Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 157175 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157175 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
I gasp, suddenly struggling for breath. No?
‘Oh my goodness,’ Elizabeth breathes, coming straight to me and claiming the children. ‘Come on, darlings. Let’s go and find your pap.’ She steers them out of the room, both of them looking back at me with confusion all over their faces.
And I just stand there, useless, staring into the eyes of the woman who rules my heart, trying to comprehend what’s unfolding. ‘Ava.’ I barely get her name out, my mind frantically searching for words.
‘Can you tell me how you crashed your car?’ the doctor pushes on.
She shakes her head on a frown, reaching up to rub her forehead. But her eyes never leave mine. They’re holding me frozen where I stand, taking me in.
‘And this man isn’t familiar to you?’ Dr Peters asks, making notes while he talks.
I hold my breath, begging she puts this right, praying that I didn’t hear her correctly, that she’s just confused. Of course she remembers me. I’m her husband. I’m the man who would lay down his life for her. She has to remember me!
She studies me for a few moments, looking me up and down, as if trying hard to place me. My heart cracks. ‘I don’t recognise him.’ She looks down at the sheets, and the inevitable tears start to pinch the back of my stunned eyes.
‘Do you have any children, Ava?’
‘No.’ She almost laughs, quickly looking up at me again.
My world shatters into a million shards of devastation, and I stagger towards a nearby chair, sitting down before I fall. Her gaze follows me the entire way.
‘You don’t remember me?’ I whisper the words.
‘Should I?’ she asks, her laughter gone and clear worry in her tone.
Her reply slays me. It turns my stomach and rips my broken heart from my chest. I want to scream at her, tell her that yes, yes, she should remember me. Everything we’ve been through. Everything we’ve done together. How much we love each other.
‘Ava, this is your husband.’ The doctor points towards me where I’m slumped in the chair. ‘Jesse.’
‘But I’m not married,’ she argues, seeming to be getting frustrated. Frustrated? She’s frustrated? I hate myself with a vengeance for concluding that she has no fucking idea. I positively hate myself. She doesn’t remember me? Her husband. Her Lord.
I can’t take this. I’m going to throw up. I dash out of the room and sprint down the corridor, thrusting the door to the men’s open with force and falling into a cubicle. I haven’t eaten for days, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for my stomach. I retch and cough over the toilet.
She’s forgotten me. Forgotten our kids. What is this madness?
My body starts to ache with the force of my retching, and when I finally accept that there’s nothing to bring up, I push myself up with too much effort and move to the sink to splash my face. I stare at myself in the mirror. I don’t even recognise myself right now. I’m pasty, my eyes are sunken, and I look drained. I am drained. I was before Ava came around, and the small, momentary sliver of life I found when she opened her eyes has been cruelly snatched away.
What am I going to do? How do I fix this? The only thing in this world that keeps my heart beating doesn’t know who I am.
A tap on the door prompts me to look past my frightful reflection. ‘Mr Ward?’ The doctor’s voice has lost all the hope that filled it when Ava woke from her coma. Now it’s back to sympathetic. ‘Mr Ward, are you in there?’ The door opens and Dr Peters appears, his lips pressed tightly together when he finds me holding myself up by the basin.
‘She doesn’t remember me, her own husband, and not even our babies?’ I swallow down the lump making me choke on every word, wondering why I’m posing it as a question. It’s not like I heard her wrong. It’s not like I didn’t see the total blankness in her eyes when she looked at me and the twins.
The doctor enters, shutting the door quietly and slowly behind him. Clearing his throat and plunging his hands into his pockets, he finds my eyes in the mirror. I can’t turn to face him. My hands wedged against the edge of the basin are the only thing holding me up.
‘Mr Ward, it would seem your wife is suffering from amnestic syndrome.’
‘What?’ I snap.
‘Memory loss.’
‘No fucking shit, brainiac,’ I mutter. Is he just going to state the fucking obvious?
Ignoring my rudeness, he goes on. ‘Having chatted briefly with Ava, there appears to be a clear divide in her memory.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, my forehead bunching.
‘I mean, from what I have established thus far, there is an obvious cut-off point in her memory.’ He points to the side of his head. ‘The part of her brain that stores certain memories has been traumatised. Our ability to recall memories is a very complex process, without the added handicap of a brain trauma.’