Have We Met Before?

The hospital lobby smells like antiseptic and burned coffee. Ava sits on the edge of a vinyl chair that squeaks every time she shifts. Her hands tremble in her lap. She hasn’t stopped shaking since the phone call came.

The nurse had said he was stable. Alive. But something in her voice was too calm and too clinical, as if it was a warning to Ava that the man in Room 204 wouldn’t be the same one who’d left for the store two nights ago in the rain.

The door is ajar. Soft beeping pulses in the air like a second heartbeat. Inside, Noah sits propped against the pillows, his arm in a sling, his face stitched along the brow. The bruises are ugly shades of yellow and violet. His eyes are open.

She steps into the room like it might collapse beneath her. Slowly, carefully, as if her presence alone might disturb whatever fragile balance is holding the air together.

He turns his head at the sound of the door. His eyes settle on her face with a blankness that slices clean through her chest. He blinks. Then again. But there’s no flicker of recognition. No relief. No smile. Just the sterile, clinical calm of a man who’s never seen her before.

"Hi," she says, her voice barely more than a breath.

"Hi." His reply is hoarse, distant. Like a stranger answering a question on the street. “Are you the nurse?”

The words hit like a punch. She goes still. Something inside her fractures quietly and devastatingly. Her knees weaken. Her hands curl in on themselves at her sides, trying to hold the pieces of her together.

“No,” she whispers, and the word quivers in her throat. “It’s me. Ava.”

The silence that follows is thunderous.

He tilts his head, eyes narrowing as he studies her face. Like a stranger squinting at a blurry photograph, trying to force meaning into shapes he doesn’t recognize.

“I’m sorry…” he says, his voice tentative, apologetic. “Have we met before?”

Ava’s breath catches, her chest tightening with a pain that feels too old to be new. “Yes,” she says, the word barely makes it past her throat. “We—we’ve known each other a long time.”

He doesn’t flinch, but something in his gaze wavers. “How long?”

“Almost seven years,” she says, and her voice breaks on the word seven. So many memories—all of them living inside her, and not a single one left in him.

He looks away, brow furrowing in confusion, frustration. Shame. “They said I have a head injury. That I might not remember things. But I thought it would be...fuzzy. Like glimpses. Feelings. Not just…” He swallows hard. “Not empty.”

“You were on your way to get ice cream,” she says, forcing a smile, trying to cling to something light, something real. “Strawberry and chocolate swirl. You always got the swirl, even though you insisted you hated chocolate.”

He gives a soft laugh, but it sounds wrong. It's too thin, too forced, like someone pretending to understand a joke they didn’t hear. “That sounds like something a crazy person would do.”

“It is,” she says gently, eyes glassy. “You are.”

They fall into a quiet that stretches between them like a widening gulf. He watches her carefully now, like she’s a riddle carved in stone. Like he wants to understand her, but doesn’t know where to start.

“I don’t feel anything,” he says finally, and the honesty in his voice guts her. “Should I?”

She looks at him, blinking against the sudden burn in her eyes. “You don’t have to pretend,” she whispers.

“I’m not.” His voice drops. “I just… I believe you. I do. I just don’t know you.”

Her throat constricts. It’s worse than she imagined. Worse than death. Because he’s here, breathing, alive—but he’s not. The man she loves, the man who once memorized the rhythm of her laugh and whispered secrets into her collarbone in the dark. He’s gone. His body remains, but the rest… the rest is a hollow house with the lights turned off.

She stands, fingers twitching at her sides, aching for something to hold onto. “Maybe I should come back another time.”

“No—wait.” His voice rises a little, urgency sneaking into the edges. He winces as he shifts to sit straighter, pain flickering through his expression. “You said we were together?”

She nods, slowly. “Yes.”

He hesitates, searching her face, like maybe the answer is there after all. “Were we… happy?”

Her heart crumbles. Tears spill, uninvited, hot and helpless down her cheeks. “God, yes.”

He’s quiet for a long beat. Then, softer than before, as if speaking a wish into the wind:

“Then maybe… we could start over?”

Her breath hitches. She stares at him, blinking through the flood of grief and hope and disbelief.

“I mean, if that’s something you’d want,” he adds quickly. “I don’t want to make this harder for you. But if there’s even the smallest chance I could fall for you again… I think I’d like to try.”

Ava’s hand trembles as she reaches for him, like the smallest motion might shatter her completely. But when her fingers brush his, something anchors her. This time, he doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away.

His fingers curl around hers, slow and hesitant at first, like he’s still not sure if he should. But it becomes firmer, more deliberate. It’s not the grasp of a man who remembers her, who knows the shape of her hand from a thousand nights before. It’s the touch of someone making a choice. Not because of memory… but because of something. A flicker. A thread. A beginning.

Ava feels the breath leave her lungs all at once. Her throat tightens as she looks down at their hands. His are pale and bruised, and hers are trembling with too much emotion to name.

It’s not the same.

But it’s something.

“You already did,” she says, her voice breaking around the words like waves on a rock. “You just don’t remember yet.”

He lifts his gaze to meet hers, eyes soft with uncertainty and something else she can’t quite name. Curiosity, maybe. Or hope. Or both.

Then he squeezes her hand, just once.

A small gesture. But in that moment, it feels like the most important thing in the world. Not a grand declaration. Not a promise he doesn’t understand. Just a quiet choice. A single step toward her, when he could’ve pulled away.

Her eyes fill again, this time with something brighter than sorrow.

Because maybe love isn’t always tethered to memory.

Maybe it doesn’t live only in the past.

Maybe love is what survives even when everything else falls away.

What rebuilds itself, brick by careful brick.

What waits patiently in the quiet spaces until someone chooses it again.

And maybe—just maybe—love is not about how well we remember…

But how fiercely we’re willing to begin again.

Even when it hurts.

Even when we’re strangers.

Even when everything else is forgotten.