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Sorry this is a day late. My work schedule was a little off this week. Anyway, it looks like #1 is the popular vote. Let’s see what information Nesia can get.
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Nesia was almost tempted to take the doctor’s advice. Her body was already winning that battle, but her mind was more awake than ever. Perhaps it was the fact that everything in her head was a muddle goop of nothing. She had absolutely nothing to think about, and yet everything at the same time. Her whole life, whatever it was, was just out of reach; teasing her with the fact that she knew, but could not remember.
“Uh, well, I hope you feel better soon.” Izen was still in the room, his green eyes stared at his sneakers. He turned to leave as he muttered to himself, “hope you remember soon.”
“Wait,” Nesia called out. “Izen, right?”
The youth nodded as he obediently turned around and came back over to her bed. Nesia carefully studied him, trying to fish up any memory or recollection she could. His eyes were more of a brown-green, not the vibrant green of someone else’s face that flashed briefly in her mind before it dissolved into nothingness. His short hair had been blond as a child, but now it was a light brown. It was the odd streak of construction orange that actually sparked a brief memory. Izen had lost a bet and the stripe down the middle of his head was the result.
“Can I get you anything, Kate?” Izen’s voice interrupted her attempt to chase down the details of the bet.
“Nesia,” she corrected. “Until I remember, call me Nesia.”
“Um, sure. Nesia then,” Izen shrugged as he looked around the room. “I’ll apologize right now if I forget. I have been calling you Kate for the past five months.”
“I’ll forgive you, if you stop acting all funny.” Nesia tried to give a reassuring smile. “When you thought I was the Kate you knew, you were all ready to joke and laugh. I’ve lost my mind, not my wits.”
Izen laughed and relaxed a little, finally willing to look her in the eyes again. He ran his fingers through his striped hair as he thought. “Sorry, I was expecting…well, a different conversation to be happening. It’s just…unnerving having a friend look at you like you’re a stranger. At least you’re awake. I thought you weren’t going to make it.”
“What happened?” Exhaustion, headache, nothing was going to keep her from asking that question. It was important. A sense of urgency pulled at her, desperately trying to find the memory it went with. She had learned something important right around the time of her accident. Nesia really wanted to share that information with someone, except she had no idea who or even what she was going to tell them. “What hit me so hard that I lost my brain to it?”
“I don’t have all the details,” Izen said slowly as he stared out her window. A few taxis flew by, heading toward the upper level landing pads of the resorts that dominated the area. His eyes narrowed a little as he quickly glanced back at the doorway the doctors had left through.
“My brother said you guys went up to the fifth floor of the estate to discuss your relationship,” Izen finally said as he stared back at the window. “You officially accepted an engagement ring and planned to have an engagement party this month. As you were leaving, the cat went crazy and tried to claw you and you fell over the balcony. You caught the edge, but right as my brother was just about to reach you, you lost your grip and fell.”
Her mind immediately pulled up an image that looked like a drunk had doodled on a napkin. It was the estate: six floors, six balconies, an atrium in the middle. The black, mental drawing kept changing in her mind as she scribbled out support pillars that were attached to nothing and could not come up with a proper number for how big any of the balconies were. She stifled the urge to scream as she placed her left hand on her head. She knew the layout of the estate, but her mind was organizing the little info she had like a child’s art project.
“Kate? I mean, Nesia?” Izen corrected himself after she glared at him. “Are you okay? Do you remember?”
“No,” she sighed as threw the mental scribble aside. “The only thing I know is five stories is a long fall. How did I not die?”
Izen’s face lit up. “Master Niles caught you. It was so cool. He was all, just coming in through the door, ran past security and totally jumped and flipped himself up so he caught you at the second floor. Then he did a half flip and practically surfed down the stair railing with you in his arms. It was absolutely awesome, like in one of his movies.”
Niles Tyanio. Galactic stunt double and coordinator. And Izen’s idol judging by the way the seventeen year-old was animatedly describing the crazy rescue. No doubt Izen was exaggerating to emphasize how awesome his hero was, but Nesia did not mind. She had remembered a little. True it was just Izen’s age and some information on a stunt choreographer, but it had come.
She was exhausted, both from Izen’s spurt of energy and her effort to remember. Nesia leaned back in her bed, letting her left hand fall to her side. She frowned and lifted her hand back up. It was not that she actually felt she cared about it, but it was something that Izen had mentioned.
“Where’s my ring?”
Izen looked like he had been hit with a steel bar as he stopped midway through telling of stunt glories. He looked a little sad but covered it up with a shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe the doctor took it off when you came in. Want me to go ask?”
“That would be nice. Thank you Izen.”
“No problem,” Izen smiled as he headed to the door. “I’ll be back soon.”
Nesia closed her eyes for a moment as she waited.
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She opened them to find the room dark, and instantly closed them as she heard someone talking quietly by the window. Judging by the voice, Doctor Grainger was in the middle of a conversation with someone on the phone.
“I’m just saying you should prepare for any of the possibilities,” Grainger said. “Bones can heal. Her cast should be off in a week. But the mind is far more complicated than just tissue and skeletal structure.” The doctor paced a little as he listened to the voice on the other end. “Well, there is a possibility that she might wake up in the morning and remember everything, though I imagine she’ll have a headache worse than when Ludi does anything. Of course, there is also the possibility that she’ll never remember. She might decide to just go her own way and make herself a new life with the blank slate she has.”
Doctor Grainger stopped pacing and Nesia fought to keep from falling asleep again. She had no idea who the Doctor would be talking to, but it was obviously someone concerned about her. Perhaps Izen? No, Izen had come to the hospital himself. It was someone who was not able to visit her.
“There is another, more likely situation,” Grainger said. “She’ll recover some of her memories here and there. There is a chance that she won’t recover all. She might only remember the worst moments in her life, or only the best. She might remember her parents, but she might not remember you. No matter how close you were. Oh, don’t give me that. Even I could tell how love struck you two were. And now she seems to be officially engaged to some…”
The doctor stopped as he listened to the other person. He sighed and Nesia heard a small thunk as Grainger tapped the glass window. “I’m sorry,” the doctor muttered. “We just need to accept that who and what she becomes is now up to her. She’s not all lost, if her insistence on being called Nesia is any sign. What? I don’t know about that. I’m guessing it probably affected her ability. We won’t know until she remembers. If she does.”
Doctor Grainger walked past her bed as he muttered some goodbyes and promises to call with updates later. Leaving Nesia with the knowledge that she was in option three. Her few recovered memories were silly tidbits of information. Nothing about her past had fully come yet. That person on the phone was no her fiancé as she had first started to guess. It sounded like an old boyfriend.
She drifted back off to sleep when a horrible thought crossed her mind. If there was no guarantee that she would remember, then there was no guarantee that people would be truthful about her life. Some guy could show up and say that he was her reconciled boyfriend and that she was going to leave her fiancé for him. Unless she remembered she would not know if that was true or not. If should could not even trust her own memory, then who could she trust?
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All right. This was little longer. I hope you are enjoying it. For these next options, we’re actually going to pick what kind of dream Nesia is going to have. Just for clarification, each of these dreams will be rooted in a memory, but because her memories don’t make sense her dreams are affected. So while they will have hints of her past in there, the dream might have something random run through like normal dreams do. These options might show up again. They might be the same, the might be different depending on what she has learned and remembered.
So then, what should she dream about?
1 – Action
2 – Nightmare
3 – Talking to Kate/Self
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I vote for #1.
ReplyDeleteAction!!!
ReplyDeleteAction/nightmare - how about replaying the scene up until she falls from the balcony? What really happened? This "fiance" - did he push her off? Lift up her fingers off the edge of the balcony so she fell? How could he have not saved her? I'd like to hear about the confusing/coercive engagement proposal (if that's what it was), since I'm not sure if she really agreed, or was forced. Although little brother Izen is nice enough. But is he an innocent pawn?
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