I See Sparks Fly Whenever You Smile

Brook

Another few days had come and gone and there was still no sign of Alex waking up. It kept getting harder and harder to remain any sort of optimist. The hardest day so far had been when the one year anniversary of the day Alex and I met past. I still found it so hard to believe how much he was able to turn my life upside down in just a year.

I’d been running on practically no sleep for days now. Any time I’d manage to get myself comfortable enough in the hard, plastic chair that sat next to the hospital bed Alex was lid up in to fall asleep, I only woke up soon after from an awful nightmare.

The most recent one I woke up from involved me finally leaving the hospital for a few hours with Rian. When we came back, Alex’s room was empty and I came to find that he had passed while we were gone. That was by far the worst of the nightmares and the one that reoccurred the most.

The times that I found myself in the room alone were the hardest. Having no one to talk to but Alex’s unconscious form was quickly getting to me. I tried to pass the time with the TV I the room, but basic cable programming got old and I hated watching the news.

I’d started to collect magazines from the waiting room to read. I had been in the middle of the latest issue of Seventeen Magazine with Selena Gomez on the cover when I heard rustling in the bed next to me. I immediately stopped reading, unsure if I’d imagined it. After the whole hand squeezing thing, I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Once I heard the rustling again, I slowly brought the magazine down from my face and almost fell off the chair when I saw Alex’s big brown eyes looking up at me.

“Oh my God,” I mumbled to myself, quickly jumping up from my seat and letting the magazine fall to the floor.

“Hi…” Alex said. He sound a little confused.

“Alex, hi…” I replied, choking back tears. I was full of so many emotions in the moment but I knew I needed to keep it together.

“I’m- I’m sorry,” Alex said, fidgeting with the oxygen tube in his nose. “Who are you?”

I froze.

It suddenly felt like I had gained two hundred pounds. Everything around me felt heavy.

I tried to convince myself that Alex was just being a jerk because he was still mad at me. Deep down I knew what was really going on. The doctors had warned us of this.

Alex had memory loss.

“I-I’m Brook,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. I did not want to freak him out.

He shrugged. My name didn’t seem to ring any bells.

“Okay. Just give me a second. I need to find a nurse or a doctor or someone. I’ll be right back,” I said quickly as I backed towards the door. “Stay here,” I said as I left the room, shaking my head at how stupid that was to say.

I ran down the hall to the nurses’ station. I was met with a handful of familiar faces. Out of breath, I told them that Alex was awake. I didn’t get a chance to tell them that he didn’t know who I was. Within a few minutes a few doctors and nurses were filing in and out of Alex’s room. I stood out in the hall and out of the way while I waited for Alex’s parents and the rest of the guys to come back from the hotel.

“What happened?” Rian asked as soon as he saw me.

Alex’s parents had run straight into the room to see Alex and the doctors. Rian was able to sneak in with them while everyone else was in the waiting room.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I was just sitting there, reading a magazine and I heard him moving around. He looked right at me and asked who I was…"

Rian quickly pulled me into a hug and I started to cry into his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay,” he assured me. “He’s awake. That’s the most important thing right now, right?”

I nodded, pulling back from the hug. “I guess,” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “But what good is it if he doesn’t remember anyone? It must be so scary for him.”

Rian placed his hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes as he spoke. “Brook. Relax. Let’s wait and see what the doctors say now. Don’t panic just yet.”

I shook my head, taking a deep breath. “What if it’s only me he doesn’t remember? What if he was so mad- the accident- maybe he just wiped me from his memory completely,” I had clearly started to spiral.

Rian shook his head and squeezed my shoulders. “Stop. You are the last person Alex would ever want to forget no matter how bad things were the last time you spoke. Trust me.”

I took a deep breath again, trying my hardest to calm down. I had done a somewhat good job holding it together up until today. I couldn’t completely fall apart. Not now.

I just had to stay positive. Alex was awake and I had to believe that everything was going to be okay.