Erased

By Margaret Chatwin

There’s that moment – you know the moment – when you emerge from sub-consciousness and enter full awareness. Now imagine reaching that moment with a pounding head, throbbing body, hospital ID band around your wrist, and no memory. No idea why you hurt the way you do, or how you got where you are. No clue what your own name is, or who the people next to you are.
I’m seventeen-year-old Ryan Farnsworth, and that’s what happened to me. Now I have to walk a mile in my own, unfamiliar shoes; view myself through the eyes of a perfect stranger; live the life a former me chose. I also need to figure out why that former me tried to kill me.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Margaret Chatwin
• Release date: Jul 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301754311

Margaret Chatwin

I love to laugh, which is weird, considering that my favorite types of movies are dramas. I guess I just crave the emotion they create and their ability to let me inside the head and heart of the character.I like my books the same way - soulful and raw.I don't pretend to be a professional writer. I'm not schooled in all the ins and outs of forming a perfect paragraph, etc, but I do work my tail off to build characters that you can really "feel." Characters that you can fall in love or hate with. Characters that will make you want to turn the next page.You can read reviews of my books or leave one of your own at: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5342646.Margaret_Chatwin

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

I’d only had the car a year – got it for my sixteenth birthday. It was a Victory Red, Camaro SS. That year’s model. It had precision handling, performance-tuned suspension, four-piston vented disc brakes, and limited-slip rear differential. It also had a V8 engine under the hood, and that night, after creeping by a Highway Patrol cruiser like I was out for a Sunday stroll, I’d kicked all 426 of those horses into full gear.

I’d traveled twelve miles down Burgus Highway at speeds so high that it’s amazing my headlights managed to stay in front of the car. And then, when I reached Foster’s view area, my vehicle no longer continued to follow the yellow lines painted on the asphalt. It veered left, crossed in front of oncoming traffic, busted through the guardrail, sailed out over the ravine and landed at the bottom in a barely recognizable crumpled mess.

I was not wearing my seatbelt.

I’m told I did this on purpose – some kind of botched suicide attempt, but I can’t tell you if that’s true or not, because I can’t remember the event or anything leading up to it. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember anything that has any real meaning, at all.

I can recall world events and leaders, plot lines to movies, the objects of games, and dumb stuff like that. But the amnesia has robbed me of myself and the things I’ve personally taken part in. It’s stolen the people in my life, as well. I can’t remember any of them, not even the man and woman in the front seat of the car I’m currently riding in.

They say their names are Wendy and Craig Farnsworth and that they’re my parents. I’m inclined to believe them because at least one, if not both of them, have been at the hospital every day that I’ve been there – which happens to have been one-hundred and three extremely grueling, overly agonizing, and utterly miserable days.

If you think I’m over-exaggerating or being whiny when I say that, you go throw yourself off of a cliff, break damn near every bone in your body and then get back to me about the matter.

I can’t wait to finally get you home, Ryan, my mom says. She twists her blonde head and upper body around in the passenger’s seat to get a better look at me. She’s a pretty woman. Well taken care of, you might say, and she’s positively beaming right now. Her red lips are curled upward, showing off her perfectly white, straight, teeth. Her blue eyes are sparkling as brightly as the huge diamond on her wedding ring as it catches the afternoon sun. Even her complexion seems to radiate. And although this is a welcome change from the million plus times I’ve seen her cry in the last three months, I turn away from her and gaze out the window.

I’m sitting behind the driver’s seat – buckled in, this time – and I watch the scenery go by. I have no clue where I am. It’s like I’m in a foreign city. None of the streets or buildings look at all familiar, despite the fact that I’m, supposedly, only ten minutes from the house.

Are you excited to be going home, Son? Dad asks. He says this in his overly enthusiastic tone. It’s the same one he used every time they hauled my ass down to the physical therapy room and tortured me by putting me in some contraption designed to help me walk again.

You lasted thirty seconds today, Ry, isn’t that spectacular? he’d say.

It’s hard to feel proud of yourself when your progress is based on how long you can stand the pain before you pass out cold.

I’m up to fifteen minutes of unassisted help now. But at fifteen point one second, I have to find something to sit down on, or my wobbly knees simply give way, and I fall. Please don’t think the fifteen minutes I speak of is me frolicking about. It’s not. It’s slow-go. It’s me doing balance checks all too often. It’s a sharp pain and limp in my left leg that I’m told may never completely disappear. It’s one of those I could just kill myself for not just killing myself properly the first time, kind of deals.

I made the mistake of saying that aloud, several months ago, after a particularly painful PT session, and now I meet with a psychiatrist once a week. To be honest, considering that they think I tried to commit suicide, I’m surprised they waited until I was out of the coma before they sent her over to shrink my brain. Guess I didn’t do a good enough job messing up my own head in the accident – they had to bring in the big guns to make it official.

Don’t get me wrong, Gretta, my psych, is a nice enough lady, but she keeps asking me stuff like, "why do you think you feel that way," and all I can do is shrug because I don’t know why I feel any way. I have no past to base anything on.

I was basically born three months ago at 5'10" and 160 pounds. That’s not what I weigh now, though. I’m an embarrassing amount thinner.

I’m nervous.

Okay, I admit, I’m actually downright frightened. And as my father scoops me up into his thick arms and carries me into the house, I’m humiliated as well. He’s just being a good dad by helping me, but I’m seventeen years old and can’t properly navigate a set of garage stairs that is only three steps high. Talk about demoralizing. It probably would have hurt less if he’d made me hike them.

He places me back on my feet in the kitchen, and I clutch the blue plastic bag with the big black letters that reads: Personal Belongings tightly to my chest. As much as I hate the hospital, it’s the only home I know, and the bag, along with the ID band around my wrist, are the only things familiar to me at the moment. It’s twisted, but I want to turn around and go back to room 326.

This kitchen is beautiful. It’s modern. It’s stylish, and above all, it’s expensive. I can see into the great room from here, and it’s the same way. It has lofty ceilings and fancy furnishings.

This is . . . where . . . you live? I speak my first words since leaving the hospital. I have no clue why this surprises me, I mean – they drove me here in a Benz for hell’s sake.

"This is where we live. Dad gives my shoulder blades an affectionate squeeze. It hurts because my right collarbone has been giving me troubles, like everything else in my body has, but I don’t say so, and I try not to wince. This is your house too, Ryan. You’ve spent your whole life here." There’s such pride in his voice.

Do you remember? Mom wants to know. Is being here bringing back anything at all?

Nope. Notta. Total blank. But she has such a hopeful look that all I can do is shrug.

Well, come in. Sit down, Dad booms cheerfully. And so I do. I follow him into the great room and take a seat on the edge of a leather chair, and they both sit down across from me on the sofa, and we just sit there – looking at each other.

I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything.

I can hear the tick of a clock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

This repetitious sound goes on until my mother can’t take it anymore and she springs from her seat and rushes for me. Let me take your bag.

Thinking she really might, my heart starts to pound, sending blood, or adrenaline, or something, straight to my brain – the same brain that was injured in the crash. It turns the dull throb I’ve had ever since I woke from the coma into a sharp pain.

No! I’m a little too loud, and it halts her only inches from me, her hands still outstretched. She stares at me, a mixture of confusion and disappointment swirling in her eyes. I can almost read her thoughts. What? My son needs a security blanket? Oh! Oh, good Lord, he does, and it’s going to be a blue hospital issued belongings bag.

I’d like to keep it, I try to explain.

Well, it’s not like I’m going to throw it . . . She can’t finish because it would be a lie. She is going to throw the bag away. She’s going to dump out the contents, put them in their proper place and toss the bag in the trash. It doesn’t belong here. Even I know that, and I know very little about this place.

I’d like to keep it, I repeat.

She frowns with her eyes but smiles with her mouth, and because I haven’t known her long, I don’t know which one is displaying her true feelings. Ryan, would you like to look at another family photo album?

She’s been bringing them to the hospital weekly – showing me picture after picture of perfect strangers. That’s weird enough, but what’s even weirder is that I’m in a lot of the pictures with these perfect strangers. It’s unnerving.

I’d rather not, I tell her, and now she really doesn’t know what to do with me, so she runs the fingers of her right hand through my hair.

We need to get you a haircut. They sure made a mess of your beautiful hair with their selective shaving.

Yes, how dare they shave sections of my head for life-saving medical procedures and not call in a stylist afterward? What the hell is this world coming too? I want to say this aloud, but this woman has been by my side from day one. Supporting me, encouraging me, crying at my pain, and I’d be an ass if I did.

Wendy, honey, sit down. Dad rescues me. Or, does he really? It’s back to the silent staring now.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Movement from the doorway behind the couch they sit on draws my eyes that direction. I catch a glimpse of something blue, but that’s all I see.

Lucas, is that you? Come in here, Dad says.

Don’t want to, is Lucas’s reply.

Come say hi to your brother, Mom directs.

Why?

Because he just got home.

So?

Get in here! my dad yells this, and I find myself flinching. Shocked. Three months of my non-stop crying, begging and bawling about having to go to PT and I’ve never heard him shout. Never anything more than his cheerful you can do it attitude.

I hear a heavy exhale of air and then the kid enters the room. He hangs back in the doorway and has a sloppy stance, but he’s tall. His hair is light – almost blonde, like Mom’s. He’s only fifteen and still has some developing yet to do, but he’s not far off from having a build just like Dad’s. Strong.

I study his face, and suddenly I recognize him from more than just mom’s photos. No, it’s not because my memory is returning, it’s because he came to the hospital once. It was early on when I was still pretty out of it, but I remember him standing with the same leave me alone attitude.

He never came again, and I’m told it’s because he can’t stand hospitals, but judging by the chilly way he’s looking at me now, I have a feeling it has more to do with me than it did the place I was in.

Can you say hi? Mom turns to look over her shoulder at him.

I can, but I ain’t gonna.

Luc, I’m warning you, Dad mumbles low.

Lucas’s focus narrows in on the back of Dad’s skull until laser beams seem to shoot from his eyes. I wait for the moment when my father’s head combusts, and after several long seconds have passed and it hasn’t happened yet, I speak, Hi, Luc.

He has blue eyes, and when they shift toward me, I wonder if perhaps I haven’t just saved my father’s life.

He said ‘hi,’ Luc, Mom says.

What do you think I am – a deaf retard? I heard him.

Don’t talk to your mother that way. And say hi to your brother.

Luc’s eyes bounce back to Dad for a short moment before returning to crawl all over me. When he’s had his fill, his lips curl into a smile, and it’s not the welcome home type.

Nice purse, he scoffs, throwing a nod to the blue plastic bag I’m still clutching. Suddenly I’m self-conscious. A little hurt too, although I can’t seem to fully understand why. It’s just a dumb bag, after all. I loosen my grip on it but can’t seem to force myself to set it aside.

That’s not saying hi, you jack-wagon. I get a good look at Dad’s eyes as he says this and there’s genuine contempt.

Whatever, Luc rolls his eyes. I’m outa here. He moves for the front door.

Where are you going? my mom wants to know, but he doesn’t answer. Luc, she calls out again, this time with more firmness in her voice. Where are you going?

At the last possible second – literally, as he’s pulling the door closed – he gives up the information. Jake’s.

After the door bangs shut much louder than is probably necessary, I glance from one of my parents to the other. In all honesty, I’m looking for some kind of explanation. I don’t need it for Lucas’s behavior, but I’d kind of like one for theirs, particularly my dad’s since he was the most changed of the two. But he’s somewhere else in mind now, and my mom is smiling at me like none of it even happened.

Are you hungry? I can tell by the look in her eyes that she wants me to say yes. Like she’s itching for something to do, but I’m not hungry.

Could I just lie down? I’m not tired either, but I don’t want to go back to listening to the clock tick while staring at two people I know even less now than I did five minutes ago.

I’ll help you to your room, Dad says.

Apparently, my bedroom is upstairs, and once I’m standing at the bottom of the long flight looking up, I silently gulp. I didn’t like how it felt to be carried like an infant into the house and I know I’m going to hate this even more.

Can I try them on my own?

No. It’s my mother saying this. She has followed along behind my dad and I. No way. It’s too high, and you’re too weak. You’ll fall and re-injure yourself.

He can try, Wendy, Dad says. If he wants to try, let him. I’ll be with him every step of the way, and when he gets tired, I’ll help him. He can do it. Then, without so much as a pause in his speech, he directs his comments to me, rather than her. You can do it, Ry. Don’t worry about falling, I’ve got ya. Go ahead. He urges me forward by placing his hand on my shoulder blade. Wait – better let your mother hold your bag.

He tugs on it, and I have a hell of a time releasing it to him. I resist, and then I hear him chuckle. You’d think it was packed full of gold.

It just . . . It has . . . everything I own in it. I somehow feel I owe him an explanation and although it only scrapes the surface of how I truly feel, I offer it as one anyway.

Don’t be ridiculous. That’s not all you own, Son. You have all this. He waves an upturned hand around our posh surroundings, and while I’m grateful that he’s willing to share it all with me, I honestly don’t feel like any of it’s mine. I don’t feel like I’m being ridiculous, either.

I just want to be alone right now, so I let go of the belongings bag, watch my dad hand it off to my mom, and then I start to climb.

I’ve done this before – in PT. They’ve made me climb steps, but I’ve never been any good at it. The pain in my left leg quadruples whenever I have to push my weight upward with it. So, by the time I’m on step one, here at home, I know that, aside from trying to off myself by driving over a cliff, this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. But I can’t back out now, I’m only on step one, for crying out loud.

I try to do more pulling than pushing, by latching onto the handrail with both hands and dragging myself up to the next step, but . . . In the accident, I broke a total of thirty-two bones, ripped muscles, tore flesh and ruptured internal organs, which ultimately means, my leg isn’t the only reason stairs are an issue.

By step three my knees are shaking, my grip is weakening, my breathing is so heavy it hurts my chest, my mother is begging, and my father is pep talking me on.

Step five; my eyes are watering, my hips hurt, my leg is throbbing, and my entire body is trembling.

Please, Craig, make him stop.

He doesn’t want to stop.

Oh, Lord, I wanna stop. Please make me stop.

Look at him, she pleads. He’s not doing well – he’s lost all his color.

He’s a fighter, and always has been. You don’t get to the places he’s been by sitting on your duff, Wendy. You have to get up and try like he’s doing. He’s got this. Look at how far he’s come. My father is hooting like he’s watching sports on a big screen TV.

All I know is, the moisture in my eyes is starting to dribble down my face, I hurt like a mother F–er, and I’m doing all in my power to hold back the heavy sobs that want to rattle my body.

My head feels weird. This is the thought I have just before succumbing to the blackness.

Unfortunately, I’m not out very long. I never am when I pass out. Wish I were though, it’s a nice little escape from the pain.

I’m on my hands and knees when I come-to. Dad’s arms are around my mid-section, and he’s standing me back up.

I’ll carry you the rest of the way, he says.

I want to tell him thanks, but all I keep thinking is; you let me fall. You said you wouldn’t, but you did.

I didn’t fall far, just to my knees, but still, I fell, and now I wonder if I can really trust him.

What choice do I have at this point?

He heaves me up into his arms, and within thirty seconds he’s laying me down on a bed.

You okay, Buddy? He’s leaning over me, and my mom is leaning over him, both trying to get a good look at me.

I can’t answer his question. I just can’t, because I’m trying too hard not to cry.

I’m so proud of you! Dad grins. You were awesome. No wonder you’ve made All-Star three years in a row. And hey, you never know, you might still have time to get the title this year as well.

There’s something really wrong about that statement, but I don’t have what it takes to think about it right now. I just want him to leave. Both of them, actually, and when they finally do, I roll over onto my side and cry myself to sleep.

So, this is my room, huh? I stand at the foot of the bed and look around, hoping that maybe, just maybe, I’ll recognize the place. But the only two things in the entire room that are familiar to me are the same two things I brought with me – the hospital bag and my ID band.

To my right, next to the window, is a ceiling to floor, built-in bookshelf. It doesn’t house a single book, though. Instead, trophies of all shapes and sizes decorate six of the eight shelves.

With a more pronounced limp than usual, due to the strain of my stair climbing adventure a few hours ago, I make my way over to the bookshelf to get a closer look.

Ninety-nine percent of these awards are for sports, and they date all the way back to little league. Most of them are for football, but there are some for hockey, lacrosse, and baseball, as well. There’s even a cardboard, and black marker made plaque that reads, Table Tennis King of the F–ing World. I have no idea if this is a self-awarded plaque, or if someone else made it for me. I don’t even know if it was given in seriousness or in mockery. I conclude that either way you look at it, I’m hell behind a paddle.

The two shelves that don’t have trophies on them hold a grand display of autographed balls – footballs and baseballs. I lean in closer and read some pretty impressive names – names my memory has retained – and then I step back and wonder if I even like sports. I mean, this stuff says I do, but the games my dad watched on the TV in my hospital room were, most often, just irritating noise to me. Was it just because I was so ill that everything was irritating?

I don’t know the answer to this, so I move out of the sports section of my room and on to the academics – a desk. There’s a pen cup with several pens and a pair of scissors that sits nicely in the upper right-hand corner, but that’s the only thing that is in order on the desk. The rest is cluttered and messy – mostly with papers. There are at least a hundred of them, and it appears they were crammed, with little to no care, into a file folder and flung upon the desk.

Before I flip open the folder, I glance toward the open bedroom door and out into the hall to make sure no one is watching. I don’t know why I do this. I guess because it feels like I’m snooping through a stranger’s belongings and I don’t want to get caught.

This is my stuff, I tell myself, but since I feel like I’ve never stepped foot in this place, or seen any of these things, it still feels weird.

The papers are school work – a year’s worth of it, it appears. My name is on all of them, and the dates range from September of last year to May of this year. They are crumpled and crinkled and probably spent plenty of time in the bottom of my locker before being jammed into the folder for transport home.

I’m not an A student. The grades on the paper range from fifty to eighty percent. High enough to keep me on the sports teams I was obviously on, but low enough to show I didn’t give a damn. The doodles in some of the margins lead me to believe that school work bored me.

The doodles themselves aren’t half bad, though, and I begin to wonder if I have any interest in art. I sit down in the desk chair, flip over a piece of the paper and reach for a pen.

What should I draw?

I glance around, and the first thing I see is the blue belongings bag my mom has sat on the dresser next to the desk. My purse. I kick the mockery of Lucas’s voice out of my head and sketch out the shape of the bag, along with its plastic handles that snap together.

The ink – my hand – they flow easy and naturally across the paper, and it feels fantastic.

Three months! For three months it’s been drilled into my head that I like football. Wait, like is too weak of a word. I love football. I’ve been shown many photos and told countless stories to prove this, yet in all that time no one ever mentioned art.

I move on.

In the top drawer of the dresser, buried under the socks, which are more numerous than any human being could possibly need, I find a string of condoms. Wishful thinking? Or am I a participant? It’s not like I can run downstairs and ask Mom.

Damn, not even knowing where my dick has been is disturbing. Maybe I didn’t care, back then, where it was, but I sorta do now.

On my way to the closet, I pass a full-length mirror and stop. Mom was absolutely right, I need a haircut. The shaved areas of my dark hair have grown back, but they are shorter than other parts, and I look like I just woke up. Okay, I guess I did just wake up, but that’s not what I mean.

I’ll ask for some help with my hair tomorrow.

The bottom of the closet has football gear piled up. Pads, helmets, balls, etc., take up the left side while the right side has a collection of expensive shoes.

Stylish jeans and shirts hang on the rack, and I’m left to assume that I’ve