They Never Loved Me. Now I Don't Remember Them. novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Stranger's Car

Devin, a night-shift nurse, drives Lydia to his ER, where she forgets his name within the hour and writes her first notebook page. He finds her pills have no label, no imprint and no pharmacy behind them.

The man stayed by his open car door and did not come any closer.

He wore blue scrubs under a dark jacket, and he had a hospital badge clipped to the pocket.

"I'm not going to grab you," he said. "I just can't drive past a girl walking in the rain at night."

"I'm fine," I said.

My teeth were chattering so hard it came out in pieces.

"Sure you are," he said. "Where are you headed?"

"To my aunt's. In Vermilion."

"What's her address?"

I opened my mouth.

The street was gone, and so was the house number.

I could see her porch swing and the yellow door, and nothing else.

"I don't know," I said.

He did not say anything clever.

He only took off his jacket and held it out at arm's length.

"My shift at the Lorain ER starts at eleven," he said. "Come with me. Somebody there can check you over, and you can warm up and call your aunt."

"I don't even know you."

"Devin Gorton. Nurse. I've got the badge and the bad haircut to prove it."

I took the jacket.

It was warm from the car heater, and I hated how much that made me want to cry.

In the car, he turned the heat all the way up and did not ask me a single question for two miles.

When he did, he asked it gently.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?"

"I turned eighteen today," I said. "I got diagnosed with amnesia, and then I gave away my house."

His eyes went to me and back to the road.

"That's a lot for one day."

"I'm going to forget you by tomorrow," I said. "So you can say anything."

"Then I'll make a good impression," he said. "And when you meet me again I'll be even better."

I laughed, and it hurt in my chest.

The clock on his dashboard said ten forty.

My mother had said nine.

I pulled the brown bottle from my coat and shook two capsules into my hand.

I did not want them, but I had promised, and I did not know what else I had left to keep.

"What are those?" Devin asked.

"My medicine. For my memory."

"What are they called?"

"I don't know. My mother said never skip one."

He did not say anything.

I swallowed them without water.

The Lorain emergency room was bright and loud, and a nurse with a long grey braid took one look at me and pulled a curtain.

Devin went to clock in.

The nurse took my blood pressure and my temperature, and asked me who the president was and what month it was.

I knew both.

"You're cold and exhausted and you've had a very bad day," she said. "Nothing's wrong with your head tonight. A doctor will come in a minute."

On the bedside table sat a small spiral notepad with the hospital's name on the cover.

I picked it up and clicked the pen.

When the family doctor told me about my illness, he had said to write things down, and I had not.

So I wrote.

Devin. Nurse. Grey car. He asked if I was okay.

Mom: never skip one.

Dad: looked at his wine glass.

Britta: thank you.

My hand was steady for the first time all night.

The nurse came back and said the doctor was held up with a car crash, and I went to find the bathroom.

When I came back, Devin was standing at the foot of the bed with his hands in his pockets.

The notepad was closed and sitting where I had left it.

"You're back," he said. "Hungry? There's a vending machine that only has pretzels."

"Do I know you?" I asked.

I did not mean it as a joke.

His face did something small and quick.

"Devin," he said. "I brought you in from the road. It's in your notepad."

I opened it and read the first line, in my own writing.

I read it twice before it came back, thin and gray.

"Okay," I said. "Okay. I've got you."

"You've got me," he said quietly.

The doctor came and checked my eyes, my reflexes and my grip.

He found nothing.

When he left, Devin picked up the brown bottle from the bedside table.

He turned it over and held it to the light.

"There's no label," he said. "No pharmacy, no doctor, no date."

"The doctor filled it himself, in his office."

"There's no imprint on the capsule either." He tipped one into his palm. "Every pill a pharmacy sells has letters or a number pressed into it. This one's blank."

He looked at me.

"I sent a photo of it to the night pharmacist while you were in the bathroom," he said. "She says no pharmacy dispensed this."

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