Chapter 29 Ch. 20.1
Ivanna had been scrolling through channels with one hand and eating dry cereal straight from the box with the other when she paused on the sports news.
A bold headline flashed on the screen: ETHAN MOREAU: THE FASTEST TEEN ALIVE? Below it was a smaller caption: Drug Test Negative. Does that mean the vampire rumours might me true?
She raised a brow and leaned forward, squinting at the TV. The screen played a clip of him running. Not just running, actually. More like... flying, gliding, something weird that didn’t feel quite real.
She blinked and sat up straighter.
It gave her a weird feeling in her chest. Like the kind of feeling you get when you walk into a room and forget why you’re there, or when someone says something that sounds exactly like something from a dream you don’t remember having. It felt like something she'd seen before.
But that didn’t make sense.
She had never met this boy in her life and she was very sure of it.
How did she at her age even want to meet and get to know a teen?
Her eyes stayed glued to the screen.
The news anchor kept talking. Something about the school denying knowledge of anything shady, and how other schools were trying to fuel the problem. They even played a clip from a parent-teacher meeting of another school. It was a parent of one of the runners who was angry her son was always third place and can't move up because Ethan was either a vampire or on drugs.
Ivanna snorted.
Then her phone buzzed loudly on the coffee table, making her jump a little. She glanced over and saw the notification.
Appointment Reminder: Dr. Sayid – Neurology, 3:30 p.m.
"Ugh," she muttered, dropping the cereal box on the couch.
She stood, stretched, and grabbed her coat from the arm of the chair. As she slipped her phone into her pocket, she mumbled, "Even hell gives you a day off, but not my brain."
Her apartment was warm but smelled faintly of burnt toast because she still hadn’t learned how to work her toaster properly. She shoved her keys in her bag, stuffed in a notebook she always carried, and left.
By the time she got in the cab, she was already pulling out her phone.
IVANNA: on my way to the neurologist. yay.
DYLAN: fun stuff. tell your brain i said good luck.
IVANNA: my brain doesn’t listen to anyone. especially not me.
DYLAN: don’t let them poke around too hard. you might lose your sparkling personality.
IVANNA: tragic.
DYLAN: you okay though?
IVANNA: yeah. just routine. my editor’s being an ass as usual, so i’m enjoying the quiet. feels weird not being buried in deadlines.
DYLAN: even chaos needs a nap.
IVANNA: a nap and a lobotomy.
The cab rolled to a stop in front of the hospital.
She shoved her phone in her jacket pocket, paid the driver, and stepped out. The wind caught her curls immediately, blowing them into her face as she tried to fix her scarf.
She glanced up at the sign.
WESTRIDGE NEUROLOGY CENTER
She sighed. Then she walked toward the entrance, still thinking about the boy on the screen and the way he ran. Like something out of a half-remembered dream.
She went into the lobby, spoke with the secretary and was directed to a seat.
Ivanna crossed her legs once she had lowered herself on the bench and stared at the clock on the wall. The second hand ticked way too slow for her liking. She’d already scrolled through Instagram, replied to emails she didn’t care about, and deleted screenshots from 2019 she had no business still keeping. Yet the doctor still hadn’t called her in.
She tapped her foot and adjusted her purse on her lap, glancing around the waiting room. It smelled like disinfectant and stale coffee.
Finally, her name was called.
She stood, gave the nurse a polite nod, and followed her down a hallway that felt longer than it probably was. The nurse opened a door and gestured for her to step in. The room was small, clinical, and cold.
The doctor came in a few minutes later, flipping through her file like he hadn’t had it for hours.
“Miss Ivanna,” he said, sitting across from her. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“It’s fine,” she said, clasping her hands in her lap. “I just want to know what’s going on.”
“Well, I looked through your scans,” he said, turning the screen toward her. “There’s no mass. No signs of any tumors, no bleeding, no swelling. Nothing abnormal that I can see.”
Ivanna blinked. “So then... what explains the blackouts? The weird dreams? The gaps in my memory that don’t make any kind of sense?”
The doctor leaned back and adjusted his glasses. “Have you ever been drugged before? Sometimes, temporary amnesia is caused by substances—especially if it was a strong sedative.”
“No,” she said quickly, then frowned. “At least... I don’t think so. I mean, I’d know if someone drugged me, right?”
“You’d be surprised,” he said. “It happens more often than people think.”
Ivanna didn’t answer. Her mind flashed to the footage of the boy on TV—the one they said had superhuman speed. Ethan Moreau. She didn’t know why it came up now, but something about it tugged at her.
She shook her head. “I don’t think it was that.”
The doctor gave her a long look. “Then I’ll refer you to a psychiatrist. I think it may be worth exploring the possibility of a dissociative condition, or memory-related trauma. It’s possible this is psychological, not neurological.”
Ivanna stared down at her fingers, then slowly nodded. “Okay.”
He scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to her.
“Get some rest,” he said. “And try not to overthink it. Sometimes the mind buries things it doesn’t want to deal with.”