Page 3 of The Fates We Tame

Kind eyes, the color of walnuts.

“I’m going to need you to cough if you can as I try to pull this out. Okay?”

I nod.

“On the count of three,” she says, and I do as she instructed. A long tube is ripped out of my throat through my mouth.

“There you go,” she says, wiping away drool with a cloth.

I feel wrecked as I wheeze and gasp and suck in air.

The pressure against my chest releases, and I look around. The man who held me down kisses my cheek. “Welcome back, Switch. The rest of the brothers are on their way.”

He talks like he knows me, but I force five words through my shredded vocal cords.

“Who…the fuck…are you?”

1

SWITCH

There may be a plush beige sofa, equally beige and plush carpet, and drapes that shimmer in the early-afternoon sunlight, but nothing changes the fact this is technically a hospital and I’m still technically fucked.

Not much better off than I was when I woke up in the hospital three weeks ago, which is why the club found this state-of-the-art, bougie-as-fuck rehab center. Vex, who is apparently my best friend, found the place. My dad said King, the club president, agreed to pay for everything. But this place is too rich for me. I don’t fit in. Can’t get a beer or a smoke except what members of the club are sneaking in for me.

“I asked how you feel about your friends rallying for you like this.”

I look up at the woman asking the question.

Dr. Katarina Polunin’s thick brown hair is pulled up in a weird braid that seems to loop around her head twice. Big gold earrings hang from her ears as she peers at me over her glasses.

Sitting back in the comfortable chair, I think about what I want to say. “It’s…complicated. I’m…” Words don’t comequickly. I have to think deeply about what I want to say sometimes before I can grab hold of fragments of it.

Dr. Polunin waits.

“Grateful,” I finally blurt out. “Grateful.”

“But?” she asks.

“It’s overwhelming. They keep sending me…” I wave my phone as if that explains everything.

“They are in regular communication?”

I nod. “Photos. Videos. Lots of…” Fuck, the word escapes me again. “You know…” I gesture, typing with my thumbs on my phone. “Just tell me the fucking word.”

“Messages?”

“Yeah, messages. And I’m struggling to remember what they tell me. I had a whole conversation with Spark, who I remember from before.”

Beforehas become synonymous with any time occurring a decade or more ago.

The past ten years have disappeared.

“Even the most well-intentioned friends can hinder progress by constantly trying to force your memory to return by asking you about it. What did Spark tell you?”

I put my phone down, rest my elbows on my knees, and tug my hands through my hair. “I don’t know. I remember he was…here, but I can’t remember shit of what he said.”

“You have two types of amnesia, Theo. The first is the more commonly known and understood. You’ve lost a portion of your past. The second is rarer and less known about. Anterograde memory is our ability to turn day-to-day events into memory. For example, I go on vacation, and I’m able to come home and tell my friends what I did each day. You have clear symptoms of anterograde amnesia because you can’t recall what happened yesterday.”