Awakening

One If a human being is the sum total of all her thoughts, memories, and experiences, then I was, for some indeterminate period of time, nothing. I did not exist. I hovered on the edge of consciousness like a breath waiting to be drawn in, a dream not quite formed into images, almost alive and not quite dead. It was not a particularly disagreeable state. Those who know nothing want for nothing, and it was good, for a time, simply not to care. And then I began to awaken. My memories of those first days are blurred and tossed together like fruit spilled from a basket; some moments, the brightest in color, stand out in particular; others are lost altogether; none are in the correct order. My eyes, so long unused to seeing, struggled to separate amorphous clouds of light into faces and objects, and did not always succeed. My ears could not quite distinguish one sound from another, and the background noise formed a rather soothing hum of almost musical cadence. I whispered the customary words, surprised at how hollow and faraway my own voice sounded. "Where am I?" A face floated into view, familiar, kind. But I could not say I recognized it. "Don't you remember?" I sensed a disappointment when I did not answer, although the voice was carefully neutral. "Try to remember. You've been awake before. You've asked the question before. Try to remember what happened." But the gentle winds of void were beckoning to me again, and remembering seemed entirely too much trouble. I whispered, "I want to go home" just before I drifted away again. And so it was, the same scene repeated over again, I can't say how many times. I would awake, I would question; I would sleep, I would forget. But gradually, it seemed, I stayed awake longer, I forgot less. Memories drifted through my dreamlessness like dandelion fluff on a summer breeze. A house with a green shutter that banged in the wind. A garden and a stone frog covered in moss. The smell of baking bread. A starched doily on a cherry table. Rain on the roof. A child's voice. Scraps of a life, bits of a woman. Particles of chaff, harmless and pretty as they danced in the sun, drifting closer and closer until I could see they weren't chaff at all but floating moths with gossamer wings; no, not moths and not floating, but buzzing insects, darting and daring, irritating me, teasing and stinging and drawing me back to a place I didn't want to be. I opened my eyes to the hurtful light. I kept them open. And this time I asked a different question. "What's wrong with me?" The face was back, kind and concerned. A male face, familiar. That's all I can tell you about it. "What can you remember?" he asked. "What's wrong with me?" I repeated, more forcefully now. "You can tell me. My husband is a doctor." Ah, that I should know that. It was a milestone, and I recognized the fact as well as he did. "You've suffered a severe trauma," he said gently. "There was a great deal of damage, I'm afraid, to your cognitive functions, and most particularly to your memory. We've all been very worried." A vague uneasiness crept through me, like beetles crawling on my skin. This time I couldn't make it go away by slipping back into the nothing place. "How long?" His eyes were sad and guarded. "A long time." Too long. I knew it in my bones. Too terrifyingly long. "Months?" Silence pulsed like a heart, muffled and strained, whispered like a wind gathering force in the distance, fading, swellingBoyd, Donna is the author of 'Awakening', published 2003 under ISBN 9780345462350 and ISBN 0345462351.