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Chapter Two: Annika

21 Days Later
April 2017

"She's waking up." I hear a woman say. I don't recognize her voice. My eyes are so heavy. I try to open them, but they don't budge. I'm trapped under this dark curtain that binds me to this bed.

I feel a hand squeeze my right foot. "Nik baby, I've missed you so much. Please wake up." A man says. Why did he just call me, baby? His voice is familiar to me. I can't put a pin on it, though. It's off somehow.

I slowly manage to open my eyes. It's so bright in here. I squint, then moving my hand to cover my eyes. My whole body is sore. As if I wrestled a bear yesterday. "Ahh." I moan.

"Hey." When my eyes adjust, I see Si and some woman in front of me. What the hell? "How are you feeling?" Why is he here?

"Sore." My voice is hoarse. It sounds foreign to me like he does. It's not the sound of his voice that's different, its the emphasis. The way he is speaking to me. And that tone is matched with an expression I have never seen. Like I hold the answers to life in my hand. Like I am his answers. Why though? "I'm thirsty, and my head hurts." My eyes now adjusted to the light are opened wide, taking in my surroundings.

There is a tube pushing air into my nose. It feels so dry in there, and it tickles. I don't like it. I have an IV in my right hand. I feel my heart pounding. I hear my breath as it moves in at out of me at a rapid pace. I'm panicking. "Where am I?!"

"Annika, everything is alright. I'm Dr. Lawrence." The woman says. "You are at Flagler Hospital." I'm still in St. Augustine. That's a relief. "You were in a car accident. You hit your head pretty hard. You have been asleep for a while, but everything is alright. You have been in and out for two days now but everything is going to be okay." She pats Si on the arm. "I'll go get you something for the pain and some water."

Once she walks away, he looks at me with a wide grin. Why is he still looking at me like that? What does he want from me? He looks like he just won the lottery. Did he come to rub it in? "Why are you here?"

He is taken aback by my frankness. "You know who I am, right?" His hands are shaking as he holds onto the foot of the hospital bed.

"Ugh. Yes, Si, I know who you are. Why are you of all people here? Where is my family?" His eyes fill with tears, but they don't fall. He bites down on his lip as he looks at my doctor as she walks back into the room. "What?" I know I sound like a bitch, but I'm the confused one in the hospital here. Why is he on the brink of crying?

"Annika, what day is it?" He asks me.

That's what he chooses to ask me. What a stupid question. "It's September 17th. Or at least it was. How long have I been out?"

"What year do you think it is, Nik?"

Think? Really? More dumbass questions? What's next, what color is the sky? "It's 2009." The tears that welled in his eyes trickle down his cheeks in thick beads. His normally olive Italian skin looks pale. What on earth has gotten into him? What is with the crocodile tears? "What?" I snap.

My Doctor comes to the side of the bed, taking my attention away from Si. "Annika, it's April 13th." She pauses, looking at him before looking back at me. "It's 2017."

It's 2017

It's 2017

It's 2017

It's 2017

It's 2017

It reverberates in my head. "I've been asleep for eight years?"

"No," She says. "You have been asleep for 21 days."

Why can't I remember nearly eight years of my life? I'm eighteen... no, I'm not. I'm twenty-five. I'll be twenty-six in two months. What had happened in all that time? "Why can I not remember..." I feel like I just stepped out of a time machine. I look at Si. He is looking down as he cries. Soft sounds leave his lips. He is gripping the edge of the hospital bed. Knuckles go white. "Si, why are you here?" I ask in a breathy quiet voice. All hostility is gone.

"Annika, we have been married for almost four years." He looks back up at me. The whites of his eyes are bloodshot, making the green of them pop like burning emeralds. Those bright emeralds are beaming at me. He runs his left hand through his thick dark brown, nearly black hair. A gold band hits the light as he does so. "We have been together for almost eight years."

I look down at my left hand. My ring is an oval diamond with a small round alexandrite, my birthstone, on either side of it. The band of it is gold. It's pretty. "You and I?" I say in disbelief.

"Yes. You and I." He says, moving towards me. When he tries to touch my hand, I pull it away.

He looks so distraught. He turns on his heels and walks out of the room.

"Silas!" My doctor says, running after him—my husband. I can't stop staring at my ring. I married Si? It must have been for a reason. Right? I need to tone down the bitch meter. As hard as this is for me, it must be so much harder for him.

I look out the window and am met with the blue sky. I fear getting up and to look out it further. The sky is still blue, but what has changed? My life is unrecognizable. I worry about how the earth is different too. I love everything about St. Augustine. The history of it. The oldness. What if all that is gone now?