Epilogue Tucker
I switch my cell phone to selfie mode and start recording.
“It’s a big day.” I turn it to show Ava sitting on the floor of our house. She sticks out her tongue. I love it. Twenty-two going on thirteen.
I turn the camera back to me. “It’s day three of Ava’s latest reset and we’re about to engage the new sequence. We’re not sure we’ll always be able to do all these steps, so we’re recording this one for posterity.”
I sit next to her. “And here she is.”
Ava fakes a smile. “Hey, Ava. I’m you. Just another you. I’ve started a new medicine. We’re hoping this is the one. We’re on what—number five?”
“We are,” I say. “We’re hoping this drug is the one.”
“I’m feeling okay,” Ava says. “The side effects aren’t too bad. I’m thirsty all the time.” She holds up her big green water bottle. “Easily solved.”
I turn the screen back to me. “We’re heading out in a minute to make our rounds of ‘This Is Ava’s Life.’ And hopefully this sequence will be the last for a good long while.”
Ava nods. “Not loving this journey for me.”
I let out a chuckle. Ava watched an entire season of Schitt’s Creek last night, and she definitely loved Alexis. She’s quoting her constantly.
I shut off the camera so we can move on. “You ready?”
She nods. “Just you and me?”
“If that’s okay.”
“Sure.”
We lock up the house and get in my car. I’ve taken the week off from my job, like I always do when she resets. It takes a while for her to be alone safely, as she still easily jumps to conclusions based on what she finds and reads first.
We don’t tempt fate, ever. We’re fastidious about movies we see and places we go. Strobe lights are stupidly ubiquitous in entertainment. Amusement parks, haunted houses, and even roller rinks and indoor mini golf can be treacherous.
But things are good. Ava’s classes are going well despite the wild ride of medicine roulette. Her professors are informed, and Marcus got a specialized plan put into place ensuring they couldn’t fail her because of her disability. But it’s been fine. So far, people are more curious than anything.
Today, it’s time to remind her of who she is outside of our house.
“So first we see the lady I lived next door to for a few years,” Ava says, consulting the book of photographs we’ve put together. She doesn’t yet know she took them all herself.
“Right. You bonded with her over the flowers on her balcony. Her name is Maya. Grandma Flowers in your notebook.” We switched to using Maya’s real name after the last reset because Ava insisted on seeing photo IDs that time.
We park in front of the duplex and stomp up the steps. Maya rises from her porch chair to envelop Ava in a big hug. Ava is gracious, even though she often bristles when new people act too familiar.
Maya also believes that the heart remembers.
When we first created the memory reorientation sequence, I suggested she be less touchy-feely at first. But Maya insisted that her hug would bring back more connection with Ava than any conversation or photograph.
As usual, she’s right, and Ava melts into her.
Maya shows Ava the shared back porch and talks about the flowers Ava loved the most. I point out the window I crawled through the fateful night of my arrest.
Several college boys live next door these days, and Maya clucks her tongue at the beer cans strewn around the yard, saying, “This too shall pass.”
We drink lemonade and eat cookies while I video their interactions. Eventually, I recognize the glow in Ava’s face that lets me know some piece of herself has returned, not in memory, but in the emotional connection. So, I tell her it’s time to move on.
Maya leans close to me and quietly whispers, “Good luck, sweet boy.” I know she means getting Ava to return to me, which is always the hardest relationship to reestablish.
Next, we visit Big Harry’s Diner. As we park in front of the dive, Ava turns to me and asks, “Where the heck are you taking me?”
“You used to work here.”
Ava peers out of the car window with trepidation. “Was it safe?”
“You were epic. You could handle the most belligerent customer with a practiced hand. Besides, if anyone gave you an ounce of trouble, Big Harry would have thrown them out.”
Despite Ava’s insistence that she isn’t familiar with the place, she knows exactly how to tug on the cranky door to make it open.
“He should fix that,” Ava says.
“You say that every time.”
Our gazes clash. “Does this get old for you?” she asks.
“Nope.” And I mean it. I will take her through this sequence a thousand times if, at the end, she comes back to me.
Inside, a smattering of people sit at tables. Two couples play beer pong on the bar side, and a cluster of college kids throw darts on the back wall.
“Okay, the smell of this place is making me want to eat fried food,” Ava says.
“Your clothes always smelled like it.”
“I can almost taste it.”
Big Harry emerges from the back office. “Ava! You’re darkening my door again!”
I start the camera as he walks straight up to her and envelopes her in an oversized embrace. He wouldn’t give up his Ava hugs either.
Ava peeps out over the tattoos of his meaty arm with a look of who the heck is this?
“This is your old boss, Harry,” I say.
“You’re still no bigger than a mite,” he says. “Can I fix you your regular?”
Ava looks up at his grizzled face, mostly hidden by a scraggly beard. “What is my regular?”
“The concoction you drank to pretend you were boozing it up like the rest of them,” he says with a laugh. “As if we didn’t know.”
He walks behind the counter and expertly flips a glass from one hand to the other. “Let’s see, I believe it was Sprite, a splash of Grenadine for color, and a wedge of lemon?”
Ava shrugs. “Maybe?”
Big Harry drags a shovel through a trough of ice. “You worked here during a pretty good run. Everyone got along, and we would talk in the wee hours when the crowd was light.”
“Ava was a force to be reckoned with,” I say.
“Oh, she was.” Big Harry passes the glass to Ava and pours himself a beer in a big pewter stein. “She was like a whirlwind. Nobody messed with her. If they didn’t catch on quick enough, I made sure they didn’t mess with her.”
He leans over and stares me in the eye. “I seem to recall tossing you out on your can the first time you showed up here.”
Ava laughs. “I’ve heard this story!”
“He earned it,” Big Harry says. “And I woulda kept doing it, but he was smart enough to sit on the bench outside.”
Big Harry sets his stein on the bar with a thump. “I never saw a boy more determined to woo a girl than this fella right here. He sat out there on that bench, sometimes for hours, just to get a glimpse of you. It coulda softened an old codger like me, if I still had a heart.”
“Now that’s a lie,” Ava says. “I’ve only known you for five minutes, but I can already tell that your heart is bigger than your beer mug.”
He holds his mug aloft. “Don’t you tell a soul, or I’ll have to feed you to the sharks.” He laughs again. “Well, from what I understand, you two have a big day ahead.” He claps my shoulder. “Good luck, young man.”
He rounds the counter to envelop Ava in another hug that almost makes her disappear.
“Give him a listen, girl,” he says. “This boy only has your best interest at heart.” He turns to me. “But I still don’t regret throwing you out on your can.”
I shake his hand, and Ava kisses his cheek. We head out of the diner to my car.
“Since you’ve been drinking so heavily,” I say. “I guess I should drive.”
Ava laughs. “It’s hilarious to know I would lie about my drink to fit in. That was fun. Where are we going next?”
“It’s an unusual stop,” I say. “I had to make special arrangements. But I got it done.”
She buckles her seat belt. “Now you have me curious.”
“You’ll know it when you see it, even if it’s not from your memory.”
“You think so?”
We exit the freeway, and Ava says, “I think I’ve been this way before.”
We drive up a boulevard that ends at our destination. My nerves jangle to the point that I can almost hear ringing in my ears as we approach the complex.
“What’s that tall tower ahead?” Ava asks.
“I think it’s supposed to be a beacon of hope or something,” I say. “No one has ever fully explained it to me.”
We pass a hospital sign, and Ava sucks in a breath. “This is the children’s hospital.”
“It is.”
Ava peers out the window. “This is where we met.”
I pull into the parking lot.
Ava is rapt, staring at the entrance. “Do they still have the disco room like in our story?”
“They do.”
“Well, this is exciting.”
I park and lead her to the front entrance. A security guard in a blue uniform opens the door.
“We’re headed to the epilepsy monitoring unit,” I tell him.
“Are you visiting someone?”
“We were here a few years ago. It’s how we met.”
He chuckles. “Well, that’s a new one. I don’t know of any couples who met here at the hospital.”
“We were seventeen.”
“I don’t think they let just anyone up, even if you met there,” he says.
“I made an arrangement with a nurse. Marsha Stephenson. She said you could call up and verify it.”
“Let me contact the unit.” He picks up the information desk phone.
The hospital is quiet. Stuffed animals fill the window of a gift shop. Ava examines the art installation near the information desk, where a series of balls travel through a complicated maze of pulleys, tunnels, and obstacles.
The security guard sets down the phone. “You guys are cleared. Do you know the way?”
“I think I can find it again,” I say.
I take Ava’s hand, and my heart soars when she lets me. So far, so good.
We wander the halls of the hospital. It was built around a courtyard, so the wards branch off a central square. We climb a set of stairs and follow the signs until we arrive at the circular layout that makes up the epilepsy unit.
“This feels strangely familiar,” Ava says. “I don’t recognize anything, but the way the rooms make a circle seems right. I feel like I know my way around.”
“Your way around?”
She elbows me.