Just Keep Going

Whether I’m ready for it or not, the future is coming, and it starts tomorrow. They’re scheduled to release me from the hospital at noon, less than twenty-four hours away. Less than twenty-four hours to figure out where I’m going even though I have no idea where I’ve been. After two more weeks in the hospital, my injuries have healed nicely. The grotesque gash on my forehead has become an uneven, reddish scar. The doctors say it should fade over the years but doubt it will ever vanish entirely. Not that I mind. Everything feels so uncertain and intangible right now. In a strange way, the scar is something stable to hold on to, a concrete mark on my skin.

Still, it feels too intimate and violent to leave exposed, and I’d rather avoid the questions it might raise, so I ask the friendly nurse for a pair of scissors and a comb to give myself a makeshift haircut. I stare at my reflection in the mirror by the small sink in the hospital room that has become my whole world. I try to imagine what my own room might have looked like, but when I try to recall it, I’m faced with more devastating blankness. They say my cognitive functions haven’t been impaired, but none of my memories have returned. It’s unclear whether they ever will.

At least I know my name now. Jane Silver. I wish it meant more to me, but I still struggle to respond when they call me by it. I wish I remembered the people who gave it to me.

My parents…

I try for the zillionth time to remember anything about them: their names, their faces, the sound of their voices. Nothing. All I have left of them is a gaping hole in my heart and a hollowness in my mind where they should be. Every time I think of them, and what they might have meant to me, there's an ache inside me. But I can’t properly gauge the depths of what I’ve lost when I don’t even remember what I had to begin with. How can I grieve their absence when it’s all I know?

At least I have some family left. My great aunt Margo is now responsible for me. According to the hospital records, I’m twenty-one years old, but apparently, amnesia complicates the matter of my legal independence. Until I’m declared healthy and capable enough to live on my own, Lady Margo Silver is my guardian. Of course, I have no recollection of her, and her name means as little to me as my own.

I stare at the mirror, trying to recognize myself in the reflection. My eyes are a light grey-green color that clashes against my ghostly complexion. Even my lips are unnaturally white, although I suppose that much is expected in my current condition. Long, straight, silvery hair frames my angular face, giving me a sort of elvish appearance. I cut a section of it in the front, giving myself blunt, choppy bangs that cover my forehead. It’s not a fancy haircut, but it will cover the scar. My skin is as pale as the snow they found me in, and I wonder if somehow the cold seeped into me somehow. A faint and familiar warmth tickles the back of my mind as I try to remember that day. Glimpses of a silhouette against the sunlight and the sound of a racing heartbeat flash through my mind, but the memory is foggy.

I try asking the friendly nurse with crooked glasses about my past, but she says my aunt will explain things once I meet her. All she can tell me is that Lady Margo is wealthy and grouchy. She has no partner or children of her own, but she’s rich and respectable. My aunt is werewolf nobility, but I can’t even remember what pack I’m in. I don’t know what sort of life I led before the plane crash, but I can only hope that I was more than some delicate princess that lived locked up in a tower of isolation and sophistication.

Lady Margo hasn’t been to the hospital to visit me, but she sent a letter of condolence, and I’m told she’s covered all my expenses in the hospital. Her letter is rather cold and formal. She writes that I will reside and recover in her home under her care. She’s sending a driver tomorrow to pick me up, and I’m supposed to go live with her in some creepy estate in the woods outside of town, where I am to follow the doctor’s orders to rest and focus on adapting to my new life without my memories.

I’m not optimistic.

I don’t sleep at all that night. How can I? My past is a mystery, and my future is… unwelcoming. I don’t want to live with some distant great aunt who was too stuck-up to visit her own niece in the hospital. If my life has been reduced to a blank page, shouldn’t I take advantage of that? Whatever happened on that plane changed things forever. I’m the only one that survived. It’s horrific and tragic and awful, but it’s a second chance. Whether it was luck or some strange guardian angel that gave it to me, I don’t want to waste it.

I know I’m lost, confused, and clueless, but I know that I won’t find myself in a secluded mansion under the tutelage of a bitter old woman. I need a life. I need normal.

But I have no memories. No parents. No pack.

What I do have is this: a name, an age, a scar, an aunt, a letter— and one burning question that grows more pressing with every tick of the hospital clock.

What comes next?