How to Date a Nerd

Memory (The Secret Life of Sarah Byrnes)

Leon left for LA tonight. From the little garden in my mom’s backyard, I watched him go. Every strand of my being all but wanted to run after him and confess.

As he stepped away, I could only stare at his back, feeling as if my happiness was being slowly robbed away from me. At that very moment, I thought, I hated those shoes he was wearing because they took my Leon away from me. I swore there would come a time that I would snatch them from him and burn them to ashes. But it wasn’t the shoes’ fault. It was the universe’. And mine.

For the last time, I took his picture, making sure that even if my brain crashed again like it did before, I would have a backup for all the memories I might lose. It would be painful. Regardless, I would not have changed anything if I had the chance.

I had to let go. No matter how willing he was to stay by my side, risking his future and his lifelong dream in the process, I knew it wasn’t going to work out between us. He had to move on with his life. While I, from the other side of the world, would have to fight an uncertain but inevitable battle for mine. My only wish was that he wouldn’t have to witness every pain and suffering and waste his life looking at me with pity.

Having this kind of affliction made me think a lot. The hardest part of having amnesia wasn’t the pain of not remembering. How could a person grieve for something he didn’t know he had in the first place? It was knowing that the people around you, people you love the most, are hurting because they remember everything, up to the last unpleasant detail, knowing that they would have to eventually narrate everything you had forgotten and let you relive the pain.

“Sarah,” a voice said, simultaneous with the snap of fingers in front of my face. “You ready?” It was Myrna—a nurse I had known for many years now—with a worried look on her face.

Inhaling deeply, I nodded.

“Relax,” Myrna smiled, sticking a needle into the port in the tubing, just above my hand. “I’m going to inject the contrast medium now.”

A tingling, burning sensation crept from the vein at the back of my hand and up to my arm, making me aware that I was holding onto the edge of the bed so hard it hurt. Slowly, I lay down, the cold from the synthetic leather covering the bed seeping through the thin fabric of my hospital gown. I held my breath, feeling a shiver run down my spine as the bed slowly slid into a cylindrical contraption with a faint mechanical sound.

Inside the tube, there was nothing to hear but the muffled whirrs and the rhythmic beeps of the MRI. It made me claustrophobic and all the while, I kept reminding myself that it was a fear I didn’t have.

“Okay, Sarah,” said another voice, this time, a male. The technician, I supposed. “You will hear a few loud noises as we’re taking images of your internal organs, but it’s perfectly normal. So I would have to ask you to stay still for a few minutes.”

I knew the drill. I had done this test a couple of times before. Still, it was nerve-racking. “Okay,” I answered through clenched teeth to stop them from rattling.

Closing my eyes, I struggled to visualize. Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. All I could think of was Leon and I, sitting in our favorite spot at Gil’s—the one at the far corner, near the window looking to the road. There, we would stay for hours, talking and laughing, and eating fries without ketchup. He hates ketchup. And tea. He hates tea. These little things, I was glad I could remember, because in this temporary and indefinite existence of mine, they to me were an anchor. A reminder that I had someone waiting for me to fix myself and when that time comes that I’m all well, I could come to his arms running.

On the table, he would place his hand over mine and draw never-ending circles at the back of my hand with his finger. At times, when I had been feeling especially inquisitive (resentful) because he had been gone for weeks, I wouldn’t stop myself from asking about his work. Of course, he would give me this lopsided smile that was slightly annoying, but still managed to make my heart stop.