He Called My Brain Injury a Hunger Strike, So I Forgot Him novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Black Bag

Imogen came on Thursday with a quart of chicken soup and a bag of lemons.

She wore a gray cardigan, close to mine in color, and it fit her better.

"You look so much stronger," she said, and hugged me with one arm.

I let her.

It took everything I had.

I had hugged this woman on my own porch in April, and I had told her about the gaps in my memory, and she had said "Poor you" with her hand on my hair.

Now I knew she had watched me fall.

She set the soup on the stove and moved around the kitchen without looking for anything.

She knew which drawer held the ladle.

She knew which cupboard Roland hid the good scotch in.

I sat at the table with my hands around a mug and let her talk.

"Roland's been a wreck," she said. "He doesn't show it. You know how he is."

"I'm learning," I said.

"Learning what?"

"How he is."

She laughed, and it came out a half-beat late.

She ladled soup into a bowl and put it in front of me, and I took a spoonful.

It was good.

That was the strange part.

Roland had told me once that Imogen made soup the way her grandmother had, with the bones in, and I had thought it was kind.

I ate half the bowl and put the spoon down.

"I wish I could remember more," I said, and let my voice go thin. "The doctors say it might come back in pieces."

Imogen's hand stopped on the dish towel.

"What kind of pieces?"

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