The New Memories of Tom Ford

In a dream…in a dream that’s where most dreamers want to be. In the sea…in the sea, that’s where my memories need to be. Washed away…washed away, to never remind me of my previous days.

In a small room located at South General Hospital on the third floor, lies a man in a bed. On the counter next to the faucet and the paper towel dispenser are some get well cards and some balloons with “Get Well Soon” written on them. The room numbered, 316 is quiet except for the beeping sound of the heart monitor, that has it’s own rhythm dance going on. Though, it can be quiet; for some reason it always winds up making its music, regardless of the protest of the staff. The white tile floor that was waxed just a couple of weeks ago, shines with the rays of the sun that pushes its beams into the room, through the clear double glass window. Every since someone decided to try to be a flying squirrel, the hospital made sure that no window could be open. So the only fresh outside air is from whatever scent the bathroom air freshener sprites out every five minutes or so. The green couch placed by the window that is usually occupied by people is empty, along with the off color blue chair beside the bed. There used to be a matching green, but after one patient decided to use it as a means of escape through the window; the off color blue chair is the couches’ partner. Needless to say, room 316 has its share of stories. As soon as people mention third floor, they instantly think psych. Even though, the psych floor as it can be called, is located in a entirely different area of the hospital.

If you ask the staff though, they’ll tell you their the unofficial psych floor. Today there is no flying squirrel attempts, no chair through the window; Instead a shifting of some eye lids and a slight movement of fingers. Today seems to be the day that Tom Ford, as he always used as a ice breaker, “No relation to that Ford, rather I’m what he would look like if he had no style,” decides to reintroduce himself to the world.

Groggy eyed and all Tom opens his eyes as they rapidly close, he attempts to reopen them again. Like a door that doesn’t closed well, Tom has to work to keep his shutters open. Finally after some light adjustment he can see clearly where he is at --- that’s if he actually knew where at was. 

“In case you haven’t put the pieces together. You’re in a hospital or purgatory. It’s really all about perception if you ask me,” a voices sounds out to Tom.

He looks around blurry to located the source of the voice. He’s newly reusing lens see’s a spot sitting in the stiff green couch by the window. The sunlight not helping Tom’s lookers to be able to get into a clear focus.

“Wait don’t tell me you’re blind now? Ugly and now blind, life can truly be cruel,” the blurry voice sounds off to Tom again.

Out of frustration Tom forces his eyes to turn on their auto focus so he can see who this face is; Not that he would know the face anyway. On the green couch is a man in his mid thirties. He has on blue jeans and a graphic tee with the saying, “Life is short, eat a taco.” His hair is slightly messy, but also looks not out of place. He has a five o’clock shade on his face as if he didn’t want to shave or he just didn’t want to bother his razor. Toms fog hazy brain can’t tell him right now, but this quash of an adult is Brian, his brother in law. As to why the least likely person to be left alone with someone who just awoken from a two week coma and has zero memory; It’s a little thing called desperation.

Once the nurse on duty noticed Tom rustling back into the waking world, she called in the residing doctor. After some testing and the usual check around. The physician called up Tom’s family to give them the good news. Amanda, Tom’s mother, made it there first. Amanda is in her fifties, but tells everyone she can still pull off thirty-five. Her husband past away a few years ago and now she’s a new social butterfly who can tinder with the best of them. Earning the nickname “The Swiper” by her kids. Shortly after, Brian and Tom’s sister Karen arrived. Brian and Karen have been married ten years this year and Brian always asks everyone if Karen had realized yet she could’ve done better. To which everyone’s reply is yes, but she is smart enough to know she might have done worse. Minus them being polar opposite, the unlikely pair are like two spades in a full house. Always a winning hand to have on your side.

“Thanks for waiting on us,” Karen looks at her mother while fixing her cross body.

“I’m sorry Karen, I’m just so happy. I knew it, I just knew it.”

So what did the doctor say?

He’s awake. The doctor said his memory is a little foggy right now, but it should come back soon.

“You mean everyone left the house and forgot to bring a key with them?” Brian asks Amanda with a slight smirk on his face.

Karen hits him on the shoulder.

Not now Brian.

“I feel pain you know?” Brian tells her as he rubs his shoulder.

Can we go see him?

“Yes, but the doctor said not to crowd him too much. He’s still trying to get his bearings together. We don’t want him to get overwhelmed,” Amanda looks at them both while she is explaining things.

She may be known as the “Swiper”, but as Arnold, her late husband would tell it, “She’s the anchor and the stern. She can stop the show one minute and the next direct traffic to any direction she pleases.”

“Well I volunteer to make sure this hospital is up to code, if you two want to go in there,” Brian jokingly tells them.

“Is it OK to leave him unsupervised?” Amanda asks Karen jokingly, but also seriously.

It’s ok mom, he has his phone; so he shouldn’t be too much trouble.

Amanda and Karen walk to the room.

“Hey,” Brian says to Karen.

She turns around and he feels time stop.

I’ll be at the chair, if you need me.

Karen smiles at him and the two walk in.

What seems like only minutes the two of them walk back out visible upset. Brian notices this as they are talking to the doctor. He decides to sit back and wait. He has never been good with emotional situations. Even in emotional moments with his wife, most times he feels a good fart would lighten up the mood. Thank goodness he never attempted that, though right now he wish he could. Amanda and Karen walk to where he is sitting at.

“Listen it’s ok, he’s always looked that bad. I’m sure the doctor said the same thing,” Brian tells the girls in hopes to break the moment.

He said he didn’t want to see us.

What?

“Everything seemed fine, tell we started telling him who we are. Then all of a sudden it was as if something scared him. He told us to leave that he didn’t want to know anything.” Karen starts to break down. Brian grabs her hand and pulls her close.

Amanda dries her face and looks at Brian.

“You got to go in there,” she tells him.

Why?

You know why, you’re the only he’ll actually listen to.

Thus why Brian is now in Tom’s room, an drafted soldier in a war he didn’t have a say in.

“I bet you’re wondering who I am, aren’t ya?” Brian asks Tom.

Tom sits up in his bed, “Not really”

That’s too bad, because I was sent here to help you cross over. Oh and by the way you use to be a belly dancer that went by the name Zassy.

“Who are you?” Tom asks as he looks around.

“The real question is, who are you?” Brian retorts back.

It doesn’t matter who I am.

Apparently it does to the two women outside that door.

Well it doesn’t matter, because I don’t want to know.

Yea, I heard that.

Brian gets up off the couch and finds a lone cushion chair in the room. He takes it over to Tom’s bed and turns in backwards to sit in it.

“This is how all the cool adults sit by the way,” he tells Tom as he gets comfortable.

I need you to go.

Brian gets up closer to him as the chair rocks towards the bed, Brian looks him straight in the eyes.

I need you to brush your teeth. Just because you were in a coma doesn’t mean dental hygiene is off the table.

I’m calling the nurse.

Go ahead, I’m not even really here.

Tom looks at this crazy man and wonders if he is just an imagination.

I’m kidding. I’m very real.

Brian walks back over to the semi comfy couch.

So those two sent you in?

You mean your mom and sister?

I don’t know them and I don’t need too.

“And why’s that?” Brian asks Tom.

It’s like I had this puzzle put together and someone just shook it apart. Now I don’t want to put the pieces back together. I don’t want to know who I was or am.

Tom looks up at Brian. For once Brian feels no need for a fart to break up the moment. Brian knows broken all too well. When Karen found him, he was a leaf in the wind, a form of chaos, as he always described himself. Karen saw more in him than he ever thought he could have inside. No matter how hard he attempted to screw things up, she wouldn’t budge. He always felt that he never deserved her or any of it. Someone who no one took seriously, a product of a broken home. Brian did whatever made him feel good and helped him forget it all. He would get up some days and pretend to be someone else, just to see how it felt. That was until Karen came into his life, the one women who could control chaos. She made him want to pick up the pieces and put them all back together again.

Now Brian looks at his brother-in-law and see’s that same look in his eyes that he once had. Now he understood why he was drafted in, Brian realize that one rebuilt piece can fix the other.

“Well good don’t” Brian tells Tom, as he stretches his legs out on the couch.

So what now? What are you going to do?

I’m going to leave this hospital and start my new life.

“Well go. The doctor said you can leave anytime you please. You’re free to walk,” Brain tells him.

Tom goes to move out of bed, then proceeds the epic descent to floor, all with the assistance of gravity and no balance. He hit’s the floor with a loud thud like a fish pulled out of the water minus any flapping, but a lot more use of vulgarities.

Brian is still sitting on the couch unfazed by any of it, as if he had already pictured this all in his head.

“You don’t remember your name, but you remember those words?” he tells a floor hugging Tom.

“Why did you tell me that?” Tom still face in the floor.

Why you listening to someone you don’t even know? You should really get off that floor though, there’s no telling what germs are down there.

Tom feels the hard coolness of the floor against his hands. It becomes a kindle to his mind. Soon smoke, then a slight spark, before he has time to put it out, a full memory has emerge to light up his fog filled mind. Tom quickly shakes his head in hopes of successfully pushing it back into his mental fog. He hopes to himself that it’ll get lost along with all the rest of them.

Tom turns his head and looks at the pale wall across from him, “Just go, will you?”

It’s seems as Brian may be ready to finally cash out of this game. He gets up without saying a word and leaves out of the room. Now it’s just Tom, the room, and his new temp bed the floor. After a few minutes of floor time, Tom decides to attempt to push himself up. Unfortunately for him, his numb legs have yet to receive the memo to fully function. He decides to give a feeble try with the sheets as leverage, but the sheets decide to just join him on the floor. At that moment of ugh, the door reopens with the sounds of wheels rolling across the floor. Tom manages to roll himself over, covers and all, to see Brian with a wheel chair.

Haven’t you sleep enough? You’ll make a bed anywhere, won’t you?

“Why are you still here?” Tom asks him with disdain.

Cause heaven doesn’t want me yet and Hell said I wasn’t worth the trouble.

He walks over to pick him up and place him in the mobile sit.

“Let go of me,” he tells Brian while trying to fight

“Gezz, your heavy,” Brian tells him as he strains slightly to pick him up.

“Nurse! Nurse!” Brian yells out while still fighting.

“Chill, they think I’m your rehabilitator. Now stop before I sedate you,” he tells Tom as he firmly gets him in the chair.

They make their way to the elevators, down to the lobby, and then proceed out into a little area that has a bench with an name of someone who made a donation to the hospital. The sun is shining with a lovely blue sky above. With a slight wind, it’s about a perfect of a day that you can get.

Brian rolls Tom out and he sits on the bench. He notices how Tom is taking in the scene, like a child seeing it’s first perfect day.

Nice isn’t it?

Tom doesn’t say anything to him for a moment.

“Yea, a lot better than the floor” Tom laughs as he absorbs the sun rays.

Brian pulls out a sandwich from his jacket pocket.

“Want half?” he asks Tom, as if motions it to him.

Tom, to the surprise of himself actually takes the other half.

“Be careful, you may not remember how to chew or swallow” he jokingly tells Tom.

Tom takes a bite and his taste buds are sparked with life at the first taste of something in two weeks.

This is great!

Yea, took it out of somebody’s room.

Tom looks at him in disbelief.

Relax I think they were dead. So they wouldn’t going to eat it.

You’re the worse, you know that right?

It’s my gift to the world.

Brian laughs at his own self for a moment.

“So why you running?” Brian asks while finishing up the last bite of sandwich.

I’m not.

Oh so you’re hiding.

No.

We’ll I’m a runner and I know when someone is running.

Tom looks at Brian and another spark of memory barges in from the fog. This time Tom doesn’t fight it back as much.

“So that’s why she married you.” He states at Brain.

It’s unbelievable he acknowledges something from a previous time and they said you were too dumb to be helped.

“You are truly a natural jerk,” he tells Brain with a smirk.

I didn’t want to remember, because I felt like my life was just a failure. I didn’t know what or why, but I just felt this need for a new start. I thought if I don’t know, then maybe I can have a new life; better than whatever my previous one was.

“Trust me. I’ve wished the same for myself and I did…with your sister. She helped me start a new life, better than the one I was living before her.” Brian tells Tom.

“And I didn’t have to lose my memory to do it,” he smirks back at Tom.

Well this is the only way it’ll work for me.

Really?

Brian shakes his head as if he accepts Tom idea before doing what he normal does. He gives Tom a smack in the back of the head.

“What the heck man?” Tom hollers back at him.

Brian proceeds to do it again.

“Stop it!” Tom tells him as he begins to get mad.

Brian repeats the pattern again.

“You got one more time to do that,” he sternly warns Brian.

“Or what?” Brian asks unfazed.

I’m going to hit you.

Congratulations!!!

Tom looks at him confused.

On what?

Making a choice. You don’t have to forget your past in order to make a new present. All you need to do is make a new choice. It’s all up to you what your life will be.

“Now lets go back in before someone calls the cops…again,“ Brian tells Tom as he gets up to take Tom back in.

Tom stops him.

“I remember now. I fell asleep behind the wheel from working a double shift at restaurant. I’m the manager there. I absolutely hate it. And I want to write. I was saving up money to start up a career in writing,” he looks back at Brian for confirmation.

Brian looks down at him and smiles.

“Washed away…washed away, to never remind me of my previous days.” Brian recites that Tom.

Tom thinks for a moment as Brian pushes him back in.

“But my memories…my memories are always with me.”

The fog lifts…