Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVE
Well, it definitely isn’t a hospital.
When we arrive at Jim’s house, he is on all fours in his back garden in a feminine-looking sun hat, snipping herbs and collecting them in a basket.
Kiera greets him by saying, “Hiya, Jim! Half retirement suits you.”
“Girls, what brings you two round?”
She explains that I’m being weird, and that we wanted to get his professional opinion.
He takes us inside, shedding his dirt-covered gloves and uncinching the string of his hat to remove it, telling me to take a seat at the kitchen table.
I’m not sure what Kiera or I expected him to do, but he merely looks at my head all over, poking it and saying, “Does that hurt?” while I say no again and again.
As if there might be a gaping wound somewhere that I hadn’t noticed.
Like, Oh, I didn’t know the golf ball wedged into my skull was an issue.
“Open up those baby blues for me, love.”
I open my eyes wide, and he shines a pocket flashlight into each of them.
“Any nausea?” he asks.
“No.”
“Does your head hurt ?”
“No.”
“Blurry vision?”
“Nope.”
After about a hundred more questions, he sits back and says, “You look all right to me, Meg,” and rolls his sleeves back down.
Strange to hear this stranger say my name.
“What did make you think something might be wrong?”
He’s a nice man, and he’s good-looking for being, I’d guess, in his seventies.
He looks kinda like Sean Connery.
“I’ve had some… memory issues? I guess?” I say, understating the issue so much that Kiera laughs.
“A bit,” she says.
He arches a silver eyebrow.
“That doesn’t surprise me; every time I run into you two, you’re at Cairdeas.”
“Does it seem like too much?” asks Kiera, a coy smile playing at her lips.
“Answer carefully now, oul fella, because if you run into us every time you’re down the pub, and you think that’s a lot, then I guess what you’re saying is—”
“All right, all right, no need to get so spirited, Kiera. So what d’ya mean by memory issues ?”
“Some short-term memory stuff.” I ignore Kiera’s eyes on me.
“Are you hallucinating at all?”
“Uh… well, I guess I wouldn’t know, would I?”
“You’d know. Do you feel dreamy? All your limbs feel like they move when you tell them to, things like that?”
I lift my arms and knees.
“I don’t feel dreamy”—not quite, anyway— “and my body moves normally.”
“How do you feel?”
“Honestly, generally normal.”
“Could be stress. Or something you ate. To quote Ebenezer Scrooge when he saw the ghost of Jacob Marley, you may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato .”
“Is that your professional diagnosis then, Jim?” asks Kiera, arms crossed.
“Stress or a potato? You’ve never been more Irish. You may as well prescribe her a Guinness.”
“Tea, loves?” A woman, I assume the doctor’s wife, comes in.
She’s also very good-looking, with blond hair pulled back in a neat chignon, and fine lines and freckles on her face, neck, and arms.
She’s in an oversized white sweater and pleated periwinkle-blue pants.
“Yes, please,” says Kiera.
“How are you, Meggie?” She’s a little stiffer with me than with Kiera, I can’t help but notice.
“I’m all right. Um, how are you?” I say.
“Mm-hm,” she says, putting the kettle on and then leaving the room.
I look at Kiera.
She exhales deeply and then says to Jim, “Marcia not so happy with Meg, I take it.”
“Oh, she’ll be fine. Always is. Upset about the breakup, that’s all. I think she was really counting on it working out this time.” He gives me loaded eye contact, and it seems as though I’m supposed to get something here that even Kiera doesn’t know.
But of course, I don’t.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten Cillian, then?” he asks, clearly thinking he’s making a joke.
My silence is confirmation enough.
His smile fades and his brow furrows.
“Jim and Marcia are Cillian’s parents, by the way,” says Kiera, looking a little uncomfortable as she says it.
“Oh God.” I slap a hand over my mouth.
I want to apologize for the breakup, but then realize I don’t know for sure if he broke up with me or I broke up with him.
Kiera steps toward us.
“This is what I’m saying. She doesn’t remember any of us, Jim. She says she’s here from outer space or something.”
“Kiera!” I say.
“What? Did you think you’d Weekend at Bernie’s yourself around here, pretending everything was fine?”
I furrow my brow.
I don’t know what I thought.
“I didn’t say I was from outer space, I said California.”
“Same thing,” she says.
The kettle starts to whistle and Marcia comes back in.
She pulls out four teacups and starts about making us all tea.
“California,” says Jim, looking troubled now.
“She thinks she’s a famous actress living in LA and that she never moved to Avalon.”
“You might be leaving out some pretty key symptoms, Ms. Bryan. Can you catch me up?”
“Okay.” I sigh, then, as I did with Kiera, try to explain what is going on even though I don’t understand it.
Kiera looks nervous as I talk, and Jim listens patiently and without judgment.
Marcia, on the other hand, has arched a perfect eyebrow so high it looks like it might float off into the air above her head.
“But I called my mom this morning and she thinks I live here. So I know it’s not you all, like… messing with me or something like that.” I blush, feeling embarrassed to even suggest something so self-centered.
“And I feel fine, so I don’t know what’s happening.”
“Any history of mental health issues?” he asks.
“Any family history?”
“I have an aunt who thinks she’s drop-dead gorgeous, but in reality looks like Rod Stewart.”
“Ah, Aunt Cath,” says Kiera.
“Bless her.”
She knows about loony Aunt Cath.
How weird.
“No,” I say, to be clear.
“No real mental health issues. I get panic attacks sometimes.”
“Right, you told me about those. Grandiose delusions are a symptom of several different psychological disorders,” Jim says, studying me.
I laugh.
“I mean, they’re hardly grandiose. Being famous kind of sucks.”
Kiera and Jim exchange a look.
Marcia lets out a sharp ha!
I must have been the one to end things with Cillian.
It’s the only explanation for why this woman seems so mad at me.
“I thought it might be because of the breakup,” suggests Kiera.
“True enough, but she’s usually fine after the breakups,” he says.
“If a bit reclusive.”
“How often do I break up with this guy?” I ask.
“Or does he break up with me?”
“It’s always you,” comes Marcia’s voice.
A guilty plunge goes through me and I say, “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine why I… why I did that.”
Jim gives me a kind look.
“Meg, I really think you ought to go to Tralee and be seen by someone.”
I stare blankly at him, then look to Kiera for explanation.
She glances at Jim and then says to me, “University Hospital.”
I shake my head.
I really do hate hospitals.
They’re a place for crisis and tragedy.
And what could they tell me?
I know this isn’t my life.
No number of MRIs or psychoactive drugs will change that.
This is the kind of thing Netflix makes documentaries about, and don’t we all watch them and think the people are crazy?
“No hospital. Please.”
Kiera sighs.
Jim makes a firm line with his mouth.
“I can’t make you go. But if you’re not having any violent tendencies or some such, no dizziness, then I think the best thing we can do is give it a few days. Try to keep her in her routine, if you can, Kiera, and let’s keep an eye on her. I wouldn’t let her out of your sight for a night or two.”
Kiera snaps and does finger guns at me.
“Sleepover time. Looks like you’ll be watching the finale too, my love.”
“I’d actually love to. I want to see how Kim does in my role.”
“ Brilliance ,” says Kiera to Jim by way of explanation.
“She reckons she plays Daphne in her real life .”
Jim keeps a straight face, but something lightens in his eyes.
“I think Meg would make a great Daphne.”
“I do!” I say, insistent.
“Seeing Meggie play a villain… oh, let me see if I can stretch the imagination,” says Marcia, rinsing her teacup in the sink.
Kiera drops her lips into a dramatic frown and then mouths savage at me.
“That’s enough, Marcia. It’s none of our business what happens with the kids, you know that.” Jim gives me an apologetic look.
She puts up a hand wordlessly and then drops it.
There’s an embarrassed silence before Kiera puts down her mug and launches herself off the kitchen counter.
“Okay, stupid, let’s leave the poor man to his gardening, shall we? We have work in an hour anyhow. Marcia, good to see you, even if you are in rare form today.”
“Work?” I ask, but no one hears me.
Marcia smiles kindly at Kiera and says, “I could never be thick at you, darlin’,” pulling her in for a big hug and a squeeze on the arms.
“Oh, it’s nice to be the favorite,” says Kiera.
“Did you say work?” I ask again.
“Isn’t it grand,” she says with a side smile to Jim.
“She’s doesn’t remember she has a job, the breakup has completely slipped her mind, and she’s forgotten she’s not a movie star.”
“TV star, actually,” I correct.
“I’ve never done a movie.”
All three of them look at me for a moment and I want to die.
“If it’s a delusion, maybe you don’t want to wake up from it,” jokes Jim.
“But really, kid, if anything else crops up or if this doesn’t clear up after a few days, come over. Anytime. Day or night. We’ll make sense of it.”
He rests a paternal hand onto my shoulder, and I feel deeply reassured by it.
I rarely spend time with people who offer this particular sort of comfort.
You don’t meet a lot of paternal older men in Hollywood.
Usually they’re too busy trying to hold on to their youth or grab on to yours.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Keep an eye on her,” Jim says to Kiera.
“Sure look,” she responds with a thumbs-up.
Marcia leaves the kitchen tsking, and we make our way out.
I’ve done so much work to release the strain of never being able to please everybody.
The early reviews used to kill me.
The comment section is a radioactive wasteland.
That New Yorker article.
The videos Lisa Michele forces me to watch or overhear.
I have tried so hard to not care about what other people think.
And yet here I am, a million miles from real life, and someone’s mom is mad at me .
It’s kind of my worst nightmare.
We make our way out, but as we get to the end of the front path, Jim stands in his doorway and calls, “And Meg?”
I turn.
“Yeah?”
“Give him his bloody dog back, will ya?”
I glance at Kiera, then back to Jim.
“I will.”
“He’s lost without her, you know. He’s lost without you, too, but the dog—let him at least have her.”
“I will.”
“All right, love. Tell him his old man said hello. See you down the pub.”
Then he goes inside and shuts the door behind him.
I turn to Kiera.
“Good looks really run in that family.”
“Feck’s sake, even when you’ve lost your memory, you’re lusting after Cillian.”
“I mean, no, I don’t even know him.” We walk for a few seconds in silence, and then I say, “But he is pretty hot.”
“This is turning into a porny version of Cloud Atlas .”
I squint at her.
“ Cloud Atlas ?”
“It’s the one with—”
“I know, it’s just such a bizarre thing to reference.”
“Okay, well, get back to me with another interdimensional love story.”
We walk down the path, back toward town.
Avalon is every bit as beautiful as I’d hoped it would be.
There are sleepy green swaths of grass alongside the lazy paths, and the sun has hidden behind gray clouds.
The cool breeze has been replaced with a slightly balmier one, the air swirling with wispy, violet fog.
“The fact that I’m even considering believing you is concerning,” Kiera says.
“Maybe I should have had my head checked.”
I put my hands on her head and say, “Does that hurt?”
“No.”
“Head check done, you’re completely fine.”
She laughs and it feels so strangely familiar and good.
I know how pathetic it sounds, but to be honest, I haven’t had a real friend in a while.
Not like this.
Not the kind you get paired with in sentences like every time I run into you two, or who feel comfortable enough to take a bite of your food without asking.
It’s an intimacy I’ve missed.
“To be clear,” Kiera goes on, “what I believe is that you believe it. And if this is something you need to work through, I’ll help you. But if it goes on too long, I’m going to have you admitted somewhere, all right? Put in a padded room or something. I don’t really know how any of that works. But. I’m going to figure it out if I have to.”
I think of Aimee again and realize that I’m now actually putting off the attempt to see her.
As long as I don’t try, I can believe she’s alive.
Man.
My denial skills are kinda stunning.
But if she is alive, I have to know for sure.
Of course I have to know.
I stop and pull out my phone.
I swipe through.
There she is.
There’s her number.
Holy shit.
Holy fucking shit.
“Meg?” prompts Kiera, seeing the contact pulled up.
“I’m going to call Aimee.”