After Image

When she woke up early the next morning, she was still in the Emergency Room. She could hear a hive of activity as the nurses changed shifts. The curtain to her bed was slid back and a nurse came in.

“Hope the music last night didn’t keep you awake. Looks like there was some sort of malfunction with the intercom. It gave everyone a fright when it started playing throughout the hospital,” The nurse said as she checked Viola’s vitals.

“Music? Huh. I thought I had dreamed that,” Viola replied stretching to wake herself up.

“It looks like the doctor is sending you over to have an MRI. I just have a few questions to ask before we take you over there. Also I will need you to make sure that you remove anything metallic on your person. You don’t have metal inside your body anywhere? No screws, plates, or the like?” The nurse asked.

“Metal free,” Viola said taking out the owl earrings that were in her ears.

“Okay let me just get this IV unhooked from you and I’ll take you over.” The nurse unhooked the IV drip from Viola and gestured for her to follow. She was taken to a large room where the MRI was housed and left in the hands of the technician.

“Have you ever had an MRI before?” The technician asked.

“Nope. Doing a lot of firsts this time around. First time CT. First time overnight in the hospital. First MRI.”

“Well, not too much to worry about,” she said handing Viola a pair of earplugs. “It’s really loud, so just put those in. Also when lying on the bed try not to link your hands together, it sometimes makes a circuit and you might feel a little funny, okay?”

Viola nodded and shoved the earplugs in her ears. She lay on the MRI bed and handed her glasses to the technician.

“You aren’t claustrophobic are you?” She heard the technician ask muffled by the ear plugs.

“I’m okay as long as I see an exit,” Viola replied. The technician gave her a thumbs up that she saw as a blur and she disappeared behind a screen.

Moments later, she felt her body slide into the MRI machine. A whirl of cold air was flowing through it giving Viola goose bumps, but also making the sudden fear of being inside a tube vanish. She had a hard time placing her hands somewhere. She was uncomfortable with them beside her as they felt as if they were going to slide off the bed and rest on the heart of the machine. Instead she placed them on her abdomen not quite touching one another. Don’t make a circuit, she thought to herself.

She knew the moment the MRI started. It was incredibly loud, even through the ear plugs that were shoved in her ears. The magnetic resonance kept changing frequencies as it scanned her brain. She felt like her whole body was realigning to the magnets around her. It made her uncomfortable. Her head felt like it was being pulled in every direction, as if her brain was made of metal and was trying to pull out of her skull and stick to the MRI. She was extremely grateful when the noise stopped half an hour later and she felt the bed slowly sliding out of the MRI. Slipping on her glasses and taking out the ear plugs, she tentatively smiled at the technician.

“Are you all right?” The technician asked.

“Just glad it’s done,” Viola said and got off the bed. The nurse was waiting there to take her back to her bed.

Once she was back in her hospital bed and reassured by the nurse that the results would be available soon, she let out a sigh. She suddenly felt the dread she was holding back descend on her. Her brain was bleeding. Bleeding. It could do anything to her. She could lose her memories like Eli, or go completely insane, not be able to retain any new memories like that man that was permanently caught in a twelve minute loop of life, waking up for what felt like the first time every twelve minutes. Coma and death were the least terrifying scenarios to her. She shuddered.

It was another hour before the doctor came to see her. It was not Dr. Cushings from the night before, but instead a younger doctor she had not seen yesterday.

“Hello Viola. I am Dr. McIver. I had a look at your MRI results and everything seems to check out. The bleeding looks like it has stopped and the swelling is down a lot. You should be okay. Just make sure to watch out for any signs or symptoms of headache, nausea, blurred vision, etc. If that happens come immediately back to the hospital. Also, make an appointment to see your doctor in a few days for a checkup, okay?”

“I guess that means I am okay to go?” Viola asked.

“It sure does. I’ll get a nurse to come in and take that IV line out for you.”

An hour later, Viola was back in her tattered dress standing at a payphone dialing her cell phone number.

“Hello?” Eli answered on the other line.

“They said I am okay to go now. You okay to come pick me up?” Viola asked.

“Sure. I’ll be there in a few minutes. I am not that far from you,” He replied.

“Okay,” Viola said and hung up the phone.

They decided to immediately go back to Viola’s home. She needed a shower and a change of clothes badly. Once she was comfortable again, long hair damp from the shower, clothed in jeans and a green T-shirt with My Little Pony characters on the front all wearing glasses with the title Nerd Heard, she started tea.

“So, what happened with your day?” Viola asked her stranger/cousin.

“I spent a large part of it at the Police Station giving as much detail as I could about anything I could remember about my life. They took a picture and finger prints and tried running it through some of their databases. I didn’t come up at all. They told me that if I had a safe place to go, to stay there until I started to remember things. If I remember things. The doctor told me amnesia is tricky. Sometimes you remember everything and sometimes you remember pieces. Other times you remember nothing at all.”

“Well I know my place isn’t big, but you could always stay here. I can put you up in the library. I have spare bedding. My sister lived with me for a while before her and the rest of my family moved out to Vancouver.”

Viola finished brewing the green tea and poured two cups. She headed out of the kitchen and back into her living room and handed the second cup to Eli as she sat down.

“I’m sorry that I can’t be of much help with your amnesia, as we are strangers and all. But, I somehow get the feeling that we are related. Do you?” She asked sipping at her hot tea.

“Yeah, I do. Funny. It feels like I have known you for a very long time,” Eli replied.

“I know what you mean. Think about it. You are a complete stranger. I know nothing about you, but I feel completely comfortable giving you my car, access to my house, even my cellphone. That doesn’t sound like me at all.” Viola glanced around her living room to see what she had left of her possessions. Her apartment, being on top of the store, had slanted walls on two sides making her house a long triangle shape. The living room she was sitting in was the front of her house and the kitchen was connected to it with one wall leading into her library room. Her bathroom was squished between the living room and the library. Past the kitchen was another small room that housed her fridge and her kitchen table and beyond that was her bedroom which was the size of her living room and kitchen put together. It housed not only her bed and dresser, but also her computer desk.

In the living room, she saw a few DVDs scattered on the shelves. She had taken all the science fiction and fantasy and left all the period films, action and comedies, none of them being her medium. All over the walls were posters made out of her own photographs of nature. Rain drops on leaves, a gnarled old tree she called “Tree Beard” and pictures of the Lower Antelope Canyon, all pinned up on the slanted walls to the very tip where the walls met. Her furniture was all intact. Makoto was curled up on Eli’s lap, purring contentedly.

“So might I ask what that fire was all about when we first met?” Eli broached.

“Kind of a long story that my whole life was leading up to, I guess you could say. I used to write stories. I decided not to write anymore. When I came home and saw all that stuff, it reminded me of all the worlds I loved to be pulled into and it reminded me of all the worlds I used to create and I couldn’t look at it anymore.”

“Drastic don’t you think?”

“Yes it was. I was making a statement to myself. Writing is like a burning fire in me that I want to quench, and so, I had to remind myself harshly. I sometimes don’t listen to me very well.”

Eli laughed. “If it burns so fiercely inside of you, why would you ever give it up? Isn’t the thing you are most passionate about what you should pursue with every fiber of your being?”

Viola set her tea cup on the coffee table and lay back in her wingback chair. “How do I explain it? Writing for me was a dangerous addiction. When I was writing I was high on it, explosively high, like nothing could touch me, and I could never feel as complete and whole and amazing as I did when I wrote. But when I wasn’t writing, it was like the worst withdrawal you could imagine. Heart breaking pain in every fiber of my being. Writing was both the panacea to my depression and the cause of it. Seeing as it is impossible to spend every waking moment of my life writing, and I couldn’t bare the withdrawal after I had done it, I decided giving it up was the safest alternative. I have other things that I can do that I love. Photography for one,” Viola said gesturing to the ceiling.

“You took all of those,” Eli replied starting up at the ceiling in awed silence.

“Yeah. I like to take walks and go on road trips just to take pictures. The world out there is amazingly beautiful and each picture I take is a moment in time that will never been seen again, unless I capture it.”

“You are full of amazing passion, Viola. It’s kind of infectious.” Eli glanced at the camera that was on the table next to her door. It was a big SLR digital camera.

“Well, you only live one life, so you might as well live it fully the first time. Short-changing yourself at the beginning seems counterproductive to happiness.”

“Wish I could remember anything,” Eli replied.

“Don’t push it. I am sure it will come in time.

Viola bolted upright in the chair nearly spilling the contents of her cup. “Oh, in the meantime, I have to work tomorrow and well, I work at this old bookshop in town called Tytonidae’s Codex. We stock old manuscripts and such and repair them. You could always come and help me there if you like. Although, I am sure that Makoto would like the company if you choose to stay at home. She gets really lonely when I am not around. Sometimes I bring her to the shop with me. Jerome, it’s his shop, loves having her around.”

“Tytonidae’s Codex?” Eli asked.

“Just a fancy way of saying Owl’s books,” Viola replied. “So you want to give it a go?”

“Sure. Though bringing Makoto sounds like a good idea.” Eli had sat down once again and Makoto had immediately curled up in his lap.

“She has taken a liking to you,” Viola replied sipping at her tea.

“I like cats.” Eli pet the small flame point Siamese curled on his lap.

“Something you can add to the list of things you remember.” Viola smiled.

Eli looked up in surprise and spoke, “I guess it is something I remember.”

Back in town, in a rundown building with a for sale sign on it, a group of people gathered. The interior of the building was covered with computers and surveillance equipment of high caliber. Will Czernicki sat at the centre of it all. Dr. McIver stood to one side of him, handing him a disc.

“The results of the MRI,” he said as Will inserted the disc into the drive. Images of a brain scan appeared on the screen and a woman in her early thirties pushed Will aside to take a closer look at the images.

“What do you think, Mrs. Ironside?” Dr. McIver asked.

“I see early patterns suggestive of what we are looking for, but it doesn’t seem developed. I am not sure if this is the one we are looking for or not. We need more surveillance of her. Will, you need to earn her trust. Get closer to her. The cameras in the bookshop are not going to be enough. This looks promising, but it did so many other times as well. I won’t take her unless we know for sure that she is the one.” Mrs. Ironside stepped back into the shadows of the room leaving Dr. McIver and Will Czernicki staring at the images.