When I regained my consciousness, first my hearing came back, then slowly I managed to open my eyes.

Machines, there were so many machines.

My vision took a few moments to clear up. There was haze of white and blue at first, which after a few minutes formed shapes.

Along with the dry nothings, I saw Rhys’s mother, Sarah, sitting beside where I was lying.

She was holding a cross and uttering prayers non-stop. “Where’s mom?” I managed to say.

Her eyes shot open and she squealed, “You’re up!” What she did next didn’t make much sense to me, but the next minute, there was a nurse rushing to my side followed by a female doctor.

She jotted down something while staring at the monitors surrounding me. She looked back down at me, perhaps even took my temperature (I have no clue what that device was used for) before leaving.

“Mom?” I asked Sarah again. Her frantic expression dimmed down a little before she answered,

“She’s still in the seminar. But she just called to ask me how you were. She’ll be here as soon as she can…it’s her boss, really,”

“Sarah?” I called.

“Yes?”

“She doesn’t have a boss. Please don’t cover up for her. And dad? Where’s dad?”

“He’s flying back. His plane should land in about an hour,” we fell into peaceful silence which didn’t last as long as I would’ve preferred. “What happened, exactly?”

Oh, that was a good question. What had happened? Why was I in a hospital?

Oh, fuck.

“I can’t remember,” and I was being honest. The last thing I remembered was going to sleep at night, and then…nothing.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t remember!” I tried to rise, to get out of there, to get some air and to…remember.

“You lost your memory?”

“No!” That couldn’t be possible, right? “No, why would that happen? What happened to me?”

She stared at me and chose not to answer. “I need to call the doctor. They did suspect a memory loss but we were hoping…” her voice broke into a sob.

“Sarah, please don’t cry!” Sarah was the nicest woman I had ever met. Seeing her cry pierced something tender in my chest.

She got up and went out in the search of a doctor, completely ignoring my pleas.

I wanted to know what had happened, why my head was hurting like hell.

I really, really, needed to do something, to work everything out.

Imagine an entire day wiped out from your head, and you just waking up in a hospital with a dent and no clue how you got there.

The female doctor returned along with a panting Sarah. “Sarah, please sit down, I am fine,”

I wasn’t satisfying my curiousity at the risk of Sarah’s wellbeing. She shot me a ‘shut-up’ look and I quietened down.

“January, I am Charlie, can you tell me what happened?” the doctor asked in a sweet voice.

“I don’t remember…” I answered honestly. Charlie’s eyes widened slightly and she looked concerningly at Sarah.

“Let’s give that pretty head of yours some rest. Is there someone who can recount some portions of her day, I suppose that could help her regain her memories!” Charlie suggested and Sarah bit her lip in anticipation.

“My son was supposed to drive her this morning. I guess maybe he could know what must’ve happened. I tried asking him but he won’t say anything…”

“Maybe he’ll say something to her. We need to try, Mrs Tanner. You son might be the only one who could know what happened. Wasn’t he here till recently?”

“Yes, he just left half an hour back.”

“I met him. Rhys, wasn’t it?” Sarah nodded. “Found him crying in the cafeteria. Poor guy looked like hell. I am certain he’ll help her. Ask him to come over later when he can.”

Sarah sent a reluctant text to Rhys and someone who was possibly my mom right after Charlie left.

“So will you tell me how you found me?”

“I wasn’t the one who found you…” she whispered slowly. My eyebrows scrunched in confusion and I opened my mouth to ask who was it but she replied, “It was Daniel. He found you.”

And my jaw stayed open for quite a while after that.

*

“I came to check on you because you hadn’t replied to my texts all night. You suddenly went offline and didn’t come to school the next day. I got scared, January. I knew you were alone and I thought something bad had happened to you and that you…” Daniel trailed off and his eyes found mine. “I came looking for you, just to know that you were fine. Your phone was off, what was I supposed to think? I knocked on the door, I rang the bell, I pounded until I was sure no one was there. I was just about to leave when…

“I almost left. But then I saw you on the floor from the window beside the door. You had passed out and there were drops of blood on the wall. I thought you were dead. It was only then did I realize the severity of the matter. I was so stupid, the door wasn’t even locked when I tried to open it. I called the paramedics and they brought you here.”

His voice was shaking and his eyes were shattered. I suppose it wasn’t the prettiest sight to find one of your closest friends almost dead.

“I am so sorry,” Poor guy was going through trauma all because of me.

“Don’t apologise. How could’ve that been your fault?”

I closed my mouth and his hand engulfed mine. “I am so glad you’re okay…” he whispered, raising my hand gently and kissing the back of my palm.

I had never felt his lips before. They looked so rough, but they felt so soft, and cold. If almost dying was what it took to feel his kiss, I would do it again, as many times as it was needed.

He pressed his eyes shut and I saw a tear escape his eyes. Sarah was sitting right behind him. He had moved a chair closer to my bed when he’d first come.

“I am just having a bad month. I told you it was in my horoscope.”

He let out a broken chuckle. A few tears accompanied his laughter and he took my fingers into his hand and examined them before placing a kiss at their tips.

Warmth filled my body, warmth I had lacked ever since I had woken up.

“Horoscopes are bull,” he said but it was in a very soft way. As if it didn’t matter to him how the horoscopes were, as if he was only speaking because he didn’t know what else to do.

“Can you remember anything, Jan?” Sarah asked, interrupting the specs of the thousand little moments that were right in our arm’s reach. The moments flew away like butterflies, almost pissing me off.

I shook my head, trying to pull in some scattered butterflies but they were too far gone.

The moment was over, broken.

Daniel wiped his tears away and Sarah addressed Daniel, “You should get some sleep, sweetheart,”

“I will, now that I know and have seen with my eyes that she’s okay…”

“Neither him nor Rhys would leave your side. The doctors had to kick them out but they tried to look at you as much as they could from the windows. Finally I got them to leave in the morning. None of them slept for even a second and even I fell asleep at some point. At least when they got home Rhys somehow fell asleep but Daniel…”

“Hold on, you haven’t slept at all?” I questioned, guilt and apprehension rising at the same time.

“I had five cups of coffee to make up for it.”

“Tell me you didn’t drive all the way here in that state!” I reached for the nearest object that I could hit him with, already knowing the answer.

“I am fine, Janu-ow!” he cried mockingly as I hit him in the face with a pillow. “There-” I pointed to a bed at my right for family members. “Sleep there, right now!”

He was too tired to argue and that hurt me even more.

“Don’t be too concerned if I don’t wake up for a day or two…” with that, he lied down and drifted off in a moment.

All I needed was Rhys to tell me what had happened in the morning. If I hadn’t gone to the school, then something must’ve happened in the morning, before I could leave. And Rhys would’ve definitely come to my house to drive me. The fact that he hadn’t already found me in that condition only confirmed two thing:

Rhys knew what had happened.

And he was never going to tell me.

When he came over half an hour later, I wasn’t expecting him to look full on dead.

According to Sarah and math, he’d barely gotten two hours of sleep. Yet there he was, in his disheveled hair, loose tee shirt and grey trousers with his hands in the pocket from the cold.

“Rhys,” I uttered and everything melted away; my doubts, my suspicions, my curiousity.

He took me in with those brilliant green eyes before lurching forward and pulling me into his arms.

For a moment I forgot that I was in a hospital, that his mother was right there watching us and that I had lost my memories of an entire day.

I felt safer, better, in his arms. His grip was rough and right. The world around us was left forgotten for a blissful moment that I broke by asking, “Are you okay?”

He didn’t cry which was good. I wasn’t sure what I would’ve done if he’d burst into tears. Perhaps that sight would’ve made me cry as well.

Sarah was watching us like we were a romantic film and she had the front row seats. Her eyes were watery and her lips were trembling from holding back sobs.

I don’t know why she was crying; because we made such a great couple, or because we weren’t one yet…or perhaps because I was half dead.

“Am I okay? That’s what you want to ask?” he growled, his eyes flashing with something that wasn’t anger, but it was just as untamed. “I am not okay…you’re in a hospital and I-I am so sorry, Jan, I really am.”

“Why are you apologising? It wasn’t your fault!” he glared at me in a way that made my stomach turn. “What happened, Rhys?”

He paused and took his head in his hands. He didn’t look ready to answer and I didn’t want to force him either but something felt off about everything. He knew something that was important and he was holding on to that piece of information with dear life.

“I came to pick you up in the morning,” he started, his eyes hollow and his tone dead. “I teased you about something stupid and you lost it. So you decided to go off to school without me. We argued, and I left. I know I shouldn’t have and maybe if I hadn’t, things would’ve turned out differently,”

Well then how the hell did I started bleeding from my head? Is what I don’t ask.

“Then?”

He looked at me and paused for a moment, perhaps framing the best answer. “You stomped back into the house and I watched you slam the door shut and rage into the kitchen. I waited for a bit, hoping you would get back out but you didn’t. So I left,”

“Then?”

“That’s all I know, January. I don’t know what happened after I left. This is all the information I have.”

I stared at the white sheets hard, trying to get a sense of déjà vu but it never came.

“Do you remember something?”

I shook my head and bit my lip. “Are you sure that’s all that happened?”

“That’s all I know, Jan!”