, and kept to himself. A lady next door said she only spoke to you
once, after his death. She said she gave you Mr. Long’s car, at his request. But she didn’t know if
you were related to him. That explains why the car was registered in his name. I guess you hadn’t
changed it over yet.”

Brittany sighed. “Did the neighbor lady know my last name?”

He shook his head. “And there’s no record of a Brittany Long, either.”

Brittany released another pent-up breath. “So I’m right back where I started.”

The officer closed his notebook. “Well, for now. Someone must be looking for you and they

would probably know to look for accident reports involving Henry Long’s car. I’ll see if I can

find some history on him. Meanwhile, I’ll have something published in the local paper. If

anything turns up, I’ll let you know.” He stood. “If you remember anything at all that might help,
call me.” He handed her a business card.

Brittany pushed the nurse’s hand away, insisting on climbing into bed on her own. “You’re awfully stubborn, young lady,” Nurse Sturgis grumbled. Brittany tugged the covers up under her arms and pushed her hair away from the scar on her

forehead, considering the churlish woman who had been her night-shift nemesis since day one.

“The harder I work, the quicker I get out of here, right?”

The nurse frowned. “That’s true in theory, but if you overdo it on these little walks down the
hall, you’ll be right back where you started.”

“Ridiculous,” she sneered. “I feel better every day.”

Nurse Sturgis nodded without conviction. “Stay in bed the rest of the day.”

“Nurse Sturgis, can I ask you a question?” Brittany inquired sweetly. The old nurse grunted

her permission. “Why do you always wake me up at night to give me another sleeping pill?”

Nurse Sturgis scowled at her, annoyed by the impertinence of the young woman. “Doctor’s orders, Missy. You should let us do what’s best for you, and stop trying to do everything by yourself.”

The rotund woman turned to go, and Brittany thought of how much she resembled a bloated marshmallow. “Oh, Nurse—” Brittany called. “I am allowed to get up and piss by myself, aren’t I?”

The nurse grunted and squiched out of the room on her white crepe soles.

Brittany released a groaning breath, clutching her side, and stifling a smile. She took the tabloid from the night stand, anxious to finish the ridiculous story about the woman who gave birth to a lizard.

Tru checked her watch. Five a.m.
Tuesday? Wednesday?
She had come home late Sunday night, after a long night of driving, searching...
realizing in a stupor that it was New Year’s Eve. Thankfully, the last holiday of the year; Christmas had only been bearable because she had refused to put up the tree, avoided the obligatory
It’s a Wonderful Life
on T V. In fact, she had kept both the TV and the radio off, except for news, that way she wouldn’t have to listen to the plethora of Christmas cheer permeating the airwaves. The only acknowledgment she had allowed herself was the Cinnamon Schnapps she had bought at a ratty old liquor store Sunday night on her way home from searching.

She had brought in the New Year watching videos of she and Brittany, playing in the snow. They put the camera on a tripod and built a snowman, and Brittany insisted on giving the snowman a cucumber penis. They laughed at passersby, who stared as they drove up the winding road. “You’re going to cause an accident,” Tru had said, her chastisement met only by giggles of delight.

The videos seemed endless, a history that had become antiquity, while she warmed her throat and deadened her nerves with frequent shots of the Schnapps. She stayed there well past midnight, into that Monday morning. She had given up on writing a new song, burdened by the difficulty of creative concentration. She had only managed to break a string, from strumming too hard on the Ovation Adamas.

All she could think about was how she used to come running into the living room with her guitar to share it. She could still see her lover’s face as she sang each new song to her.
Brit was gone now.

So she had stumbled in the back door Monday night, after another fruitless search, shuffled through the kitchen, and collapsed on the sofa for a few hours. Had she slept since then? No...
she went searching again and came home last night to sit at the table and drink more coffee.

Coffee had become a drug for her; she often thought the effects would be the same if she merely leaned over the canister and snorted the black grains directly, or grabbed a handful, and munched them like the dry Shredded Wheat she had eaten days ago, straight from the box.

Tru had endured another sleepless night here at the kitchen table; sleepless, save the nap she had taken with her head on her arms just before she had reached for her eCig.
It was Tuesday...

Tru put her head down on her arms again and closed her eyes, banishing the images of Brit, if only for an hour. Long enough to rest—

The sound of the paper boy’s Toyota jarred her awake again as she drifted off. A double beam of headlights flashed over the walls when he turned around in the driveway. Mechanically, she pushed herself up and went through the living room to the front door. Dropsi followed her and darted out to tiptoe cautiously in the snow. Leaving the door open, she watched the calico pounce on the orange polybag in the slush of the yard, rolling on it as if it were filled with catnip. Tru wandered across the drive to drag the paper out from under the writhing cat, brusquely aware that her well-worn sweatshirt didn’t possess enough thickness to fend off the

cold, and moved slowly back into the house, as if an army of leeches had also sucked her as dry as the Shredded Wheat.

She held the bagged paper by the open end with two fingers, avoiding the muck that slid down the plastic and slapped onto the concrete walk that led to the porch. No matter how often she had reprimanded that delivery boy, the kid always threw the paper in the yard. Drying out papers by the fireplace had become a habit for her and Brit—

Tru shook off the memory and freed the paper from the bag, dropping it flat onto the fireplace ledge to dry. She could have spared her weary brain cells the task of figuring out what day it was, by merely waiting for the paper—another indication of her exhaustion, she guessed.

She stared at the front page of the Denver Post, the headlines shouted foreign policy, inflammatory comments made by the some politician about his gay sister, and another report about The Highwayman. He had claimed his third victim. She whispered a silent prayer that Brittany was safe somewhere, and would not become the fourth on his list.

The newspaper was a frightening place to search for news of a missing loved-one, unless it was in the want-ads.
But when will I stop?
Staring at the paper, splotchy with the moisture from the ground, she left it on the hearth and went to turn down the bed.

Removing her jeans and Naropa University sweatshirt, she likened the hard void inside herself to the cliché,
you don’t miss the water ‘til the well runs dry.
She had no idea how deeply rooted in Brit her world had been, nor the value of that bond, until severed. Another dull pain thumped through her chest and she knew it as a pain impervious to any human-made panacea. Sleep would be the only offering of release—if only from the exhaustion. Finally, that idea alone was enough.

Tru slid beneath the black sheet and matching geometric design of the comforter that used to warm her and Brittany on those cold Colorado nights, recalling the vividly unsettling images of that evening, weeks ago, with Travis in that hotel. Did she deserve, then, the emptiness that had taken over her life since it all crystallized into this current hell? Was she singularly at fault? Tru did not have the strength to will her eyes dry again. She sighed, letting go of the churnings in her mind, focusing only on the gentle purring of Dropsi, who had taken her usual place on the pillow above Tru’s head. She drifted into a deep sleep, feeling the slight vibration of the cat’s internal motor on her scalp, knowing that by morning the tears would be a memory soon refreshed.

Brittany lay in her hospital bed, knowing she’d be released today, and wondering where the hell a person goes when she doesn’t know where she belongs. The Women’s Shelter would be the temporary solution. A solution, Nurse Sturgis told her, that was standard operating procedure for the hospital in cases like hers. She looked at the clock.
Eight a.m.
The sun tried to shine, but the bitter cold kept it from warming the window and permeating the room. Feeling a chill, she got up carefully and put on the robe and slippers.
Nobody’s robe, nobody’s slippers
—some articles of clothing that had been given to someone with only one name, by a nurse who took pity.

She strayed to the window and examined the new day. The first day of a new life which would be full of searches for the old one. The first day of the rest of her past.

The hospital staff had taken up a collection so that she would not be penniless when she walked out of here, along with the directions to the shelter, and a list of other organizations that might help her. She had refused psychological counseling because it made her feel somehow threatened; still not used to this disconnected universe her memory loss had caused, she certainly didn’t want some stranger with a psychiatric degree poking around in her head when she wasn’t sure what was in there, trapped beyond her grasp.

A perky volunteer named Trina picked her up outside the hospital entrance, her hair thin and a dull blond, her birdlike arms reminiscent of recent heroine-abuse ads. The young woman tried to make conversation, but Brittany didn’t feel particularly talkative. Trina seemed not to notice, one hand clenching a newly lit clove cigarette, periodically thumping the ash out the cracked

window. She launched into a waterfall of information about all aspects of life at the women’s shelter, crediting them for her newfound purpose in life. They had helped her find the job she had after she’d escaped an abusive husband. As she drove with her left leg bent, foot in the seat, Brittany hoped, with a generous amount of anxiety, that the girl’s reflexes were quick enough to get her right foot off the accelerator and onto the brake, should the need arise.

Trina’s words faded back into Brittany’s awareness.

“...not that everyone down there isn’t nice, it’s just that, well, they all have their little problems or else they wouldn’t be there, ya know?”

The door to the Shelter’s community room opened, and Brittany placed the paper down on her lap, anticipating the appearance of her visitor.

A young man in his early thirties, wearing round spectacles, strode up to her. “Hi,” he said simply.

“I’m sorry—” she began.

“I know.” He held up his hand. “The hospital told me about your amnesia. My name is Max. I’m the one who brought you in after the accident.”

Her face softened. “Oh, Max...
I’m...
what can I say? You saved my life. A thank-you seems a little inadequate.”