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When you bring Dave home from the hospital, he still doesn’t remember who you are. He’s been at the hospital for months while his physical injuries healed, and now that they say he’s more or less restored, they can no longer justify keeping him there. They need the room for other patients.
Except, contrary to what the doctors say, Dave is not restored. The most important part of Dave, the part that makes him Dave, is still broken.
”It’s a miracle that he even survived,” the doctors tell you. An even greater miracle that he has actually recovered as much as he has. There was no way to save his left eye, and he still walks with a limp, but other than that and a long and jagged scar on the back of his neck, he’s able to walk and move around. Considering the list of injuries that Dave’d had when he was taken to the ICU, you suppose that this kind of physical recovery is somewhat of a miracle.
No one knows exactly what happened to him before he was fished out of the water by the coastguards on that stormy day. And the only person who could tell you is Dave. And Dave doesn’t remember. Dave doesn’t even recognize his own face in the mirror anymore.
You have demanded answers from the doctors, but they have none to give.
”It’s impossible to tell at this point,” they’ve told you, over and over again, ”Your husband has suffered significant trauma to his brain. Right now, there’s no telling how much of his memory he’ll be able to recover.”
You continue to ask them, every time you bring Dave over for his doctor’s appointments, but the answer is always the same. No one knows.
”It’s a miracle,” they keep telling you, but sometimes… sometimes it feels more like a curse. To have your husband back, except it’s not actually him. It’s a stranger in his body and every time you see him, you’re reminded of all the parts that are missing. It’s like living with a ghost.
When you’d married, you had promised to be by his side in sickness and in health, but sometimes it feels like it’s killing you to stay. You’ve thought about arranging for him to stay somewhere else and hate yourself for even considering it. You had always pictured that your relationship would be sturdy enough to handle anything, and it feels like you’re betraying Dave by not being strong enough to handle this. Sometimes you try and justify your thoughts by thinking that maybe Dave would be happier somewhere else? These living arrangements have got to be tough for him too.
Then you remember the scared look on Dave’s face when the doctors had told him that he had to leave, the way his remaining eye had immediately turned to look at you and the way his shoulders had relaxed when you asked if you could take him home, and you realize that you will never be able to turn him away. Dave trusted you, even if he had no memory of who you were. Just two matching gold rings signaling that you belonged.
You catch him looking at those rings sometimes, both the one on his own finger and the one on yours, as if they hold the answers to all the world’s questions. You have no idea what he’s thinking. Dave was always a difficult man to read, but now it is downright impossible.
You catch yourself staring at your ring too sometimes. Is it still a marriage when one of the parts aren’t there anymore? Are you a widow? It feels wrong to even think that word when Dave is sitting on the living room couch downstairs, even if you’re not really sure it’s still Dave.
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Dave is polite and quiet to live with. He watches the news a lot, trying to make sense of the world. He has a small notebook where he writes things down. You have no idea what he writes in it, but you know he brings it to his therapist at the hospital. Dave can remember facts and numbers even if he can’t remember the faces of his daughters. You catch him standing in Alice’s room one day, in front of a map you had helped her make, quizzing himself on the names of the different states. He looks embarrassed when he notices you, but you assure him that it’s fine.
The girls are staying with your parents. You go to see them as often as you can. It’s not the escape you had hoped it would be. You have told Molly and Alice that their dad is sick, which is why you need to take care of him and they need to stay with grandma and grandpa. They understand this but they still tell you how much they miss him, and every time you come over they ask when they can come home. You feel like you’re being torn in two. When Alice hands you a card with a big wonky heart on it that says, ”Please get better, Daddy! We miss you!” you barely manage to hold it together until you get downstairs and find your dad in the garage. Then you cry in his arms like you are a little girl again.
Sometimes you think you can see a spark of the old Dave. Like when they show one of his favorite movies on TV and you can tell how much he loves it, or when he accidentally grabs your cup of morning coffee and the coffee with milk makes him scrunch up his face like it’s the foulest thing he’s ever tasted. It’s the exact same face he’s made so many times over the years you’ve been together, when mugs have gotten mixed up on previous mornings.
Other times, he’s a complete stranger. Like the way he suddenly really appreciates purple, despite always having claimed that it’s an overly flashy color, or the way you sometimes hear him sing in the shower, something he wouldn’t have been caught dead doing in the past. You and the girls have tried to get him to sing so many times before and he’s refused. Now he’s singing and it feels like a knife to the heart because it’s like the hope of getting your Dave back drifts further away with each note that carries through the bathroom door.
You sleep alone in the big bed and Dave sleeps in the guestroom. Every night, you hug his pillow close and long desperately for the nights when you could hold him in your arms. Your sheets have stopped smelling like him and when you help change Dave’s sheets in the guestroom you sometimes find yourself in the laundry room afterwards, with your nose buried deep in his sheets and tears streaming down your cheeks. The fabric muffles the sound of your ragged breathing.
You try and keep it all together when Dave is close by. He doesn’t deserve the burden of your tears. It’s not his fault and you don’t want him to feel like you blame him for this situation. So you save your crying for when he’s not around. When he’s at the hospital, when you’re in the shower, or during the night when you can hide your face in the pillow. You don’t want him to see your pain.
Then, one evening, he comes home from a run and catches you having a breakdown in the kitchen. You’re in your pajamas, sitting on the floor behind the kitchen counter, with your face buried in your arms and a picture of all four members of your family clutched tightly in your hand. You’re crying so hard that you’re shaking.
It’s the first time he touches you since he came back. Sitting down next to you, he wraps you up in a careful hug and you instantly melt against him. Part of you know that you should pull yourself together, but you can’t. It hurts too much.
”Dave,” you sob, dropping the picture of your smiling family, and gripping the fabric on his shirt in your fists.
Dave doesn’t say anything. He knows that it’s not really him your hugging and that speaking would shatter the fragile illusion that he’s another version of himself. Instead, he just rubs slow circles on your back while you cry and stain his shoulder with your tears.
You have no idea how long you sit there. Your tears have long since run dry and it’s fully dark outside when you eventually pull back. You feel weak as a baby bird and your eyes are red and puffy. Dave looks tired too.
”Come,” he says and helps you stand. He guides you upstairs and into the bedroom where he tucks you into bed. It’s on his old side of the bed and you try not to read too much into it.
The light from the streetlamp outside illuminates his face just enough in the dark room. He’s still so incredibly beautiful.
”Stay,” you beg him, voice weak and hopeful. He reaches for your hand but stops just before your fingers can touch.
”I can’t,” he whispers and you hear the way his voice breaks at the words.
He leaves the room and takes another piece of your shattered heart with him. Dave would have stayed.
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The next morning, you can’t bring yourself to even get out of bed. You hear Dave move around downstairs but you can’t go down and talk to him. Not when it’s not him. You pick up your phone to check the time. 10 am. Not terribly late for a Sunday, even if it’s late for you. You think you can probably get away with hiding up here for a little longer before you have to go downstairs and face him.
But then you smell it. At first you think you’re imagining it but no, it’s definitely there. It’s the smell of apologies and ”I love you”s. It’s the smell of pancakes.