"Hey Sam!"

Mark's cheery greeting helped to snap Sam out of the sleepy stupor she found herself in, but not quite enough to wake her up fully. Tom had called as soon as Mark had arrived as promised, but had found a pillow being thrown into his face as soon as he poked his head around the door to check she was getting up. Sam was in no mood to entertain guests.

"Hey Mark." She replied sleepily, plastering a fake smile over her face so she didn't seem rude.

"How are you?" He asked seriously as he was led into the living room by Zoe.

"Recovering... I guess." She replied before asking him the same.

After a few minutes of polite conversation while Zoe went and took his cheque out of the safe Mark began sharing details of his life Sam had no doubt heard before but forgotten.

"…Yeah, my girlfriend almost fainted when I told her about the cheque! She was beyond thrilled, and though I didn't show it around her so am I. I can finally buy her an engagement ring fit for the queen she is."

"You're going to propose?" Tom asked with a smile.

"Yep! We've been together for about four years now and I can't bear to think of life without her right by my side… she's the love of my life."

Sam smiled at his words but it was for a more personal reason. She had been thinking about what Zoe said more and more lately, especially the part about how she and Tom were basically made for each other. A part of her wondered whether or not it would be either him or her proposing marriage one day even though they were still both technically single. After a few moment of thinking like this she shook herself and moved over to the kitchen, offering everyone coffee which they gladly accepted as she went. This wasn't the time to get all romantic, if that's what you could call it.

While she switched on the electric kettle and located the coffee Mark and Tom continued their conversation about relationships, and Sam did her best not to listen as Tom spoke about ex girlfriends as the thought made her strangely irritated. Upon returning to the kitchen with three steaming mugs of coffee Sam noticed that Zoe had given Mark his cheque, and he had gone rather pale most likely from shock.

"You alright there Mark?" Tom asked cheerfully.

"Yeah… I just… I don't think this whole thing felt real to me until now." He said, his eyes darting back and forth as he absorbed the amount of zeros that were on the piece of paper.

"I felt the same way." Sam replied as she handed him, Zoe and Tom a cup each.

"You're not having any?" Zoe asked upon noticing her empty hands.

"No I'm good. If I have coffee in the afternoon I never get any sleep." Sam replied with a smile.

"I see you're remembering more and more." Mark noted .

"Yeah, I just wish I realized what I can remember and where the gaps in my memory are." Sam said quietly.

As soon as the words escaped her mouth Sam found a plan of sorts forming in her mind and quickly excused herself from the living room and ran back upstairs into her bedroom. She quickly rummaged around in the bedside table for something to write with and found a thick black marker pen. Without hesitation she walked straight over to the wall opposite her bed and began drawing a line as straight as she could manage from one corner to another. After completing this she stood back a moment to check it really was straight before marking ten small vertical lines onto the horizontal line and then wrote each of the lat ten years at the bottom of the vertical lines. She had formed a timeline of sorts.

Pretty soon there were lines coming of pf the horizontal lines in all directions particularly between 2004 and 2005, and 2011 and 2012. Each was accompanied a small description of what she could remember happening around these times. Some of the examples included graduating university, getting a job, and wrote in very small and somewhat begrudged writing marrying Dylan. She also knew the date that she went out to Afghanistan for the first time and when she came back.

When Tom entered he stared at the wall for a full ten seconds before so much as uttering a word. When the ten seconds was up, however, the questions began.

"So you're making a timeline? He asked in somewhat of a rhetorical manor as he stared at the dates.

"Yeah." Sam replied.

"Good idea." He said, "Do you want any help adding more dates?"

"No thanks. I want to go with what I actually remember instead of what people have told me." Sam said with a small twitch of her mouth as she noticed the irritated expression on his face after seeing Dylan's name.

"Cool. You seem to be missing a lot around 2006…"

"By the looks of it that was when I first went out to Afganistan." Sam said, staring at the same blank patch on the wall that Tom was.

For a while both Sam and Tom went on discussing the timeline, with Tom mentioning some words to see if they jogged any memories. Sam managed to squeeze a couple more details out of her brain before Zoe came in and stared at the wall with her mouth wide open before saying.

"I'm glad that isn't my wall."

…

Thanks for reading as always :)