The Life Lucy Knew

A flash of irritation moved through me. I was tired and having to repeat myself was hard work. Why couldn’t she answer the question? “Daniel, Mom. My husband. Where is he?” My tone was harsh and my mom recoiled slightly. I should have felt bad about that, but my bewilderment whitewashed everything else.

Her mouth opened and closed and she looked at Dad, whose smile had now been replaced by a frown. My heart started thumping again. Fight or flight.

“Where’s Daniel?” Now I shouted it. Everyone seemed shocked, especially Matt, who looked like I’d slapped him across the face with my words.

“I d-don’t... Lucy, what do you...” Mom stammered.

Dad’s fingers came up to pinch his lips as he watched me with worried eyes.

“Excuse me,” Matt said, then bolted from the room. I heard the sounds of someone being sick outside my door.

“Is Matt okay?” I asked, momentarily distracted as I craned my head to the side to look through the open doorway and into the hall. But I couldn’t see Matt and the movement made my head feel as though it was being drilled into. Mom kissed my forehead and said, “Shh, shh, shh.”

Dad’s too-big smile was back on as he stood behind her. “I’ll go check on him,” he said, walking quickly out of the room.

“Mom, what the hell is going on? Where is Daniel?” Why wasn’t he the one here in my hospital room, kissing me on the lips and telling me everything was going to be okay?

“We can talk about that later,” Mom said, shushing me some more. Later? Why not now? But before I could get another question out—my mind moving too slowly, like pushing molasses through a fine sieve on a cold winter’s day—a nurse came in. Mom shifted out of the way, crossed her arms over her chest and said, “She’s fairly, uh, confused right now.” She sounded panicky, but my mother wasn’t prone to panic and that was when I started to think I might be in real trouble here.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. It was as though my body knew the truth but the connection to my mind was broken. I was missing something but had no idea what it was or how to figure it out.

“Oh, that’s to be expected,” the nurse replied, wrapping a blood pressure cuff around my upper arm and smiling at me. The cuff felt tight and her hands cold. My insides were jittery and I was shaking, hard. “Are you cold, Lucy?” she asked, her voice quite loud. The way you talk to a toddler, or a senior citizen with a hearing aid.

“Yes,” I replied, teeth chattering to prove it.

“I’ll get you a warm blanket in a minute.” She glanced at Mom, now seated with furrowed brow in the plastic chair by the bed. “Why don’t you go get something from the cafeteria, Mrs. Sparks? I’ve got a few things to do here, so Lucy won’t be alone.”

Mom pressed her lips together, seemed to hesitate but then nodded. “I could use a cup of tea,” she said. Then she stood and bent over me, resting a hand on my cheek. “I’ll be back in a jiffy and Dad’s right outside.”

Once Mom left, I focused on the nurse. “Has my husband been here?” She was reading the blood pressure monitor and her eyes briefly flicked to mine before going back to the monitor.

“I’m not sure, hon. Try to relax, okay? Your pressure’s a bit high. Deep breath. There you go.”

Relax? How could I relax when no one would tell me where Daniel was?

“I’m not feeling very well,” I said, my words clipped because of my chattering teeth. Anxiety crested through my body in waves and my heart continued its wild thumping.

“You keep taking deep breaths. Can you do that for me?” The nurse smiled again—wholly relaxed—then walked over to the whiteboard on the wall and wrote a few notations. It was then I saw my name at the top of the board. Lucy Sparks.

Sparks? It had been over a year since I was Lucy Sparks... “Do you know where my rings are?” My finger was bare and my hand looked lonely without them.

The nurse moved back over to the bed to retrieve the blood pressure cart and 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.”

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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.