He Called My Brain Injury a Hunger Strike, So I Forgot Him novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Hunger Strike
A week after she collapses, Leah's husband accuses her of faking and tells her she'll want her pills when she remembers what she did. She walks out with a stranger's card.
After a bullet went into my head, I became the wife Roland had always wanted.
I stopped waiting up on the sofa to lecture him about his stomach when he came home smelling of whiskey.
I stopped shutting his laptop at two in the morning to tell him about men his age who dropped dead at their desks.
Before his trips, I stopped checking that his stomach pills were in his bag.
Roland noticed none of it, except that the house was quieter.
Every Sunday he asked me, lightly, while he buttered his toast, if I had remembered anything from that day.
I never had.
Three days ago I collapsed on the sidewalk outside the pharmacy.
A man in a canvas work jacket knelt down and held my elbow until the world stopped tilting.
"I'm calling an ambulance," he said. "Do you need me to contact your family?"
I looked at him for a long time.
Somewhere behind my eyes there was a husband, but the picture of him wouldn't hold still.
"No," I said softly. "I don't have any family."
He didn't argue.
He rode with me to the hospital, gave the nurse his name, and left a card on my tray.
Erik Hargrove, boat carpenter, with a number and nothing else.
The hospital found Roland through my wallet.
He came on the second morning, checked his phone twice, and asked the doctor how soon I could be discharged.
On the seventh day, I finally had some strength back.
I made it as far as the living room.
Roland was on the sofa with a cigarette between his fingers, though he knew I couldn't stand the smoke.
Imogen Sayre sat at the dining table with her laptop open.
She was his chief of staff, twenty-nine, and she had been bringing us soup all week.
She wore my gray cardigan, the one I'd lent her when it rained.
"Leah, sit," she said, and pulled out a chair. "I made you tea. Ginger, for your stomach."
"Thank you," I said, and meant it.
Roland didn't look at the tea.
"Leah," he said, "you've overplayed the hunger strike."
I stared at him.
"What hunger strike?"
"Seven days of crackers and tragic faces. Everyone at the office has heard about it."
It was the metal in my skull.
Whatever I ate came back up, and the room spun for an hour afterward.
I had told him that.
I had told the doctor, who had told him again.
I looked at his face, and for one second it was clear, every line of it, the man I married six years ago.
Then it blurred, as it did whenever I reached for it.
"I'm not on strike," I said. "I'm sick."
"You were sick in March," Roland said. "Now you're punishing me."
"Roland," Imogen said quietly. "She's pale. Maybe not now."
"Stay out of this."
He said it to her gently, and he turned back to me with his eyes hard.
"I've covered the bills. I took the days off. I've been patient for six months, and you drag me through this on the one week my investor, Albert Blair, closes his deal."
"You took two days off," I said.
His jaw tightened.
"I'm trying to say you're not the only one this happened to."
I waited for the rest of the sentence.
For six months, I had waited on that sofa, at that table, in that bed, for the sentence where he asked how I was.
It wasn't coming.
I put the cup down on the table.
The tea had gone cold, and I hadn't drunk any of it.
"I'm going out," I said.
Roland laughed.
"Where? You can't find the pharmacy on your own."
"I'll find something."
I took my coat from the hook and my wallet from the bowl.
I took the hospital discharge folder, and I found the card in the pocket of my coat.
Erik Hargrove, boat carpenter.
It was the only name I had that nobody in that house had given me.
"Leah." Imogen's voice was small. "Please. He doesn't mean it."
I opened the front door.
Roland didn't get up.
"Go ahead," he said. "Walk around the block, and come back when you're done."
Then he leaned his head back against the sofa and added, almost kindly, "You'll be back by dinner. You'll want your pills when you remember what you did."
I stood in the doorway with the cold coming in.
What I did.
I closed the door behind me, and I didn't go back.
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