Alors, Et Toi? is a quarterly magazine of the arts, digitally published on the world wide web.
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I Don't Remember.
By Lydia Riley
It itches and burns, that spot in my head raw from rubbing itself, trying to make memories like fire. I have archives, medical bills from when the ambulances were shuttling me around from place to place. But they are cryptic, foreign with words like “NASAL CANNULA”, medical terms in all caps, as if a bigger word could explain the even bigger sum tagged to it by a string of ellipses.
When I came to, I asked the nurses what had happened. They just fed me the same line; I was in a coma for about two days, nothing important really happened. ‘Nothing important?’ I wondered, running my fingers along stiff linen sheets, tracing all the joy, tragedy, birth, death, and everyday life that popped in my brain.
I later asked the ones who were actually there when I chased 40 Xanax with a fifth of vodka. Victor actually ragged on me for drinking all the Stoli. When Erin recounted the insane rush to Saint Luke’s, she sounded mildly irritated, as if I were a child who stuck their finger in a light socket, despite the fact that they ostensibly knew better. Matthew was incredibly distraught, which might have been soothing if it weren’t for the excruciating guilt he paved his concern with. Plus I suspected that he was far more concerned about himself than he was me. All in all, it formed a pastiche of strange emotions that weren’t mine. Strong reflections, but it sure wasn’t me in the mirror. I wanted the me part back, the self that I lost for two days. That sad gap of memory that hurts more than the pain of remembering.
About The Author
Crass yet charming, Lydia Riley has been vigorously CHURNING words for the past several years and has no intention of slowing down. She resides in Kansas City, Missouri.