A Five-Minute Life

“Every morning,” I said, “the doctors come in here and they ask me their questions. They want to know what the amnesia was like and I never could explain it properly. An airless box. A vast desert that was infinitely huge and yet claustrophobic. None of that is accurate.”

“What is it then?” she asked softly.

“It’s like death, Rita,” I said. “Because what are we if we aren’t our memories? Who are we without them? Where are we in this life? They anchor us to all the who, what, and where. Without memory, we might as well be dead. Inside the amnesia, I’m not physically dead but I’m stuck in between both worlds. Like a ghost. And now that I’m here, my sister wants to cram me back in that purgatory.”

“Is Blue Ridge so bad? We want to take care of you—”

“It’s my pyramid. A tomb stocked with all the things I need for the next life I can’t get to.” I sat up and took her hands. “Help me, Rita. Talk to Delia. Or Dr. Chen. Make them see. Time is ticking away. I can’t explain it. Maybe because my consciousness is determined by a chemical reaction in a pill. It’s all I have, and sometimes it feels like the thinnest thread. Help me live before it snaps.”

Rita looked away. “Dr. Milton reports that the patients who have undergone the procedure ahead of you are doing well. There’s no reason to think the medication will fail, but if it does…”

“If it does and I’m still here, then I came back for nothing,” I said.

She pressed her lips together. My hope guttered out.

I let go of her hands and curled away from her. I stifled my cries but what difference did it make? I could scream from the rooftops, in my paintings, in word chains, and they wouldn’t hear me.

They can hear me. They just won’t listen.

A hand shook me awake as dawn’s light filtered through the window.

“Get up,” Rita said. “Get dressed, quick. I’ll help you pack.”

I sat up, blinking. “What…?”

“Hurry,” she said, grabbing the backpack I’d bought on our mall excursion. “Shit, I’m going to be so fired for this.”

I watched, slack-jawed, as Rita pulled the Hazarin pill bottle from her front pocket.

“I was tired,” she said. “Had a bad night. Instead of bringing you one dose, I grabbed the entire bottle without thinking and you swiped it. Okay? That’s our story. It might not be enough to save my job, but it’s worth a shot.”

Hope flared like an inferno, but I tamped it down. “No, Rita. I don’t want you to get fired.”

“I don’t either,” she said with a rueful laugh. “But I have a lifetime to remember the choices I made. And you only have right now.”

I flew off the bed and hugged her tight. “Oh my God. Are you sure?”

“I didn’t sleep at all last night, thinking of what you said. That part of my alibi is true.”

She gave me a motherly pat on the cheek, though she wasn’t quite old enough to be my mother.

She’s the sister I never had.

The thought felt ugly and unfair. Delia was doing her best. It’s all anyone could do.

Rita pressed the bottle in my hand. “It’s got thirty pills after you take today’s dose. One month and then you have to come back. I don’t know what will happen when you do…”

“I don’t either, but right now, I don’t care.”

I swallowed that morning’s pill dry and stuffed the bottle at the bottom of my backpack. While Rita dug through my clothes for the essentials, I got dressed and hit the bathroom, grabbing toiletries and makeup, plus the birth control pills they had me take to keep track of my periods because I hadn’t been able to do it myself.

Jimmy flitted into my thoughts at what else the pills meant, but I pushed him out.

“Take my number,” Rita said. “Let me know how you are. Do you want Jim’s?”

“I don’t know. Not yet. I need to get out of here first and then sort out how I feel about him.”

Rita nodded. “You’re going to New York?”