Losing Time and Tabula Rasa
AN: I’m always thinking about time and how much I’ve lost over the years.
“It’s incurable.” It is this first words Lucy hears today, in a crapped doctor’s office where she waited fifty minutes to be seen. Lucy blinks at the dark mass on the x-ray slide, never quite understanding what is good and what is bad on one, but incurable? That she knows. “C-can, I can get a second opinion, right?”
“Of course, we have a wonderful—” their words trail off as Lucy continues to stare at the x-ray. Just a simple check-up (the first lie of many she will tell coworkers, this was her second follow-up after her family doctor found something odd in her bloodwork) and this is her life. She takes the brochures and the sticky note with addresses of additional labs and leaves the clinic.
Her life in the next week consists of forgettable doctors telling her the same thing, “see this mass, it’s growing and eventually you will have no memory of your current life, we suggest assisted living.” She nods through hospice options and follow-up calls for wellness checks until she finally makes it home. Her home—something about the word solidifies the news. She won’t remember her house.
Not the lovely reading nook that was supposed to take up and unused portion of her living room, now is her entire living room and a shelf extends through into her kitchen. Lucy holds the doorknob as she thinks of every small detail slipping through her fingers. Would it be quick or slow? Losing one thing at a time or large chunks? Her thoughts spiral. She feels trapped outside, if she doesn’t go in there is nothing to lose.
That is when the door opens and she hears Cera’s voice. “Lucy.” She laughs nervously, “you spaced out for 20 minutes outside, you okay?”
Lucy shakes her head and stumbles to Cera, who has her arms open.
How could she forget Cera? Her best friend, her kindred spirit, her pillar, they’ve known each other since birth and have lived together through break-ups and fall-ins. Lucy laughs, she almost forgot Matt, Cera’s fiance, and more tears fall. Is it already starting? It would be worse when she started to forget Cera—more worrying still would be not knowing. No history, no shared trauma, no inside jokes, just a blank slate and a burden.
Cera drags her to Lucy’s room where she collapses on the bed and shakily explains everything. Somewhere along the way, they are huddled together on the bed, facing the ceiling. They are both reeling—Cera from the fact that she will be a stranger to the closest person in her life, Matt didn’t even know some of her life. And Lucy. Poor Lucy is trying not to think about it.
“What are you gonna do?”
Lucy picks a corner of the popcorn ceiling and zigzags around making silly patterns to distract herself from her own reply. “The way I see it, I have three options. 1, tell everyone and move away to an assisted living unit out of the city, letting my family keep me in their memories. 2, fake my death and start a new life before I completely lose it. And 3…” She turns her head to Cera, who knows what she’s going to say but can’t stop the gasp nor Lucy from saying it. “3, I end it.”
Cera grabs Lucy’s hand, “3 should be a last resort if the first two don’t work out.”
Lucy exhales a sigh. It’s selfish of both of them to ask the other. “Okay, then, what should I do?”
“Try mixing them up. I’ll go with you, we can tell your family and then move to a new city.”
It was a sweet sacrifice Lucy would never ask Cera to make. Cera had a career, a fiance, and a life here already. To ask her to start a new life with what would be a stranger is insane and would hurt both of them too much. Cera knew this too, but she had to say it. To offer, in Lucy’s opinion, was enough to hold her heart together a little longer.
Lucy closes her eyes, “But I won’t remember you.”
“I will and you soul will.” What a silly thing to say, it makes Lucy laugh and Cera smile, “You forget, we were made for each other. I’ll be here whoever you are.”
The tears pick up speed and she curls into Cera, they wind around each other, holding hands.
“I mean it’ll kinda be funny to make up a new role for you to play everyday,” Cera says trying to help. It doesn’t, not really, but Lucy appreciates the attempt.
