Lillia awoke coughing, a terrifying tightness in her throat and
her limbs leaden. She knew she had seconds to survive so she kicked, her legs
feeling as if they were kicking through treacle as tears began to stream down her
cheeks.
Then there were hands holding her down, hands and voices and
beeping and whiteness.
She drifted off again.
----------------------------------
Next time she came to she was calmer, the beeping was still there
and the whiteness but shapes began to emerge from the edges of the blur. Lillia
knew she wasn't underwater anymore, her throat was clear but painful and there
was a soft pressure on her hand.
She couldn't turn her head but managed to flutter her fingers and
the hand in hers jolted as Jeremy Gilbert swam into view.
'She's awake', he screamed. 'Mr Monroe, Mrs Monroe?'
Her parents came rushing into the room, disheveled but grinning,
Rachel with tears streaming down her face as Gray kissed Lillia's forehead and
stroked her hair.
The next hour was a blur of questions and lights being shone in
her eyes. Lillia answered yes, she knew her name, yes she could wiggle her toes
and no she wasn't hungry. The doctors seemed to be expecting different answers
from those she was giving, consulting something in a folder that her mom kept
looking at fearfully.
Apparently satisfied they left her with her family,
Lillia attempted to talk to them but the exhaustion of the last hour soon
caused her to drift off to sleep. The next time she woke up the room was full
of teenaged girls and flowers.
'Lil' Rose cried on noticing she was awake. 'You had us all so
worried!'
Daisy nodded, 'Thank god Jeremy is a little geek and was awake for study club and pulled you out. He had to do CPR for
like, 15 minutes until the meds arrived.'
Typical Daisy, Lillia thought, always covering good with a nasty
comment. But what had Jeremy been doing at her house. And who were those other
girls in her room?
'What happened to me' she asked her friends. 'I know I was in the
pool but I don't know how I got there'.
The unknown girls snickered and Rose shot them a look.
'Lil we were all wasted' Rose said, 'None of us saw you go out,
it wasn't until Jeremy screamed for help we even woke up. I guess you just
fell in or decided to swim drunk'.
Lillia couldn't believe she would have been so stupid but that
wasn't the only odd thing.
'Why were we drunk at my house?' She asked, confusion clear on
her face.
The unknown blonde said, 'Um, it was your party? Duh!'
And Lillia snapped. 'Who the hell even are you two. Get out of my
room you freaks!' And they scuttled out, looking shocked. Daisy's face was
unreadable as Rose looked worried.
'Lillia,' she began, 'Do you really not recognise Brooke and
Nina?'
Lillia shook her head, 'I think I've seen them around school but
never to speak to.'
Rose nodded.
'Daisy we need to go find the doctors and her parents,' she said,
turning away and speaking quietly, but not quietly enough.
Soon the room was filled once again with people and the hated
folder. The doctors poked and prodded, asked more questions and then conferred
in the corridor. As one left the other held on to a single sheet from the
folder and came in and sat at the foot of the bed.
'Lillia,' he said, 'this is a scan we took of your brain the day
after you arrived. You can see there is some damage in these areas caused by
the oxygen starvation that took place before you were resuscitated. The main
area affected by the anoxic injury is called the hippocampus. It's the part of your temporal lobe that
looks after your memories.
That's why we were so surprised that you had such a clear
recollection of who you were and could answer questions about your life and upbringing. Brain
injuries are funny things and we thought that perhaps the damage looked worse
than it was or perhaps had affected scattered and non essential memories.
It seems you haven't escaped completely unscathed though, it
appears what is lost is your short term memories. The last five to seven months
to be precise. You couldn't identify friends made shortly before Christmas but
do remember your summer holiday. Can you tell me who Jeremy is?'
Too stunned to process what she had just been told Lillia
answered the question.
'He's a boy in my school. I think he's cute. And he was here'.
Her parents looked at her sadly, Lillia didn't know why and
turned back to the doctor.
'Why do you want to know about Jeremy?' She demanded.
The doctor also looked sad, 'To pinpoint the beginning of your
amnesia. You remember shopping for a Homecoming dress but not what happened at
the dance and afterwards. Jeremy is your boyfriend, you were homecoming queen,
he was king, he says you love him.'
Lillia couldn't even begin to process that. How could Jeremy be
her boyfriend? She hadn't felt anything when she'd seen him. Surely even if her
head had forgotten her heart would have remembered. She had liked him for so
long.
'Will I get my memories back?' she asked, her voice barely higher
than a whisper.
She knew the answer from their faces before the doctor answered.
'We don't think so.'
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They had told her she was
lucky, that based on her scans they thought she would have lost more, that she
would have died if Jeremy hadn't known CPR, if he hadn't found her. But Lillia
didn't feel lucky, she was glad not to be dead but she couldn't call missing
six good months of memory lucky, especially when she could remember drowning so
vividly. She hoped the nightmares of being in the pool would clear once she was
discharged and back in her own bed but they didn't.
Night after night she awoke drenched in sweat, clutching the air
and panting. She could feel the water choking her, hear it pushing at her
eardrums. Lillia couldn't go to the back of the house, the proximity of the
pool was enough to make her panic, she didn't even like to sit where she could
see it out of the window.
When her counselor asked her why she told her honestly. Seeing
that pool was like seeing her own grave while she was still alive. Six months
of her life died in that pool, her career plan died in that pool. Whoever
Lillia had been before the accident lay still and unbreathing on the bottom of
that pool.
The counselor looked sympathetic and promised she would find her
way back to herself. Lillia wanted to slap the sympathetic smile of her face. At 17 six months was a large fraction of her life to lose. She wanted to slap
most people these days and apparently this was another part of her brain injury.
Irritability due to anoxic injury of the frontal lobe.
Even the sound of the diagnosis was irritating.
Above all though, Lillia was frustrated by herself. She could
shut out other people, doing the rest of the academic year as homeschooling and
not answering her phone. But even when she was alone in her room there was in
escaping that blank hole in her memory, the shadow which had taken the place of
her personality. Lillia saw the sideways glances people gave each other when she didn't
respond how they expected, the careful readjustment of their expectations of
her when they realised she didn't remember.
The girl in the mirror might have looked like her but she wasn't
the same. She wasn't a swimmer, a girlfriend or a leader.
