Heartstrings

Chapter Six

Reid

I left Ormond Hospital a week after my accident. Nina visited me every day; my parents and Tony visited even more frequently. One day, a few college-age people I'd never seen before were standing nervously, just outside my door. My mother went outside to greet them, and then she introduced them to me as my friends of the past year. I nodded and went along with it, because I had no other option.

And the blonde girl, my girlfriend Mallory, never visited me again, after that first day of waking up in the hospital. She looked beautiful in the pictures that Tony showed me. Maybe she was already back at university, focusing on her work. I wouldn't blame her, if that were the case.

After I left hospital, I moved into my parents' house on their request. Tony told me that I used to rent an apartment with Mallory at our university, Collard. Mallory was probably staying there, but I didn't want to ask my parents. My mom's eyes turned sad whenever I tried to mention Mallory in front of her.

I took time off studying and told Collard University staff about my accident. Then I sat in my room, trying to remember how to be normal again. But that was easier said than done, because I didn't know who I was in college. Someone who was majoring in History; dating a girl who looked like she belonged on a movie set. That didn't feel like me at all. 

I tried to spend as much time around my family as possible, to prevent myself being alone with my thoughts. When I was in high school, I was pretty introverted. There were so many drastic changes to my life in the past year, with close friends who cared about me cropping up out of nowhere, that I was barely able to catch up. Time was running ahead of me.

Tony gave me a picture of Mallory and I on his last visit to the hospital. It was on my work table in my old room, next to the bed I was sitting on. I rolled over my bed to pick it up. It was taken at some beach, and Mallory was wearing a red bikini. It was during that last year of high school that I didn't remember. Tony gave me the brief details on Mallory's background, but there were still a lot of gaps that needed to be patched up.

I recognised Mallory's face, because I'd seen her in my hospital room. That was all my memory extended to. She was my girlfriend, but I had to learn that she existed from other people.

Bile rose up in my throat. I pushed away the picture and lay down in my bed, trying to ignore my growing panic. It was difficult to ignore everything when it came rushing up in me like that, those hidden inklings of knowledge, choking me in their vice.

And then, like a switch that had been flicked, it happened. My lightbulb moment, the eureka to my problem. I sat up in bed, my head whirling with possibilities. It was the picture of Mallory that triggered it. A red bikini, red sunset, a red drink with ice and a tower rising into the sky.

My thoughts were finally collected, a train of certainty that lead me somewhere. I got up and sprinted out of my room.

I rushed into the living room, all action and resolve. Everything felt sharper, vivid, and my heart kept time with the roaring blood in my ears. Tony and Mom looked up at me, shocked by my expression. I surely looked manic. I smiled, elated and terrified at once.

"I remembered something." I told them. "The trip to France, when I was eighteen. Tony went up the Montparnasse Tower with me, and we could see the sunset-"

"No, Reid." Mom's mouth tightened at the corners. I stared at her, my smile falling.

"What do you mean?"

She closed her eyes. "You never went to France. We did Greece when you were fifteen. But we never took you abroad after that."

Tony stayed silent, but he was looking at me with pity in his eyes. My stomach churned. I couldn't bear to look at my family anymore. I stared at the floor, feeling sick again. But this time, the churning was in my heart. My joy was like paper, scattered to the floor and torn to shreds under my feet. I thought that Mallory was the key to my vindication. But I placed all my hopes on a stupid picture; a snapshot of time that I forced into my reality.