It All Started With Amnesia

Chapter Four || They Both Suffer From Full-Name Phobia ||

|| They both suffer from Full - Name Phobia || 

James

I look on as a girl; followed by two guys, who look like they’re around my age, walk into my room. The girl is carrying that enormous bouquet of flowers. Jeez, it looks like the florist had put in all the flowers he had into it! I could count about ten sunflowers from where I was sitting.

Guess who’s going blind in the night, I thought dryly.

“Hey James!” The girl began, after she dumped the bouquet on the stand beside my bed.

“How are you now? Aunty rang us up to tell us about your accident. My name’s Elita. Elita D’Costa.” She says, taking a seat on the couch on the other side of the room.

The two guys look a tad uncomfortable, and I don’t blame them. This whole affair is one whole bucketful of uncomfortable. They take their places on either side of Elita on the pale cream couch.

Before I could reply and tell them I was fine, the doctor poked his head through the door. Apparently, some test results had come. He was searching for my mother. I told him she’ll be back soon. He then left, after telling me to take my medicines on time.

I roll my eyes. Doctors and their meds.

“So, um, not to sound rude, but who are you guys?” I ask them, a bit apprehensive.

They could be axe murderers for all I knew. ‘Funny,’ said the small voice in my head sarcastically. Great, now I’m talking to myself. Step one of going bonkers – complete.

Before I could continue with my internal monologue, the guy on Elita’s left spoke.

“Well, his name is Christopher.” He said, pointing at the other guy.

Christopher shot him a dirty look and then said, “And, his name is Benjamin,” putting an emphasis on ‘Benjamin’.

“Hey now, there’s no need to play dirty, Bro!” Benjamin retaliated.

Elita sighed and then said, “Don’t call either of them by their full names – they’re Ben and Chris. And, both of them suffer from Full-name Phobia. Oh, and we’re your best friends.” She finished. 

“That’s….. nice?” I ventured out, hesitantly.

“Chill bro, we don’t bite. Well, not you anyway.” Ben said, winking at me. I finally started feeling comfortable, and then grinned back at him.

“Ew. Shut up, Ben. I don’t want to hear about my brother’s exploits with girls.” Elita squealed out, inching away from Ben and towards Chris on the couch.

“Brother?” I echoed.

“Yeah, Elita and Ben are twins; Elita is older by two minutes and forty-three seconds.” Chris answered me, grinning.

“So, we’re all buddies?” I ask, a tad hesitantly.

“Not, buddies, we’re BFFs!” Ben says, imitating a girl’s high pitch.

We fall into easy banter after that. They tell me a little bit about themselves. Ben and Elita belong to the same church as I do, Chris who lives a bit far away practices atheism though he’s a catholic by birth.

Chris told me that we were all students of commerce. We all went to the same college – Perdeson College for Science and Commerce.

And, we also had another guy in our group. He was Chris’ best friend from college, Arjun Malhotra. Unfortunately, he couldn’t come visit me today because he had to babysit  his younger sisters.