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Zoë Hange did not watch a lot of television. She had never had the time, but since the accident, she had watched what felt like a thousand of them.
It was the stop sign at the intersection of Everguard and Somna Road. It was always half in shadow because of the tree. Zoë had never failed to warn Levi about it, but the one day she’d forgotten to, he’d forgotten, too.
The questions had been endless at the hospital. T-boned by a pickup truck that sent Levi’s car flying and all they could do was ask Zoë over and over, “Do you think maybe he did it on purpose?”
She tried not to cry because Levi hated it when she cried, and she cared what he thought of her about half the time. But she cried anyway when Petra came to see her. Petra smoothed her hair down and said it would be okay…and it was—for her.
But things were different for Levi.
The truck had hit his side of the car, after all. She’d been able to crawl out of the broken windshield, but they’d had to get the Jaws of Life to get Levi out, and even then he was in bad shape, blood all over his slack-jawed face. She’d thought he was dead—had fought the medical team from the moment they arrived until they’d taken care of him.
If this situation were a movie and not reality, Zoë later thought, then her forgetting to remind Levi of the stop sign would have been a major plot point. She’d feel guilty about it for the rest of the film. She’d apologize toward the end, he’d forgive her, and they’d probably make out afterward, like it had never even mattered at all.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about the stop sign.
“He wasn’t paying attention,” was what she said.
Levi was the movie buff. He had been an introvert as long as Zoë had known him—he preferred sitting inside watching his old VHS tapes or his DVDs or browsing endlessly through the choices on Netflix to anything else.
After Zoë was released from the hospital, she took up space in Levi’s hospital room every chance she had, for as long as they’d let her.
They weren’t married.
She lied and said they were engaged.
The staff took pity on her. Someone laughed and said While You Were Sleeping. Zoë found it and watched it with Levi.
It wasn’t like While You Were Sleeping at all.
She knew Levi. Had known him for ages and ages and years and years and no, they weren’t married, and no, they weren’t engaged, and no, they weren’t even dating, but he meant so many things to her that it wasn’t a damn thing like a film about a girl who lied to see a guy she didn’t even know, a guy she’d seen in passing, a guy who, in reality, meant absolutely nothing to her.
Zoë liked the film, though—liked that the guy in the coma wasn’t the one for the female lead. Liked that it was the brother instead.
While You Were Sleeping was the first movie she watched with Levi in the hospital. After that there were what seemed like a thousand others. War films, documentaries, cartoons, dramas, comedies. Then she found romantic comedies, romances—films about lovers across time, across space, across an apartment complex.
They didn’t really remind her anything of Levi.
Levi was not the sort of man that movies liked to use as a lead. He was short and he always looked exhausted and he almost never smiled. He wasn’t very friendly, either, and he was hard to understand. He had few friends. In movies, characters who acted like Levi were usually the bad guys.
Zoë hated that about films.
But, she thought, if this were a movie, if they were living a movie, Levi would wake up. He’d wake up and he’d be happy to see her and everything would be just fine and they’d probably really actually for-serious get married or something. That was the kind of crap that happened in movies.
But when Levi did wake up, twenty-seven days after the accident, he panicked.
She was watching The Iron Giant when he woke up. She’d seen it three times already in the hospital because it was Levi’s favorite movie and she hoped he’d wake up if she watched it enough times.
He’d never said it was his favorite, but the VHS case was worn down and almost impossible to read, so she had made an assumption.
But Levi woke up during and even now, it orbits overhead; boop, boop, boop, and he tore at his IV.
He was so confused and afraid that for a moment, Zoë was afraid he would begin to cry.
She had never before in her life seen him like that.
And his words, when he finally did speak, were hoarse and trembling like a wobbly kitten:
“Where the fuck am I? Who the fuck are you?”
If this were a movie then the amnesia would be another plot point, resolved in under two hours of film time, though for the characters Zoë felt confident in the idea that it would take at least a week.
But two weeks passed, and then three, and Levi had not remembered her at all.
There were brief flashes of what she thought were memory, what she hoped were memories seeping back into him, but she was wrong.
He didn’t remember her at all.
He didn’t remember the bus stop, didn’t remember how she’d scooted over on the bus seat and made a face at him like, Ew, this guy is going to sit with me ew-ew-ew; hedidn’t remember saying, “For God’s sake shitty-glasses, there’s nowhere else to sit on this godforsaken bus.”
He didn’t remember how she’d threatened to clobber him with her calculus book, or the time they’d gotten caught in the rain and she’d gotten a respiratory infection; he didn’t remember a great many things.
He only barely remembered Petra and Auruo—but the recognition there was dim at best. Auruo’s shoulders sagged when Levi couldn’t remember his name. Petra cried and held onto Auruo’s hand like maybe she thought that would make it more tolerable a situation.
“Six years?” the doctors suggested. “I think he’s forgotten the last six or so years.”
Just in time to forget her.
It wasn’t his fault. She didn’t blame him.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I lied about being engaged. We’re not engaged. We’re not even dating. I only said it so I could stay here whenever I wanted, so I could make sure that you were okay.”
He paused, eyes focused on the ceiling.
“That reminds me of something,” he said, but he didn’t seem to be able to remember what.
She knew.
It reminded him of a movie.
While You Were Sleeping. But it was nothing like that.
Weeks passed, and Levi still did not remember.
If this were a movie, she thought day after day after day, he’d suddenly remember. I’d touch his hand and heart with one brush of my fingertips and he’d remember everything.
But he didn’t.
Because it wasn’t a movie.
Some things came back to him.
Her respiratory infection, he remembered, but his recollection was so abstract it was painful.
“Does he have any family? Anyone?” the doctor’s asked. “He doesn’t need to stay in the hospital anymore.”
“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. She’d known him six years and he’d hardly told her anything about himself. “I don’t think so. I don’t think he has anyone.”
Except me, she thought, but he didn’t even really remember her, so she wasn’t sure if she counted anymore.
Zoë had missed so many days at work that her job was in danger.
If Levi’s accident and subsequent amnesia were plot points in a movie, her boss would take pity on her, would give her as much time off as she needed.
But her boss told her that if she didn’t get back to work by the following Monday, he’d have to fire her. “Forty-six days is too much, Zoë, I’m sorry. You’re lucky your coworkers donated a few of their vacation days, or you’d have been out of a job three weeks ago.”
“What’s going to happen to him?” she asked the doctors. “Where’s he going to go? What’s he going to do?”
If this were a movie, she told herself, Levi would move in with her and she’d take care of him, help him remember.
He did move in, but he was temperamental and tired and he had forgotten a lot more than just her. She was selfish to only be thinking of herself.
He couldn’t remember credit card numbers, the address of his dentist, how to operate a forklift even though he’d taken the class and been certified only two years ago and had, until the accident, worked in a warehouse driving one for a living.
Some things came back to him, but it was slow, and Zoë couldn’t wait for it all. She had too much work to do. She had her own life.
She couldn’t take care of Levi because he was tired of being taken care of and he wanted to live his own goddamned life—not her idea of what his life was and should continue to be.
“Look,” he said one night, “I’m not the same guy anymore. I don’t even know who that guy was, anymore.”
And Zoë thought, if this were a movie, he would not say something like that.
He also wouldn’t walk out of her apartment and down four flights of stairs. He wouldn’t just leave—
Like she didn’t even matter at all to him anymore.
But he had, and she supposed that…maybe she didn’t mean anything to him.
How could she?
He didn’t even remember her.
Almost two years later he came into her workplace.
She had no idea how he managed to get in; you had to have an ID badge and clearance and twenty-thousand other things that meant he should not have been able to be there, but he was.
He was holding onto a worn VHS tape.
He said, “I remember you now, Zoë.”
And she said, “Oh,” because she didn’t know what else to say.
“Sorry,” he offered.
“It’s okay.”
Was it okay? The look in his eyes said it wasn’t. And if it were all a big stupid movie, the two years they’d only barely seen one another would be nothing, a gap easily bridged by love or friendship or something like that, right?
Levi shrugged. “I remember you now,” he repeated. “You stayed up with me and you commented on every movie and it was fucking annoying and it was like I was trapped there. Couldn’t even tell you not to talk over the good parts.”
She laughed.
Levi almost smiled.
“Thanks,” he said.
For what? she wanted to ask. But it was probably for sticking around.
If this was an ending to a movie, she’d probably ask him to get coffee, and he’d say yes, and they’d reconnect, fall in love, get married and have no kids or five kids or a big over-the-top wedding or something-something-something.
But it wasn’t a movie.
“You’re welcome,” she said, and gave him a smile.
He shrugged, said, “Bye,” and then left.
Forty seconds later security was there. “Ma’am? Ma’am?”
And she said, “It’s fine, I didn’t see anyone.”
But when she looked down, on the corner of her desk was Levi’s old copy of The Iron Giant. His favorite movie.
And if this were a movie, that VHS tape would bring them back together. But Zoë Hange took it home with her, watched it one last time, and then put it on her shelf. She left it there, where it gathered dust.
When people asked about it—important businessmen, colleagues from the research lab, visiting professors she had over for dinner—she said, “It’s a movie.”
And when they laughed, she added, “I once had a good friend who got amnesia and forgot all about me.”
The inevitable response was always given with a smile: “That sounds straight out of a movie, Dr. Hange.”
People expected the happy ending.
People thought that extraordinary events worked in real life like they did in the movies. It was easy to romanticize things like amnesia when they didn’t happen to you, when you had no way of experiencing the actual hurt such events oftentimes provided.
There was only ever one way to reply to a comment like that: “It was nothing like a movie.”