Somewhere in NYC

When the doctor returns, he tells you that he would like to talk to you for an hour tomorrow morning at twelve thirty to one thirty and time seems to drag from then on. You're not exactly nervous about meeting with a therapist because you've been seeing one for speech for a while, and you'd seen one twice when you first woke up but they'd decided you were coping fine. So you've got to wonder what's changed between then and now. Presumably something to do with the fight you had with Alex, but really you just wanted him to apologize, not get a therapist involved.

When the therapist arrives he stands outside your door for a few seconds finishing the last bites of a sandwich and you realize meeting you now probably means he's seeing you in his lunch break, and you can't for the life of you figure out why you'd be more important to a stranger than lunch break. Especially in this place.

Dr. Franceschi leads you through the corridors and to a room where a sign on his door proclaims it to be his office and gestures for you to sit down in a reasonably comfortable looking chair placed at his desk while he takes a seat opposite.

"So Jack," he starts, smiling at you, and you wonder why every therapist starts their session in the same way. Probably to do with training. And habit, or are we meant to call that routine?

"So," you return in a friendly tone. Maybe if you're friendly and can prove you're fine you'll get out of here faster.

"So I'm aware since you woke up you've been able to remember the events that happened before the accident. Could repeat these to me, please?"

Well at least that's a question you prepared for.

You tell him of your version of the events that happened on the day you got hit by the car, from eating breakfast in the morning to going in to work to coming home and having people over. You include the details you think don't matter just to waste time. (If you're going to be here for an hour you want to spend as much time as possible seeming like you know what you're talking about).

You inform him of the fact that you had toast for breakfast, peanut butter-jelly.

You inform him that you got stuck in traffic on your way to work, there was some argument happening between two drivers in the middle of the road.

You inform him that your colleague at the office, Matt, was in a bad mood, but seemed to cheer up when you reminded him he was coming over to yours in the evening.

You inform him that you went to get coffee from the machine, but they were out of milk and you had to have black coffee which soured your mood as well as the taste.

You inform him that when you got home Alex had put chips on the side and they were the spicy ones that are your favorite so you ate them all by accident much to his displeasure, and that he made you go and get more and while you were at the shop he texted you to get more beer, namely Stella.

You inform him that when you got home there were a few people there, and more kept coming until you couldn't hear what people were saying to you and a girl named Cassadee kept trying to get you to speak to her, but you couldn't hear her and just wanted to be alone even though she was being really friendly.

You inform him of going to sit at the side, and Alex pulling you in to the bedroom because he was angry you weren't in the mood for a party.

You inform him that you could hear the voices of friends and family in your head which didn't match with what was really happening and it was difficult to concentrate on what was being said to you.

You finally inform him of Alex telling you you were crazy and ruined his life, and how you didn't want to listen to his apologies as you ran outside and how when you tried to run across the road you got hit by a car, which brings you to waking up in the hospital. He knows your story from there.

He looks to be deliberating before he speaks. You wonder what you said that made him think.

"This isn't uncommon in people who wake up from a long period of sleep," he begins in a knowledgeable but friendly voice. "It seems that while you were unconscious you had what is basically an ongoing hallucination, not unlike a dream. Your sequence of events," he continues, "is different to other's for this reason. That's why when you asked Alex he had no knowledge of this, he genuinely doesn't."

The more he speaks the more your brain wants to reject the words. After weeks of living in New York you had accepted that you had simply somehow lost your memories of what had happened before, choosing not to dwell on it too much. Eventually you'd given up trying to make sense of it. That is your life. That is the way things are. Alex was there. Matt was there. Rian was there. Your mom was there, and the rest of your family too.

All along you'd thought you were from an alternative universe or something, so this should make sense. Instead the affirmation confuses you more because no one's ever agreed with your theory before. You were used to New York; the job, how you were with your boyfriend, family and friends. But now that's all been stripped from you, and you feel almost exactly the same way you did in the coffee shop when Alex told you New York was real life.

You fight the tears that you can feel start to prick at your eyes.

"Is that all?" you ask through the lump in your throat. And although you both know it isn't, Dr. Franceschi nods sensing that you need space, and you leave without a second glance.