I am looking at my fingers, I strain to move one. I will the tip of my finger to lift upward and I grunt. I hear my voice and my voice sounds familiar. I remember last night, not vividly, but as if they were small movie clips. I was taken out of a car. There is a family in this home: a husband, wife, and two daughters. The family is beautiful, strange, they scare me. I know this family is not my own. The man stands in front of me and I look up at him. Hello Josh, he says. I know that name as my own. That IS who I am. My name is Josh, Josh, but what is my last name? My mother named me Josh, she used to call me Joshy when she was feeling affectionate. Kiara and Jesse told me that they've been working with you a lot these last few days and you're started to regain your ability to talk. That's great.I search my brain to remember Kiara and Jesse, and I recall them. The two girls were putting lipstick on me and playing dress up. I asked them for help, and they giggled and mocked me. This was just last night, or was it last week? Time is escaping me. I'm angry. I look at my restraints on my wrist. Those are to protect you from yourself. They're only temporary. I ask him, how am I here? The words came out slow and methodical, but they were my words, and it was easier to speak than it had been. This means that I am getting better, I am improving. I will break free of this place, and go somewhere... I don't know where, I try to think of home and I begin to feel nauseated, exhausted by the small work of forming a sentence, moving my finger. The doctor is speaking and I try to concentrate on his words. He is a doctor. This is another found piece of a lost memory. This new information doesn't soothe me with trust. He is telling me that I tried to take my life, and I was in a coma. They thought I was gone. He believed that he could save me. I feel my face flush with heat. I am angry. I am frustrated. He is lying, or is he? His face looks kindly at me, he smiles at me. I do not trust him, his smile looks wicked like an animated Cheshire cat. I think he mocks me behind his kind eyes and wicked smile.I do, however, remember the bathroom, it is my bathroom. That was my last memory. On top of the porcelain sink was an empty bottle of pills, and I remember lifting my heavy head to look at my face. I was pale, my eyes were red, there was vomit on my white t-shirt, my head throbbed, much like it throbs now. If he is telling the truth, I must be in hell, and he must be the devil. I must be captive in a hell specifically designed to torment me. I'm tired of the thought of it all so I sleep and when I open my eyes a woman is taking off my restraints. It's the doctor's wife. I heard him call her, Beverly, when they were making love. I asked her, So what, this is supposed to be hell? She caressed my arm, she smiled seductively, It could be heaven.Beverly tells me that her husband, Tommy, saved me, and she said more things about death that were poetic and flowery,
