Chapter 6
2748words
"Dad, today in art class we learned to paint sunflowers! Do you remember? That hillside covered with sunflowers we visited last summer?" Lily ran over holding her painting, her face full of expectation as she asked me.
My heart suddenly sank. Sunflower Hill? I didn't remember it. In my memory, the only scenes of summer were that rainy street corner and a blue truck. But I couldn't say that. All I could do was stiffly curl the corners of my mouth into a smile and mumble a response, "I remember... Of course, Dad remembers. You drew it so beautifully."
I lied. From the moment I "woke up," my life became one big lie. I was using countless small lies to cover up the most fundamental, earth-shattering lie about who I was. Every time I lied, I felt a physical wave of nausea.
"Mike, why do you still look so pale? Is the rehabilitation training too tiring?" Sarah walked over with a cup of warm milk, worriedly pressing the back of her hand to my forehead. "Should we ask the doctor for a day off tomorrow?"
"I'm fine, Sarah, really." I avoided her gaze as I took the milk. Her tenderness and thoughtfulness, once a comfort to me, now felt like a silent interrogation. She was taking care of the "Hero Mike" who had fallen into a coma for a year to save his daughter, not the impostor who had stolen someone else's life through despicable means. The kinder she was, the heavier my guilt became.
I began to suffer from insomnia. At night, after everyone had fallen asleep, I sat alone in the darkness of the living room, clutching the cracked kaleidoscope in my hand. I didn't dare to look at it again, afraid of seeing it completely shattered. I just held onto it, feeling its rough surface, as if clinging to the last fragile thread connecting me to that "real" past.
I tried hard to recall. Like a drowning man desperately grasping for any drifting piece of wood, I struggled to remember. What was the scene like during my first date with Sarah? Was it at that seaside restaurant or on a snowy park bench? I remembered we both ordered fish, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't recall what color clothes she was wearing that day.
What about the secret gesture between Lily and me? That little action we always did when parting—hooking our pinkies and then flicking each other's foreheads… I remembered it, but somehow I couldn't get it right anymore. My fingers had become stiff, the familiar, fluid motion was gone, replaced by an awkward imitation.
I was forgetting. Not only was I forgetting the first Lily, but I was even beginning to forget Sarah from before this "perfect" world. My past was being peeled away layer by layer, covered and consumed by this new reality I had created. I felt like a statue eroded by wind and sand, my features gradually blurring until, in the end, only a faceless, past-less outline would remain.
Sarah keenly sensed my changes. The joy of awakening lingered on her face for less than a week before it was replaced by growing worry. She no longer asked what had happened but instead treated me with even greater care. She would place my favorite book (I didn't even remember it being my favorite) by my bedside, prepare foods said to calm the mind and aid sleep, and gently drape a blanket over me when I stared into space.
She thought I had "post-traumatic stress disorder." Everyone thought so—doctors, friends, and even herself. They believed the horrific car accident and the year-long coma had left a deep scar in my mind. This explanation was so logical that no one doubted it. Except me. Only I knew I wasn't suffering from post-traumatic stress; I was experiencing an existential crisis. I was disappearing from this world in a way more thorough than death.
"Mike, eat something." She placed a bowl of hot soup in front of me once again.
I shook my head, having no appetite. I simply looked at her — at her tired, haggard face from staying up late and overworking, at the new fine lines at the corners of her eyes, at her hands that were no longer smooth from holding two jobs. A huge wave of emotions, a mixture of love and guilt, surged within me, but I couldn't say anything. What could I say? Tell her the truth? Tell her that the husband before her eyes was no longer the man she deeply loved? Reveal to her that her hard work, her sacrifices, and everything she had guarded were all just byproducts of my selfish actions? I couldn't. All I could do was remain silent.
That night, I returned from the hospital after my final check-up. The doctor was amazed at my recovery speed and declared that aside from some follow-up muscle strength training, I had fully recovered. It was good news, the kind that should have made the whole family cheer. But in my heart, there was only a cold, lifeless silence. What did recovery mean? It meant I had to integrate deeper into this world I didn't belong to, meant I had to play the role of a more perfect "Michael Sullivan."
To celebrate, Sarah took half the day off and prepared a lavish dinner. Lily was also excited, buzzing around me, exclaiming, "Daddy's finally better!" The dining table was filled with laughter and joy. They were all laughing, but I remained like an outsider, unable to truly join in. I tried to respond to them, tried to appear happy, but my smile must have looked worse than a frown.
After dinner, Sarah was going to work at the restaurant. Before leaving, she hesitated for a long time at the door, but finally came over and gave me a hug.
"Mike, try to cheer up, okay? For me, and for Lily," she whispered in my ear, her voice tinged with a hint of pleading.
I nodded stiffly.
After she left, the house fell silent. Lily was drawing in her room, while I sat alone on the sofa in the living room. The sky outside gradually darkened, and the city lights lit up one after another, like a distant and cold sea of stars. I didn't turn on the lights, letting the darkness engulf me. I just sat there, thinking of nothing, doing nothing, as if I had become a piece of furniture fused with the sofa. My mind was blank, and the fragments of memories that once tormented me now felt thin and distant. This emptiness terrified me more than pain. It meant that my "fuel" was almost depleted. I was about to be completely erased.
I don't know how long I sat there until the sound of keys turning in the door came from the entrance.
Sarah was back. She opened the door softly, her footsteps heavy with obvious exhaustion. She didn't turn on the light immediately, as if adjusting to the darkness, and then she saw me sitting on the sofa.
"Michael?" She tentatively called out.
I didn't respond.
She sighed and turned on the light. The soft glow instantly filled the living room, illuminating her exhausted face. Her hair was slightly disheveled, and she carried the distinct smell of grease from the restaurant. She took off her coat, walked over to me, and sat down quietly without saying a word.
Only the two of us were in the living room, and the silence rose like water, slowly submerging us. I could feel her gaze resting on me, devoid of reproach but filled with a profound sadness that was almost unbearable.
Finally, she reached out and gently grasped my cold hand resting on my knee. Her palm was rough but warm. That little bit of warmth, like a pebble dropped into stagnant water, stirred a faint ripple across the numb lake of my heart.
"I know you're hurting," she finally spoke, her voice hoarse with the fatigue of a long day's labor. "I can feel it. Ever since you woke up, it's like you've become a different person. I don't know what you went through while you were unconscious, nor what you're facing now. All I know is that you feel like you've lost so much, don't you?"
My shoulders jolted sharply, and I looked up at her in disbelief. How could she know?
She looked into my eyes, those eyes I'd loved for so many years, now filled with sorrowful understanding and unwavering love. She gave me a weak smile, tinged with self-mockery yet infinitely gentle.
"I can feel it, Mike. The way you look at me and Lily sometimes... it's unfamiliar. Like you're looking at two people you know very well, but can't quite remember who they are." She took a deep breath, tightening her grip on my hand. "You're afraid, aren't you? You're afraid of yourself. You're afraid of becoming someone even you don't recognize."
Her words, each one like a precise scalpel, cut through the layers of my disguise, reaching the core of my fear. I opened my mouth, wanting to deny, to explain, but not a single word came out. Tears, for the first time since I "woke up," uncontrollably welled up, blurring my vision.
"It's okay, Mike." She brought my hand to her lips and kissed it gently. Her lips were also dry, with a hint of cracks. "Listen, I don't know what that past is that you can't forget. I don't know what you've 'lost.' All I know is, no matter what you've become, no matter if you remember our past or not, the one I love is the you standing before me. The you who falls silent out of fear, the you whose eyes are filled with pain and confusion. It's all you."
Her voice was soft, yet carried an undeniable strength, piercing through all my defenses.
"You don't have to carry it alone, Mike. You've never been alone. Not before, and not now." She looked at me, tears shimmering in her eyes, but her tone was unwavering. "Share a little of your pain with me, okay? No matter what it is, we'll face it together."
Sarah's words were like a rusty key, finally inserted into the long-locked, thoroughly corroded keyhole of my heart. With an ear-piercing, metallic shriek, the corner I had deliberately avoided and dared not touch was forcibly opened.
I looked at her. For the first time, truly, I raised my head from the life I had stolen and gazed at the woman before me. What I saw was no longer "my wife," no longer a "character" in this perfect ending, but an independent, living, suffering soul.
She had lost weight, far too much compared to before I fell into a coma. Her eye sockets were sunken, her cheekbones protruded, making her eyes appear startlingly large. Her hands were covered in small cuts and burn marks, the traces of a restaurant kitchen. Her back, no longer as straight as before, had developed a habitual stoop from prolonged standing and serving, carrying the weariness of a life weighed down.
And all of this was because of me.
It was I who, to satisfy my own pitiful, unwilling weakness to face reality, forcibly twisted time. It was I who, for the sake of a so-called "perfect ending," let her shoulder the burden of a broken family all on her own for an entire year. It was I who pushed her away when she needed support and comfort the most, lost in my own pitiful self-torment over the authenticity of memories.
I always thought that the price I paid for traveling through time was my own memories, my own identity. I was wrong. I was utterly wrong. The true cost was Sarah's youth, her health, and all the ease and happiness she should have had. I used her pain to cultivate the false, self-righteous garden of happiness before me.
I was a selfish bastard. A thorough, hopeless, incurably selfish bastard.
I never hurt just myself. With my so-called "love," I wielded the sharpest knife, carving bone-deep wounds into the person I loved most. And she, the one I hurt the most, was still telling me at this very moment, "It's okay, we'll face it together."
Overwhelming shame and regret erupted from the depths of my heart like magma, scorching my very core. I finally realized that everything I had done was not love, but utter destruction. I had saved no one. I had merely shifted the disaster from one person to another, and then, in another form, brought retribution upon us all.
"I..." A painful groan escaped my throat. I wanted to say sorry to her, but the word felt so hollow. How could my apology make up for the year she had lost, or heal the scars she bore?
Just as I was engulfed by this sudden, overwhelming wave of self-loathing, a crisp voice interrupted us.
"Dad, Mom, what are you doing?"
Lily came out of her room, rubbing her eyes while wearing her bear pajamas. She held a drawing paper in her hand, seemingly a freshly completed work, eager to share it with us.
She ran up to us, lifted the drawing high, and wore a proud smile: "Look! This is my drawing of our family!"
My eyes fell on the drawing. And then, in that moment, my entire world froze completely.
On the paper were three small figures holding hands. On the right was Mom, Sarah, with a ponytail and a bright smile. In the middle was Lily herself, drawn the largest, with a crooked crown on her head.
And the one on the left, the figure representing me… it wasn't standing.
He lay on a white hospital bed, with various tubes attached to his body. His figure was drawn small and frail. What frightened me the most was his face. Lily had not drawn him with eyes, a nose, or a mouth. That face was a blurred, blank vortex.
A father with no face.
This drawing, this innocent yet cruel drawing from an eight-year-old child, hit me like the heaviest of iron fists, striking hard at my chest. All my fears, all my self-doubt, all my existential crises, were suddenly made concrete by this drawing at that moment.
In Lily's world, in her memory, her father was just a blurry symbol lying on a hospital bed for a year. I wasn't the dad who would tell her "The Rabbit Under the Stars," nor the dad who would play secret hand gestures with her. I was just a stranger who had "just woken up," someone she needed to get to know all over again.
I thought I had saved her, but I ended up erasing "us."
I suddenly lowered my head, staring at my trembling hands. Then, my gaze crossed the living room, landing on the bookshelf in the corner where my briefcase rested. I knew the old, worn-out kaleidoscope was still inside. That kaleidoscope, riddled with cracks, teetering on the edge of shattering.
I had to make a choice.
Should I stay in this "perfect" present, where parts of me were being erased one by one, and become a faceless "good husband" and "good father" without a past, watching myself being completely "formatted"?
Or...
Or should I go to any lengths to reclaim the real me? To retrieve those vanishing, irreplaceable memories? Even if it meant tearing through time once more, even if it meant... losing this warm, albeit false, present?
I looked up, gazing at Lily's innocent face, then glanced at Sarah's eyes filled with both love and weariness.
A thought, cold, mad, yet incredibly clear, finally took shape in my mind.
I couldn't live on as a ghost.
I had to go back. I had to find that initial point, where everything was still untouched by my mistakes.
This time, it wasn't to save anyone.
It was to find myself again.
