Don’t want to Forget - 1. Chapter 1

It’s bright. White everywhere. It smells like metallic, or is it chemicals, he can’t tell. The smell makes him feel uncomfortable. His eyes hurt when he opens them like he’s been punched in the face. The more he opens his eyes the more he takes in the pale walls. A large window at the side, there’s a bunch of bare trees outside. Next to him there’s a small table with a jar of water and a mix match of small and large cards. All get better soon cards. The machine on his other side is beeping and the door at the end of the room opens. A young nurse comes in. He looks mid-twenties and he has a Sikh turban on that is coloured dark purple with light dark spirals. His face has strong features, sharp cheekbones, trimmed beard, his eyebrows are thick and brown. He has a calming gentle manner about him, and his eyes are piercingly dark.

He suddenly feels, unexplainably, relaxed.

‘Tom?’ the nurse flashes a white smile at him, and he feels a smile coming on his face.

‘I guess so?’ he asks, raising an eyebrow.

The nurse nods and comes over to him, tapping at the machine beeping next to him.

‘What’s your last memory there?’ the nurse asks, his voice low.

Tom can smell his strong scented aftershave, it’s sweet.

‘Um,’ he tries to concentrate on his words. He closes his eyes, screwing his face up. ‘No, nothing. I can’t remember anything. I’m a guy right, that’s all I know?’

The nurse chuckles a little at Tom and he smiles back at him.

‘Yeah, I can’t remember anything of who I am. That’s pretty bad, isn’t it?’

The nurse pats his arm, ‘It’s a lot common than you think.’ He sits down. ‘You had a car crash with some head injuries a few months ago. You’re recovering quite well; we can focus on your memories and hand eye skills.’

‘Ah,’ Tom doesn’t know how to feel about that.

‘Your name is Tom Junes, you’re twenty-nine, um,’ he leans back and thinks. ‘What I can do for you, Mr. Junes, is I can call your family, and they can come in. They’ll be so excited to see you.’

‘Tom,’ he says, without thinking. ‘Call me Tom.’

‘Okay, Tom,’ the nurse smiles back, patting his arm again. His hand is so warm and soft.

‘What should I call you?’

‘Nurse, or Arjan, whichever you need,’ Arjan laughs. ‘If you need me, just press the button here.’ He shows him the button on his bed. ‘Now you’ve woken up, I’ll go get the doctors to have a look at you, okay?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ he smiles back at him.

When Arjan leaves the room, it smells of chemicals again and the quietness buzzes loudly.

***

There is loud chattering outside the door. The door swings open. An older couple, mid-fifties, are loud and their eyes widen at the site of Tom. The lady has clearly had some work done on her stretched make-up face. The man has a suit on. Next to them is a woman the same age as Tom, she’s quite slim, in quite good shape as if she is a runner. She has thick blonde hair, and her face has perfect make up and sharp cheekbones. There is a young guy also with them, holding the older man’s arm. He has short spikey hair and a round face. He is wearing a heavy brown jacket, it feels like almost 90s style with the spikey hair.

They all stopped talking and gawk at Tom, wide eyed, before rushing in.

‘Oh, Tom, you’re awake!’

‘I thought you’d never wake up, dude!’

‘This is fantastic news, baby!’ the younger woman rushes over to Tom, grabbing his face hard and kissing him all over.

Tom winces a little as the little pecks go all over his face.

They all gather round, all excited to see him.

The young guy lightly punches Tom’s arm, ‘Knew you’d wake up though, you look on the rough side, but we can get you fixed up, sure I can sneak Barb in to fix you up.’

They all chuckle at the guy.

‘They said you got memory problems,’ the older man states, crossing his arms.

‘Um,’ Tom feels a bit scrutinized, as if he was a bug under a bright targeted light.

‘So, you don’t remember any of us?’ the young woman gets all sad eyed, holding his chin up as she stares down at his face. ‘Not even me,’ she sniffs and smiles, ‘I’m Tanya, honey, your Tanya.’ She raises her hand to show a ring on her marriage finger. It’s a large ring with a big diamond in it.

Must have cost loads, Tom thinks.

‘Well,’ the older lady looks around. She sighs, and clicks her fingers, ‘I need a chair. Ugh, can’t this place provide anything.’

‘We’ll get you moved over to the Dancy Hospice,’ the older man nods at him. ‘We’ll get it all sorted for you, son, don’t you worry.’

‘Here we go,’ the young guy rushes out the room and comes in with chairs.

‘You shouldn’t be having to do that,’ Tanya says raising her thin eyebrow. ‘They should.’

The older woman nods at the guy who sets all the chairs out around the bed. The older woman wipes her seat down before perching down. They all sit around and stare at Tom.

‘You were in a car crash,’ the guy says.

‘Oh, I was already told that.’

‘I was driving,’ the guy sighs and looks down. ‘Total accident. Some muppet cut me off. I feel awful about the whole thing. I only got off with a few bruises.’

‘Oh sweetie,’ the older woman reaches over and rubs the guy’s arm. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

Tom says nothing.

‘We had the car insured though! We can get you a new car.’

‘Don’t talk about stuff like that now,’ the older man snaps. He pauses and looks at Tom, ‘How you feeling?’

‘Um, okay,’ Tom reaches up and rubs his head.

‘Yes, we can help you out with memories,’ the older woman says, ‘So I’m your mother, Bridget, Bridget Junes, your father over there, is Ron Junes.’

‘That leaves me last,’ the young guy states proudly. ‘I’m your best buddy! Jonny! We’ve been mates for, like, years, since school really!’

‘You guys play tennis every weekend,’ adds Tanya. She pats Tom’s hand. ‘We’ve recently married.’

‘You’ve been married for like three years,’ laughs Jonny.

‘We’re that much in love it feels like we are recently married,’ Tanya narrows her eyes at Jonny. ‘We are young and in love, Tom.’ Her eyes soften towards Tom. ‘We will fall in love all over again, okay, sweetheart.’

‘Yeah,’ he nods.

The next hour they tell him all about life as Tom Junes. He is twenty-nine years old, married, no kids. Not that they weren’t trying but it just wasn’t happening. Plus, they probably weren’t ready. Tanya runs a successful hair salon. Jonny has been his best friend for years; they often race their cars together and lost track of how many cars they had trashed. In one little crash Tom chipped one of his front teeth ever so slightly and now has a faint line down one side of his cheeks.

Ron and Bridget were successful business partners in soda cream and have built a larger-than-life life for themselves and Tom and his brother. Tom’s brother, Jimmy, who unfortunately couldn’t come along, was abroad in America playing tennis.

Tom was the head of a marketing team, earning a large amount of money which was on the increase which was more impressive with how young Tom was and Tanya was saving up to have another boob job, but she was only getting them as she didn’t feel the last one did the best job.

Tom’s jaw hurt a little from holding in a big tired yawn.

‘Your father and I are looking into retirement soon,’ Bridget says, looking around the room. ‘We can move you to Dancy’s this weekend, the difference is astonishing,’

‘You’re talking about this place as if it’s rat infested,’ laughs Jonny, nudging Tom’s arm and winking at him.

Tom gives a small smile back, wishing Jonny wouldn’t nudge him so much.

‘ ‘It’s fine here,’ he says. ‘It’s fine. The nurse here is very lovely.’

‘Ugh, they have Christian …’ murmurs Bridget.

‘Bridget,’ snaps Tanya. ‘It’s all fine, anything is good for my baby.’ She pats his hand. Her hand is cold.

***

It’s been three days and Tom is still in the same hospital room, declining his parents’ decision to move him.

The door opens. It’s Jonny.

He grins as he comes in, and throws his hands up in the air, ‘Sup, boy!’

Tom gives him a small smile, but Jonny can read his confused face.

‘Ah, still nothing’ Jonny shrugs. ‘That’s fine. We’ll get there. Google says it can take a while for memories to come back.’

He bounces over, scraping a chair across the floor. Tom winces a little as the scraping goes against the floor.

He sits down heavy on the chair, legs crossed, he slams his backpack onto the floor. He heaves a big cough and reaches into the bag, and takes a brown wooden box out.

The box is dented as if it’s been thrown about hard against a wall. Tom sits up a bit more as his best friend places this on his lap.

Picking it up, he clicks the box open and looks inside. There are odd pieces of paper and clips and photographs.

‘Did you make it?’ Tom asks.

‘Nah, well, kind of, this is all from your office drawer, all the stuff I found that you’ve kept over the years,’ Jonny shrugged. ‘I found this old box in your wardrobe. Google said this sort of stuff would trigger your memories.’

‘Oh nice,’ Tom replies, going through the pieces in the box. This guy really loves his Google, he wanted to smirk to himself.

‘Then we will have the old Tom back,’ he grins.

‘Oh,’ the door opens again, and its nurse Arjan. He smiles at Tom then sees Jonny and he bows his head down. ‘Sorry, for interrupting. Meals will be issued out this evening, chicken or pork or vegetarian?’

‘Vegetarian?’ snorted Jonny.

Arjan’s cheeks go a bit pink.

‘Chicken, please’ Tom says, quickly.

‘Hell yeah,’ grins Jonny.

Tom looks at him.

He explains, offering his hand to high-five, ‘Your favourite meat, mate. Looks like the old Tom is still in there!’

Tom doesn’t want to make an awkward scene, so he gives him a reluctant high-five back.

But he can’t help but look at Arjan from the corner of his eye. He keeps his head low as he leaves them.

‘Do you guys know each other?’

‘Huh?’

‘Just asking,’ Tom tries to shrug.

‘Could read the room huh?’ Jonny smirks at him. ‘Yeah. We all went to school together, do you remember him at all, like?’

‘I still don’t remember anything,’ Tom says, flatly.

‘Oh, well, yeah, we went to school. I’m surprised he hasn’t poisoned your food or anything?’

‘What?’ Tom feels his chest crumpling, feeling very deflated. ‘He seems nice so far. Did we really all hate each other?’

‘Hate is a strong word. We weren’t bothered, he was probably annoyed about our jokes and that,’ he laughs. ‘He didn’t have much of a funny bone, he was all so serious and got all funny when we asked genuine questions about the hat thing.’

‘The turban?’

‘Yeah, that thing, anyway, don’t give it much thought!’

***

It’s been an hour since Jonny left and Arjan comes back into the room. As he comes inside, Tom can feel the warmth off the sun coming through the window.

‘So, how’s the appetite today?’ Arjan smiles. He reaches down to read Tom’s chart at the end of his bed.

Looking down, Tom clasps his hands together tight and the horrid slimy feeling of dread was in his stomach.

‘You okay, Tom?’ Arjan asks, putting the chart down.

‘Um, just,’ he mumbles. He clears his throat. ‘Yeah, fine. You know, if I was ever awful to you, I mean, years ago, what I mean.’ Tom sighs as he stares at him, with a confused face. ‘I’m sorry for whatever I did, it’s annoying that I can’t remember, but you know, I’m sorry.’

A soft smile comes on his face, Arjan comes around the bed and sits down, ‘You weren’t always a bad person so stop beating yourself up, okay?’

‘Mm.’

‘People change, you’re not this monster that you think you are,’ he smiles, he rubs his arm. ‘So, your friend came in, did he bring in anything to look at?’

‘Oh actually, yeah,’ he sits up a bit more in bed, Arjan reaches behind and adjusts his pillow. He is close and he smell sweet like cinnamon.

Tom bites his tongue and stares at his hands.

‘Ah, I see, this little box, ooh nice,’ Arjan reaches over to the drawers next to him and brings the dark brown box onto his lap. ‘It’s like a little treasure box, isn’t it?’ he laughs and Tom can almost see a little twinkle in his deep brown eyes.

He can’t help the grin on his face. ‘Yeah, they said it would help with memories. Always worth a try, right.’

Arjan gave him a small nod, ‘It must be so frustrating not remembering, just take your time, the brain is hurting and it takes a longer time to heal.’

‘Thanks, nurse,’ Tom wiggles his eyebrows at him while opening up the box.

He laughs, his white teeth flash, ‘Oh, shush you.’

The box has bits and pieces of random things inside.

‘Okay,’ he says, taking things out. ‘We have a piece of paper, a receipt of some shoes? Huh, must like fashion flare, hah. Right, then there’s this photo.’

He takes out a wrinkled faded photo; it’s been bent and folded many times. In the photo is a small boy and old man, smiling brightly at the camera, almost laughing, with the rain coming down in the background.

‘Must be a relative you really cared about,’ Arjan smiles.

He nods, ‘Wish I knew who it was though.’ He sighs. ‘This isn’t working.’

‘Just keep trying,’ Arjan reaches down. ‘How about this, piece of paper? Looks like a recipe for something?’

There’s a handwritten note with the list of onions and mince, and sauce.

‘I wonder if any of this is my writing? Actually,’ he stares hard at the swirling loops of handwriting. ‘I don’t think this is mine. Just a feeling.’

‘A feeling is good though, it’s something in you, that gut feeling!’

‘Gut feelings aren’t reliable.’

‘You’d be surprised, I always believe in the gut feeling, it never lies.’

‘Oh, wait,’ he finds a ring box and opens it up. There’s a ring inside, it’s an unusual ring, gold banner with some sort of inscription on the inside. ‘This is strange, isn’t it,’ he squints hard at the writing. ‘There’s quite a bit in here, ‘I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of the world alone.’ Ooh, that’s quite mystery, wonder where that quote is from.’ He then paused and added ‘But I thought I was already married to, um, ah.’ he scrunches up his face, embarrassed he forgot his wife’s name already.

He looks over to Arjan, and Arjan is staring hard at the ring. His eyes are almost glazed over. Why does he look sad?

He realises Tom is staring and blinks and gives a small smile, ‘Tanya. That quote is from Lord of the Rings, too’

‘Right, right,’ Tom says, putting the ring back in the box. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen it?’

Arjan grins, doesn’t say anything and shakes his head.

What Tom can’t see is Tanya at the window. She is staring hard at Arjan and Tom. Staring very hard with a large frown on her petite face.