The Girl He Forgot (Book 2)

Chapter 1 - All That Matters...

'Who are you?'

That's what the boy in the hospital bed had just asked me.

Who am I?

Was there even an answer for such a question?

I was the girl who'd told the boy to go away. I was the girl he'd taught to shoot a gun. I was the girl whose nightmares he'd chased away, the girl who'd confided in him, who'd confessed to him. I was the girl he'd kissed and the girl he'd made cry out his name. I was the girl who'd left him afterwards...

...I was the girl who came back to him because I was always going to be that girl. I was the girl who'd sat with his unconscious body for weeks so that he wouldn't be alone...

...And now?

Now, I was the girl he'd forgotten... now, he regarded me as he would a stranger.

My wrist was still gently encased inside his hand, his fingertips cold on my skin, his grip weak from having not used his muscles for so long.

"I'm... I'm..." I stuttered for the right words, before I realised that they didn't exist. "You know who I am..." I said to Carl, silently begging him to stop messing around.

But he wasn't...

He stared at me and his remaining cobalt eye held no memories of me, it was plain to see. Everything I wanted to tell him, everything I'd been dreaming of saying to him should this day ever come, melted away like ice-cream down a grid.

"I've never seen you before, I don't know who you are..." he mumbled, his words slightly slurred.

My heart contracted painfully.

"What are you doing?" he asked, groggily, regarding my hand with suspicion as he released his hold on me.

"I-I'm changing your bandage" I replied, my voice a distant whisper in my own head, its tone mechanical.

"Bandage?" Carl began to sit up and winced in pain doing so.

"Don't" I said putting a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to keep him lying down.

He flinched away from my touch and looked at me as if I'd no business laying even a finger on him.

I swallowed, removing my hands from the boy's bare skin. "Don't move, j-just wait there, ok?" I fussed, as I began backing away from Carl and towards the door.

Carl slumped back into the pillow and I made for the door handle.

"Where's my dad?" he asked, his voice trying to speak louder but failing and breaking halfway through the question. I turned around to face him, my fingers still curled around the cold metal handle.

"I'll get him for you, just stay lying down". 

Carl nodded, a little out of it still. 

Once I was convinced that he wouldn't move, I left the room to find Denise. My head spun and I was forced to hold onto the walls of the infirmary to steady myself as I walked down the hall.

Denise was in the kitchen, her hands wrapped around a cup of herbal tea, her head buried deep in a medical book. Denise had been feeling the pressure since Pete's departure had left her the only person with any kind of medical experience. When she wasn't seeing to her patients, she was reading up on how to save them. Since the zombie break in, there'd been little disturbance in Alexandria and the hospital beds had slowly emptied. All accept Carl's, of course...

"He's awake" I blurted out to her.

She almost dropped her mug, the hot liquid splashing over the table, but she barely seemed to notice. She was suddenly hurrying past me, towards his room.