life. You can try to get your family to your graduation early and a truck can still come smashing through it, shattering it to pieces. But you can’t live in the fearful moments just before the truck hits. I know what it’s like to live in those few minutes and it’s not living, Deel.”
Her eyes widened until I could see the whites. Her pulse pounded in a vein on her neck.
“I see,” she said, her tone chilled and low while her body trembled with raw emotion I’d never seen in her before. “So it’s my fault you got in the car when you did.”
I gaped. “What?”
“It’s my fault. I was pushing you out the door to my graduation.”
“No.”
“I skipped out to be with Roger.”
“I’m not saying that. Delia—”
“I left you to get smashed by that truck.”
“I wasn’t saying that at all. Jesus, listen to me—”
“It’s true,” Delia said, biting the words out. “All of it. And I’m not going through it again. I refuse.”
She rose to her feet, shouldered her purse with hard, jerking movements.
“You never take anything seriously. Not even your own life. I may not be able to control what happens to you out there, but in here there are doctors and nurses and safety. You can stay put a few more months. It won’t kill you.”
I shook my head. “No.”
She went to the door. I rushed to it and shut it when she tried to open it.
“Let me go,” I cried. “Please, Delia. If something’s going to happen, it will. But let me be happy until then. Don’t let all of my memories be of this little box of a room.”
My sister jerked the door open, her gaze never leaving mine, her composure—her control—returned.
“It’s for your own good.”
Then she was gone, shutting the door tight behind her.
Chapter 26
Thea
I backed away from the door and sat on the bed, all that I didn’t know about my sister crashing over me like a wave.
I don’t know her at all. I never did.
I curled up on the bed as the sobs came. I cried for all I lost. For all I never had. My sister, Jimmy, Mom, and Dad. The alone-ness of the amnesia loomed, closing in on me.
A soft knock came at the door. “Thea?” Rita called.
I didn’t answer. She could come in whenever she wanted. The door locked from the outside.
The door opened. “Oh, honey.”
She sat beside me and I curled toward her, needing the human connection. I wrapped my arms around her knees and cried as she stroked my hair.
“She’s like the witch in a fairy tale,” I said between sobs.
“She’s trying to protect you.”
“I want to fight her in court, but she said she’d fight back. It could take months.”
Rita sighed and I peered up at her. Conflicted thoughts played behind my nurse’s eyes. A tiny flicker of hope sparked in me. Rita was my last chance. My only chance.
I sat up and wiped my eyes.
“Every morning,” I said, “the doctors come in here and they ask me their questions. They want to know what the amnesia was like and I never could explain it properly. An airless box. A vast desert that was infinitely huge and yet claustrophobic. None of that is accurate.”
“What is it then?” she asked softly.
“It’s like death, Rita,” I said. “Because what are we if we aren’t our memories? Who are we without them? Where are we in this life? They anchor us to all the who, what, and where. Without memory, we might as well be dead. Inside the amnesia, I’m not physically dead but I’m stuck in between both worlds. Like a ghost. And now that I’m here, my sister wants to cram me back in that purgatory.”
“Is Blue Ridge so bad? We want to take care of you—”
“It’s my pyramid. A tomb stocked with all the things I need for the next life I can’t get to.” I sat up and took her hands. “Help me, Rita. Talk to Delia. Or Dr. Chen. Make them see. Time is ticking away. I can’t explain it. Maybe because my consciousness is determined by a chemical reaction in a pill. It’s all I have, and sometimes it feels like the thinnest thread. Help me live before it snaps.”
Rita looked away. “Dr. Milton reports that the patients who have undergone the procedure ahead of you are doing well. There’s no reason to think the medication will fail, but if it does…”
“If it does and I’m still here, then I came back for