A.N. I can't believe they actually did that. No words, really. I'd been told by some more internet-connected friends that some people were suspecting an amnesia story line so this is what I hoped would have happened instead. Still, I don't plan to stop writing Beckdam. Writing this was, at least for me, therapeutic, and I hope this story helps alleviate some of the hurt for some readers.
"Good night sweet prince and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." - Horatio
Feel Again
Swirls. Swirls of yellow and green and purple and blue.
He's floating in colors and they're wrapping around his limbs, enveloping him, and it feels good. There's orange snaking up his arms, a vine of silver crossing his stomach. It feels like fog, but palpable – quicksand, but measured. He feels a rush of colors and he wants to give chase, but they've already wrapped around his waist. They surround him so completely, a menagerie of wonderful hues, that he doesn't know what he's thinking. There's only an incredible need, this heart-pounding need to melt into the swirls of color.
It's nirvana and he's ready to melt away but he feels a pull at his wrist and a tug at his leg. There's a long beep and suddenly, the colors are blending into black and he's falling into it. When he opens his eyes, it feels like he's opened them to black and white.
It's not like the early 1930's television sitcom black and white, but the colors that caressed him so completely a moment ago seem muted. He shuts his eyes and tries to conjure the colors but they won't come and he tries to blink away the blandness around him but it won't work. He looks around and he's no longer in that swirl of hues but he's on a white hospital bed. There's a television across from him playing a muted movie and there's tubes going into his mouth and into his arms.
Beep.
The long beep sounds again and he's scared. Everything is white and foreign and muted and he's scared.
He cries for the first time in five months.
Everything's a blur at the Torres household right after the call from the hospital and Mrs. Torres barely has time to pull on a sweater when Drew and Dallas pull her out the door. She's just as anxious as they are, fingers fumbling the key as she ignites the engine. She's gunning down the road like a maniac, but she slows down a bit when she thinks about what happened to Adam. But only a little bit.
It's been five months, five fucking months since her son was put into a medically induced coma in preparation for the surgery (which was completely successful) but he hadn't woken up since. Her hands are shaking and she can't think of anything but holding her son, kissing him on the forehead and telling him she loves him again and again.
Her mouth drops when she gets the text from Drew.
'Becky, he's up.'
It's three words and it takes all of one second to read but it feels like a million. She's already up and running out of the house, grabbing her dad's keys off the counter, and putting her limited driving skills to the test. It doesn't matter though because she makes it there two minutes after the Torres family.
Eight words. The first eight words he says since his coma. Eight words and they're enough weight to crush her.
"Did they catch that guy who shot me?"
"Who are you?" He asks her after his family gives her time alone with him, and he sounds so incredibly confused and broken that she can't stop the cinching of her heart.
"Becky Baker. I'm – I mean, I was – your girlfriend."
"Girlfriend?" His eyebrows crease into a puzzled frown and he twiddles his fingers anxiously. "You?"
"Me." She replies.
"Girlfriend, past tense?"
She tersely nods.
He pauses, looking into her eyes for a sign of a lie or a trick but he shakes his head instead. "God, this is crazy."
There's a voice yelling at her in the back of her mind, telling her to get the hell out of there and spare herself the embarrassment. It's a devastating blow to be told that the man who had been in the forefront of her mind the past few months didn't even recognize her existence. It hurts and it hurts and she wants to slap him and run but her feet won't budge. It's not his fault.
"I think maybe I might love you."
It sounds like a wildcard and unbelievably wicked but he sounds as shocked as she looks.
"Ah – sorry. Didn't mean to say that out loud. Impulse." He shrugs. "I mean, I woke up feeling super depressed for no reason. Like everything seemed pretty dull but when you walked in, well, I don't know. Things looked colorful. Is that love? Do I love you?"
"I can't answer that for you." She says with her eyes closed tightly.
"Yeah, I figured. I just, you know, I just wanted an answer. I feel so many things but I don't have any memories to connect them to."
"Maybe…" She plays with the corner of the hospital bed sheets. "Maybe we can connect them to new memories."
He walks with a slight limp but she's holding his arm so he doesn't tip from the sudden imbalance.
"This is irritating."
"Your leg will heal." She smiles.
But it's not about the leg. It's about how they've dated before, they've kissed before. They've talked on the phone and walked in the park. They've gone on dates and held hands in the streets. He can't recall. It frustrates him to no end but he can't recall. As far as he's concerned, this is their first date.
"Sorry, I don't really know what to say." He mutters, hoping to alleviate the awkward silence between them.
"It's alright. You don't… remember me." She replies, her grip on his arm getting slightly tense.
"I mean, I'm just afraid I might say something stupid. Like, something I've already said to you before. I'd die from embarrassment."
"I wouldn't mind hearing them again." She assures him as they walk towards the movie theater.
They take a seat at the back of the theater, a bag of popcorn between them, and she tries to focus on the movie. It's about a haunted house and a broken portal in the attic leading to an extra-terrestrial planet, but she can't really remember further than that because she finds her eyes drifting over to the boy next to her. He's staring at the screen every time she looks over but she risks another glance and finds his own eyes trained on hers.
"Uhm, so I probably told this to you before but you're really, uh, beautiful." He whispers.
She blushes under his gaze and she figures she really wouldn't mind hearing that from him a thousand times over.
He curses under his breath.
It took him an hour and fifteen minutes into the movie to come up with something to say and that was the best he could come up with?
He feels like choking himself with the popcorn bag.
If he thought the first date was a disaster, then the second date isn't any better. The Italian restaurant they initially chose closed down due to a kitchen fire and so they opt to go to a nearby pizza store instead. Pizza is Italian, right? He finds himself tripping over words as if they'd made themselves physical the moment they flew out of his mouth. Within the first two minutes of getting their pizza, he makes three puns about cheese and at this point, even he wants to forget himself.
Miraculously, she laughs at his terrible Swiss and Feta based jokes and he wonders if she is being nice or if she has a remarkably bad taste in jokes. Or maybe she's just perfect.
"You can't have seriously found my lame cheese puns funny, you weirdo." He grins, grabbing a piece off the tray.
"No, they were funny!" She whines.
"So you're saying you found them… Gouda?"
Bursting into laughter together, he avoids a smack from Becky.
"God, now that was really pushing it."
"Just tell me if you're getting Feta-p with me." He winked.
"Ooh, good one." She smirks, pointing a finger at him. "But you better stop with these puns or I'll Brie mad. That's an Orda, Edam Torres."
"Woah, woah, okay, you win. I bow to you, cheese pun master." Adam surrenders, raising a white napkin and waving it.
"That's right. You're learning. I'm a Pro…valone."
The two share another laugh, digging into the pizza slices with renewed vigor. So the second date isn't a total disaster. Actually, it isn't even close to a disaster. He feels comfortable and happy and he really, really likes her. He laughs again when reaching for his soda.
She's definitely perfect.
"Here's a good place." He smiles, pointing at a bench near the pond.
He pulls her behind him, making sure to shoo away the birds that had gathered on the bench until they relocated onto the lake itself.
"I'll grab us some ice cream." He says, motioning to the vendor standing across the street.
"Oh, alright." He starts walking and she speaks up. "Shouldn't I tell you what flavor I like?"
"I'll take a guess." He smiles, waving.
"But there's like fifty flavors –"
Sighing and shaking her head, she decides to let him be. She doesn't really mind the other flavors.
She sits on the park bench and Adam runs the best he can despite his limp towards the vendor. She watches him talk to the vendor before averting her attention to the pond. There are ducks pecking at the ground and swimming by in the water. Her mind is a mess and she wonders if all this is useless, if this setback might be costly to her sanity. It's been a whole two weeks since he's woken up, a whole two weeks of spending time together again.
He walks back to Becky with two cones of ice cream, mint fudge chip for her in one hand and a vanilla for himself in the other and she gratefully thanks him. She leans against his arms and wonders if this is life now, lazily watching the birds and fearing for their future. But the ice cream doesn't taste any less sweet than it did five months ago and she finds herself wishing things wouldn't change.
Wishing things wouldn't change, like how the ducks came back to the pond day after day and like how the bench remained rooted to the ground at that exact spot. Like how the trees grew leaves every year or how they fell into large piles every fall. Like how the vendor sold the same flavors as the store across town and like how mint fudge chip was her favorite since she was three –
She feels a smile stretch across her face and she thinks change isn't the best but it sure as hell isn't the worst because he's alive and here and that's all she needs. His memory is wiped but maybe a part of him remembers. She grabs him in an embrace that he carefully reciprocates, and she tells herself not to give up on him, because damn it, Becky, mint fudge chip is your favorite flavor.
"Christ, Becky. I want to remember you. I want to remember you so bad but I can't and it scares me because I want to remember you. It's killing me because you deserve someone who remembers you. You deserve someone worth loving."
There are tears in the corner of his eyes and she wants nothing more than to kiss them away.
"I deserve nothing less." She reassures. "And I'm a patient girl."
"You shouldn't." He murmurs.
"You are everything I want and beyond, and I'd never forgive myself for leaving you because you can't remember a year with me. I don't want us to be a year."
He smiles at her and wipes his eyes on his sleeves. There's a fondness in her chest at his boyish grin and she knows she's making the right decision, because she wasn't lying. This boy isn't someone to love and leave. This boy is something else, something different. She doesn't exactly believe in soul mates but she thinks they're pretty damn close.
She really doesn't want them to be a year, because she believes in forever.
They're sitting on a curb behind the local mall, sipping on cans of ice tea and imagining adventure. The shadows encompass the entire curb and the flat of his cap completely hides his face, but she can imagine the smile on his face as he faces her.
"You're really something."
She raises an eyebrow at him.
"What does that mean?"
"Nothing."
He turns away and avoids her swinging palm. They're up and chasing each other around the curb but they're laughing and Becky thinks she can live with this. He woke up from his coma that summer night with an empty cast inside his brain but she has an abundance of sharpie markers and a love for drawing, so they'll create memories. They'll create tons.
"Hey, Becks?" He mutters, laying down on the grass with his hands behind his head.
"Yeah, Adam?"
"Were we in love? I mean, before the crash and before I got all messed up in the brain."
"I told you I can't answer that for you." She replies with a curt smile.
"Oh."
Lying down next to him, she turns her head to face him and she tries to form words. It's dark and the stars look brighter than ever but it's hard to think when thinking leads to remembering and remembering makes her remember that Adam cannot. It's a complicated chain of events but it's the truth. The truth doesn't feel so good.
"But I can speak for me." She finally says, staring back into the sky.
She chooses a star in the center of the sky, a not-too-bright but not-too-dull one and she pretends it's him. She wonders if she could reach it.
"And I loved you." She continues. "And I still do. I know I'm like a stranger to you again that you've only known for three weeks but I didn't forget a single day with you. I mean, I still love you more than I did day one and more than I did just yesterday. I could fall back in love with you forever. I know whatever you felt for me is, I don't know, back to day one again or something, but –"
She doesn't know what else to say except maybe ask is it stupid to love someone over a year more than they love you?
"I don't think that's true at all." He says, still looking up at the stars. "The more time I spend with you, the more I feel that weird feeling I told you I felt. And the colors get brighter and brighter around me and it's all strange but I really like it. I think we were in love. I think I'm in love. I think I was always in love and I still am. I'm just… I'm just finding the reasons why I am all over again is all."
She sees his cheeks turn a light shade of red and she smiles at the sight. Snuggling into his outstretched arm, she wraps her arms around his waist and listens to his heart beat.
He pauses.
"Yeah, I think that's it. I don't think I ever forgot the feeling, just the reasons why. Every time we spent time together I get so ridiculously excited because I'm eager to find out what else about you I absolutely adore. What else about you I fell in love with. I guess all I can really hope for is that you'll be there until I remember every single reason, because I want you to want me even though I forgot why."
She leans forward suddenly, and when her lips touch his, he feels a burst of colors. It sounds silly but he knows that's what it is, an explosion of dark and light hues, bursting from inside him and spreading around. He's engrossed in her lips, eyes shut tight but he can feel it. He can feel everything around him turning shades brighter. Blue, red, purple, gold, silver – they spread through his veins and shoot through the atmosphere, and suddenly, he wonders if he's joined the stars in the sky.
"You don't need to remember our past for us to have a future, Adam." She whispers against his lips.
He shivers at her touch and he thinks that she definitely is perfection. Her eyes go for miles and miles and he's completely lost in them but he feels at home in the confusion. He wants to learn her, learn every curve and dip of her body, every expression that flickers across her face, and every thought that crosses her mind. He wants her utterly and perpetually.
"That was like our first kiss, then. Since you don't remember anything." She says, leaning back.
"You'll have to remind me – I might've forgotten." He jokes.
"Forgot already?"
She laughs before pulling him towards her lips and making sure he never, ever does.
"Death ends a life, not a relationship."
- Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie