Page 6 of Help Me Remember
CHAPTER TWO
Eric’s face broke into a smile, and he took a step forward. “When did you get into town?”
The doctor glanced between us, curiosity in her eyes. “Do you two know each other?”
I said no at almost the exact same moment he said yes. The effect was immediate, and I watched his smile stutter and fall as he frowned at me in confusion.
“What?” he asked, cocking his head. “Dyl, it’s me, Eric. Christ, I know it’s been a handful of years, and you’re beat to hell…by the way, what the fuck have you been doing? But shit, we know each other, we grew up together. I’d recognize you anywhere.”
The fuzziness in my head grew thicker as I stared at him, tracing his features with my eyes. He was about my height but not nearly as bulky, though almost as broad in the shoulders. His face was long with a slim but still noticeable jawline, and his nose might have been long once, but a slight crookedness gave away that it’d been broken. Scruff speckled his jaw, far darker than the so-light-it-was-nearly-white blond hair on his head.
The whole time, his bright blue eyes continued to bore into me, staring with confusion and, much to my growing shame, hurt.
“Dylan?” he questioned.
“Huh,” the doctor grunted, looking between us. “You’re sure this is him?”
Eric glanced at her, then at me with a deepening frown. “He’s…bigger than the last time I saw him, and that scar is new, but…if it’s him, he’s got a raven tattoo on the inside of his left upper arm.”
“Crow,” I said without thinking.
“Raven,” Eric insisted. “You got them because you were obsessed with Norse mythology when we were teens. You wanted to…look, they’re just ravens. And if that doesn’t satisfy you, there’s a small birthmark on your left hip, just below the waistline of your underwear, in the shape of a star.”
“And you would know this how?” the doctor asked, glancing at Eric in what I thought was amusement.
Eric ducked his head, pale skin coloring. “We went to school together, seen it a couple of times when we changed for gym.”
“Ah,” she said, leaning over to look at my left side. “So?”
I blinked before realizing what she was asking me. Pulling the band of my underwear down, I stared at what, sure enough, was a discoloration on my skin in the shape of a star. It was a lopsided, asymmetrical star, but a star all the same.
“I’m from here?” I asked, looking up to glance between them. This was the first time I’d felt like I had a chance at some answers. “Like, I live here?”
“You moved out of Port Dale eleven years ago, and I haven’t heard from you in over four years,” Eric said slowly before finally glancing at the doctor. “What the hell is going on?”
“Local,” the doctor said, holding out her hand. Eric held a bottle out to her without a word, which she took and immediately got to work, bending over to fiddle with a needle. “Up until you came in here, I was working on the belief that his name was Stanley.”
“Stanley?” Eric scoffed.
“Stanley Brown,” she affirmed, motioning for me to lean forward. “At least, that’s what he put on his entry paperwork. What’s his actual name?”
“Dylan Levin,” Eric said, looking frustrated. “He’s thirty-one years old, birthday is August sixteenth, and I don’t know what his current address is. We talked less and less after he moved, and then one day, he just disappeared off the face of the planet.”
“Family we can contact?”
“No siblings…and no parents.”
The last was said with a quick glance in my direction, searching my face nervously. All I could do was stare back blankly, realizing I hadn’t even given a thought to any friends or family I might have. My whole existence since waking up had been colored by searching for who I was and trying to find someone who could stitch me up.
“This might sting,” I heard the doctor warn, and then I felt the needle slide into my scalp. It wasn’t the greatest feeling in the world, and I twitched when I felt the burn of the anesthetic. “Your friend took a fall and claims not to remember anything.”
“Not remember…amnesia?” Eric asked in disbelief.
“Completely retrograde from the sounds of it,” she continued, giving one last poke before disposing of the needle. “Remembers how to function and basic information, but not a flicker of anything else.”
“Seriously?” Eric demanded, staring at me with eyes so wide I wondered if it was possible for them to fall out.
“I was admittedly a little skeptical at first,” the doctor said, fiddling with something in the case she’d set on the table beside me. “Though after that little display with you I’m more of a believer now.”