To My Rock, I Love You

One in eight thousand one hundred and twenty-three. Those are the odds of getting into a car accident. Even smaller are the odds of memory loss, and severe amnesia on the rarest of occasions. 

Everyone has a rock, something stable to keep them intact. It could be a boulder, and it could be a pebble, but something to rest your head on or rub between your fingers. Something that can always be counted on when the world’s worries become a little too intense. 

Well, I lost mine. 

She was in her bright-yellow Volkswagen bug, a two-seater with a little bit of pep. We were just on the phone, talking about the day’s events like we normally would. She was headed to our dorm from her job, as she did everyday, and I waited patiently for her, wrapped in my fluff-filled blanket. 

A silent twenty minutes passed, an eerie feel to the cold air. Twenty turned to thirty, and as more minutes ticked away on the clock, I became more and more unsettled. Her place of work was only ten minutes away, and she normally made it five. But maybe she was stopping to get food, or groceries, or she decided to take a short shopping spree before the local mall closed. 

I let an hour slip away before I went into a little panic. I left a message on her phone after calling three times, all being concluded with no answer on the other end. I texted her several times, and checked several times if she had read them. She had not. 

After another hour filled with hyperventilating sessions and panicked sobs, I got a call from her mother. I had time to settle down before she called me, reassuring my dramatic self that my rock was probably fine. 

By her mother’s tone, something bad definitely happened, but by her stable voice I could tell it was nothing too bad. 

“Hey, Anna,” she started with a low voice. She left her message short and concise. “Lea is in the Seattle Medical Center at the Virginia Mason Hospital. Bad crash. She’s okay, for now. They aren’t letting in visitors, just close family, but I am sure we can make an exception.”

“Yes, I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I wrapped up the phone call. My rock needed me as I had much needed her in the past. I quickly got to my car and drove to the medical center. 

Lea was laying in a bed, her head propped up on a pillow and several of her limbs tightly wrapped in casts and bandages. Scratches marked her skin that was left uncovered, and bruises were starting to form in the unscratched areas. I let tears stream down my face as I looked at my helpless friend unable to escape this awful fate. 

Lea’s mother, Mrs. Hayes, let me into the room as a family member lovingly, pulling me into a hug tightly. It was more to comfort her than to comfort me. I sat in a chair that was a little too soft, and I sunk into the cushions, too tired to adjust. Something about trauma and shock drains energy.

Hours passed, and the only people I saw was Mr. and Mrs. Hayes and a few doctors continually checking up on Lea’s vitals. Something about the chair I was sitting in really disgusted me. I felt like I was falling into a pit of despair, and the chair really emphasized the feeling. 

Something about it was comforting, though. It was like a nice, warm hug that would temporarily console me while my rock lay in the face of danger. The doctors said that she was in a coma and had experienced brain trauma. They also said they wouldn’t know what damages occurred until she woke from her state of unconsciousness, and they didn’t know when that time would come. So much for modern technology. 

I spent hours that dived into the night in the chair. My head laid on my hand as I tried to find some comfort in sleep. Sleep which was too impossible to find. I did like the constant, soft beep coming from the machines in the hospital room. Noises which assured me that Lea was okay.

I had met her five years ago when we were sophomores in high school. We met in chemistry, sat right next to each other. We both excelled and became excellent partners. At the end of sophomore year, our friendship was eternally sealed, all thanks to Ms. Gem’s seating chart. 

A chaos of movement awoke me, and it was no soft wake. I jumped from my chair, which shot me up due to the spring from the cushion. Doctors surrounded my friend, whose eyes were open wide. I saw her beam at her parents, and her eyes passed by me as she observed the room. She looked awfully confused as her parents assured her that she was okay. 

The doctors took her away for some tests before I could say hello to her. I didn’t want to interrupt the time with her parents, so I decided I would wait until she came back from the labs.

It was nine in the morning on a Wednesday, and my first college class started at two. I had time to wait. 

When she came back, she looked tired. Her eyes were weary and black bags rested below her eyelids. It was expected, the exhaustion, but the look on the doctors’ faces was not. Three came in single file, holding clipboards and binders unevenly filled with papers. 

The doctors went over to Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, which I was not against. They would probably inform me about what the doctor’s said afterward. While minutes passed and they discussed, Lea’s parents kept drifting their eyes over to me wearily. I started to get a little panicked, but what could be wrong when Lea was alive and recovering?

Mr. Hayes sat on the bedside next to his daughter, while Mrs. Hayes came over to me, walking in a slow, calm manner. She wore a smile, a smile which looked faded and tired. A mask which she was exhausted from wearing.

“Honey,” she said. “Honey” could not be any good.

I sunk into my chair, even more than its normal proximity, and I braced myself for the news.

“Lea had some brain damage, specifically in the hippocampus.”

I tried to remember what I had learned from biology. What are all of the brain areas and their functions? My racing mind couldn’t think of the purpose of the hippocampus. Sight? Smell? Emotions? Creativity? What could it be?

“From what the doctors said, it looks like Lea can’t remember anything from the past six years. When she got in her accident, her long-term memory storage was damaged.”

Memory, that was the function of the hippocampus.

All I could do was nod. I couldn’t form the words to say, nor could I push the words out of my vocal chords. I looked over at my friend, my best friend, who would look at me like I was a stranger. 

I didn’t know what to do, so without thinking, I left. I stood up from the soft chair, smiled at the Hayes family, and left the medical center. I drove home, leaving the radio off, windows up, and I just resonated in the soft sound of silence. 

Her case of memory loss didn’t mean we couldn’t still be friends, right? She still was my roommate, and we still had a few years of college to go. We could still make new memories, right?

Something about it didn’t feel right, though. The fact that this person, my rock, who I had poured so much onto, had forgotten everything about me. All of the secrets I had shared, all of the memories which we had created, had somehow drifted away into an unreachable abyss.  

I couldn’t quite understand; how can someone I have known for five years suddenly become so strange? Even though I still remembered all of the experiences we have been through, I still felt distant from her.

The blank stare she gave me at the hospital, the unknown look wondering who I was and why I was there, came back to my memory. She had no remembrance of who I was. My rock had eroded into the wind. It was weathered away by the river of forgetfulness. 

I got home and turned the car off. I remained in the vehicle for a long time, a time which felt like seconds to me.

How can friends, the best of friends, turn into strangers so quickly? No matter what I do, we can never be the same again. 

I had lost my rock.