The Price of Forgetting

Chapter 10

I had a concussion, a sprained wrist, a few broken ribs, and bumps, scrapes, and bruises all over the place. Obviously, I didn't have a point of reference, but I didn't realize healing would take quite so long. A week later, I was just able to sit up on my own, and it still really hurt. I wasn't allowed to actually get up on my own, but thankfully after I proved to Dr. Collins that I was able to stand up without getting dizzy and falling over, I was allowed to take care of my personal needs, so long as someone stayed with me and made sure I didn't get dizzy and fall over.

Embarrassing as that was, it was a lot better than being taken care of like a baby the way I was at first. I became very grateful for the nurse who was helping Mama take care of me. I would have been mortified to have Matthew or one of the other men doing any of it.

The most noticeable changes over the week were the bruises. Aside from the deepest ones, like on my ribs, they were mostly gone. My face still showed some evidence of injury, but it looked a lot better than it had before. I had a long way to go with everything else. Doctor Collins said the concussion wasn't as much of a concern anymore, but that my memory loss and headaches meant that I still had to be careful for a while. And of course my wrist and ribs didn't feel much better than they had a week ago.

Matthew almost never left my side. The longest he was away was when he allowed himself to sleep. It wasn't easy, but I managed to convince him that he didn't need to sleep in the chair anymore. He refused to go before I actually fell asleep, but now he slept on the sofa in the sitting room. Since I was still sleeping a lot, he usually returned before I woke up, so it seemed like he didn't leave, but Mama and Papa assured me he was actually able to rest too. But aside from when Doctor Collins did his examinations and other times I needed privacy, he was always there.

I didn't mind. In fact, I liked having him to rely on. Especially since he'd kept his promise to stay with me any time people came to see me. Doctor Collins knew that it was stressful for me, so he limited new visitors to two a day. That still would have been pretty stressful if Matthew hadn't realized that I was much more comfortable knowing who I was meeting before they just appeared in my room. So he would find out who was going to visit and then he'd tell me all about them before I actually saw them.

I was so grateful for his thoughtfulness. Not knowing who someone was when I should was hard enough. Trying to figure it out without saying the wrong thing was awkward and exhausting.

Even though I didn't remember anything from before, Matthew was still my best friend. Which maybe doesn't sound like that much since I hardly knew anyone else, but we were close. There was his devotion in staying with me, but we just seemed to fit together well. He knew everything about who I was that I couldn't remember myself, and he usually knew what I was thinking. If not the specific thoughts, the feelings and general idea. Fuzzy as things still were for me, I sort of had that clarity with him too. I wasn't nearly as confident in what I thought about him as he was with me, but I was usually on the right track. It made me feel so much better to know that with everything that had been turned upside down in my life, that had apparently stayed the same. It also gave me hope for the future. That black fog continued to cloud my mind, but with Matthew, I felt like I could almost see through it. It was as if he was my anchor and I just had to hold on to him long enough for the storm to clear.

But of course, I found myself wondering at his devotion. I didn't know exactly how our relationship worked before, but it just seemed like a lot for a friend - even a very close one - to put his entire life on hold to be with me every single day for weeks. It made me curious about how close we'd actually been. Were we really just best friends or more than that? He never said anything, or even hinted that we'd been romantic at all, but I could easily imagine myself falling in love with him. There were times when he would look at me a certain way that made me think he might love me like that, but then he'd resume his casual, friendly behavior and I'd think maybe not. And why not say something if that was the case? Maybe we'd gone there in our relationship and it hadn't worked. Maybe one of us felt that kind of love and the other didn't. I just had no idea and I couldn't bring myself to ask. I know Matthew said I could ask him anything, but I just wasn't ready for that potentially very awkward conversation yet.