LEELA RAJ-SANKAR
CW – illness/injury
Subdural Hematoma
The fall steals years from me. My mind becomes a maze, monsters looming from every nonexistent corner. The first week out of the hospital, I call three times before you finally show up, chewing your lip cherry-red on my doorstep. You confess that you don’t want to teach me my own history, and at that moment, with my brain full of metal, I don’t want to learn: mostly, I want to sit with you and watch leaves from the magnolia tree drift across the yard.
But there’s nothing like picking at an open wound, so it doesn’t take long before I give in and beg you to tell me everything. Somehow, that’s all it takes for you to acquiesce—hesitantly, we crawl into each other’s pockets again. Every evening after you finish your shift, you ring my doorbell, carrying takeout from restaurants you tell me I love. When I ask questions, you answer in fits and starts: how did I get the scar on my hand? You take a bite of lo mein. You burned yourself making eggs for me. Six months ago.
Did the eggs taste good, at least? I ask.
Your mouth quirks. Not really.
The terrifying thing is that I don’t know how much I don’t remember. From what I’m able to put together, the past two years are a wash. Anything before that is untouched. I remember my childhood perfectly (and meeting you—some party in our sophomore year of college), but not whether we had remained close in the years since. While washing the dishes, you ask: why’d you call me?
I know you visited a few times while I was in the hospital. Secretly, I think it was only because my sister forced you. During those first few harrowing days, even my short-term memory was patchy—I’d panic, forgetting why I was in the hospital to begin with. I don’t tell you that I remember all of it: the way you looked as you left, the shadow in your eyes, more afraid than I’ve ever seen you.
I put down the sponge. You’re my best friend. No response. Aren’t you?
Of course, you say. I just thought… You shake your head. You know what, nevermind.
(There’s something you refuse to tell me, some secret that hangs heavy between us. On the days when anger curls red-hot in the pit of my stomach, I want to tell you: a lie of omission is still a lie; I want to tell you: these memories are as much mine as they are yours; I want to tell you: if nothing else, you owe me this, but I can never find the nerve.)
We only fight once, on a humid Saturday in July, over nothing at all—old laundry, rotten groceries, plates piled high in the sink. When are you finally going to start taking care of yourself? God, this place is a mess.
It’s fine, I say, stiff. I’ll take care of it.
Your hand goes to your forehead, right in the place where I always get headaches. It’s a mannerism I don’t recognize; I search my memory but find only the now-familiar stifling dark. When? Next week? Next month? Next year?
The words are out of my mouth before I can think to stop them. Why do you care? You don’t even want to be here in the first place. Stop pretending to give a shit. I’m not your charity project.
Silence. A step back. Your face twists, uncharacteristically ugly. I never said you were.
Right. I just meant—
Why did I stay? Why am I still here? You exhale through your nose, slow. I don’t know. I really don’t.
To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I expected: a declaration of love, a confession of whatever you’ve been hiding, a halting motion to walk out the door. In the end, your reaction is as anticlimactic as it is exhausting, an ending that holds on too long after the story finishes.
I’m going to vacuum, you say.
I nod, my skin suddenly too small. Okay.
And so the stalemate continues: the months slide by, each day so similar to the last that I hardly notice the time pass. You watch me crawl down dead end after dead, digging through boxes of photos, scattering a trail of breadcumbs as I try to retrace my steps. Some things come back. Others don’t. You start to smile more, tentatively, and pretend you’re not disappointed at what I fail to remember. I say to myself, again and again until I start to believe it: maybe this is a do-over. If what you’re hiding is something terrible I did, I don’t know if I want you to tell me. If the rest of my life was like this, I think I could be happy. Honestly? I might be almost there.
Follow the breadcrumbs. Back to your old apartment, the bar we stumbled out of at 2AM on my birthday, drunk beyond belief, my arm around your shoulders—I remember all of it but I don’t; I know what you leaned over to whisper in my ear that made me giggle like a teenager, but it eludes me all the same. Some weekends we drive for hours, along the Pacific Coast with the windows down and the radio turned up too loud. For a few glorious seconds, watching you sing along to I Wanna Dance With Somebody, I pretend nothing happened. I pretend we’re just two college buddies catching up. I pretend we’re not searching for something I’m half-convinced neither of us will ever find. I pretend you love me in the same unabashed, fearless way you used to, and I can almost believe you do, right up until the song changes and your smile drops, until you make a reference to some inside joke and my mouth twitches in confusion, until you turn off the highway and we lapse into the same silence we haven’t been able to escape since June.
I need you to be happy, I want to say. Goddammit, I’m trying—please, please be happy.
But it’s been a good day, so I don’t. I prop my feet up on the dash and crack joke after joke, and when you finally laugh, it’s electric. When you park on Ventura Beach and drag me into the freezing water at least it’s something, something I can hold onto through the inevitable collapse, the days when neither of us have anything to give each other. When you quietly curl your fingers around my wrist. When you sigh and punch me in the shoulder before heading back to the car. When I can’t move, watching your retreating back and thinking of the doctor’s face when he said: it’s likely that you’ll get your memory back. It’s equally likely that you won’t. When standing on the cliff, all I can imagine is the fall, how cold the water must have felt before everything went black.
When you toss me the keys, sunlight in your mouth, I’m too ashamed to tell you that I still can’t remember the way. Memory, a black hole with gentle hands, holds home above my head, forever just out of reach.
Leela Raj-Sankar is a 16 year old from Arizona. Her work has appeared in Rejection Letters, Brave Voices Magazine, and CLOVES Literary, among others. In her spare time, she can usually be found watching bad television or taking long naps. Say hi to her on Twitter @sickgirlisms.