Encounters

The bed I’m lying in is not my own. The mattress is flimsy and the sheets are paper against my skin. My limbs feel the outline of a metal frame pressed beneath my body. My eyes crack open and protest against the onslaught of light. 

I am in a hospital, that I know for sure. The walls are glacial white, and the raised handles around the bed give me the unsettling feeling of being caged. I observe the tangle of wires lining the walls, and the needle extruding from my arm. It’s attached to a large monitor, and a nurse seems to be documenting the data on a clipboard. I can’t see what she’s writing, but I notice that while my breathing seems unsteady, there’s no tube stuck down my throat and no ventilator attached to my face. That, I think, is a good sign.

The nurse is turned away from me, and I deliberate silently before clearing my throat. “Excuse me, could you please tell me what happened?” I know my words sound stilted and too formal. But I can’t help it. English was not my first language. It does not fit naturally into the curve of my mouth. My lips still stress against these foreign sounds, and though my mother tongue doesn’t cling so desperately to my intonation anymore, I can feel its presence nonetheless. 

The nurse jumps, and despite the mask blocking her face, I can see her smile crinkle her brow. “Sorry, sir. Yeah, sure.” The statement is made with a definite edge of surprise, as though she could not have anticipated this turn of events. Neither could I; my befuddlement is starting to morph into anxiety. My fists clench and unclench beneath the bed sheets as I intentionally slow my breathing. She looks at me quizzically. “You feeling okay?”

I nod, smiling as brightly as I can muster. 

She raises her eyebrows and turns, calling over her shoulder, “Let me get the doctor. We’ll be right back.”

I nod again and try not to panic as her receding frame disappears through the doorway. The line between dreams and reality is too blurred for my mind to distinguish. Visions my subconscious has already presented replay in my head. I close my eyes, and colors paint over each other and muddle to create new pictures. I see a flash of brown fur and hear the squeal of tires, but this scene gives way to a sleek briefcase floating down a river of coffee. The torrent of caffeine swells and pushes at banks made of cookie crumbs, and I glimpse volcanoes spewing fudge into cotton candy clouds which swirl the sky into a hazy pink. I blink, and the image twists. The candy-scape swallows itself, and I see a young girl who looks a little like me in a petal-colored tutu. She disappears and is replaced by my mother, who bandages my scraped knee as I wail. My consciousness begins clawing at these dreams, and I remind myself that I am Julian Karalis. I am twenty-two years old. I recently joined a startup in Silicon Valley. This final thought reminds me that I’m probably very late to work, and I glance at my watch, only to realize it's been replaced by a cuff attaching me to the monitor. I exhale. I’m at the hospital.

But as the minutes tick by, I start to wonder why there’s no one with me. My parents, my childhood friend Aaron, or…

Nehir. The name strikes me, sharper than the lance of a diamond. If she’s not here, that means I’ve lost her.

While I can’t remember what got me into this hospital bed, I do recall another mistake I’ve made recently. 

I met Nehir on my first day at Aurum; I’m in engineering and she’s in communications, both of us fresh out of college. She was not so much the stars as an eclipse: Nehir came into my life and blocked out everything else that seemed to matter. The first time we met was after I’d pulled an all-nighter at the office to fix a new bug with the software. In the morning, she strolled in and offered me her own untouched coffee the second she saw my haggard face. I immediately noticed the intentionally unraveled quality of her appearance: her hair wisping from its updo, her skirt slung low across her hips, and her jewelry an asymmetrical scattering of gems and glass. But more than that, the resolute confidence she ruled herself with. I was entranced. I asked her out, and we made it official after a few weeks. Nehir and I are alike in a way I never experienced before: she accepts my quiet, and fills the silence with joy. Her light is infectious. She’s bright and bold, and has a striking wit she wields with an adept hand. It wasn’t hard for me to love Nehir. It wasn’t something I tried to do. I think I’ve loved her from the start, in my quiet way.

One person can only take so much quiet though. Last night, we returned to Nehir’s apartment from a restaurant downtown. Standing in the doorway, my eyes caught on the glitter dusting her lids, her ageless skin, her natural hair intertwined with strands of ash purple, and I was struck by how otherworldly she is. How vibrant. Still, I could tell by the set of her face as she turned the key in the lock, that her silence was only a preamble to something serious.

Nehir threw her bag down on the side table, kicking her heels off at the door. Her wrists trembled, causing the cymbals of her bracelets to knock together.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She turned around slowly. “What’s wrong is that it’s always me answering the questions and never you.”

Taken aback, I stared at her blankly. Though she’d been fidgeting all through the meal with her parents, I hadn’t expected her to respond so directly.

Nehir’s face flushed and she went on. “You ask me questions all the time, about my hopes, my fears, my beliefs. But I have no idea what you want.”

Still, I said nothing. 

Her eyes dug deep into mine, searching for something she couldn’t seem to find. “Why don’t you tell me?” Her voice broke on the word. “I first told you I love you two weeks ago. And you said it back but haven’t repeated it since.”

“Why unnecessarily state what hasn’t changed?” I asked. I meant it as a reassurance; that I would show my care by bringing her dinner if she was working late, or apologize promptly if I ever suspected I’d hurt her. That even though I was slow to reveal myself, every second I spent with her made me want to even more. 

But then I saw the frustration branded across her features. She’d wanted me to prove her wrong. And whatever earnestness I’d tried to imbue into my voice had come off as mockery. Her eyes went cold, her knuckles white between the glass rings she wore. “Go home, Julian. I’m done.” 

Driving home that night, I wished that I had told her that even I can barely shoulder the burden of myself, and I’d never dream of asking her to. But she thinks I don’t care and I didn’t have the words to explain how wrong she is. If only she knew the poems I would give her, how I’d serenade her night and day and make proud declarations to anyone who’d listen that she is the axis my world revolves around. If only I could. 

I think I am a canyon; brimming with feeling but empty at the same time. Sound echoes inside me and silence stretches bridges across my gaping chasms. Beautiful from afar, but not somewhere you want to be for a prolonged period lest the quiet get to you. Unfortunately, I do not have the option to leave.

The door swings open and the doctor comes in, beaming. “Hi Mr. Karalis, I’m Doctor Whittaker, your neurologist. How are you feeling?”

My answer is automatic. “Very well, thank you. How about you, Doctor?”

“Oh, doing fine, doing fine.” He’s old with a pulsing energy that leaves me slightly unnerved. Still, there’s kindness in his features as he approaches my bedside. “You were in a car accident.”

I can say nothing, so he goes on.

“I know this must be overwhelming. You went through a serious head trauma. We did a CT scan a while back—you have a severe concussion and were in a coma for two weeks.”

My eyes widen and my heart accelerates erratically. Nehir. It’s been two weeks since she told me to leave. That’s two weeks for her to have changed her mind or to have solidified her belief about my indifference towards her. I want to slam my head into the bed rail. If only I’d stayed. I should’ve explained myself. What if it’s too late? I try to pull myself out of the spiral, to rationalize. I take a breath. “How did it happen?”

The doctor’s face turns apologetic. “You were driving when you swerved and hit a semi-truck. Witnesses claimed you were trying to avoid a deer on the road.”

The words wash over me. It takes much effort to bridge the gap between his story and myself. I nod numbly, but can’t stop the next words from plunging out of my lips.

“Am I allowed any visitors?”

He smiles at me knowingly and my hope ignites. “Your wife is already outside. I’ll have the nurse send her in.”

My brain labors so slowly over his words that the shock barely registers before there’s a woman running into the room. “Julian!” She gasps and throws her arms around me.

I stiffen. I have no idea who this woman is. 

She releases me quickly, clearly taking my sudden rigidness for pain. She’s older than me, the suggestion of smile lines creasing her mouth though currently, there’s worry wracking her brow. She has short dark hair only slightly woven with gray, and wears an elegant sweater tucked into trousers. Her eyes, framed by thick glasses, and the tired bruises stamped under them testify to her sleeplessness. An engraved ring circles the fourth finger of her left hand, which she effortlessly lays on my arm as though it’s the most natural action in the world.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t with you when you woke up. How are you?” she asks. 

I swallow. The way she looks right now—so fragile in all the wrong places like her eyes will pool with tears at the slightest provocation—prevents me from speaking my thoughts. She cares about me. I don’t have the heart to say I don’t recognize her. “I’m okay.” I look past her and I finally notice the brightness of the lights is assaulting. My vision feels hazy, like cotton fills the space in my head. 

She exhales, closes her eyes, and massages the bridge of her nose. When she looks back at me, I see her dark irises are glassy, and her hand shakes as she traces my cheek. “I was so scared. When I got the call, I thought—” Her voice hitches.

I grimace at the pain ripping her face apart, and even though it feels horrible and wrong, I let the woman cry into my shoulder. My palms are sweating, and I swallow back the guilt as one name chokes me; Nehir, Nehir, Nehir.

“What’s the date?” I ask the woman, if only to break the internal chant.

She dries her eyes. “January fifth,” she says, smiling a sad sort of smile that seems to hurt her so much that I wish she wouldn’t. “Happy 2023.”

Her words make me blanch, and I can’t hide my surprise.

The woman catches my expression. “What?”

“Nothing,” I lie. But this new information changes everything. “Do you have my phone?”

When she hands it to me, I do not recognize the model. It’s sleek and frameless with a large display, and sure enough, the date reads January fifth, 2023. I can’t mask my disbelief. I run the numbers in my head, but can’t seem to account for the eight years that are missing from my memory. I’m thirty. I’m married. 

And then I see the lock screen of the phone in my hand and the emotions that shoot through me are a mix between chaos and sadness and utter bliss. It’s a picture of me: brown eyes, sharp jaw, scar above the arch of my eyebrow, and stubble grown out slightly more than I’ve ever allowed it to. In my arms is a girl with pigtails, my strong nose, and the woman’s coloring. She holds my face with one hand and grips a stuffed donkey in the other. The woman stands next to us, holding a bundle of blankets in which a tiny baby pumps her fists and smiles, all gums.

Now I feel my eyes grow wet. For some reason, I no longer doubt that the woman before me is my wife. Maybe because I know I’ve suffered head trauma and my memory must have been jostled, but mostly because I see proof of our union in the two perfect girls we held in our arms. 

I add this to my list of facts: I am a father.

My joy has eclipsed my confusion, and I know I’m smiling like an idiot. I don’t even know their names and I love them more than life. But then panic sets in. How can I tell my daughters I don’t know them? I’ll be destroying the perfect family I’ve already lost.

Still, my other love continues to haunt my thoughts, as our probable ending dawns on me. Nehir, certainly, is no longer a part of my life. We both moved on. Even though my accident put me back at the start.

“Where are they?” I ask the woman, gazing at my daughters with equal parts longing and fear.

“With Emine. They miss you so much.”

“Do they?” I muse quietly, but inside I’m thinking I’ve never missed people I don’t know before and the sensation is toppling over me.

“They’re only little, but Defne keeps saying she wants to go to the ‘house-pit-ol’ and Aleyna is babbling about ‘Baba’ constantly. Of course, they miss you.”

“And you?” I ask, even though part of me knows I shouldn’t. I am intrigued by who this woman is to me. She feels real, in a way that Nehir never did. Nehir was ethereal; not a fleeting thought, always a downpour in the best way. But the woman before me feels constant.  She would stay by my side till the end of time. “Did you miss me?”

The woman smiles, and her lips brush my cheek. “I’ve been here with you the last two weeks. I visited every day, talking to you about the girls. Defne had her ballet recital, and Aleyna took her first steps and has a new game where she pretends to make coffee.”

In two weeks I’ve missed too much. But eight years? Then it hits me. “I heard you. Some part of me did.” In my state of ether, I couldn’t distinguish memories from dreams. Now I know everything was a bit of both. 

The woman stares off, and I can see her thanking whatever force brought me back to her. Inside, I’m doing the same. I might not know her now, but I have known her, in the deepest way. It could take weeks or months or years. I am certain I’ll know her again.

“I almost forgot,” she says, retrieving a folded paper from her purse. “The girls and I made you a card.”

The cardstalk is wrinkled from little hands, and the front is covered in a haphazard mix of glitter glue dollops, Disney stickers, and marker doodles in primary colors. I run my hand along the cover, admiring the wealth of textures. I am certain my daughters are true artists. I open the card and inside is neat penmanship which must belong to the woman before me.

The message is simple:

Dear Baba,

We hope you get better soon! We miss you so much.

Lots of love, 

Aleyna, Defne, and Nehir 

My heart skips a beat, and I look up at my wife. I see something that no age, hair dye, or clothes could hide. A new memory surfaces in my mind, and this time, I’m certain it’s real. It’s of a woman in a white gown of lace walking through an aisle towards me. The fabric swirls around her and I can glimpse the barest glimmer of gold around her wrist, brushing her collarbone, and dangling near her stray curls. She clutches a bouquet of pink tulips with reverent care. Music swells, but I can’t hear it over the racing of my heart. Her steps are graceful but purposeful, her countenance determined but serene. I feel my body fill with warmth as I lift the veil away from her face, and I finally see her in all her glory.

“It’s you,” I whisper to the woman before me. I’m so relieved I could cry. “I married you, Nehir.”

Nehir laughs, and the sound is like chimes flirting with the wind. “And aren’t you glad you did?” Her voice is teasing but my answer is earnest.

“Yes.” And then I know why my mind, in a split second of life or death, took me back to that fateful night. “I’m so sorry,” I tell her. “About that fight, all those years ago. That I didn’t tell you how much I love you every chance I got.”

She holds my face in her hands. “That’s long been forgotten, Julian.” She presses her lips to mine, and finally, finally, I am found. “Besides,” she says. “You’ve said it no fewer than twice a day since then.”

“I love you,” I murmur. “I love you.” And once more. “I love you.”