Page 10 of Help Me Remember
I didn’t want to call it unnerving, but it felt strange for him to be so quiet when I would swear he wanted to be anything but. I couldn’t prove it since it was only the impression. At one point during the trip, I considered whether some latent memory had risen from the depths of my damaged mind. That delusion only lasted a couple of minutes before I remembered I was basing all my understanding of Eric solely on our first meeting.
Well, not our first, just the first to me now…and really, maybe I didn’t know this man at all. Despite going along with the idea, I had absolutely no intention of believing we knew each other. Perhaps it had only been in passing, or perhaps Eric was a stalker. The worst theory emerged, however, when I thought that maybe Eric was one of the people or the single person who had tried to kill me.
It was a paranoid thought because even I had to admit the chances were so incredibly small. It should have been easy to dismiss. But, then again, if what Eric had said was true, the chances of me running into a childhood friend at this exact moment were incredibly small as well. Yet I had run into him, and that coincidence was enough to keep the wariness alive and well.
Pulling into a small parking lot beside an old building, Eric turned off the car. “Are you able to walk upstairs?”
I scowled, biting my tongue against my initial retort. “I don’t know. Haven’t had to do it yet.”
“Alright, let’s find out then,” he said, taking his keys and sliding out of the car.
Sighing, I did the same, albeit at a slower pace. Walking wasn’t too much of a problem, so long as I didn’t try to rush. Following him to the front of the building, I took the few cracked stone steps up to the entrance, muttering my thanks when he opened the door.
A hallway led straight ahead with a set of stairs to the right. The tiles reminded me of the clinic, though the place didn’t smell of cleaning supplies. Someone was cooking something pungent, and it flooded the entire level. The smell made my stomach roll, and I made my way over to the stairs.
It turned out that I could climb stairs, albeit at a speed I was sure a disabled geriatric could have outpaced on a bad day. It wasn’t so much the pain or even the tightness in my chest that held me back but an extreme weariness that had set in during the drive. Nothing sounded better than settling down on a reasonably comfortable surface and staying there for as long as possible.
“You good?” Eric asked. The first words he’d spoken since we entered the building.
“Yeah,” I said. Because any sarcastic retort I might have had as I tried to catch my breath withered in the face of his genuine concern.
“You can come in and sit down. It’s just right here,” he said, still watching me closely as we reached the nearest door. He unlocked it quickly and pushed it open, motioning for me to enter ahead of him.
I did so, forgetting my wariness in the face of my weariness, and was met with a long hallway. There was a doorway on my right halfway down, and the hallway continued before opening into what I thought must be a living room. Eric closed the door behind me, flipping a thick deadbolt, the knob, and a bar rather than a chain.
“Eh, screw sitting down, c’mon,” he said and led me toward the doorway on the right.
I didn’t have the energy to argue and followed him into the room. It turned out to be a bedroom, and one without a lot of space. There was a closet in one corner and a dresser right beside it. The bed dominated most of the room on the opposite wall from the dresser, and it looked like the most comfortable thing I had ever seen in my life, from the sheer thickness of the mattress to the plush duvet that neatly covered it.
Eric moved forward, pulling a part of the duvet back and patting the edge of the bed. “C’mon, you look about ready to fall down.”
“I think I’ve done enough of that for one day,” I muttered as I sat down where he indicated.
“Oh, we’re joking about it then, are we?” he asked wryly, crouching down before me.
“What are you doing?” I asked, almost groaning as I felt the bed sink wonderfully beneath my weight.
“You’re exhausted and in pain, and I don’t trust your balance with those two things and a head injury,” Eric told me, grabbing my laces and beginning to undo the knots I’d tied earlier. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to strip you down…unless you want me to.”
“I just want to sleep,” I said, briefly wondering if there was some ulterior motive in his words. Could that be another piece of the puzzle, adding credence to the possibility that he’d been a stalker?
Yet as he carefully pulled my boots off and set them aside, not flinching as he took my socks with them, I felt the suspicion fizzle out. There was no eagerness or insistence on his part. Instead, he was careful and gentle as he set everything aside and finally stood up, looking down at me.
“Alright, get some rest. And I’m sure you’ll probably end up dead to the world, but I’m going to warn you right now that I’m going to come in occasionally to make sure you’re okay.” He arched his brow as if daring me to argue.
“Gotta make sure my brain didn’t swell too much and shut my heart off,” I muttered, giving in to temptation and rolling onto my back with all the grace of a drunken bear.
“You really need to work on your sense of humor,” he said, leaning over to frown at me.
“Sorry,” I said, meaning it. “It’s just…been a really weird day.”
His expression softened, and he leaned over, gently resting a hand on my brow. “Get some sleep, Dylan. Maybe after you get some rest, everything will be better.”
“Doubt it,” I said, letting my eyes slip closed simply because I didn’t have the strength to fight it any longer. The bed was even more comfortable than I had imagined. “It doesn’t seem like luck has been on my side lately.”
“It’s not all bad,” he said softly, and I could tell he was moving away from the bed by the sound of his voice. “At least for the moment, you’re safe. That has to count for something, right?”
I didn’t have time to come up with a counter-argument before my exhaustion finally won out, and I slipped into peaceful darkness, surrounded by the soft comfort of the bed.