Chapter Text
- The Accident, the Aftermath
She had always hated hospitals—even going to the doctor’s office for a simple check-up had her anxious beyond rationality, her left knee bouncing and her fingers tapping against the plasticky veneer on the car door.
Whose car was that? She was in the passenger seat. Who was driving?
The smell of sterility was sharp against her hardly-waking senses, and the keen odor of isopropyl alcohol made her wince. By the time she had fully opened her eyes, blinking once, twice, thrice, to rid the blurriness, an unfamiliar figure was already standing to his feet, calm and measured and stable as she only wished she could be, and pressing the call button.
“I’ll call the nurse,” he spoke, his tone somewhat abrupt but comforting enough to soften the flash of the fluorescent lights that flickered obnoxiously above her.
“Thank you, doctor,” she mumbled sleepily. A brief argumentative expression passed over him, and she worried that she had just committed a minor act of sexism against this, as far as she could tell, kind and attentive male nurse. His lip curled in a suppressed smile.
“Very funny. Should I be glad that you’ve managed to retain your sense of humor?”
“Have we met?”
The man paused. He froze, so strictly that she feared she was in a dream.
“Don’t joke like that.”
“Um… are you in one of my classes?”
His mouth, seemingly the only autonomous part of his body at that point, stiffened into a flat line until he was entirely unmoving. The only thing that managed to stir his attention was the entrance of the nurse and subsequent entrance of her blonde, swinging ponytail that now seemed too merry for the atmosphere.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” the nurse intoned as she busied herself with measuring vitals and tugging at tubes—things that had always made y/n incredibly nervous and were now happening to her very own body. It was enough to make her visibly flinch, curling up to the flattened white pillow that sulked pitifully under her stiff neck.
Oh. She was in pain, primarily down her spine and all around her head, but her entire body was sore, as though she’d been flattened by a steamroller in an old Tom and Jerry cartoon.
“How are we feeling?”
“Uh—I’m sure I’ve been better,” y/n spoke, unsure of what else to say. “What happened?”
The nurse’s eyes flickered upwards to glance at the room’s third occupant, whose gaze had all but turned to stone, standing like a tin soldier at y/n’s bedside. An understanding passed between them that y/n couldn’t grasp.
She felt like crying, and she was sure she was going to do it at any moment. Her eyes were swollen with the pressure of utter confusion that had steadily built in her since the moment she woke up in a hospital bed with a stranger beside her, her family nowhere in sight and no idea of what had landed her in such a terrible circumstance.
“Can I talk to my parents, please?” she blubbered pitifully like a wanting child.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” the nurse began, which brought on an onslaught of fresh tears. “You’ll need to talk with the doctor first. I’ll page him. If you’ll follow me, Mr. Ackerman—”
The man—Mr. Ackerman, obviously—followed the nurse silently through the open door, leaving y/n to collapse in a weeping mass of bedsheets. Unbeknownst to her, Mr. Ackerman was tearing up, too, just beyond the heavy wooden door.
Mr. Ackerman was, as it turned out, her roommate Levi, who would henceforth be in charge of facilitating both her physical and mental recovery while she was at home—home, here meaning the apartment she apparently co-owned with Mr. Ackerman. He seemed agitated as he pulled to a stop at a bustling red light. His lithe fingers gripped the wheel with such ferocity that she feared he would leave claw marks in his nice black interior.
He wasn’t filthy rich, but he seemed to have a comfortable income. She could only guess at what he did for a living. Asking questions to a man who appeared to be trying to annihilate all traffic with only the malicious gleam in his eyes did not seem like the prudent approach at the moment.
“It’s always busy at this time,” she mumbled absentmindedly, drawing a surprised expression from Levi. “This is the route I take when I drive to class.”
“I… see.” He cleared his throat, pondering something weighty before he spoke again. “What are your current classes?”
“I have Classical Art History and Early Ancient Mythology on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then on the other days, I have Medieval Religion, History of European Monarchy, and History of Revolution.”
He smiled, muttering “History of Revolution,” with a fond, familiar look in his eyes.
“Are you interested in history?”
“I—yes, but not as much as you. I prefer literature,” he replied, his words stiff as though reciting his own characteristics from a script. It was unnatural for him to talk to her this way, and he was obviously uncomfortable, but she didn’t know what to do, or how she could help. She wanted to apologize, but as far as she knew, she didn’t have anything to apologize for.
Retrograde amnesia was not on her to-do list, and yet, a nice doctor had sat her down and told her that, as a result of a particularly hairy car accident involving an intoxicated driver and a light pole, y/n had lost about seven years of her life. She could get it back, with a whole lot of patience and no small amount of pure luck.
“The best thing you can do for her is make her at home. Take her through her daily routine, visit familiar places on occasion. Simple sense memory might be the most powerful reminder for her,” the doctor had told Levi, who had slowly nodded with a far-off look in his eye, as though he had been the one to lose his memory.
So, while she was taking a hard afternoon nap in her hospital bed, he had driven home above the speed limit, strategically hid potentially emotionally confusing items from around the apartment, and drove back without a single coherent thought running through his brain the entire time.
They hadn’t so much as passed each other on the street seven years ago, much less lived together, which was made evident by her every action. Where she once had nothing but comfortable posture in his presence, she now sat stiff and polite and proper in his passenger seat as though she hadn’t passed out asleep in that very seat during late night drives, not even stirring when he delicately lifted her out of his car and carried her inside.
How could be possibly make her at home when she thought her home was miles away, in her parents’ house—her parents, whom she hadn’t spoken to in years. When she had asked for them, teary-eyed and begging like a lost child, he had nearly lost himself. It was all he could do to keep from running away and finding some locked closet to hide in so he could break down in peace. Of course, the one person he could turn to with the full spectrum of his emotion had been effaced of his entire existence.
A lot of her personality was still the same, save for that which had changed since she had left her parents’ house. Living with them, she had moved strangely through the world with an innate nervous energy and undue politeness for even the most abrasive people she encountered. He knew her now as brilliant, thoughtful, witty—she was still unobtrusive and kindhearted, but she had grown in her own confidence. Since they had met, with his help and encouragement in part but largely of her own determination, she had become so…
He couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought.
For all intents and purposes, y/n was the stranger in his passenger seat, and he was wholly unequipped to be her live-in nurse. But he had vowed to himself and to her that he would do all within his power to keep her safe and healthy and happy, and he’d be damned if he didn’t follow through on his word, whether or not she remembered that he’d made the promise at all.
He had, not even 48 hours prior, gotten the worst phone call of his life, rushed to the hospital, learned that the person dearest to him had been in a life-threatening accident, and then, on top of all of that, he had been forgotten entirely. It was among the top contenders for the worst 48 hours of his life, and he did not make that comparison lightly.
He hoped all the while that perhaps, by some miracle, her memory would all come crashing down on her the second she walked in through the doorway to their apartment. By that point, regardless of how irritated he may be, he would have gladly accepted the revelation that the whole thing was an ill-meaning prank on him. Such ideas were dashed immediately upon entering the apartment, when he had to show her where the bathroom was, and when she subsequently remarked upon the nice shade of blue on the walls.
“Thank you,” he spoke solemnly. “You were the one to pick it out, though.”
“Oh, I have good taste. I’m surprised the landlord let us paint the bathroom.”
“You picked a fight with him. He told you that our contract forbade us from altering the paint color, but you spent hours searching through the contract and found nothing about it. You threatened to report him for malpractice, and he finally gave in.”
“I—damn. Good for me.”
He chuckled at the sight of her, so in awe of her own willpower, and in that moment of reminiscence, he swore he saw a flicker of the brilliance he knew of her, but it was gone before he could properly address it.
When she entered the bathroom, she first took stock of her appearance in the mirror. She hadn’t necessarily meant to, but it had shocked her somewhat. She didn’t look too astoundingly different, just a bit more mature, and with a different hairstyle than she was used to.
Based on her conversation with Levi, she was sure that she had picked an excellent roommate, if not a somewhat stiff and laconic one. He had mentioned that he was interested in literature, and she had every intention of discussing that with him as soon as she got the chance. His conversation was pleasant enough, and he seemed intelligent, even having a few moments of dry humor that she particularly appreciated.
Handsome, too, she thought, but she wasn’t prepared to admit that, not when she had just met the man not 24 hours ago. Well, she had met him at some point within the last seven years, but not to her knowledge.
When she reemerged, he was setting a few utensils on the kitchen table. She hadn’t thought much about food, but the sudden idea of it was tantalizing. She wondered if her taste buds had changed in the last seven years, errantly hoping that she hadn’t developed a taste for cauliflower. She couldn’t respect herself in that case.
“Our favorite thing to eat when we don’t want to cook is takeout from the sushi restaurant a few blocks down. I hope you don’t mind that I ordered your usual.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
She didn’t much care for sushi, but she was loath to let him know that after he had so graciously welcomed her into his—their?—home and spent his money on dinner. When the delivery finally arrived, she was delighted to find that he had ordered her noodles instead. He briefly relished the light in her eyes, the reflection of her realization that he knew her. He knew her, even if she didn’t know herself, and he was here to care for her, even if she never fully recovered.
“So what do you do for a living, Levi?” she asked between bites, waiting until her food was only mostly chewed before eating. It was a habit he knew quite well, and one he had admonished her for enough that she should know better.
“I own a bookstore downtown.”
“Really? What’s it called? I’ve probably been there before.”
“The Crow’s Nest.”
Her eyebrows shot up, eyes gleaming brightly with wonder. Yes, she had chosen the exact right roommate.
“Oh, I love the Crow’s Nest. I can’t believe I haven’t seen you there before. Or—well, I have, I guess, but I don’t… I don’t remember. Is that where we met?”
“Yes, it is. I haven’t always been the owner,” he explained as he finished the last of his own meal and neatly began collecting his utensils with all the diligence of a waiter at a fine restaurant. “I inherited it from my uncle.”
My uncle, who used the place as a front for his illegal side-businesses, he conveniently omitted, choosing to save the more salacious details of his past for a different conversation. After all, Levi had cleared all the rabble out from the backrooms himself and turned the place into a well-ordered and fully-legal establishment that made more than enough money to keep itself afloat without the addition of nefarious activity.
“I’ve bought a lot of my used books there over the years. You have a lot of books that have handwritten notes in the margins.”
“Yes, you do like those,” he mused to himself before abruptly standing, excusing himself, and disappearing into his bedroom before reemerging with a large, well-loved novel held reverently in his hands. “You bought this book the day we met.”
“That makes sense. This is my favorite book. And—oh. It’s in the original French. I don’t even speak French.”
He watched her fingers carefully as they drifted across the crinkled pages, tracing the lines of ink that some poor French student had scribbled in the margins in frustration. She was smiling, and she was radiant.
Please, let this be the thing that makes her remember.
“Do you speak French, by chance?”
“I do.”
“Really? I’m sure I’ve already asked you to read it with me a thousand times before. I won’t ask you to do it again.”
He wished that she would. When he extended his hand to take her plate from her, she offered to help him with the dishes, but he refused. She was essentially a guest in the apartment, after all, and he did not want her to miss a second of rediscovering that particular copy of Les Miserables, the one that had put a light in her eyes and had eventually led to the happiest moments of his life.
“If you’re feeling up to it, we could take a trip to the bookstore tomorrow. We can go after closing time, if that might make it less overwhelming.”
“Yes,” she replied so quickly that she embarrassed herself. “Yes, I would love to visit my favorite used bookstore after hours. I mean, I hate to take advantage of you, but if you’re offering.”
He studied her for a moment, and she wondered if she had said the wrong thing. It was odd, speaking to someone who knew her so well yet she didn’t know at all. She couldn’t help but think that it was something like meeting God—all sorts of questions begging to be asked of him, and nothing that he need ask of her. If she misspoke, would he get angry, simply because she didn’t know how she was meant to act in his presence?
Her fears were quelled when his expression turned fond and a passing smile lifted his features.
“Living in my apartment, eating my food, exploiting my connections. You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
She was smiling, and she was radiant, and he was lost.