𝔸𝕧𝕒
I've spent a lot of time in hospitals dealing with weird symptoms, but amnesia is a new experience for me.
At least—I think it is.
Isn't it?
"What is your name?" the nurse asks me, eyeing her clipboard.
This seems like a trick question.
"Ava Reynolds," I reply, mentally high-fiving myself for not giving a sarcastic answer.
The man who brought me here is standing and scowling in the corner.
He seems fun.
"When were you born?" she continues.
"January 27th, 1996."
She flips a couple of pages, nods, and writes something more down.
Yes, lady, I know my own birthday.
I do know my own birthday... right?
"Where are you now?" she asks.
"The hospital," I say. The woman scrunches her face as if I got it wrong. "...in Port Charlotte?"
She pinches her lips shut and starts writing.
"PC Memorial Hospital?" I add.
She begrudgingly nods. I'm not sure why she had to be all cryptic about that, but okay.
"How did you get here?" she asks.
"Um, this guy drove me," I say, gesturing to the grumpy hot guy in the corner. "I'm sorry, I didn't actually get your name."
As I look toward him his eyes dart away, avoiding my own. The nurse looks to him and he nods in response.
"What is the first event you remember after your injury?"
"I was sitting on a couch and um, this guy was talking to me and my leg hurt like a bitch, and I said I didn't remember who he was..."
I trail off, not knowing how to finish that. Do I tell her that we were in this totally trashed apartment and there was blood everywhere? Should I add that I was surrounded by ultra-hot people who were covered in blood? Is the pile of ash in the middle of the room a relevant detail?
I mean, I may not be Einstein, but I feel like those are the kinds of things you don't share until you have the details. Like, are these people in the mafia? Am I in the mafia?
Are we just the worst house sitters of all time?
"Can you give some detail?" she asks.
I look to Mr. Grumpy who doesn't seem to give me anything to work with.
"Detail?" I ask. "Um, we were in a fancy apartment and there was this cute guy with long hair..."
I hear a strange, low, almost-growl-like sound emerge from Mr. Grumpy.
What the heck was that?
"...um, and this lady came out with a bag and she got all panicked."
"Okay, that's good enough," she says, scribbling on my chart. "Can you describe the last event you can recall before this incident?"
I strain to remember. My mind feels foggy, almost as if there's a literal haze creeping in at the edges, blurring the details and obscuring others completely.
"Um, my boyfriend and I were having dinner with his parents," I say. I hear another low rumble from Mr. Grumpy.
I've really got to learn Mr. Grumpy's name.
"And can you tell me today's full date?"
"Um," I say, wondering exactly how far off my memory really is. It does seem awfully cold out for the day I think it is. "May sixth, two-thousand-and... eighteen?"
Mr. Grumpy storms out of the room in a sudden, violent motion.
So, I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that was wrong.
ℤ𝕒𝕟𝕖
Kami is standing in the hallway outside Ava's room combing a hand through her hair as she attempts to make herself look less like she just lost a fight to a demon. She has tidied up a bit since we arrived and her skin is just slightly stained red from the remaining traces of blood. I wiped most of it off on the way over here, but she couldn't exactly do the same while driving.
"I can't fucking take it, Kam," I say, slamming a hand into the wall and leaving a fist-sized crater in my wake.
"I was listening," she says with a sigh. "I'm so sorry, Z. We will figure this out."
She pats my back as a reassuring gesture, but it does nothing to ease the ache in my chest.
"She's gone," I say, staring at the floor tiles beneath my feet.
"She's not gone." She grabs my shoulders and shakes them. "Listen to me. That's still Ava in there. We don't know anything right now, okay? It might not even be the lethe that caused this."
"Of course it is."
"You were so sure it was your venom making her sick before, and we all know how that turned out. Ava has some weird human medical stuff going on, for all we know it's one of those things and her memory will come back."
"Even if it is a medical thing, she could be lost for good," I say, pinching my eyes shut. I feel warm tears spill onto my cheeks.
"That still doesn't mean she's lost. You may just have to start over," she says. "Which honestly may be a good thing in your case, 'cause you fucked things up a lot."
I chuckle at the thought of the many idiotic things I did the first time around.
"For starters," she adds, "you could avoid cursing her out at Pike's this time around."
"Oh piss off," I say with a laugh.
"Why are we pissing off this time?" Kieran says as he rounds the corner. A large, gnarled scar spans across his neck, and his red shirt masks most of the residual blood from his encounter with Asmodeus.
"I thought we told you to stay in the car," Kami says, crossing her arms.
"Yeah well, I forgot. You know—lethe and all," he says, his voice hoarse and raspy from the injury to his throat.
"That's not how lethe works."
"Can you two fucking shut up about lethe??" I snap.
"Shit, Z-Man," Kieran curses. "I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking about it like that... I know you're really into this girl. I didn't mean to..."
"It's fine," I say with a sigh, combing a hand through my hair.
"How is she?" he asks.
"She's lost more than a year," Kami replies, seemingly knowing that I'm not up for answering the question. "She doesn't remember any of us—me, you, Zane."
"Well to be fair, I don't remember her either," Kieran says with a smile. His smile fades as he looks back and forth Kami and me. "Too soon?"
Kami smacks the back of his head.
"Ow, okay," he says, rubbing his head. "My bad, just trying to lighten the mood. Have you talked to her?"
Kami looks at me knowingly and raises an eyebrow.
"Not really," I say. "What am I supposed to say?"
"Just about anything would be better than standing silently in the corner and grumbling every time she mentions a man," she says.
She may have a point there.
I look back to her door and sigh.
She's right. I have to talk to her.
𝔸𝕧𝕒
The nurse steps out just as Mr. Grumpy walks back in. Despite his roughed-up, ragged appearance, he's still remarkably handsome. His dark, curly hair is swept back and, for the first time since we left for the hospital, his deep brown eyes meet mine.
"Hi," he mumbles, brushing a hand through his hair as he shifts back and forth on his feet.
"Hi," I reply.
What do you even say in a situation like this?
Hi, I have no idea who you are. Care to tell me why I ended up in your wrecked house looking like a Walking Dead reject?
"You er, asked my name earlier..." he says with a sigh. "It's Zane."
"Ava." I realize as I say it that I'm meeting him for the first time, but he has already met me. "Oh, I mean... I guess you know who I am already, huh?"
He gives me a small nod and chews anxiously on his bottom lip.
"So, any chance you're going to explain what all that was about?" I ask.
"Which part?"
"What the heck happened? I mean, I know what you told them, that somebody broke in and attacked me and you fought with him, but we both know that's a lie."
"Is it, now?" he asks with a brow raised.
"You're telling me that some random dude off the street broke into a penthouse apartment on top of a building and in the process broke through brick walls, bled all over the house, smashed the furniture, and beat the shit out of us and your two friends?"
He smirks slightly and brings his eyes up to my own.
"I guess you are still you," he says.
"That's hardly an answer," I say. "Were we doing drugs or something? Did you kidnap me? Are we part of some kind of fight club?"
He opens his mouth to speak but I stop him.
"Don't. If you're about to tell me not to talk about fight club I am so not in the mood."
He pinches his mouth shut and I watch as the corners curl into a subtle smirk.
"This isn't funny," I say, crossing my arms.
"You're right," he says with a heavy sigh. "I'm sorry. Er... This is complicated. Can we start with an easier question?"
"Okay. How do we know each other?"
He sits down beside the bed on a nearby chair and closes his eyes for a moment. As he reopens them again, he takes a deep breath in.
"We're together," he says. "You're... you and I are together."
Oh.
This super-hot guy is my boyfriend?
I guess that means Mike and I didn't work out, not that I'm exactly surprised. We're a lot better at fighting than we are at getting along. I can't say it doesn't sting a bit, but I'm also not entirely bothered by the fact that I'm apparently getting it on with this chiseled god of a man.
Damn.
"Okay," I say, slowly processing the information. "What happened to my leg?"
"You were attacked," he says, his eyes catching the light in a strange way, making them look almost green. "I wasn't lying about that. He, erm... caught us off guard."
"Who was it?"
"Fuck, Ava, these are your easy questions?" he asks, tugging a bit at his hair.
"Okay, fine. For now. So your friends that were with us—Kami and the other guy that kept cracking jokes—who were they?"
"Kami and Kieran, yeah—they're old friends of mine. Well, they're your friends now too."
"Were we doing something illegal?"
"No, love," he says with a chuckle.
"How did I hit my head?"
"Your head?" He grimaces and drops his head into his hands. "Did the nurse say something about the scans? Are you alright?"
"No, she said they're fine," I say, which seems to calm him slightly. "I mean how did I get the memory loss?"
"Oh," he says. His eyes dart around as if he's trying to carefully craft his answer. "I... I... I'm not sure, actually..."
He's interrupted by a nurse tapping at the door.
"Could you confirm your address for me?" she asks me.
"Sure," I say. "It's 1822 S Wollstone-"
"Uh, no," Zane says. "Sorry to interrupt, love, you don't live there anymore. It's 2800 17th Street, PH1. Still in Port Charlotte, though, same postcode."
"Oh um, thank you," the nurse says, stepping out into the hall.
"I moved?" I ask.
"Yeah you er," he says, pausing to bite his lip a moment. "That was our place that we just came from."
Our place?
Before I can even process the idea, a commotion breaks out just outside the door. Several voices seem to be arguing and I only catch bits of what they're saying.
"Mam, I'm sorry, but it's our policy to call..."
"...hell freezes over."
"...if she wants to talk to me..."
I recognize the last voice slightly.
"What's going on?" I ask, my voice loud enough to reach the hallway. "Hello?"
Zane's eyes go wide and this time they're unmistakably green as a figure steps through the doorway.
"You've got to be bloody kidding me," he hisses as he jumps straight up.
What is Mike doing here?