Chains wrapped around his wrists, Clive tried to see through the darkness of the room, blinded by a hanging light. Nothing about the room or the chair he sat in seemed familiar. He tried moving his legs, but only to find they remained still, numb and unresponsive. With a table placed in front of him, covering his body from the waist down, he was not even sure he had legs to move. A couple red dots blinked repeatedly to his right, but other than that, nothing else could be distinguished beyond his position.
A creak echoed throughout the mysterious room, followed by a white light peeking through a small crack in the wall. It was a door opening. Standing there was a man, blurred by the brightness around him. His legs pushed against a long trench coat as he walked in and sat down across the table from Clive, dropping a folder stuffed with files. The door slammed behind him and the room turned dark once more.
Untying a single string that secured all of the files together, the man sat just far enough behind the light so that Clive could not see anything but the man’s hands.
Clive widened his eyes, trying to focus on his hidden face.
The folder opened onto the table and one by one, the man in the trench coat gently turned over the top most pages as if he were reading a manuscript. He stopped on a blue page, looking at a close-up of a young boy smiling, and cleared his throat. “Hello, Clive.”
Clive looked down at the page and saw the picture, but did not recognize who it was. “Where the hell am I?”
“Are you not going to say ‘hello’ back, Clive?”
“Why are these chains around my wrists?” He pulled his arms a few inches above the table—the highest they would go. “Who are you?”
“No, I take it?” The man clicked his pen and jotted down a note on a yellow sheet of legal paper.
Slamming his arms back down, Clive muttered to himself, “Unbelievable.”
The man stopped writing. “What was that, you said?”
“Who the fuck are you?!”
“No, I don’t think you said that. No, actually, I believe you uttered the word ‘unbelievable’, did you not?”
Clive stared into the dark where he thought the man’s face would be, only able to see part of his trench coat.
The pen clicked again and he started writing a sub-note underneath what was already written. “Clive, do you know why you are here?”
“No, I don’t know why I’m here! Why the hell are you here?”
“Clive, I need you to calm down, okay? A simple yes or no is perfectly fine. I don’t need any attitude, understand?” He finished writing down the note and set down his pen. “Just relax yourself,” the man said.
Clive wanted to get up and strangle the man with his chains. Instead, he took a deep breath and attempted to sit back a little, playing along with whatever game this was.
“Good. Now let’s start with what you last remember,” said the man.
He tried to remember, but a lingering woman’s voice continued to cut through his thoughts. She seemed to be saying something over and over, but she was too quiet to understand.
“Clive?” asked the man.
“No! I can’t remember anything at all—nothing.” He tensed his muscles and pulled his chains up again. “Why the fuck are you doing this to me?!”
“Clive,” The man pulled off his glasses, setting them on his lap. “Now, I can’t do this—no, we can’t do this—if you don’t keep your calm and relax.”
“I don’t care what you can or cannot do! Get me the hell out of here!”
“Clive, please, just relax.”
“You’re holding me in some interrogation room with chains and expect me to relax?”
The man in the trench coat wrote down another note and said, “And these chains, Clive, why do you think you have them on?”
“How am I supposed to know that? I don’t even know where I am! Why are you doing this to me?” The woman’s voice inside of Clive’s head persisted.
“I’m not doing anything to you, Clive. I just want to ask a few questions.” He picked up the blue sheet and analyzed the boy’s picture printed on it. “I need you to promise me right now that you will let go of whatever is holding you back and just cooperate with me. Can you do that for me?”
Clive did not respond.
“I’ll take your silence as a yes.” The man put the picture back down on the table. “Now Clive, what is the last thing you can remember? Anything at all—whatever comes to mind first.”
Clive ignored the man’s question, trying to drown out the voice of the woman. It grew louder and became distorted and muffled. So loud, in fact, that his eyesight weakened and darkened, to the point where soon enough, all he could see was black. And then, a green blur bled through the darkness and in his head; he saw her. The voice stopped and there sat a woman wearing a lavish green dress, turning her head the other way. Clive immediately shouted, “A woman!” He did not even think to withhold the information from the man in the trench coat; he was too caught up in seeing such magnificence.
“A woman?” asked the man.
“Yes, she’s wearing a green dress!” Clive’s eyes were closed.
The man put his glasses back on and clicked his pen. “What does this woman look like?”
“Why should you care?” Clive asked.
“Clive, please. I might be able to help you find out who the woman is,” said the man.
Clive continued to watch the dazzling woman. Her head was still turned away and looking down. He wanted to know who she was. “I can’t see her face. She’s looking the other way.”
“I need you to try really hard for me, Clive. What does her face look like?”
The woman started rubbing her left ring finger with her other hand. Clive tried to look closer, mesmerized by the glossy red polish on her fingernails. “She isn’t turning around, but something is in her hands I think.” He watched as she slightly turned her head toward him, but it was not enough for him to see her face. Then, nothing. “She’s gone. She’s not there anymore!”
The man across the table let out a sigh and began writing more notes down, this time with a bit more force than usual.
Clive tried to imagine her again, but even the color of her dress began to fade away, changing shades of green until it was an entirely new color. “Who was she?” he demanded.
The man drew a long line between two notes he had written, setting his pen down afterwards.
“What are you writing down?” asked Clive, opening his eyes. A tremendous amount of frustration and anxiety suddenly built up inside his chest, almost unexpectedly. “Who is she?!”
The man did not respond.
Clive balled his hands into fists. “What are you writing about me? Why are you treating me like some maniac?” His breath fell short.
The man clicked his pen. “Alright Clive, you are making me do this.” He looked behind him and into the darkness of the room, as if he were expecting somebody to enter through the door. He then turned around and jammed his pen onto the table. Radically changing his tone of voice, he shouted “Let’s just cut the shit! You and I both know what you did and why you’re here, so why don’t you spare me the theatrics and get to the last goddamn thing you remember!” His heavy breathing could be heard through the shining light.
Clive responded, “What the hell happened to keeping one’s calm?” The room felt different. He could start to feel people standing just beyond the light, watching him, judging him. The red dots beside him continued to blink relentlessly.
The man continued, “You killed a man! You took a gun and you shot him in the head! We’re lucky to even know who the poor bastard was after what you did.” He grabbed several pictures from the back of the folder and slid across the table. Some were focused on the top of the man’s head where the bullet had exited, while others were wide range shots of nearby blood splatters.
Clive’s face froze as he looked at each of the photos. The floor, the walls, even the couch, all of it was consumed by the murder. A picture of the ceiling fan above the body showed where the bullet hit after leaving the victim’s head. The gaping hole oozed blood and revealed part of the man’s fractured skull. Clive closed his eyes, feeling a pain in the back of his head and the imaginary chunks of flesh hanging from his hair. “I don’t want to see these!” The roof of his mouth felt tender and sore; he could taste the blood. He tried to pull his hands up to feel for a wound, only to dig the chains further into his arms, cutting off all circulation. “Make it stop!” The throbbing pain continued. His hands went numb and, within seconds, he passed out.
The dark room Clive was in evaporated into the hanging light. He now sat on a green couch in an apartment, facing a wall with a few frames of family portraits hanging from it. His hair fluttered as the fan above spun on its highest setting, almost pulling itself out of the ceiling. His hands in his lap, Clive did not even notice that his chains were gone or that the pain in his head had vanished. Instead, he was fixated on the picture right in front of him, hearing the same whisper from before in that smooth, woman’s voice—the word still unclear. The picture was of a woman in a lavish green dress sitting on a chair, teasing the camera as she looked the other way. Her nails were freshly painted with a red coating and her long brown hair hung with elegance. Clive slowly got up from the couch, captivated by the beauty.
Just before he could get closer to the portrait, a door to the room unlocked and swung wide open, hitting the wall hard enough to leave a mark. A man wearing a trench coat stood at the entryway, gripping something with his right hand. It became very clear, the apartment he was standing in was the very same from the one in the crime scene photos. The ceiling fan wobbled even more rapidly as Clive stared at the man’s trench coat—how familiar it was.
Clive’s eyes shot wide open. He was back in the interrogation room, drooling on the table that he had collapsed on.
“Clive! Wake up!” yelled the man in the trench coat across the table.
The photos were gone and, as far as Clive could tell, his head felt fine.
“Good, you’re awake. You’ve been out for nearly five minutes,” said the man.
Clive sat up and looked at the man’s trench coat. “You! It was you!”
The man cleared his throat. “What, Clive?”
“You were there at the apartment! You killed him!”
“Excuse me?”
“You killed that victim! You’re the one who shot him. You’re the one they want, not me!”
“Clive, what are you talking about? What victim?”
“The apartment! You shot him in the head!”
“Clive, I didn’t shoot anybody.” He picked up his pen. “Did you?”
“Stop this!” Clive pulled his arms up repeatedly, shaking the table. “Those photos—those disgusting photos!”
“Clive, what photos?” He pulled up the blue sheet with the picture of the young boy’s face. “Do you mean this photo?”
“No, I don’t mean ‘that’ photo! Why are you doing this to me?” He could feel the eyes of people staring at him through the darkness, their feet just beyond the edge of light.
“I want to help you, Clive. What photos?”
Clive did not understand. He heard people writing notes, digging their pens into copious amounts of paper. He glanced at the flashing red dots next to him. They must have been for some camera, a recording.
“Clive, do you want me to come back? We can do this another time.”
All he wanted was to see the pictures again, to know they existed. “Goddamnit! Check the back of that folder you have—the very back! Check it!”
The man slipped his hand under the stack of papers and rustled through them for a moment. Finally, he pulled out a single photo, hiding it from Clive.
“You’re doing this to me on purpose! You killed him!” Clive looked around the dark room and shouted, “I didn’t do this!” He kept searching for somebody else, trying to spot anything beyond the light.
The man decided to rest the picture on the table for Clive to see. It was a picture of a moderately young looking man, hair parted one way. “Clive, do you know who this is?”
Clive stopped scouring the room and looked down at the picture. It meant absolutely nothing to him. “Why are you showing me this? That’s not what I’m talking about!”
“Just answer the question, Clive.”
“No! I don’t know who that is! Did you kill him, too?!”
The man pulled out another picture and laid it on top. It was a picture of the woman in green.
“Okay, Clive, how about this one? Do you know who this is?” asked the man.
Clive saw her face—the most beautiful face he had ever laid eyes on. He saw her eyes, her lips, and a freckle gently placed to the left of her nose. The room fell strangely calm again, the people watching over him now gone. Her face alone deprived him of all anger. Clive did not understand.
“This woman, Clive, do you remember her?”
Her face turned into different pictures, different poses, actions, and then full-fledged movies. He remembered kissing her lush red lips, feeling her fingers caress the back of his neck. Her skin was so painfully soft.
“Clive, are you with me?”
He held onto her for a moment longer, savoring her perfume as she smiled at him with her indulging green eyes. “I—” She tasted like strawberries.
The man leaned forward a bit, but not enough to expose his face to the light above. “Clive, this is very important. What is her name?”
He saw her extending her arm, slowly moving her lips. She repeated something—a word—over and over, gently. Clive still could not make out what she was whispering, but her voice alone loosened the remaining tension in his body.
The man raised his voice and said, “Clive, what is her name?”
Clive did not respond. The same muffled word repeated continuously, hypnotizing him.
“Okay.” The man held up the same blue sheet of paper from before, showing the picture of the boy’s face. “I want you to take another look at this picture for me now.”
Still fixated on the woman now inside his head again, he watched her lips move flawlessly.
“Clive!” interrupted the man.
The voice stopped and the woman faded. Clive yelled, “I don’t understand! What is happening to me?!”
“Clive, please, just look at the picture and tell me who this is.”
He looked down at the picture the man had placed between his arms. The boy had long enough brown hair to cover his eyebrows. His big, goofy smile showed that his front two baby teeth were gone. A freckle was positioned just beneath his left eye, too, just like the woman in green. Something about him stirred Clive’s memory. He had seen this boy before. The place, time, even his name—all of it stood right at the edge of his tongue.
The man asked again, “Clive, who is this?”
The boy’s face suddenly disappeared behind a tombstone. Engraved at the top was the name “Jeremy Brigham”. Clive’s head felt light; his vision was blurring. Before he could say anything to the man in the trench coat, he passed out again. The man slammed his hands into the table out of frustration.
In the depths of his mind, Clive saw himself standing back in the apartment with the picture of the woman in green—this time, more frames surrounded hers, almost covering the entire wall with portraits. At the doorway stood a man in a trench coat. The man walked forward and into the light of the entryway, his face looked young and his hair was parted. The sides of his mouth were puffy and drooped downward, making him appear to frown indefinitely. Gripped in his hand was a gun. He stepped into the living room and positioned himself in front of the wall of pictures, right next to Clive. Two frames down from the woman in green, he picked up a photo of a young boy smiling with two missing front teeth. He stared at the picture, still holding the gun.
Clive slowly approached the man from his side and calmly asked, “Who are you?” noticing the pictures of both the man and boy had been shown in the interrogation room.
The man did not say anything. He turned around and headed toward the couch. Clive stepped aside and said, “Is that your son?”
No response.
Clive looked at the gun still in the man’s hand. His grip was tightening.
Clive came a little closer and said, “Please, what happened?”
No response.
Before Clive tried to say anything else, an unsettling emotion came over him. He grew nervous, but had no idea why. Something about the apartment and man seemed familiar, more meaningful than just the pictures he had seen. Clive had been there in person before.
The man got up from the couch and placed the picture on a cushion. He walked around the couch and into a nearby bathroom, staring at himself in the mirror. Clive followed, standing directly behind him. Several bottles of prescription anti-depressants decorated a shelf above the sink. The man picked one of them up and popped the cap, peering inside the half-empty container. Without taking anything out, he threw the bottle at the mirror, spilling several tiny blue pills all over the sink and floor. After looking at himself one more time, he turned around. Before Clive could respond and get out of the way, the man walked straight into Clive’s skin and through his body, sending a tingling sensation to every one of his organs. The man exited on the other side and Clive all of a sudden felt cold and empty as the man went to the other room. He stood still, trying to accept what had just happened, and stared into the bathroom mirror. What he saw was almost as impossible of a situation. His face was identical to the man’s. His hair, his eyes, even the drooping of his lips—everything was the same. With the tips of his fingers, he touched the skin on his face as he dragged his hand across.
Staring at the other side of the mirror, Clive began remembering. The bathroom, the pills, the green couch, the entire apartment, all of it was his. He remembered his wife, posing in her green dress for her first photo shoot. He remembered the first date with her in college, the wedding with his mother crying hysterically in the front row, and the day spent together in the hospital when Jeremy was born. He remembered Jeremy’s smile, his infectious way of bringing happiness into even the worst of days. Clive smiled as he looked into his eyes through the mirror, as if it were the first time that he had ever seen them. He finally understood who the man holding the gun in the other room was; it was not the man from the interrogation, it was him.
Off in the distance, he heard the sound of a gun being cocked. A throbbing pain crawled back into Clive’s head. The smile was gone.
Clive ran out of the bathroom and saw the backside of his own projection on the couch. “Wait a minute! Stop!” He circled around the armrest and saw the gun positioned upward inside the man’s mouth. “Please!” Clive reached for the hand holding the gun. It fired.
Back in the dark interrogation room, Clive was convulsing uncontrollably. He was no longer in a chair, but rather a hospital bed.
“He’s going into shock! Get medical in here now!” The man in the trench coat jumped out of his chair and circled the table, checking for Clive’s pulse. “We’re losing him!”
The door to the room flung open and several nurses dressed in scrubs rushed in. One of them stopped abruptly and asked, “Is it safe to turn the lights on?”
“Yes! Get over here!” yelled the man.
The lights flickered on, exposing a relatively small and typical hospital bedroom. The walls were painted in a welcoming light blue, with the occasional picture of cheap, multicolored abstract art hanging from them. The bed was in the upright position. Clive’s arms were strapped to the side railings and his sheets were tucked so tightly around him that he could hardly move. Next to the bed stood a life monitor cart, red dots flashed from its information panels. An attachable table hovered over Clive’s legs. At the end of the bed, there was a chair.
Clive’s restraints were immediately removed and the table was unhinged and set aside. Several nurses picked him up and placed him on a nearby gurney. They rushed him through the doorway into a brightly lit hallway as the man in the trench coat stood over the empty mattress, rubbing his eyes with his fingers.
Another man walked in with a clipboard by his side. “I’m sorry Dr. Richards, I truly am.”
“It was supposed to work!” Dr. Richards picked up the folder of files from his chair.
“Are you alright?”
“It’s been almost two years! Two!” He flung Clive’s folder out of his hand, scattering random files over the tiled floor. “I’ve been with him from the beginning. The memory lapses, the inability to recognize his own face—all of it!” The blue sheet remained alone on the floor, standing out from all others. “Never has he come this close. Never!”
“Look, John—”
“No, Michael, you don’t understand,” said Dr. Richards. “He remembered her,” he muttered under his breath.
“What?”
“He saw her picture and he recognized her.” Dr. Richards stared at the blue page, trying to decrypt some hidden message. “Then when I showed him the photo of his son, that’s when he went into shock. He must have had some postponed reaction.”
“Did he actually say he recognized her? Did he say her name?”
Dr. Richards paused for a moment. “No.”
Michael shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Then how can you be so sure?”
Dr. Richards did not respond.
“You have to let this go. It’s not that this man refuses to remember his past. He simply can’t—his brain is damaged, John!”
“You’re wrong.”
“Damnit, look at you. You’re interrogating this man like he’s some criminal, scaring the shit out of him. He’s being rushed to intensive care for Christ’s sake.”
“I appreciate what you’re doing. I really do. But please, just stay out of this.”
“I can’t let you keep doing this to him.”
“Michael—”
“It’s a lost cause! The man has suffered enough from his son’s death, not to mention his own attempted suicide! Do you really think you’re helping him like this?” asked Michael.
“Lost cause?” Dr. Richards came closer to Michael. “You think he’s brain-dead? Fine. But I know what I saw earlier. Clive Brigham is not a lost cause. He’s developing reactions to the very memories we thought he lost. You’ve seen it yourself. So yes, I think I’m helping him.”
“What I saw was—”
“He recognized her, Michael! Why are you so inclined to ignore that?”
“And why are you so inclined to believe it?” yelled Michael.
“You’re wasting my time,” Dr. Richards took one last look at Michael and stepped over to the door. “I don’t need you lecturing me in my own hospital.”
“Wait.” Michael put down his clipboard and followed. “John? Where are you going?”
Dr. Richards ran down the hall toward the waiting room.
Michael tried to catch up. “John!”
Dr. Richards’ coat fluttered behind him as he turned corners and rushed by hospital counters. He came to the opening of the waiting area and spotted a brunette woman wearing a green blouse, a familiar freckle just to the left of her nose.
“Mrs. Brigham?” asked Dr. Richards.
The woman quickly looked up and slammed her book shut. “Did it work? Is he alright?!”
“I need you to come with me.”
“Is Clive alright?”
“Please, Allegra, just come with me. I’ll take you to him and explain on the way.”
Without hesitation, she dropped her things. They quickly walked down the long white corridor to a cluster of elevators. Michael stumbled in along the way.
“Jesus, John. What are you thinking?” said Michael, out of breath.
Allegra looked at Dr. Richards, ignoring Michael, and said, “Please, doctor, is he alright?”
“I think we may have a new development,” replied Dr. Richards.
“John!” yelled Michael.
“Michael, I’m doing this whether you approve or not.” He looked back at Allegra. “You are aware of the shock treatment we gave your husband earlier today, correct?”
Michael smashed the elevator call button.
Allegra, focused on Dr. Richards, nodding her head. “Of course, that’s why I’m here in the first place.” She rubbed her wedding ring, sliding it clockwise around her finger. “What’s going on here? Did it work?”
“Well, I think it may have at least helped the psychosis that Clive entered after his suicide attempt. He remembered you after today’s session.”
She cupped her hands over her mouth and let out a gasp of relief.
Michael shook his head and stared at Dr. Richards, waiting for him to look back. He didn’t.
Dr. Richards continued, “He also seemed to show some sort of reaction after seeing a picture of your son.”
“So what exactly does that mean?” she asked, her voice echoing off the palms of her hands.
“Well, I think we have a window of opportunity to bring Clive back.”
Allegra stared at him, trying to piece together what he was saying.
“The delusions and hallucinations that come with psychosis are still there and the electric shock therapy has produced some confusion, but the fact that he is starting to show signs of remembering is a very good indication of recovery. So far he’s just seen pictures, but if he is able to actually hear and feel you, well—”
“So he’s going to be ok?”
Dr. Richards looked over at Michael, who was still angrily staring him down. He hesitated for a moment and said, “I don’t know.”
The elevator doors opened and they all stepped in, anxiously standing still as the doors slid shut.
A voice whispered in Clive’s ear, repeating the same intangible word, waking him up as he rolled down the hallway on the gurney. Fluorescent lights scrolled like credits to a movie, one by one. Two nurses on each side of him glanced down and saw Clive’s eyes open.
“He’s conscious already. Get Dr. Richards over here!” ordered one of the nurses to a nearby nursing station. “Clive, can you hear me?”
Clive looked at the nurse standing over him but did not respond.
An elevator door opened at the end of the hallway and out ran Dr. Richards, Michael, and Allegra.
“Is that him?” asked Allegra. Without waiting for a response, she sprinted past the two doctors, wiping off the smeared mascara beneath her eyes. Nurses, orderlies, patients—everybody stepped aside to let her pass. She came to a slow stop at the gurney.
Clive moved his head and looked at her. His eyebrows slightly lowered, and, for a moment, he studied the features of her face. He saw her green eyes, her lush lips, and the freckle to the left of her nose.
Dr. Richards caught up and saw the look on Clive’s face, waiting for some sort of verbal reaction.
Michael put his hand on Dr. Richard’s shoulder, “What in the hell are you doing? He’s not ready for this. Neither of them is,” he said quietly.
Dr. Richards continued to ignore him and watched Clive, who was staring blankly into Allegra’s eyes.
Allegra came close to his ear and whispered his name softly, “Clive.” She held her breath, waiting for him to respond.
There it was—the word that had been repeating all that time in that same exact voice. The way it rolled off her tongue, it was more than just saying his name. How remarkable it sounded.
The entire corridor went quiet, everybody watched Clive as they waited for him to respond. Dr. Richards bowed his head downward and closed his eyes, holding his hands together.
Clive slowly leaned forward, just enough for him to see over his feet. He looked around at the many faces welcoming his attention and then turned back to his wife. Michael gently pressed his hand on Dr. Richard’s shoulder, forcing him to open his eyes.
In a tired, raspy voice, Clive responded with what seemed to be his first word in years. “Allegra?”
Allegra grabbed onto his hand, feeling the electricity of the touch ripple through her arms and toward her chest. “I’m here, sweetheart.”
