her Easter-egg-purple scrubs filled my vision. “Everything you had on when they brought you in was given to your mom and dad.” She pulled up the sheet and smoothed it down on one side. “Okay, hon, let me grab you that warm blanket and—”
“Please,” I whispered, clutching at her arm with desperate fingers and pulling her toward me. My breathing wasn’t right—too quick, unfortunately timed to my racing heart. I tried to infuse as much urgency into my tone as I could despite the breathlessness. “Please. I need to know where my husband is.”
“I’m sorry, Lucy.” She put her cool hand over mine, shook her head and gave me a sympathetic look. “I don’t know anything about your husband.”
I was indignant when they first told me the truth about Matt.
“That’s impossible,” I said, because it was. I was married, and married women didn’t have boyfriends. So Matt Newman could not be who they said he was.
“It’s the truth,” Alex said without preamble. I’d stared at her and she repeated herself.
This first foray into my new normal happened the day after I’d woken up. A day after those very confusing moments when I tried to piece together why Matt was crying by my bedside instead of Daniel. Why the whiteboard in my room and my hospital bracelet read Lucy Sparks, my maiden name. Why no one seemed to know where Daniel London—my husband—was. Or understand why I was asking about him.
“Stop it, Alex,” I said, waiting for her to admit she was messing with me, which was certainly offside considering the situation but not out of the realm of normal for our sisterly relationship. “Why are you lying to me? And where are my rings? Mom, please give them back. The nurse said you have them.”
“There are no rings, love.” Mom’s voice was barely a whisper. She’d done some crying before she came back into my room, telltale red splotches under her eyes and on her neck that hadn’t yet had time to fade. “There are no rings.” My dad stood quietly beside my mom, nodding and solemn.
Alex said it again, stone-faced, the bravest of the bunch. “Daniel is not your husband, and Matt is your boyfriend, Luce. You’ve been living together for two years, in a condo in Leslieville—which I think you pay way too much rent for, PS.”
“This is crazy.” I lay back against my pillow. My breathing was erratic, my heart pounding hard enough an alarm beeped on the monitor attached to me. Everyone looked at the screen, then back at me with concern. “How can I be with Matt? I’m married. To Daniel.” If I kept saying it, maybe it would turn out to be true.
The plastic bracelet itched my skin, and I tugged at it with my other hand. Seeing the name Sparks so clearly typed across it made me nauseated. I had to be dreaming. But when I pinched the skin on my wrist—hard—it hurt and felt all too real. “Daniel is my husband. We got married a year ago! You were all there.”
“No, honey. We weren’t.” Mom grabbed my shaking hand and squeezed softly. “You have never been married. To Daniel, or anyone.”
And then I’d lost my breath—it left me in a long wheeze and I had a hard time getting it back, even with the nasal cannula streaming pure oxygen up my nose. This wasn’t a joke, or a dream. They were not lying to me.
Later my parents brought proof. Photo albums with pictures of Matt and me together—wearing matching ugly Christmas sweaters for my best friend Jenny’s annual holiday party; on a boat in Mexico during some beach vacation, head to toe in scuba gear; holding up plastic cups of beer at a hockey game.
But Matt can’t be my boyfriend, I’d whispered again. And then once more in case I was too quiet the first time. Matt and I worked at Jameson Porter, a Toronto-based consulting company with impressive clients and a better-than-most corporate culture. It was full of young, highly motivated types looking to climb ladders quickly, and I’d been there for nearly four years. Matt was a business consultant, while I worked in communications, as the director managing the firm’s many press releases, industry reports and memos. We often grabbed lunch when Matt wasn’t traveling and joined our coworkers frequently for after-hours drinks at nearby watering holes.
“That’s the Matt I remember.” I squeezed my eyes shut and clutched the photo album to my chest. It made me feel sick to look at the pictures.
“Well, that Matt? Your work friend Matt? He’s also your Matt,” Alex said.
“But...but what about Daniel?” A crushing sense of loss crashed into me. “What happened with Daniel?”
And why could I remember him sliding a wedding band over my finger? Dancing to Harry Connick Jr.’s “Recipe for Love” for our first song as husband and wife. His hand on mine as we cut into our wedding cake—vanilla with lemon curd. What about the memory of him tripping, and us collapsing in a fit of laughter, as he attempted to carry me over the threshold of our Leslieville condo? How did I have all these memories of us together when apparently none of them had ever happened?
No one could explain it. They weren’t even sure where to start, except to acknowledge that obviously something was very (very) wrong inside my head.
“Honey, you and Daniel were engaged. But then you broke it off, oh, about four years ago now,” Mom said. “Is that right, Hugh?” Dad confirmed it was. Alex nodded. They looked as distraught to be giving me this history lesson of my life as I was to be receiving it.
“Four years ago?” They all nodded again.
Defeated, I pressed my fingers to my eyes to try to stop the tears. I’d never been more scared, and even with my family gathered tightly around me, I’d also never felt more alone.
* * *
“It’s called ‘confabulated memory disorder,’” my neurologist, Dr. Alvin Mulder, said, his white-coated arms crossed over my chart, which he held tight against his body like a shield. “It’s not uncommon in head injury cases.”
Does “not uncommon” mean “somewhat common”? I wondered as I took in his words. Or does it mean “rather unusual, but not exactly rare”? Not that it mattered. The answer wouldn’t change anything, couldn’t fix anything.
After I had asked where Daniel was, causing Matt to throw up with shock and Mom and Dad to insist on more tests, everyone realized things weren’t quite right with my memory. Obviously. But it wasn’t only amnesia we were dealing with; it was something altogether scarier. Dr. Mulder confirmed while my physical injury had mostly healed, it appeared there were some “deficits.” And these deficits may be long-term, he added, which caused Mom to slap a hand to her chest, her mouth open in a perfectly round circle. “How long-term is long-term?” she asked.
“Well, permanent might be a better way to think about it,” Dr. Mulder said, and I felt a jolt inside me.
“Permanent?” Mom echoed, her hand now on her neck, her fingers rubbing the skin there with apprehension. “I see.”
I didn’t see at all. All I had done was hit my head on some ice. And now I might be stuck with this mismatched memory permanently?
“I prefer the term false memories to confabulations,” Dr. Theodore Talcott, the hospital psychiatrist on my case, said. I glanced at him, careful not to turn my
