19th of February, 2025

He woke up with no memory, but for an instant, as his eyes opened, he remembered being in his mother’s womb. He remembered safety, but not when the dark warmth was replaced with sterile fluorescents, and the smell of oranges—a smell of his childhood—had been replaced with the sting of antiseptics.

Somewhere near him a machine beeped, matching his heartbeat. He looked around, cold, thousands of little tubes protruding his skin. His clothes were gone, replaced by a paper-thin “gown”.

A doctor walked in, checked the machines, wrote something down, but the man was already falling into a deep slumber, and before the doctor could ask anything, he was asleep again.

He woke up the next morning with the doctor’s face close to his.

“The Doe’s awake,” the doctor beckoned to a nurse.

The man groaned and rubbed a hand across his face. There was a pounding in his temple, and his hair felt somewhat matted near the back of his head. He touched it, only to realize there was a bandage all around his forehead. The doctor cracked a half-smile at him.

“Finally, you’re up. Good news, your vitals are stable” he said, writing something down on his clipboard. “We’re gonna do a really quick test, alright? Can you follow my finger with your eyes?”

The doctor moved in close and moved his finger from left to right.

“Good,” whispered the doctor. “Alright, squeeze my hand, please,” he said, holding out his hand. The man grabbed it and released all the tension in his mind onto the doctor.

“You’re strong… Good. You want water, young man?”

The man nodded. Or young man. He didn’t know. He looked at the glass doors and locked eyes with his fleeting reflection. He was young, vulnerable enough to look boyish.

The doctor called a nurse, who then came back with a paper cup and a straw. She handed it to him, and he took some sips of water, then pulled it out and drank properly. One thing he remembered: He didn’t like straws.

“Okay, son. You’ve got a head injury, but you’re stable. We’ve been monitoring you for a while now. There was no ID on you, so we already alerted the police and a social worker. Do you know your name?”

The man stared, dumbfounded, already scouring through his mind to make space for the information he had gotten and the one he should be able to grant. What was his name? He was interrupted when a woman burst into the main office, he could see through the glass. She had red hair and demanded to see her son. Her voice was muffled but desperate; “Simon Ogilvy, please, tell me he’s in here.”

Maybe this is it, he thought. Maybe that’s my mother and I’m the son she’s looking for and I can get out of here—but the man’s hair was black, and the receptionist asked the woman to describe her son. “Lots of freckles, red hair like mine…,” all hope was gone.

“I don’t know my name,” he told the doctor, voice low.

“Alright,” he whispered back.

The man looked at the doctor’s nameplate. “Dr. Walker, do you know why I’m here?”

“Ah, so you can read. That’s a good sign,” he muttered, taking more notes. “What was your question?”

“Why am I here?” he said, more impatient.

“Well, you were found near an accident. There was an explosion. You got hurt pretty badly, but we’re taking care of you. Right now, I need to know what you remember.”

And the man said: “Nothing.”

The next few days were spent in a sleepy haze between dreams and reality. Small details began to seep into his mind. He remembered having slammed a door, having left the stench of beer behind him. A woman’s voice shouted at him. A red carpeted corridor, the biting cold outside the building. He remembered his hand in his pocket, and the soft crinkling of paper on his fingers. He remembered it clearly: There was a note in his pocket.

He fought to keep the memory alive, but it slipped away. There was the beeping again. The glass doors slid open, revealing Dr. Walker.

“Morning, son. How are you feeling? Your head hurt?”

“Actually, it does,” he said, rubbing the back of his head, “but I can remember a thing or two.”

The doctor scribbled something down. “Good. Everything helps,” he paused. “You seem to be more talkative today.”

The man shrugged.

“Care to tell me what you remembered?” continued the doctor.

He looked at Dr. Walker. He didn’t think it was relevant to him. Even if he couldn’t remember the whole thing, it seemed as if it were private, felt like a part of something bigger.

“It’s stupid. Nothing to do with an accident,” he said, crossing his arms. The doctor nodded.

“I’ll be back soon. Tell me when you’re feeling better so we can get your fingerprint matched or photos taken. We still need to find your name, kid.”

The man grit his teeth. He didn’t know why, but being called a kid was the most insulting thing he had heard so far. He swallowed his anger. He had seen himself on the glass’ reflection. He wasn’t a boy, not exactly a man either. If he had to guess, he was somewhere between seventeen and twenty.

“I assume I had clothes on when you found me, Doc,” he said with an apprehensive edge.

“Of course you did.”

“I want them back.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” said Dr. Walker in a smooth voice. It was soothing, but the man didn’t want soothing. He rolled his eyes. Great, the tone they use for toddlers.

He scoffed. “Why not?”

“Protocol.”

“And that’s my problem because…?” The moment he said it he knew he had crossed a line, but he held his challenging tone out of spite.

Dr. Walker took a deep breath. “Is there something in your clothes that could help you?”

“I dunno, Doc. Definitely helps more than some acetaminophen.” The doctor gave him a look, the kind that puts people in their place. The man let out a breath and muttered, “Just the jacket. There’s something in the pocket.”

The doctor sighed. “The police are holding your clothes. They’re keeping them for evidence. For now I just need your fingerprint.”

Reluctantly, the man held out his hand, pressed ink on his finger, and printed it on paper.

It was two days before Dr. Walker came back. In those two days, the young man had done a lot of remembering. He remembered stupid, useless things, like eating oranges at funerals. Whose, he didn’t recall, but he was small, stupidly small, and hugged a black haired woman. She handed him another orange and walked away. He remembered fighting with that woman all the time, living with her, but he didn’t know who she was. He assumed it was a mother or an aunt. He also remembered her drunken face the very same day he hid a note in his jacket’s pocket.

He had looked at himself on the glass doors for hours. He tried to recall who gave him his subtly roman nose, his green eyes, whether it was his mother or his father. How had he gotten all those fresh cuts on his face? No nurse ever specified what happened. He figured he’d ask Dr. Walker. The doctor arrived at the room.

“You said there was something in the jacket, didn’t you?”

“I did. Why?”

“I thought it would be helpful for the police. Anyways, we found your name. Does the name,” he squinted at a paper, “Silas Hawke Dane mean anything to you?”

And upon hearing the name, memory flooded into his head.

The same black haired woman appeared again. He was fourteen, approximately.

“Silas. I told you to get ready hours ago,” she said. Her voice was icy cold like her hands.

“Not going,” he had said, not looking up from his computer. He had been coding a game, the lines of text blinking patiently up at him.

“Do not argue with me, boy. You’re coming to the party. Dress nicely.”

“I said I won’t. You don’t need me there. I’ll only be a nuisance.”

The woman walked into his room. She looked around at the messy bed, the circuit boards littering the boy’s desk, the walls devoid of the awards he’d hidden.

“This isn’t about you,” she said. “They need to see the genius I raised. Or do you want them to think of you as a slob?” she threatened. Her breath reeked of alcohol. The boy tensed. She was going to have a fit. He knew it. Whenever she drank and raised her voice, nothing good could happen. Still, out of the many things Silas had sacrificed to keep his mother neutral, he wasn’t going to be used as an object of praise instead of being treated as a person.

“Alana,” he started, closing his computer and leading her out of his room before she could break anything, “how about you go to the party and you talk about the awards, but I stay here.”

“You’re coming with me and that’s final.”

She did what she said she’d do, no matter how much her son objected, argued, or complained. He went to that party. He was flocked by old men in suits. He was dragged from one side to another, hoping Alana would do something stupid and humiliate herself. He would have liked to see that.

Dr. Walker expected an answer. None came. “I see. We’ll keep looking,” he said, beginning to leave.

“Wait–” Silas blurted out. “It is my name, can I leave now?”

“Right… Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Hawke. You still have to stay. Like I said, you were found near an explosion. You’re a person of interest, especially as you’ve recovered quickly. An officer might want your testimony.”

Person of interest. His breath quickened, betrayed by the monitor’s frantic beeping. He felt the pulse in every cut, every wound, every healing scar on his face. He was a person of interest for an explosion, one he didn’t even know happened, and still, without knowing anything, he was going to be interrogated.

“Dr. Walker,” Silas said, his voice sharpening. “I don’t know what happened. I’ve asked you before, so tell me. Tell me, Doctor. What happened to me?” he shouted.

“Listen, Silas. I need you to calm down and then we can talk. It’s a lot to process, alright, boy?”

“Don’t call me boy.”

Dr. Walker put some space between him and the patient, then turned to a passing nurse. “Cheryl, bring Jo and some others, please,” he whispered. “Patient showing verbal aggression. Tell security to stand by.”

“I heard that, Walker,” said Silas in a voice he didn’t know he had. “All I want is to know what happened. Tell me what happened and I’ll calm down, but tell. Me.”

The doctor raised his hands, palms outwards. “Listen, kid. Your memory is bad as it is. If I say something and it’s out of order, it could make things worse. Alri–”

“Say ‘alright’ one more time, Walker. I dare you,” he threatened, pointing a finger at the doctor. Two nurses and an orderly blocked the door. Silas noticed immediately.

“I can’t remember how I got here,” as he yanked off the IV tube, “I could barely recall my name, and you–” ripping out the pulse monitor from his finger, “–you’re treating me like a criminal without even telling me why!”

“Mr. Hawke, our job is to keep you safe–”

“Yeah, nice and safe, strapped down like a lunatic,” he snapped, then winced as he pulled on a needle ingrained far too deep into his skin. It bled.

“We can’t let you leave until you’re stable, and we need you to cooperate in order to find out who did–”

“Well, I didn’t do anything!” Silas snapped, his voice trembling. He hadn’t meant to be so angry or sound so desperate. He feared the worst; that his memory had erased something crucial, something that said he had done something, even if he didn’t know what it was.

“Tell me I didn’t do anything…”

The doctor looked at him in pity. He didn’t know who he was looking at, a lost boy or a crazy man. He stayed quiet for a long moment. Then, he pulled up a chair next to the cot. “Listen, son. We didn’t plan to tell you yet, but…,” he trailed off, then scratched whatever he was going to say next. “There was a library. There was an explosion. Nobody knows why yet, but the police suspect it was a gas leak. From where they found you, and judging by your cuts, you were near the glass doors when the blast happened. There was no weapon, no bag, nothing. Just the clothes on your back,” said Dr. Walker. “You have no reason to think you’re guilty of any crime. The police just need your testimony.”

Silas swallowed, his mind stopping and resting for a moment. “So I didn’t…”

“No,” said the doctor firmly. “You didn’t set it off. You didn’t hurt anybody. In any case, you’re lucky. Most people don’t walk away from a blast like that. Take the boy next door, the one just down the corridor. He’s lost his leg and half his hearing. You have a second chance. Use it well.”

A second chance…

The words sat heavy in his chest. They followed him through recovery. Every time he pretended to feel sick to get more of the deliciously numbing medicine, the words echoed in his head. I don’t deserve this second chance, he thought.

The words followed him through visits from friends he didn’t know he had and from Alana, whom he met with disdain. They followed him when he dropped by to say hello to the boy next door. They sounded louder than ever when he saw the red haired boy’s mangled leg and burnt face. They were about the same age. Silas never visited the boy after that. Even if he didn’t care, if he had trained himself to pretend like he didn’t, it shook him to know he was lucky. He couldn’t face the mirror knowing his face was cut, not burnt like Simon Ogilvy’s.

Eventually, he was let out. The burning of Poe’s Society was left unsolved, and soon everyone forgot what had happened, but Silas still had the scars on his face and the image of Simon’s ruined leg to remember forever. He had the memory of the worst day, 19th of February, 2025, ingrained in his dreams.

“I am sick of you,” he had said, matching his mother’s frigidity.

“You don’t get to be sick of me, Silas. I’m your mother. Who provides for you? You can up and leave anytime you want, you’re old enough to do that–”

“Except I’m not,” he corrected her, frustrated. “This is what I mean. You don’t even know my age!”

Alana Hawke stood up from the couch, on which she had been drunkenly sprawled on just a second before. “I’d know if you weren’t cooped up in your room doing whatever it is you do–”

“Because you definitely don’t know what your son does to win the awards you love gloating about.”

“Don’t talk over me, boy,” she threatened, voice low. “I will not take this behaviour from you,” as she swayed unsteadily inches away from Silas’ face.

“You know what I can’t take? I can’t take washing you when you come back drunk every weekend as if I were the parent here–”

For a moment, something in Alana broke. For just a second, she looked lost. “You have no right to criticize me,” she whispered weakly to the boy already tugging his jacket on and slamming the apartment door in her face.

Silas stormed out of the tall white building with nothing but two layers of clothing to fend against the mid-February cold. It was a winter bent on keeping his hands numb. His breath came out in clouds drifting into the dark night sky. How he wished the apartment was a place he could call home. Maybe then he wouldn’t be out there walking alone like a stray dog.

He dug into the pocket of his leather jacket and took out a battered cigarette box. He shook one free and balanced it between his lips as he took out a Zippo from his back pocket. Looking up and down the avenue, he lit the cigarette and took a drag. He took the note out from his pocket, a bright pink Post-It. He had written something on it a week ago when he was more tired of Alana than ever before.

Dear future me: Still stuck with her? Pathetic. Light one up, take a walk. Pretend it helps.

Silas snorted at himself. He always walked when he was angry. He always ended up drifting to the library, even if he didn’t like reading. It was warm and often empty, a safe haven for frostbitten boys.

He crossed the street and turned a corner. Poe’s Society, in its lonely glory. He sighed, all the anger gone, and pushed the glass door.

For just a split second, he sensed something was wrong. For just a moment, he could smell the ghost of gas. His eyes flung open, he threw the lit cigarette to the ground…

This is all my fault.

Everything went quiet for a moment. For just an instant, the world held its breath. The silence before the blast.

A thousand shards of glass rained down on him. The reds contrasted the gleaming glass. For half a heartbeat, it was beautiful. If Silas hadn’t hit his head on the pavement, he would have said being blown into the air felt like flying.

If he hadn’t been unconscious, he would have seen his world go down in flames.