Shadowed (Unbound, Book 2)

Chapter Twenty Three

Maible wasn't at our usual meeting place when lunch arrived. Not wanting to wait, I grabbed a salad from the cafeteria and headed out to the front lawn to sit in the sun, alone. It was a nice change, not having to try to figure out conversations or pretend to understand something I should know but couldn't remember.

Calin was comforting but sometimes comfort held the pain that pushed realizations through to the surface at bay. It fogged my ability for logic and dulled my senses of anything that wasn't him. So, while his calm was good, it wasn't everything that I needed. I could want to be with him and still desire space to be alone, just for a little while. Being in my room and feeling trapped within the confines of four walls didn't count.

I mixed my salad dressing with my lettuce and laid on my stomach to eat and watch as people came and went. The traffic above the cement wall felt hypnotic, making my mind wander. My thoughts drifted to all of the unanswered questions and overwhelming confusion I walked around with but tried to hide. So far, I had discovered a lot on my own, which nobody seemed to mind confirming and almost always revealed a new tidbit in the process.

Nothing I'd been told had hindered my progress like the doctor in the hospital warned.

Was I special or was the doctor wrong? They all called it amnesia, but what kind? Wasn't there levels to losing your mind? There had to be. No one person with amnesia would be the same as another. I mean, it was all forgetting whichever way it got spun, but what caused it? Physical wounds? Repression? Maybe the origin and symptoms played a role in figuring out how to overcome it.

Why hadn't I thought about this before?

I sat up and pulled the netbook Devland had finally returned to me from my bag, opening it to rest in my lap. The glare of the sun made me turn to face the school in order to see the screen. Already jacked into the school's Wi-Fi connection, I typed "amnesia" into the search engine and started to eat my salad as I read the results that generated.

Choosing what appeared to be the best result—the one with the least amount of medical terminology—I ate the rest of my lunch as I devoured every word.

But even with language a student in grade six could understand, there was a lot to digest in one sitting. Lunch wasn't long enough to obtain a satisfactory answer, though the main points were crystal clear. You didn't need a goose egg to forget who you are. An event traumatic enough could induce amnesia, and each person had their own trigger for what was determined to be their trauma. Some didn't have a trigger at all, their ability to compartmentalize beyond the realm of normal. Was that how soldiers are trained in case they're captured at war?

Reading on, my suspicions were confirmed. Different types of amnesia existed, though the mystery of the brain made a conclusive rehabilitation regime impossible to arrange. But there were case studies linked to the site which helped shed light on ways other people had recalled their memories. Again was the warning that nobody recovered the same. I reread the main article, committing the types of amnesia listed to memory, or at least the part of it that was still active.

It wasn't anterograde amnesia since I could still process and retain new memories. Retrograde seemed obvious, but then I hadn't suffered head injuries. Everything leading up to and during the accident was gone, though. My procedural memory, that which allowed me to remember things like how to brush my teeth, was intact. That left psychogenic amnesia since I wasn't having flashbacks like someone with posttraumatic amnesia.

I clicked the link and set my salad aside to pull the screen closer.

Psychogenic amnesia sounded crazy, like I belonged in an asylum. Despite its name, it fit. Memory loss due to a stressful event or psychological trauma not linked to physical injury or caused by a known neurological affliction. It lasted from minutes to months, and could be a single event that was lost or everything from infantile amnesia to whatever triggered the current loss.