Chapter 5
Tucker
Gram clasped her hand over mine in the center console as I drove her old Buick to the hospital. It was well out of the way of the route between our house and the country club, but Marcus would have wanted to go there to access Ava’s records.
We hadn’t been in this awful position for years. Not since we’d struggled to find a new med for her after the one that was preventing her seizures ended up causing liver damage.
Three memory resets in a row were impossibly hard. Each time it happened, I had to win her over all over again. She always wanted me to move out and give her space.
Gram knew the direction of my thoughts. “You’ve done it before. You can do it again.”
I realized I didn’t have the laptop with the videos we’d prepared back when we were going through this before. Even so, they weren’t up to date. Nothing in there explained we lived together and were getting married. We’d been complacent, lulled into how easy life had been the last few years.
Still, it was something. In the sequence, Ava explains to herself who she is, who I am, her father, Gram, Maya, Big Harry. All the important players. She also warns herself about her mother.
Shortly after the last reset three years ago, we went to all the places that jogged sensory memories, the parts of her brain that could connect feelings to location, which she insisted helped her reorient herself. The children’s hospital, Big Harry’s Diner, Maya’s flower-covered front porch.
Visiting them in person was best because a creaky door or the smell of fried food or the roughness of the terrain were the best ways to help her brain find safety in the terrifying nothingness she described as having her memories erased. But that took convincing her to go.
Not always easy when survival Ava arrived.
“I should go get the sequence videos,” I told Gram. “Without them, there’s no telling what direction she might go.”
“But we’re almost to the hospital,” she said. “Let’s see how she is and go from there.”
She was right. Besides, almost half an hour had passed. The version of Ava that was going to present itself would already be established.
She’d never woken up with her father, not since she was a little girl. Normally, I was there.
Maybe that would make the difference.
Maybe I was the problem.
We pulled up to the emergency room doors. “I’ll drop you off and catch up after I’ve parked,” I told Gram.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Text me if you find them.”
She opened her door. “I will.”
Something glinted on the curb. I almost ignored it, but it’s familiarity caught my eye.
I leaned over the console as Gram stood up. “Is that Ava’s shoe?”
She bent down to pick it up. “I think it is.” She passed it to me.
I held the shiny white heel. It wasn’t midnight, and I wasn’t exactly a prince, but I’d take any symbol I could get.
Even though the Ava I loved would be physically fine, sitting on an exam table in the ER, nothing about her would be the same.
She might be hostile. Or terrified. Or frantic. We’d seen all those versions of her after she’d emerged from a seizure of this magnitude.
Gram closed the door, and I pulled forward to enter the parking garage.
The doctors would never listen to me, at least not until we got in touch with her usual neurologist. Memory loss like Ava’s was extremely rare, although losing a half-hour before a seizure was typical. It used to happen to me.
But in the ER, they always dismissed our concerns and left us to deal with it on our own. This time, though, we had the father factor.
I might be a minor character in the new world of Ava. And technically, I still wasn’t her husband.
The Buick barely fit between a pillar and an SUV, but I squeezed through the door and made a dead run for the stairs with the shoe in my hand.
I wasn’t clear why people stopped to stare as I passed, other than my speed, until I caught sight of myself in the glass panes leading to emergency.
Full tux. Boutonniere. A fancy shoe. They’d think we were doing a Cinderella-inspired flash mob or a viral video prank.
I spotted Gram at the desk, flanked by Ava’s sisters Jennifer and Amanda, plus Vinnie, Ava’s photography assistant. They all looked terribly out of place in their fancy clothes. The other patients in the chairs watched with interest. A few not-so-covertly filmed them with their phones.
“Only two people can go back,” Amanda said. “Mom is going to come out so you can go.”
The secure doors whooshed open to the right of the desk, and Tina emerged, looking poised as always. I wasn’t sure anything rattled her. “She’s awake. Go straight back and find the section on the left. She’s behind the third curtain.”
“How is she?” Gram asked.
Tina’s lips pressed into a glossy rose-colored line. “Curled up in a ball. Won’t talk.”
Terrified Ava. I wasn’t sure whether this version would be easier or harder than before.
“Thanks,” I told Tina. “I’ll report back.”
“Tucker,” Vinnie said. “Hold up.”
I paused and turned to him. He looked grim in his shiny black pantsuit. He passed me the fancy camera.
“I don’t know how to use it,” I told him. And why would I want to take pictures?
He turned it aside and showed me a play button. “She had me hold on to a recording on a memory card she made in case something happened while we were together. It’s been in my camera case ever since.” He pressed play.
I watched the screen. Ava sat on a chair in the spare bedroom, which she used as her office, dressed like she always was in jeans and a T-shirt. This one read, “I’m about to snap.”
She gave a little wave. “Hey, Ava, I’m you. If you’re not sure, look at this tattoo.” She held up her arm, showing off the words inked there. “Go ahead, find it.”
Vinnie pressed stop. “Hopefully, it will help.”
I held the camera against my chest. “Thanks.”
A nurse came out of the secure doors, so I hurried through while they were open. Time to find out what I was dealing with.
The curtain to the third sectioned room was closed, so I paused to listen for a second in case it was the wrong one.
Then I heard Marcus. “Ava, this is a photograph of you as a young girl.”
He still carried her kindergarten picture. I wasn’t surprised because him having it when Ava had met with him after a decade apart was what had turned the tide of their estrangement.
There was no way to knock, so I cleared my throat and said, “It’s Tucker.”
The curtain moved aside. Marcus held it back to let me in.
Ava sat at the far end of a hospital bed, her knees drawn up to her chin. The white fabric of her dress spilled to the edges of the mattress, piling up inside the plastic rails.
I knew not to approach too quickly or to touch her. I stopped at the end of the bed. “Hello, Ava. I’m Tucker.”
She peered at me with wide, frightened eyes. Her hair had been swept into an intricate updo, fixed with rhinestone combs. It was now only half up, the rest flowing over her shoulders.
Ava never wore makeup, so this flawless version of her with creamy skin and lined eyes and long lashes took some getting used to. She was heartbreakingly beautiful and so scared.
“Does anything hurt?” I asked her.
“They gave her some ibuprofen for her head,” Marcus said.
I spotted her other shoe on the floor and set the matching one beside it. “I found this outside,” I said.
“I wondered where it went,” Marcus said.
I knew better than to do too much talking without involving Ava. It irritated her whether or not she’d had a seizure.
Her gaze moved to the camera in my hands. She tilted her head with curiosity.
For a split second, I almost wanted her mother before shunting that thought away. From Ava’s notes and talking to Maya, who had lived next door to Ava and her mother for years, sometimes Ava’s memory loss was so complete she could no longer read or write.
I had never seen that level of disability, and I didn’t know the signs.
I cleared my throat. “This camera has a video on it that you recorded so you could talk to yourself when you were scared.”
Her eyes lifted to watch my face.
I made sure to give her a kind, easy expression. “Would you like me to press play so you can listen?”
She looked back at the camera, which I took to mean she was interested.
I set the camera on the end of the bed and pressed the play button Vinnie had shown me.
Thankfully, the video started over.
“Hey, Ava, I’m you. If you’re not sure, look at this tattoo. Go ahead, find it.”
Ava’s gaze immediately moved to her arms. Her wedding gown was short-sleeved, so it was easy to spot the tattoo.
“Can you read it?” the recording asked.
This was good. Ava had already predicted what her future self would need.
Ava nodded at the recording as if her former self were there.
“Say it out loud,” the recording said.
“Trust only this handwriting,” Ava said from the bed. “Find the book. Remember your life.”
I released some of the tension I was holding in my chest. She could understand. She could read. She could talk.
The recording went on. “Ava, if you can’t read it, you need big help. Look at the faces of the people around you and trust yourself to know who is there to help you and who isn’t. Always trust this feeling. It will steer you right.”
Ava glanced at us briefly, then returned to watching the video.
“If you could read it, let’s move on. You should have gotten this recording from Vinnie. He has black hair, and he’s kind of short. He is a good one. See, here he is.”
Vinnie’s voice says, “Hola, Mija.”
Uh, oh. We broke protocol on this.
Ava’s eyes flew to me. “You’re not Vinnie,” she said. Then to her father. “You’re not Vinnie.”
“Look at us, Ava,” I said quickly. “You told yourself to trust your feelings.”
She crawled to the top of the bed again, this time snatching up the camera. “Where is Vinnie?”
“I’ll send him in,” Marcus said and exited the curtain.
“Look at me,” I said to Ava. “I love you.”
She curled her arm around the camera, which was still talking. “Go away. I want Vinnie.”
I heard my name on the recording, but Ava wasn’t listening.
“Hey, you talked about me. Listen.” I moved forward to see if I could figure out how to rewind that part, but Ava recoiled.
“You scare me,” she said. Her eyes flitted to the tattoo. “Where is my book?”
“I can get it for you. It’s at our house.”
She turned on the bed to face the back curtain, curling over the camera. Her dark hair streamed down her back, falling from the sparkly combs. The recording continued. “Vinnie and I work together with this very camera. You take photographs. Vinnie helps.”
“You help,” Ava repeated. She stayed hunched over the screen, ignoring me. The two of them in the video talked about photography and kidded each other, establishing their friendship.
So, that’s how this one would go. Vinnie would be the star of this version of Ava.
I had my work cut out for me.