Unwanted Memories

I tried to do as Ellen had asked, to keep my emotions in check. I sort of succeeded. "Liz-- " I heard my voice crack, and I worked to get myself under control. "Liz, I'm just glad you're awake. We... we can worry about the rest of it later, but I'm so happy you're back with us."

Her expression was strange; More surprise, then a wary smile. "Thank you... John." She rolled the word around in her mouth. "I-- I know this... it's hard for me. I can't... I can't imagine it's easier for you."

A half-hearted laugh was all I could manage. "Yeah, it's-- " I shook my head. "We'll get through it. I'll be here with you all the way. I love you, Liz."

Liz's face was hard to read; sad, but not for herself. For me. Pity. "I-- Thank you, J-- John. I, um..." She looked away, tears in her eyes. "Can I have a little time to myself? I know that..." She started to cry.

My instinct was to rush over to her and wrap her in a hug. But as I took a step, Dr. Taggart shook her head, stopping me in my tracks. "We'll let you get some rest, Liz. Try to sleep if you can." The stranger in my wife's body looked away and closed her eyes.

Once we were outside, Ellen put her hand on my shoulder. "You handled that far better than I could have asked for, John. Thank you. But-- but now you're going to have to keep doing that. For as long as she needs. Will you be able to?"

I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "If not me, then who?"

Liz's physical therapy started a few days later. Hours a day of grueling physical effort to get her to the point where she could walk, sit comfortably unassisted, get into and out of a chair, all of the things we usually take for granted. It took a month before she was cleared to leave the hospital.

In all that time, she never regained any significant memories. A few things here and there: a cartoon she saw on the TV gave a brief spark of her childhood, and she remembered the name of a friend from the second grade; a tune played on the muzak that reminded her of a trip she'd taken one time. Nothing to do with me and her, nothing to do with our life.

I tried; God knows I tried. She told me that she could remember a few faces, but no names or context to go with them. I brought in our wedding album, her college and high school yearbooks, pictures of our vacations, and anything else I could find that might spark a memory. Nada. Ellen told me this was always a longshot, but I had to try. Liz's frustration mounted with each new attempt, and I ultimately decided it was time to put the pictures of the past aside and focus solely on her physical recovery in the here and now.

Near the end of the third week, I went out to grab some lunch. "Do you want anything, Liz?" I smiled. We hadn't had any real kind of connection, but she also no longer saw me as a stranger. It was a start, at least.

Her face became unreadable for a moment, then she forced a smile. "No, I'm good. Thanks. I'll see you soon." I nodded and went on my way.

I had learned to curb the urge to try to find out what was wrong when she acted this way. She was Liz, but she wasn't my Liz. There were echoes there, tics and preferences that I recognized, but she wasn't my wife. It was like the old stories of the faeries replacing someone with a changeling-- there, but not right. I know that sounds horribly uncharitable, but I had spent seven months waiting for my wife to wake up, and even after that happened, even after almost another month, she hadn't really come back to me. I did what I could to not show the discomfort, but I know I wasn't entirely successful.

Liz no longer saw me as a stranger, but I thought she was starting to see me as an interloper instead. Yes, I was her husband, according to me, the hospital, and the state, but she had no idea who I was. As I ate, I asked myself, "Am I making her recovery here easier or harder? Am I here for me or her?"

I returned to her room with no clear determination. Then, I realized I had a very easy way to make my decision: ask her. "Liz-- " That tiny flinch again. I sighed. " -- Do you want me here?" She opened her mouth to speak, but I pressed on. "I know you've been uncomfortable with me around. I'm not-- this isn't me trying to make you feel guilty or anything. What I care about is your recovery. If I'm impeding that, I shouldn't be here.

"And if you don't want me here, I'll still support you in any way I can: financially, a place to live, all of it. But I-- I don't want you to feel like..." I looked down, unable to hide my expression, the Stoics failing me. Or maybe me failing them. "I don't want you to act like you want me here if you don't. You've got enough to work through without dancing around my feelings."

Her voice was soft, but I could tell she was conflicted. "John, no. It's not-- " She paused. "Please come over here, next to the bed." I shuffled closer to her, and she let out a little laugh. It was nice, something I'd rarely heard from her since she woke up. Rarely heard for the last few years, for that matter. "Closer, silly. I'm not going to bite." A few more shuffling steps brought me to her side. "There. That's better."

She reached down and took my hand. "Look at me, John. You are-- " She squeezed my hand. "You're the only thing that's kept me sane for the last month. I know I've seemed distant, but knowing you would be here made this so much more bearable. I need you here. But-- " I saw her eyes were rimmed with red; she'd been crying again, not for the first time this week. " --but I can see how this is hurting you.

"Every time I-- every time I'm not her. When I don't react like you expect. When I don't remember a thing I should. It's not fair to you. You're putting all of this energy into taking care of me, but no one's taking care of you; not even you. I can't keep doing that to you. Especially if-- especially if--" She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Especially if Liz never comes back."

I nodded. "I know... I can see it hurts you, too. Ah ah, my turn to talk. It does. I don't know if it's because it's bothering me, or if it's bothering you, or if it's both and it just turns into some kind of feedback loop." I tentatively reached out and stroked her cheek; it was the most intimate gesture I'd allowed myself, and she responded by pressing herself into my hand and sighing happily. It felt... good. Real. Like a real connection between two people, not the two of us pussyfooting around the missing woman that separated us. "I'll-- I promise that I'll try to do better. But if you have any ideas about how..." I paused, hoping she'd come up with something, because I sure as hell hadn't.

"I do, actually." I went to draw my hand away from her face, but she moved her hand to it and held it there. "I-- I don't know if I'll ever be Liz again. And it-- you're right, it hurts when I see I can't be her. Hurts when I see how I've disappointed you, even-- Tut! -- even if you do your best to hide it. So... what if we stop worrying about Liz? What if I stop trying to be Liz?"

"What do you mean?"

She took her hands back, placing them in her lap and gazing intently at them as she spoke. "According to Dr. Taggart, my name, my full name, is Elizabeth Mildred Barnes. What if I started calling myself something besides Liz? Mildred is-- " She shook her head in disbelief. " -- yeah, that one's right out." She looked up at me with a smile. "But what about Beth?"

I laughed, and she looked a little hurt. "No, no! I think it's a great idea. I think... I think it's a really thoughtful suggestion, thoughtful for both of us. A reminder for me that you're, well, not Liz anymore. Maybe you never will be. And a way to take the pressure off of you to not feel like you need to be. It's a great idea."

Her head tilted quizzically. "Then why the laugh?"

"Because Liz hated 'Beth.' It was a surefire way to get her mad at someone, if they used that name." I let it go unsaid that, in recent years, I'd "accidentally" called her by her hated nickname more than once for just that reason. "That's... it's perfect. It's a perfect choice." Her face lit up.

"So. Beth. I ended up having this extra cookie from the cafeteria, and I was wondering..." She grinned broadly as I slipped the contraband to my new partner in crime.

It wasn't a perfect fix; I still slipped up. She was still, in the back of my mind, Liz more often than Beth at first. She still moved like Liz, still smelled like her, same accent, same figures of speech; all of those little things that, if they're off, let us know something is wrong with a person we know intimately. But over time, Liz took up less and less mental space, and Beth replaced her.

Part of it was that she was more comfortable now that she wasn't trying to be Liz, but it was more than that. She was actively trying to be Beth now, and I wasn't subconsciously trying to make her into Liz, or even a younger, earlier version of Liz before everything went wrong. With that pressure off, she became her own person.

I liked Beth a lot. It's hard not to compare Beth and Liz, for obvious reasons. I don't want to just go through a checklist of "Beth was like this, and Liz was like this," like some kind of shitty 90s observational comedian, but some of that is just unavoidable. Liz was kind of uptight and insecure; her competitive nature sprang, I think, from that. Conversely, Beth had a very self-deprecating sense of humor, a real ability to laugh at herself that was so charming.

Both women had a huge amount of native intelligence. It was part of what attracted me to Liz in the first place, but in Beth, it was melded with a new thirst for exploration that felt, for lack of a better term, less affected than Liz's need for new experiences. With Liz, it felt like she wanted to travel to a new place or try a new cuisine to say that she'd done it. Beth actually wanted to find out things, not just brag about them. I know that's probably because of Beth's tabula rasa nature, but it was still very appealing.

Beyond that, Beth was... comfortable. I just really enjoyed being in a room with her. She was funny. Inquisitive. A strange mix of innocent and worldly; I don't mean that in any prurient manner, just that she lacked memory of certain things, while still retaining skills elsewhere. We'd be talking, she'd learn something new, and it was a huge delight for her. Occasionally, she'd teach me some new piece of skill-based knowledge, something I'd never known that Liz had known, that she hadn't shared with me. I don't know if Liz had intentionally hidden these things from me, or if I had never bothered to learn. But I wanted to know everything Beth could teach me, even as I wanted to show her the world.

Unfortunately her world, for now, had to be small. Once she was out of the hospital, I took her back home. I made her take what had been our bedroom, and I moved into the guest room. A few more memories were triggered once she was "home," mostly small happy ones. The most significant, for us, was a morning coffee shared at our kitchen table early in our marriage; that was the first one with me in it, and it included a kiss. She blushed when she remembered it, shy as a schoolgirl in describing her remembrance. It was adorable, but I did my best to move along and limit her embarrassment.

We were just friends. I didn't expect anything more than that; want, yes, but I did my best to put no pressure on her. I knew she liked me, but maybe not like that. I was steeling myself for the eventual "you're a great guy, but" conversation. It never came. Instead, we embraced a unique blend of roles: a husband and wife that didn't know each other; a caregiver with an unspoken and possibly unrequited crush on his charge; two roommates who shared a history one didn't remember. I'd be lying if I said I was happy with how things were shaking out, but I'd already lived for some time in a house with a woman who had stopped loving me; at least this one liked me.

In the first months back at home, she had an interminable number of doctor's appointments: therapist, physical therapist, outpatient check-ins at the hospital, and many more. In between, we did a whirlwind tour of the places I knew that she frequented. I say "I knew that she frequented," because my divide with Liz had been sufficient that I was no longer sure everywhere she went when I was out of town.

Between her office, gym, favorite coffee shop, and a few other spots, she put a few more names to faces, but these reunions were bittersweet; she remembered the friends, but not their histories. And there were all of the people that she didn't remember, who showed a muted version of the pain and horror I had felt when she looked at me and saw a stranger.

As part of her recovery, Beth needed to exercise. She and I started taking long walks each day; we talked about her history at first, but she started to ask about mine instead. I told her about my life both before and after I met Liz. I didn't want to put too much pressure on her, but as she asked about our marriage, I was honest. Maybe she'd remember that she hated me, but at least she'd remember something.

One day, after we had finished our walk and were having something to drink in the kitchen, she point blank asked, "Jesus, how much of a bitch was I?"

I laughed. "I-- honestly? Liz was kind of a huge one by the end. I'm not-- I had my role in how things went bad, but it always felt like an escalating game of tit for tat. It was this extended prisoner's dilemma scenario where, no matter how I'd try to reset and get us back to cooperating, she'd take it as a chance to score a win." I'd avoided this for a while, but she deserved the truth, and she was strong enough now to hear it. "Beth, I... the night of the crash, I was waiting at home to talk to her about getting a divorce. I just couldn't do it anymore."

Beth gasped, "What?"

I nodded. "I'd gotten back from a trip, and I just... the whole time I was on the plane home, I was dreading seeing her again. I knew something had to change, and it wasn't going to be her-- " I stopped, realizing what I'd just said. "Oh, oh god, Beth, I didn't mean-- "

She was dumbstruck for a long moment, then just started laughing, big belly laughs that had her doubled over. I looked on in horror, worried that I'd broken her, maybe set back her recovery by months.. She finally stopped and wiped a tear away, then patted me on the cheek. She giggled, "Well, at least something good came out of all of this."

I could only look at her in shock.

She hugged me, the first completely real hug we'd shared, the first one that didn't feel like she was doing it partly because she should, but because she wanted to. I could hear her voice quavering, like she was trying to not cry. "This has been-- it's all been-- just so awful. But I-- god, I needed something good to have come from it, some kind of, I don't know, cosmic reason that-- " She fell silent and hugged me tight.

My arms encircled her, bringing her as close to me as I could. I felt tears on my shirt; there were tears on my face, too. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed this kind of closeness. Not thinking, I kissed the top of her head, and she burrowed her face into my chest. I felt her turn her face to the side, then she choked out, "Why?"

My voice croaked, "Why what?"

"Why did you-- why didn't you leave?"

"Because you're-- she was my wife." She sobbed, an acknowledgment of what we weren't. A longing for what should feel right, but didn't.

We stayed that way for a while. I don't know about her, but I spent the whole time wishing that some magic would come and make things right between us. That this embrace was the start of the next step in our relationship. Wished, but didn't hope; hope was a step too far. Hope meant heartbreak. It meant--

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed me. Not a big kiss. Not even necessarily one with a promise of more. Just a small, almost courtly kiss, like a princess rewarding her champion. She stroked my cheek and said, "I-- I don't know if-- if we can-- can be more..." She shook her head. "We'll be-- we'll be whatever we are. But, god, John. I don't know how a woman couldn't want..." Her words trailed off, too much pain in the possibility. She gave me a sad smile and stepped away, heading to what had been our bedroom. I got a beer from the fridge. It was before noon, but, honestly, I couldn't give a damn. I felt, simultaneously, more pain and more hope than I had since she first went into the coma. "Desire is the root of suffering," indeed.

We were distant for the next few weeks. Not in a cool, uncaring way, but still giving each other more space than we had before. That was difficult at times; she couldn't drive, and it was possible she'd never be cleared for it again. I wasn't supposed to leave her alone for too long, either, just in case. I'd been working from home since she left the hospital, and what had been convenient before now felt almost stifling. When we were together, we were warm but slightly impersonal. Preferentially, we were apart.

We couldn't find a way to square what we'd shared with the realities of our situation: there was so much tangled up in who we'd been to each other that trying to become who we could be seemed like an impossible task. Could she really love me, or would it just be gratitude disguised as love? Could she believe that I loved her, or did she only see duty to my absent wife? How much of what we felt was real, and how much of it was two people who had no one else and maybe could never have anyone else again?

Our impasse was broken in the strangest way: laundry day.

"Have you seen my black t-shirt?"

Beth became very focused on her folding. "Which one?"

"The kind of ratty one. The one I wear when we go for walks sometimes."

"Oh." She paused. "I, uh. I've been using it as, um, as a night shirt."

I raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

Her voice was quiet. "Because it smells like you."

"Did-- did it spark a memory or something?" That had happened before, a scent bringing up some little vignette from her past.

"No. I just-- " She looked away. "It-- I like--" Her eyes closed. "It makes me feel safe."

"Oh." I stepped close to her and patted her shoulder. "That's-- that's okay, then. I've got plenty of other shirts. Or do you-- do you need a, um, a fresh one? I mean, one I've worn that's-- " I sighed and started again. "Do you need one that smells more like me, because you've been wearing that one?"

She looked up at me. "Would you? Would-- would that be okay? Not-- " She laughed nervously. "Not too weird?"

Beth was so pretty, her expression vulnerable and so earnest. My heart melted, and I know she could see it on my face. "No. It's sweet; I'm glad I make you feel that way."

"You do!" Her enthusiasm embarrassed her, and she looked away. "You do. I-- Being here, with you. It feels-- really feels like home."

"I'll be happy to give you one, but we've just done the laundry, so I can't right now. They're all clean. Can you hold out one more day?"

She laughed as she looked up at me. "I think I can manage."

We finished the laundry and ate dinner. It felt intimate in a way it hadn't been before. There was something there, a warmth both indefinable and very real. Nothing had really changed; we still had the unassailable wall, the power imbalance that made any deeper relationship suspect. Everything had changed; the wall had been breached, just the tiniest bit, an admission of the imbalance serving to make it seem less important. I made her feel safe. She made me feel wanted. Maybe that was enough for now.

We cleared the table and did the dishes together; it had been a nightly ritual before the recent distance. Lately, we'd been taking turns at the chore. But tonight, we returned to it together, and as we worked, we were closer physically. Before, she had tried to keep a little space between us as we worked, and I had tried to honor that. Now, we brushed against each other. She'd touch my arm, silently asking me to move to one side. I'd squeeze between her and the kitchen table, my body pressing lightly on hers; she didn't pull away, and I think once she pushed back into me, but I couldn't swear it.