Page 176 of On Edge

Mother lets out a breath. “Nothing that makes sense. Yet.”

“Try and get hold of Fogg again. She needs to be checked over. She might be having another episode.”

“Richard—”

“I’m not losing everything because our daughter can’t tell reality from fantasy!”

“The hospital said she might get better once the head trauma from the fall healed, with the right treatment. I really think it’s time we took her to see a proper doctor.”

“Fogg is a doctor.”

“A specialist, Richard. Not one of your boys’ club buddies.”

“No. She’s fucked up my deal because she thinks she’s fucking Nancy Drew. I’ll not have her start spreading lies about this family outside of it.”

“But she’s getting worse. They said once the stent went in, her headaches would ease off, and they haven’t.”

“I don’t care about headaches. I can’t lose this fucking deal. Get Fogg here. If that bastard has fucked our daughter, we might be able to salvage this.”

“I think you need to calm down. You did this to her.You. So you need to fix it, Richard.”

“I do notneedto do anything. Get out of my house, you infuriating woman. Go back to your boyfriend. No one wants you here!”

Then my father slams his office door, and it’s quiet for a very long time.

I knewbefore the accident that Nell wasn’t real, but I needed her and imagined what it would be like to have a sister who would protect me, listen to me, see me when my parents didn’t, and keep me company when I was trapped in my room, listening to them argue.

When I was younger, she was an imaginary friend; my mother hated that I had one. My father ignored that I did. Later,Nell became someone I could be when I didn’t want the shackles that made me Sage to hold me down anymore. Nell could be reckless and bold. She would be the lock picker, the escape artist, the risk taker. And then, I (Sage) could remain the good one.

But then the accident happened.

When I woke up from my coma, and Nell was gone, all I had was a diary with lost pages, a story of my life with holes, and I forgot she was made up.

You see, I dreamt of her while I slept.

I forgot that I even fell.

It’s only now, when I painstakingly read my medical records, those clinical essays that say what happened to me, that the truth slips into focus, like a camera lens. Though, what see through it, like a past that’s not mine, are small things…

The never-ending visits to the hospital, the inability to sleep at night, the fevers from a brain infection, a complication with the medication, the constant beeping of the machines, the nurses helping me go to the toilet, the forgetting of words, names, and places, and the godawful headaches. And worse, the delusions, the dreams that felt so real that when I woke up, it felt like everyone was gaslighting me.

But then I would read my diary, the one that my father said was found where I fell, with pages missing, blood on the edges. And who I was, Sage, started to come back, slowly.

Nell didn’t.

That’s when I thought she’d died.

No one told me any different.

Dissociative amnesia with confabulation following a traumatic brain injury, they call it in my medical notes. Apparently, the false memories aren’t lies but the brain’s coping mechanism to protect me, and with gentle therapy, I would have realized it.

I do now, though it’s fragmented.

Three weeks ago, I didn’t want to believe it. I stared at the letter Troy gave me until my eyes blurred with yet more tears. Laine listened to me ramble on and on about how Nell had to be real. But over the last few weeks, with the help of my medical reports and the complete diary (my father kept the pages from me), it’s been coming back.

Nell, brushing my hair at the dressing table, was my mother.Nell, holding my hand under the bed, was one of many nannies, one of the younger ones with lighter hair than mine. The pearls left on my bed weren’t fromNell; they were a parting gift from my mother, the day she walked out.

Some days I wake up remembering her, but then she’s gone, like a puff of air. The unbearable sense of loss that weighs like lead on my chest is, in fact, the loss of my mother, who moved out the day I fell.