EPISODE 4: The Powers That be…
He could hear voices…yes voices, not one or two but many; talking about something in hushed tones. Now this would have been normal except that they kept referring to him as “the subject” instead of his real name.
“How is the blood pressure Dr Wyatt?” A female voice asked. He couldn’t see her face. He was lying flat on his back, carefully strapped to a table.
“Still stable for now, subject is doing just fine.” A masculine voice replied.
He could hear a click and a wheeze. He tried opening his eyes, but felt too weak. He could neither talk nor move. He was scared, really scared and he couldn’t comprehend how he got to where he was. He remembered sitting on his couch, watching TV and waiting for her and the next thing, he was strapped to a table with a lot of people in white overalls. Where am I? What is happening to me? He was in a cold room and people towered above him, he could feel someone holding his head.
“That’s it… I’m done, over to you Dr. Baines. Time to extract.” Another voice said.
Extract? What in the world did that mean? What were they doing to him? He struggled to open his eyes but he was becoming weaker and weaker. Dr. Baines came closer and he could almost hear the sound of her thumping heart. Before he could realize that Sophia was right, He felt a stabbing pain which burned throughout his skin, blacking him out and sending him to a vast hole of nothingness.
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Damon Scott got up from his bed feeling very thirsty. He checked the mini-sized clock on his bedside drawer. It was 5:06 am.
“Right on time as usual”, he muttered. It was the 4th day of another round of episodes-random visions that played out in his mind. He knew he had to visit Dr Wyatt. The Asian doctor had fixed many appointments for him but for some reason, he hadn’t met any of them. It’s about time I rescheduled another session. He helped himself to a cup of chilled water and sat on the edge of the bed as if waiting for the episode. It usually came around this time accompanied by a feeling of extreme thirst. Nearly 3 seconds later, he felt the familiar dizziness and collapsed on the floor.
Damon suffered from a condition known as RA. Retrograde amnesia or RA is a loss of memory access to events that occurred or information that was learned before an injury to the temporal lobe or the onset of a trauma. It is temporally graded and subjects are more likely to lose recent memories closer to the traumatic incident than more remote ones. It doesn’t usually mean forgetting everything and the level of amnesia is mostly determined by the severity of the cause. Typically, episodic memory is more severely affected than semantic memory so that the subject may remember words and general knowledge and their present lives but not specific events in their lives. There is no actual cure for retrograde amnesia but in very rare occasions, some victims experience certain “flashbacks or episodes” of those affected memories long after the trauma has faded. This was the case in Damon… He had suffered a traumatic setback some months ago and though he has since recovered from the incident some memories however had been lost- perhaps forever.
Damon opened his eyes. He reconnected himself with his immediate environment and got up from the floor. He was safe at least for the rest of that day as he didn’t have to worry about blacking out in public. After doing some push-ups, he took his bath and prepared to go to work. Moving over to his peach-walled kitchen, he picked up a bowl and brought out some cereal emptying its contents. He poured a generous amount of milk and added tepid water. He grinned; it was becoming a habit of his to eat cereal before going to work. He wondered who he learnt that from. Picking up his phone, he scrolled through his messages-nothing. No message from Sita. He needed to pick up some files in her apartment but she had neither returned his calls nor replied his messages. He decided to drive over to her apartment hoping to meet Cataleya… she is usually off on Tuesdays I think.
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It was the same dream again. Areya decided to fix an appointment with Dr. Charles. If dreams were about assembling and disassembling memories, why was she having the same dream over and over again? She would be trapped in a car that had plunged into the river with no way of escaping and just when she was about to drown, someone would yell her name and she would wake up. From what she was told and the news in the paper, she knew the dreams were similar to her accident except that the papers didn’t say what happened while she was down there. She had been reportedly rescued by an officer who administered CPR on her for approximately 15 seconds before she was resuscitated. Reya knew those dreams were not merely for her entertainment as it was almost like they were trying to tell her something.
She heard the sound of a power bike coming from the front porch. Quickly, she changed into a top and shorts and made her way downstairs to ascertain the source of the sound. As she climbed down the stairs she remembered her first day here, she had been so nervous to see strange faces. She was much better now and was certainly looking forward to resuming back at the office.
It was the courier guy and he stopped to drop some letters in the box. Areya waited till he was gone before going outside. The weather was a little chilly and she wrapped her arms around herself. Opening the box, she searched through the stacks of envelopes, she found 3 addressed to her and one to Sita. She took the four of them and went back inside. The 3 were from her phone company. Reya was relieved as she read the contents; she had been enabled to use the phone. Tossing Sita’s later on the centre table; she headed up the stairs and into her room to retrieve the box she had kept her gadgets in. She had very good instincts and organization so when she marked a box as “personal items”; it meant it was actually personal. She fished out her phone and laptop and unlocked them with the code given to her in the letter. Browsing through the folders, she came across some pictures which she quickly flipped through. She remembered most of it but couldn’t remember some others.
She saw a folder saved in a different location tagged “departmental dinner” and opened it nervously wondering why it was secluded. For some abstruse reason, she hoped it would give her a little insight about the guy she saw at the hospital. She had decided to tag him a ‘john doe’ since he was still a mystery to her. She searched through the folder and clicked on pictures only to discover to her utter dismay that the picture files had been corrupted. All the pictures, every single one of them.
Someone was knocking at the front door. Reya frowned slightly. Cataleya had left for work after an emergency call from her colleague about a patient; she was usually off on Tuesdays. Could she be back so soon? Ugh. She took her time before leaving her room; carefully tucking away the box and laptop. On getting downstairs, she peeped through the window and saw a Ferrari car parked in front. Unlocking the latch, she pulled the door open and came face to face with the one person she never expected to see……
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“Excuse me Miss, you left your phone on the counter.” The cashier called after her running towards her. She had branched to the grocery store to get some items to store in his house since she had resolved to stay with him till the hearing was over. She had hoped it would buy them some time to talk to the captain. Luke had agreed to call him and promised to give a feedback. It had been 2 hours however and he hadn’t called her back.
“Thank you so much. That would have been disastrous.” She collected the phone and smiled at the petite lady who smiled back and jugged back to her store. Sophia unlocked her car and dropped the items on the backseat. She propped up the driver’s seat a little to make herself comfortable. As soon as she started the car, the trackphone buzzed. Glancing at the caller id, she closed her eyes hopefully and swiped to answer.
“Luke? Thank God. What took you so long? I almost left my phone at the store and I’m sure Brandon would be waiting for-” She stopped, Luke was mumbling something.
“I’m sorry what?” she asked in shock…... “Oh my God, Luke why didn’t you call me sooner?” she ran her hands over her hair as Luke kept trying to explain. “… Just forget it okay? I understand, you did what you had to do, if the commander wanted the extraction, there’s nothing we could have done…… yeah, bye.” She ended the call and slowly kept it in the compartment. She felt sick to her stomach and a bad headache had just developed, her heart was beating faster than normal and her body quivered. It was until she ran her hands over her face and felt its moistness did she then realize that she was crying.
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Reya remained frozen on the spot, staring at ‘john doe’ (who turned out to be the visitor) for what seemed liked eternity. He was unmistakably hot and handsome. His eyes were a shade of blue and his black permed hair stood straight on his head. He was on jean and a green top that hugged his perfectly built body. She swallowed; she had never expected to see him again- not this soon at least.
“Hi” he said his voice richly deep. Reya almost floated. The mere sound of his voice was enough to melt her insides.
“Hi” she smiled apologetically.
“Um… is Sita home?” He asked even though he was certain she wasn’t. He just needed to break the awkwardness that was starting to develop.
“N-No, she is at work, do you need something?” she shifted her gaze to his long arms. They looked strong and firm.
“Yeah actually, I called her earlier and left some messages but she hasn’t replied any of them so I figured I would stop by and pick up the files myself-” He paused. “Can I come in?”
“Oh! Of course, sorry I just wasn’t expecting anyone by this time.” She invited him in and locked the door trying hard not to stare.
“Is Cataleya home?” he asked helping himself to a cup of water from the fridge. Reya figured he had probably been here a couple of times to know his way around.
“No she isn’t. She was called from work, it was an emergency otherwise she would be home today since-”
“She is free on Tuesdays.” He completed for her. “I should check for the files, excuse me” He went inside.
Areya watched his back frame as he left and bit her lip in frustration. She wasn’t thinking straight, he was confusing her…he confused her. On a normal day, she wouldn’t let a stranger into the house without calling someone. But he didn’t seem like a stranger after all she had seen him with Sita at the hospital and apparently he knew cataleya. Strangely, she felt at ease with him. She didn’t deny the fact that she was attracted to him, but it didn’t make sense to her cos he was unusually familiar. How come Sita never mentioned or talked about him? Was he a colleague at work or a relative?
“Didn’t find anything.” His deep voice echoed behind her and she turned. He looked tired.
“Do you need it urgently? Here, check these ones.” She gave him a big folder. “She keeps some work items here.” She said hoping to get more info about what he was looking for.
He looked from her to the files and back to her. His gaze settled on her eyes.
“Forgive my manners; I’m Damon…Damon Scott.” He extended his hand.
“Areya, Areya Philips.” She didn’t shake his hand and pretended to move away quickly so it didn’t seem awkward. She was literarily melting by mere looking at him, she didn’t exactly think establishing a physical contact was going to help matters.
“Nice to meet you.” He continued with his search. If he was offended by her gesture, he didn’t show. He opened the folder and went through the files one after the other. He looked up at her “You remember me right?”
“Are you kidding? I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I saw you at the hospital the other day” she wanted to say, but instead she just said “sure”
“Good, it’s really nice to see you well again all smiles on your pretty face. Not everyone gets a second chance.”
She tried not to blush
“So would you call her and tell her you didn’t see it or should I tell her when she gets back?” she changed the subject.
“Nah…I would call her myself, thanks.”
She nodded and sat on one of the couches, pretending to flip through a magazine. He returned the files to her after few minutes and moved to the kitchenette to wash the cup.
“You know,” He spoke from the kitchen. “You are going to get really better. I mean, I understand how you feel but soon everything would begin to fall into place and after a while it wouldn’t bother you as much. So you just gotta look past it and focus on the good stuff.” He said as he approached the living room where she was seated. He wiped his hands with a napkin on the dining table. Reya shot up an eyebrow, dropped the magazine and turned to him.
“Yeah, it’s easy to say but until you’ve experienced some sort of memory loss, I don’t think you can possibly understand what I’m going through.” She replied with an edge in her tone.
He grinned “That’s very true, no other person can understand.” He said reassuringly. “Anyway, it was good meeting you again Ree, tell Leya I stopped by.
He called her ‘Ree’, there was only one other person who called her that but she couldn’t remember who. Well, there was only one way to find out.
“Damon…” It was the first time she mentioned his name and it felt good. “Have we met before?” She gave him a nervous smile. He looked puzzled.
“Like before now” she added.
“Y-Yeah I think so. I’ve seen you once or twice. Sita introduced you as her best friend but then I got transferred back to my old place. She was pretty bummed about your accident you know; it was very hard for everyone actually. It made her put so many things on hold especially the wedding plans cos she wasn’t feeling up to it so we kinda postponed it…”
Sita wasn’t listening again. She felt slightly disappointed that they were not acquainted, According to him; they had met before so the feeling of familiarity wasn’t so strange. He had probably done something really extraordinary to have an effect like this. Maybe he caught my fall or saved me from some dementors or the evil queen. She grinned at her silliness. Sita had been pretty upset about the accident, she could imagine what she would have felt if the situation was reversed. She even had to put the wedding plans on hol-
“Wait, what wedding?” She blurted out suddenly realizing what he had been saying.
“The wedding…our wedding” He narrowed his eyes and shifted his head.
“Our wedding?” She wasn’t sure she heard right.
“Yeah. You know, wedding...two people getting married, an altar… A church wedding… probably a bachelorette part-”
“I-I get it! I know what a wedding is.” She snapped, “Who is getting married?”
He knew he had said something wrong
“Sita and I… in six months time, she didn’t tell you?” ………….
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