Remember Me? ✔

T W E N T Y - S I X | Forgot

"I don't understand" I muttered moving away from her. She didn't have the time to answer as David finally joined us.

"Why don't you take a seat" David instructed pulling up a chair for himself too. Mum and dad sat opposite me, my dad wrapping his arms around my sobbing mum, whilst Elliot took a close seat next to me.

"Jessica, before I offer you an explanation I need to warn you that it is a lot. I don't want to pressure you into anything so please tell me if it gets too overwhelming" David said. I gave him a slight nodded giving him the permission to continue. 

"Shall we start with Daniel?" He began to ask. I felt Elliot begin to stiffen next to me, his hands balling into fists. I nodded once more not having the words to speak.

"Daniel is in what we call a medically induced coma. Daniel came to us after a car crash and he was in a very bad condition. So we had to do what we could and that was to intubate him and get him onto the ventilator. Daniel can't breathe on his own at the moment, that's why the machine is helping him" I nodded processing the information. 

"That doesn't explain why he's here." I finally said. Daniel was in America, not back in England. None of this made sense.

"That's where you come in" David said looking up at me. My mum continued to sniffle sitting beside my dad but didn't say anything. 

"Me? This is about Daniel?" I began feeling my heart pound in my chest. 

"This is about you both" David said softly. I felt a wave of dizziness hit me and I automatically held my hand out to Elliot who grasped it within his own immediately. 

"What I mean is that Daniel wasn't the only one in this position. You were just like him a few months ago." I remember back to when I woke up in the hospital back in England.

"Yeah, but that was back in England. And I was nowhere near as bad" I expressed laying my head in my hands. My head continued to spin rapidly.

"Jess, I looked after you myself." David started slowly "Here....in America" David finally said sending a wave of shock through-out my whole body.

"That can't be." I shook my head. "This is the first time I've been to America. It can't be. I would have remembered" Elliot shuffled closer to me but all I wanted to do was push him away. I felt as though the room was beginning to close up around me. Was I even breathing?

"That's where it becomes complicated, Jess." David began once more. "You and Daniel were in the same crash, but it wasn't in England. It was here, in LA. I won't get into the technicalities of the crash, maybe someone else can explain that to you once you feel better" he continued. 

"But...I...I woke up in England" I said looking up at the doctor. He nodded slightly. "You did" he confirmed. David waited  a couple of minutes giving me the chance to catch my breath before he continued. 

"You were in a much better position then Daniel, Jess. You were stable." he explained. "Once we had stabilised you it was getting you back to England from there. There were two options we could have gone for, one being using your travel medical coverage to carry out an evacuation process and two an evacuation through a governmental arrangement as part of the NHS. It all depended on whichever one we could get first, but since you had premium health insurance they were quick to make arrangements" he explained. "Daniel, on the other, was and still is far too unstable to be sent on a plane across the world. We couldn't risk it".

"I would remember" I whispered to myself. A flash of sympathy crossed David's face. 

"That's what we thought too" I said. "Up until you finally woke up." he continued. "Before you fully gained consciousness, you were always in and out of sleep. A week before you regained full consciousness, you had woken for a few hours." I listened intently as Elliot began getting agitated next to me.

"Your mum was there for you, she talked to you but you didn't remember anything. You didn't remember the crash and you didn't remember America." I felt the air being sucked out of my lungs as he continued to explain. 

"When we asked you what the last thing you could remember, you said your birthday. We had no way to explain to you how the months had flown by so we had to let you believe that you were out for the whole of those months." he paused for a second "Jess, your accident was 6 months after your birthday." My mouth fell open. "You have what we call retrograde amnesia, Jess. After the crash you forgot the last six months of your life" and that's when my whole world came crashing down.

"And you forgot me" came a small whisper from beside me.