There were so many things I didn’t know. I couldn’t get ahold of Aunt Robin, and God only knew what the hell was wrong with Alec’s phone.

“Mr. Walker, this is Dr. Shaw. He’s the neurologist I spoke with you about earlier,” Dr. Pace said.

I looked at Dr. Shaw and had a strange sense of déjà vu, but, as with everything else, I couldn’t place it. My stomach tightened with nausea when I met his eyes.

“Dr. Shaw will run a few tests so we can rule out some possibilities regarding your memory loss,” Dr. Pace finished.

“Okay, whatever we need to do,” I replied.

I kept looking at Sam while Dr. Pace and Dr. Shaw talked in the corner of the room. She kept glancing from Dr. Shaw back to me. I began to ask her what the deal was between them, but she retreated through the curtain, followed closely behind by both doctors.

“A nurse’s aide will be in shortly to take you down for an MRI,” Dr. Shaw said on his way out.

About an hour later, a man wearing blue scrubs came in with a wheelchair.

He helped me into the wheelchair and propped my leg up on a metal flap that folded out near my calf. As we approached the elevator, Sam stepped out with a woman garbed in a dressy, knee-length skirt and a long, white lab coat.

The awkwardness of the moment gave me time to read her nametag. Melody Kisner, Grief Counselor. What was Sam doing with this woman? Was it just coincidence they were on the elevator together? I breathed a sigh of relief and squeezed Sam’s hand when she reached out for me.

“I’ll see you when you’re done downstairs,” she said.

The physical contact felt odd, like we knew each other intimately. If only I could remember. I roughed my hands through my hair, getting more and more frustrated by the minute. The nurse’s aide left me in a room with the technician who’d be running my MRI. It was cold in there, even more so than my room.

I laid down in the machine for the test while the technician wrapped me in another thin blanket, more like a heavy cotton sheet for all the warmth it provided. Even with three, I still felt a slight chill.

When the test finished, I went back up to my room, only to find Sam sitting by my bedside with the woman from the elevator. She stood up and wiped the tears from her face, as she cleared space for the nurse’s aid to help me back into bed.

“Emmett, this is Ms. Kisner. She’s the hospital’s grief counselor. I . . . I umm, asked her to speak with you.”

“What the hell? Why do I need a grief counselor? I just lost my memory. Where’s my brother? I don’t understand what the fuck is going on here!” I flinched from the pain in my splinted finger, when I reflexively tried to run my hand through my hair.

“Mr. Morris, please try to calm down. Ms. Lang and I need to talk to you. With your memory loss, you’re forgetting some very important events. I’d like to discuss these with you,” Ms. Kisner stated.

“Yes, I know I don’t remember Sam, but that doesn’t explain why I’d need to speak with a grief counselor.” I regretted throwing my head back against the bed when instant pain shot through my skull.

“Emmett, please just let Ms. Kisner continue. This is hard enough as it is,” Sam pleaded.

“Okay, I’m sorry. Look, I’m just so frustrated that I can’t remember you. I feel a connection, but I just can’t place it.”

Sam squeezed her eyes shut.

Ms. Kisner cleared her throat and continued as if I hadn’t interrupted her at all. “Mr. Walker, we need to talk about your brother, Alec.” She paused . . . and let that information sink in.

“What about him? I’ve been trying to call him, but it goes directly to a message that says his number is no longer in service.”

The tears were filling Sam’s eyes again, and a dark foreboding set in.

“Mr. Walker, Alec was in an accident about a year ago. He had an epileptic event as a result, and died here, in the hospital later that night,” Ms. Kisner explained.

“Bull shit! You’re lying. Get the hell out of my room!” I screamed at the lady, but my eyes were locked onto Sam, and I saw the cold, painful truth of it, in her bloodshot eyes.

A boulder settled heavily into the pit of my stomach. The nausea I’d felt earlier crawled up my throat. I snatched the bowl off the table and threw up. My entire body convulsed painfully, my leg twitching and head pounding as I retched.

Sam cried freely then, and I could feel the tears running down my face, as well. This couldn’t be true. They were wrong. There was abso-fucking-lutely no way my little brother was dead. No fucking way!

Sam jumped to my side and slipped her small, soft hand into mine, while I reached up with the other and bit my knuckles. I couldn’t breathe. I wretched again, but only green bile came up.

The next thing I knew, a nurse was running into my room.

“Get the fuck away from me!” I tried to lean away from the nurse as she pulled a syringe from her pocket, and inserted the needle into my IV line. After a moment, my body felt weirdly over-relaxed. My eyelids grew heavy, and everything turned black.

Bringing Emmett home was hard. It was devastating that he still couldn’t remember me. As expected, he wasn’t handling Alec’s death well either. Seeing the pain he went through as he tried to accept the reality, shredded my soul. I don’t know what I would have done without Ms. Kisner. It was both surreal and unnerving, having Dr. Shaw as Emmett’s neurologist, hitting a little too close to home since he was the same doctor who’d been there when Alec died.

Thankfully, Emmett’s injuries weren’t life threatening, and the only major thing we had to contend with was his memory loss. With his Aunt Robin still in Europe, he had little choice but to come home with me. He said he wanted to go back to his normal life and routine. The doctors said it should help bring his memory back. I hoped so.

However irrational, there was a small part of me that was hurt that Emmett couldn’t remember me, almost as if his mind was trying to protect him from more pain and heartache considering he didn’t remember Alec’s death either, yet remembered other random things.

I worried he subconsciously wanted to forget me, and the pain I’d brought into his life. The girls said that was crazy, and I was just stressed out, that Emmett loved me, and had fought for our relationship after all that had happened. I knew it all already, but it didn’t make it any easier to deal with. I was overwhelmed with heartache. I tried to keep everyday things as normal as possible for Emmett, hoping something would spark his memory.

The first week, he slept on the couch every night, and it was near impossible to fall asleep with him so close, but so far away. Then one morning, I woke up wrapped in his arms, and he was awake, just watching me sleep. It was such a welcomed feeling, I began to cry silent tears.

“Good morning,” I said as I stretched out on the bed and snuggled back into his chest. I relished in the familiar feel of his arms around me. The faint smell of his cologne that lingered on his skin.

“Good morning Peach,” he whispered.

My heart leapt with joy when he called me Peach. “Oh my God, Emmett . . . you remembered?”

He looked sheepish and shook his head. “No. I’m sorry. I was just trying it out to see if it would spark a memory, but it didn’t.” As he saw my sad expression, he followed up saying, “But it feels right. Every morning, when I wake up on the couch without you, it feels wrong, so I crawled into bed with you. I promise I didn’t do anything. I just held you and watched you sleep for a while. I like the normal feeling it gives me.”