Chapter 10 Emery
It would be easy to get lost in the absolute euphoria of having Luca back—as it is, I’m barely restraining myself from leaping on top of him and never letting go—but we aren’t out of the woods yet.
The good news, I guess, is that he doesn’t seem immediately horrified to find out that we’re married.
Bad news, however, is that there is zero recollection in his eyes.
If anything, he’s looking at me like he thinks we might be up to something nefarious.
Which… fair.
I pull up a chair beside him and try to organize my racing thoughts. I was prepared to come clean about my job, but I realize I need to be careful and not completely overwhelm him. Okay, I think. Baby steps.
“What I’m going to tell you is incredibly confidential,” I begin slowly. “Even bringing you here, I’ve broken about fifty company policies—”
“And probably about a hundred international laws we don’t even know about,” Annie interjects. Luca’s eyes bug out as he looks between us.
“Yes, thank you, Annabella.” Clearing my throat, I continue. “We’re in a medical lab at a company called BioNEX. The technology they’re currently known for is a multimodular radio-magnetic-tomography—”
“Bring it down, Em,” Annie interrupts, turning to Luca. “She gets like this. She cannot not nerd out. Like, she is incapable of speaking like a normal human.”
“Sorry. Right.” I brush the hair out of my eyes. “The technology we’re known for is a scanning device that, in its most simple description, combines all of the imaging technology available to date, such as an MRI, a CT scan, an X-ray—but also includes a cellular-level diagnostic capability.”
Luca frowns. “This is the simple version?”
I wave my hands. “The details aren’t important. What I want you to know is that you’re going to be okay. I’m sure you’re disoriented, sore, frustrated—maybe scared, too. But you’re in good hands here with me and Annie.”
He takes a deep breath. “Okay.”
“The machine you’re in is called the BioVIVE,” I tell him. “It can treat disease, heal and repair injuries, and, um, together with an experimental compound… apparently resurrect.”
At this, my husband goes completely still, brow furrowing as he appears to translate and retranslate what he thinks I mean. I ball my hands in my lap, fighting back the urge to reach out and comfort him, to assure myself that he’s here. That he’s really okay.
Finally, he speaks. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your injuries were severe,” I say. “You suffered a two-inch laceration in your right thigh that nicked your deep femoral artery. CT scans found a Grade 1 pulmonary contusion and a bruised rib. You have various skin abrasions caused by the impact with the road; no brain or spinal injuries were detected, but you’d lost a lot of blood.
The damage to your femoral artery alone should have been fatal. ”
“Should have been…”
I blink up to the ceiling. Nowhere in all my years of medical training did we cover how to explain to someone that they were actually dead. “Were fatal.”
Luca’s blue eyes—still so bloodshot, so glassy—go wide.
“Still want us to tell you everything?” Annie says from behind me.
He looks at each of us. “I feel like I might regret this, but yes. And no sugarcoating.”
“Okay,” I say on an exhale, not sure this is a good idea. “Technically, you were dead.”
“Be serious.”
“You have no idea how badly I wish this was a joke,” Annie tells him.
“I was dead.”
I nod. “Medically speaking.”
“What does that even mean, ‘medically speaking’?”
“That’s kind of tricky to answer, but clinical death can really be looked at as a medical emergency, and with the right circumstances and the right tools, it’s now possible to intervene.”
“You’re saying I was dead. Clinically. As in, dead dead?”
“As a doornail,” Annie says.
“Then you gave me some kind of experimental medicine, and now I’m not.”
I nod again.
Luca looks down at himself as if searching for confirmation.
He must find it, because with jerking, ungraceful movements that make my stomach twist anxiously, he presses the heels of his hands to his eyes.
This would be a lot for a person with a fully functioning memory to take in.
Past experiences provide context to the world and help us make informed decisions.
If what Luca is saying is true, he has no experience to draw on and no idea how he should or would react to anything.
On instinct, I reach out to comfort him. Startling, he jerks away. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, no. I’m sorry.” It stings, but it’s to be expected. Right now, I’m as much a stranger to him as Annie is.
“I knew there could be side effects to the technology, even potentially some memory loss.” I stare at the backs of his hands, his strong hands that have wrapped around my body so many times, worked on our home, cooked me incredible meals, held me in sleep. “But I didn’t expect you to forget me.”
Annie steps back, leaning against the counter and clearing her throat loudly in an overt You should have listened to me.
Ignoring her, I reach for my notebook and press on.
I can’t hug him or assure him everything will be okay, but I can figure out what’s going on and how to fix it.
Which means we must document everything and figure out how far-reaching the side effects are.
“Do you have any memories of who you are? Such as, your parents? Your work?”
Luca closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Finally, he blows out the exhale and looks at me, admitting, “No. It’s like—everything is blank.”
Nodding, I ask, “Do you remember my name?”
“Emery.”
“And hers?” I point to Annie.
“Annie.”
I make a note that the memory loss appears to be retrograde only. He can form new memories, but if I’m right, it’s almost like the protocol wiped his hard drive.
I point to the chair beneath me. “What is this called?”
“A chair.”
“What is that called?” I point again.
“A cabinet?”
“And inside the cabinet?”
“Um… I think beakers? Flasks? Dude, I don’t know. Am I a scientist, too?”
I shake my head. “No, you’re a landscaper. Sorry, the beaker one wasn’t fair. There isn’t a lot of normal stuff to point to in here.”
“How can I know how to speak and that what you’re sitting on is called a chair, but not remember that you’re my wife?”
“Memory is complex,” Annie says, and I’m delighted when Luca gives her a yeah, no shit look. It’s a look I’ve seen him make a hundred times… usually when he’s teasing Crash or calling me out for an extra dice roll while we’re playing Yahtzee. It’s so Luca, even if he doesn’t know it.
Annie explains the different types of memory and how, neurologically speaking, memories of life experiences are different than memories of names of objects or how to use them.
And both of these types of memory are distinct from motor-related ones like riding a bike or driving.
So it’s common in head injuries to see one but not another affected.
“Does that make sense?” she asks when she’s finished.
Luca tilts his head from side to side. “More or less.” He frowns. “How long is this going to last?”
I glance over at Annie, wincing. I hate it when she’s right. “We don’t know. I wish I could tell you that it will resolve. I think it will. But so far, we’ve only ever used the protocol on, um, on…”
When I trail off, Luca simply stares at me, waiting. Finally, he prompts: “You’ve only ever used it on what? Volunteers?”
“In a sense, yes,” I hedge.
“She’s trying to tell you that we’ve only ever done this to save dogs and cats that have been in fatal accidents,” Annie says finally.
Luca’s expression blanks. “Dogs and cats.”
“Yup,” Annie says, clearly enjoying that I’m about to get my ass handed to me. “That’s why we said it was experimental.”
“You’ve only ever done this on dogs and cats, and then you…” He frowns, trying to find the words for something that even I can admit is a pretty rough path, logically speaking. “You gave me, your husband, an experimental compound and put me in this machine as your first human test subject?”
“We brought you here—”
“She,” Annie corrects, pointing at me. “She brought you here.”
“Because it was the only way to save you.”
Luca’s eyes narrow again. “And you’re saying you don’t know who hit me?”
“No.” My heart sinks at his confused expression, wishing I had just one good thing to tell him. But then his expression shifts… turning wary. Like he’s scared of us, and it breaks my heart to see my sunshine love looking at me with fear.
And then I understand what occurred to him. “Wait.” I hold up my hands. “Luca. You don’t think that I—”
He looks away, pulling the blanket protectively up over his chest.
“Luca, I didn’t run you over so I could bring you back to life!”
“That much is true at least,” Annie says.
“Someone hit you. I guess it could have been intentional, but like Emery said, it was dark, and you were crossing the street. My guess is whoever it was freaked out and fled. And listen, while I have some serious reservations”—she slides her gaze in my direction—“I agree that if Emery hadn’t initiated the reanimation protocol, you would have died. Or… stayed dead.”
Luca nods, no longer looking at us, and Annie and I exchange a worried look. She tilts her head, silently telling me to give him a second to process it all. We walk toward the freezer bank, out of view of where he’s sitting, unmoving, on the BioVIVE platform.
“Girl,” Annie says, “we need to get him home ASAP. Robert Pattinson has probably logged his vitals and it’s already in the system.”
“Great idea,” I say, motioning to the other side of the room. “I mean, clearly Luca’s dying to leave with me.”
Annie barks out a laugh, clapping her hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she says through her fingers.
“Don’t be,” I say, groaning. “I heard it, too. Not my best phrasing.”
“Let’s get him dressed—”
“In what, exactly? His blood-soaked clothes?”
“I need you to calm down. If you’re freaking out, Luca will freak out. We can put him in scrubs, dumbass, we have an entire closet full of them.”
“Yeah, I’ll just drive him along the street that’s probably still covered in a giant pool of his own blood.
I’m sure he won’t notice.” At her raised brow I pause for a beat, pulling in a calming breath before continuing in a whisper.
“Seriously, it looks like a crime scene. And if someone sees it when the sun comes up, they’ll realize it is a crime scene and probably call the police. If they haven’t already.”
“Now you think of the consequences?” Shaking her head, she digs in her pocket for her phone while mumbling about pouring stupid gasoline on crazy fire. “Just relax. I’ll get someone to come clean it up.”
I look at my watch. “Annie, it’s 1:18 a.m.”
“Don’t worry about that. I know a guy.”
“You know a guy.”
She continues to type, not glancing up from the screen. “Yes. He was my neighbor growing up. Single guy, kind of odd. My mom brought over food to him all the time. He loves me and has a little cleaning business, if you get my drift. He’ll take care of everything, including your car.”
Frowning, I lean in. “There are people who do that?”
She turns the phone toward me. “This is the intersection, right?”
I check the cross streets and confirm, watching as she finishes the text, presses send, and gets an immediate response.
“How did I never know you have a fixer?” I ask, in awe.
“You’ve never done something this stupid that required one.” She types out something else before pocketing her phone. “At least that’s taken care of. He’ll also drop off some medical equipment and supplies at your place. Just don’t ask where any of it came from.”
I nod vaguely, unsure why I’m surprised that texting someone to clean up an unreported crime scene is as simple as ordering a pizza. “This feels so… shady.”
“Well, deal with it, Em, because me knowing someone who can clean up a crime scene and deliver equipment at 1:18 a.m. is the least shady thing about tonight.”
“Fair. Thank you,” I say. “For everything.”
“You can figure out an impossible way to thank me later.” She sets her hands on my shoulders. “You ready?”
I nod. “No. Yes. I mean no.” Taking a deep breath, I say firmly, “Yes.”
She looks equally unconvinced. “Really? You’re ready to go home with a husband who has a freshly sealed fatal femoral artery wound, who doesn’t remember you and thinks you mowed him down in the street to test your fancy new technology?”
I bite back a sob. “Is this really my life?”
“Ask yourself that when the sun comes up,” Annie says, turning to walk back to Luca. “I need to get the fuck out of here and have a drink.”