This room, though…
So drab and boring. The morning light’s gold brilliance only highlighted how craptastically plain this joint was. I sat up and pushed the covers off, yawned, and stretched.
Rita knocked and came in with my morning dose of Hazarin and a glass of water. The doctors said if I didn’t take this pill every single day I’d sink back into oblivion.
“Here you are,” she said. On her palm was a horse pill, half black, half gray.
“Looks like poison,” I said. “Hazarin. Like hazard. Keep out. But hey, if it keeps me here, they can call it Shitterall, for all I care.”
Rita laughed and I popped the pill in my mouth, washed it down with the water.
“I’ll be back in a bit to take you to breakfast.”
“I’m sure I can find my way down.”
She smiled. “Probably. But let’s take it slow, okay?”
“Thanks, Rita.”
I used the bathroom, washed my hands, and stared at the note taped to the mirror.
Hairbrush is in the first drawer.
I tore it down, and the mirror was clear, showing my entire reflection. A twenty-three-year-old woman with tousled blond hair and blue eyes puffy from crying. I searched my face for signs of the two years I’d lost. Grief for my parents was making it difficult to tell. I bent and splashed cold water on my face.
When I came up, my T-shirt had dropped a little to reveal a scar, low on my neck. I stripped out of the shirt and inspected myself. The scar ran horizontally the entire length of my right collarbone. Another scar ran down the outside of my right forearm. White seams, half an inch thick, with hash marks from stitches.
“Jesus.”
Now that I could see those scars, another, thinner one at my hairline jumped out at me. Another small hook over my left eyebrow.
I stripped out of my pajamas completely and stood naked in front of the mirror. My breasts looked the same—B cups with small nipples—but I’d gained a few pounds in the hips and stomach. A six-inch scar ran along the right side of my abdomen.
I kept going down, rediscovering my own body.
There was no sign of Dr. Milton’s procedure—they’d gone in through my nose, gag—but for a bandage, small and square-shaped on the back of my left hip bone where they’d done a bone marrow extraction. I had another old scar running from hip to knee, on the outside of my right thigh.
“God.”
They’d told me in the hospital I’d broken bones and had internal injuries from the car accident, but I couldn’t remember any of that pain or the recovery. The one benefit of the amnesia.
My vanity took a hit, staring at my scarred body, but I squashed it. Mom and Dad hadn’t survived at all. I’d wear these scars proudly as a tribute to them. Daily reminders that I had to live this life that had been spared in the accident that took two amazing people out of this world and into the next.
I wiped my eyes and went naked through my little room, tearing down the dozens of notes, schedules, and reminders taped all over to give me some sense of orientation when Rita wasn’t around, I guessed.
TV is here.
The TV, a small flat screen, lived behind cabinet doors. I’d spent hours and hours watching The Office—a show I obsessively binged even before the accident. No doubt I had every line of every episode memorized. But as much as I adored that show, the thought of other people living their lives while I sat in this room watching a screen made me itchy.
I’ve lost so
much time.
I tore the note off the TV cabinet, wadded it up with the others, and chucked them in the trash, then opened the closet to get dressed.
“Jeeeee-sus,” I said under my breath. “Fifty Shades of Beige.”
I picked out the least “mom-jeans” pair I could find and a white T-shirt with horizontal pinstripes of maroon every two inches, in the dresser. It was the most interesting garment I currently owned.