Sometimes I wonder if he fully understands how bad I want to remember, but it’s like my mind won’t let me.
It feels like a shield made of iron and no mental weapon can stab through it.
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I feel like this is my new mantra; Open your mind, Adelaide, being that every time I have a session with him it’s what he says juts before I allow the gentle lull of the metronome to pull me under. I have to admire his tenacity. His determination and will to make me remember, but I always feel like I’ve let him down when my session is over and he’s left with nothing but a void of a wife who still has no recollection of her time with him or her life with him at all for that matter.
A violent scream bleeds through the walls of the office and stunts my descent into the land of picking through my memories trying to put the puzzle back together that is my life.
I shiver at the sound of the agony in that scream. I picture Marjorie restraining a patient. I picture the malicious smile on Dr. Morrow’s lips. Pulling my knees to my chest, I rest my head in between my knees. “Please doctor, I mean Elijah,” I cover my ears with my hands, “please make them stop.”
Elijah is up from his seat in a flash, dashing toward his office door. He closes the door. I hear the lock click. Then he’s at my side. He places his hand on my shoulder, and the warmth from his touch seeps through the flimsy material of my hospital gown and eases my shivering. I peak up at him through my lashes as he tucks my hair behind my ear. “Better?”
I nod with steady breaths and lower my legs as he takes a seat across from me again. He flicks the needle of the metronome a second time and I relax. My eyelids grow heavy. Fighting off the pull at first, I widen my eyes, but it’s no use. I’m being dragged down into the darkened parts of my mind. Just before I close my eyes, I notice the look on Elijah’s face. He seems pleased. He’s wearing a hint of a smile and I can tell that he thinks these treatments are working. It makes me sad that he’s filled with so much hope and I keep deflating it.
The truth is, I wish I could remember our time together. I wish I could remember the life we shared. The love we had or have. More than anything I wish I could remember my daughter.
I assume the love he has for me must be a love of gigantic proportions. Because who would fight for someone the way he’s fought for me if the kind of love we shared couldn’t move boulders. Mountains even.
With that, I slink down in my chair, rolling my head back, my neck cradled by the back of the chair. Then I allow the soft ticking of the metronome to probe my mind, to hypnotize me. I allow it to take me to places I’d rather not go.
~ ~ ~
I don’t know how much longer I can handle this.
This meaning my treatment sessions with Elijah. I admire his will. I admire his determination. I admire the fact that he loves me enough to continue these frustrating treatments every day and when I remember nothing, he still gives me a faint smile and says, “Maybe we’ll have more luck tomorrow.”
The broken spirit that I know is lying dormant behind his smile is what keeps me from saying, I hope tomorrow never comes.
As awful as it is for me to admit it, that’s the truth.
I’m beyond exhausted and every day that I leave his office, I feel like another little piece of me disappears. Like an orange slowly losing layers of skin as its’ being unraveled.
There are times where I think I’m breaking him down, chipping away at his hard edge. There are times where I think the cold doctor is starting to evaporate. The part of him I used to find intriguing is fading away. Pretty soon he’ll be just like me. An emotional blob, a mess of a person. Sometimes I wonder if and when he reaches that point that the staff will take action and have him committed.
I’m staring at him now. He sits across from me at his desk, his hands balled into one giant fist, his forehead resting against his hands. He’s shaking and I can tell he’s using every ounce of strength to keep himself together. Through gritted teeth he says, “Alright Adelaide. That’s enough for today. We’ll resume tomorrow.” His voice is thick with the worst kind of emotion—pain—and I can tell he’s starting to realize I’m an egg that can’t be cracked.
I stand before him, wanting to offer an olive branch. Maybe tell him, I’ll try harder. But he slouches his shoulders with a sigh and I decide against saying anything. Instead, I slip out into the quiet hall and out of Elijah’s view.
I close the door behind me and listen for the click to make sure it’s closed then I hear him. “You just don’t get it do you?”
Damien.
My head snaps to the left. “Get what?”
He’s not real. He’s not real. He’s not real.
I know this. I know he’s a hallucination, a side effect of the barbiturates. But there’s also a portion of me that wonders why I’m still seeing him then because I stopped taking my meds weeks ago.
He’s perched against the plaster wall, arms folded across his chest, foot propped against the lower part of the wall. His radiant blue, blue eyes stare back at me in a direct way. “Get that all these treatments are useless and failing for a reason.”
I snort and brush past him, walking down the hall. “And what would that reason be?”
Damien is at my side in a second and shrugs. “You don’t love him.”
I shake my head. “You don’t know that.” I had to love him enough at one point to marry him and have a child with him. But I’m not going to say that to Damien.
“Neither do you.”