By Leiani Brown
It was one of those snowy mid-February mornings that Alice had loved. Just after a blizzard. The surrounding whiteness gave the earth a newness that seemed to slow time. It was 5 a.m., the softness of the snow soothing the harsh sounds of morning to a kind of muffled silence. Sean was used to being the first one awake in the world, but there was something about snow that made everything softer, sleepier.
He walked out to the road, rubbing his hands together to generate heat. He could feel the numbness already beginning to take hold of his skin. His were the first footprints to touch the fresh snow. He stopped in the middle of the road, the orange glow of the faulty streetlight illuminating his lone figure.
Within hours, Sean knew, the pure, untouched road would become a grey slush, tainted by car exhaust and tire tracks.
Alice had hated the slush. Sean would always hear her griping about the grey mess that seeped into her shoes and made a splash with every step. That's why he'd often find her outside in the cold at 4, sometimes 3 a.m., just staring at the untouched snow.
“It's so beautiful,” she'd say when he came to herd her inside. “Why can't it stay like that forever? Why can't people just stay inside? Just leave it alone?”
Alice was a bit of a purist in that way, she hated to see things tampered with.
He had laughed at her then, shook his head at her ridiculous standards and unrealistic hopes. But he wasn't laughing now.
Sean and Alice had been married for 27 happy years. High school sweethearts. Their marriage hadn't been perfect, but it had worked. That's why Alice leaving two years ago took him by such surprise. Sure, he hadn't always been around, but it was a part of the job, and he knew Alice understood that. Being a truck driver meant traveling a lot. It was a lonely profession, but they had found a way to fit marriage into the lifestyle. Or so Sean had thought.
He shoved his hands into his pocket and sighed.
The drive to the clinic was long and uneventful. He stayed in the car for a dozen minutes before finally going inside.
“And how may I help you, sir?” The woman at the front desk wore a cyborg-looking Bluetooth attached to her ear and had big bulging eyes that stared up at him as she spoke in an annoyingly sweet voice. Sean wasn't sure if she was talking to him or the electronics wired to her face.
“Sir?” she repeated after an uncomfortable amount of silence. “Sir, can I help you?”
“Y-yeah,” his voice cracked. “Yeah I'm here to see Dr. Stanport.”
“Alright, if you'll just wait one sec,” she smiled a toothy, over-friendly smile, and turned to a computer behind the one in front of her.
She wears way too much makeup, Sean thought to himself as he took a seat that was set out for waiting clients. And how many computers do these people need? He was thinking like Alice again. He did that sometimes.
Sean calculated his age to be somewhere around 84, and his bones often agreed, despite . He had striking green-blue eyes that held the vividness of his 20 year-old self, and the slightly sagging skin of an 80 year-old, with the brown, somewhat greying beard of his thirties.
“Sean Kimball.”
His name came over the intercom, like he was back in grade school being called into the principal's office. Dr. Stanport's office certainly matched the description of one, as far as he could remember or imagine one might look like.
“Sean! What a delight to see you!” Dr. Craig Stanport, head physician of the clinic, stood in front of his desk in the middle of his office, welcoming Sean in.
“I had a scheduled appointment. You were expecting me.” Sean replied brusquely. He’d always suspected Dr. Stanport of faking pleasantness. In fact, he’d always got the feeling everyone was faking something, like the whole place was just one giant plastic bubble filled with plastic plants and phony mannequins posing as people.
“Yes, but nonetheless, it's a delight! An absolute treat!” For a mannequin, Dr. Stanport sure was animated—so many hand motions and shifting facial expressions. “How are you doing this fine summer day?”
Sean froze. “Summer?”
Dr. Stanport nodded, a fake smile still vibrant on his baby-faced features.
“What do you mean? I had to drive through a nasty snowstorm to get here, the roads are awful.” Sean began talking fast, his confusion and dread picking up speed. He jerked his head in the direction of the window to see sunshine creeping in through the blinds.
“No…” Sean groaned.
“Ah, I see we still haven't given up on those hallucinations.” Dr. Stanport’s voice was annoyingly matter-of-fact.
“There's snow on my windshield you can look for yourself!”
“Please, Sean. Take a seat.”
“But it was snowing! I felt cold! I'm wearing a coat for Pete's sake!”
“Yes, and you're sweating immensely. Please, take a seat.”
Sean suddenly became aware of an uncomfortable amount of heat generating from the insides of his thick winter coat. He wiped beads of sweat from his forehead and cursed. “No. No no no no no... I don't understand. I honestly... I thought…”
“Sean, please, take a seat.” Dr. Stanport spoke slowly, as if coaxing a child.
Sean reluctantly took a seat, never taking his eyes off Dr. Stanport's baby face. He didn't look older than 19 or 20, and Sean hated that. Dr. Stanport took his spot across the desk from Sean, pulling out a few files, a smile seemingly ever-fixed onto his face.
“Are you telling me I can't even tell what season it is anymore?” Sean’s confused voice mixed with frustration and hostility.
“Can't? Sean, we've been over this. You alone can eliminate the can'ts.” Dr. Stanport and his stupid philosophical quips.
“But it was freezing! I woke up and the snow was there! If I had gone out in shorts and a t-shirt I would've frozen to death!”
At this Dr. Stanport’s eyes widened, a kind of fear sneaking into his curtain of tolerance. “Sean—”
“What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to think?”
“Sean, please. Just leave it.” His voice was dangerously low, and his smile teetered ever so slightly.
“I'm sorry. Honestly, Dr. Stanport, I wasn't trying to be difficult, it just caught me by surprise is all. I'm sorry. I really have been trying my hardest to let everything go like you said, sometimes I just get confused. And I was doing good too, I had everything together—”
“It's alright, Sean. Please, take a seat.” Somehow in his agitation he had stood up again, and he quickly shuffled back into his seat.
“Tell me about this morning,” Dr. Stanport finally stopped flipping through files and placed his hands atop the stack, fingers interlocked.
“I woke up early,” Sean said slowly, thinking hard. “It was a long drive to the clinic, and I didn't want to be late. But I... I took a moment to look at the fresh snow. Alice, my wife, loved fresh snow…”
“Sean.” Dr. Stanport sighed. “I can't help you if you don't help me.”
“I can't remember. Please, just show me the tapes. Please.”
“Sean, you can't rely on that forever. You're never going to improve if you don't at least try to remember on your own.”
“Tapes? Haha how old is this guy?” A third voice made Sean jump out of his seat. A young man in scrubs was standing behind Dr. Stanport's swivel chair, but Sean hadn't seen him. Had he been there this whole time?
“Shut up Chris,” Dr. Stanport's voice was uncharacteristically brusque. “He can still hear you, you know.”
“Why does it matter? He won't remember any of this,” the man named Chris said bluntly, either oblivious to Sean’s presence, or he just didn’t care.
“Ha, true.” Dr. Stanport’s voice was different now. Callous. Raw. Unpleasant, even.
Sean's hands were shaking. “Excuse me? Who do you think you are?”
“Sean please, sit down.” Dr. Stanport repeated, reverting back to his fake pleasant voice.
“I'm not stupid! I will not be treated like this! You're just going to let him treat me like some kind of-of—” Sean began to yell, flustered and angry.
“Of what?” Dr. Stanport snarled. That look on his face. The one of smugness mixed with indifference. Sean hated that look. “Struggling to find the words?”
He was sweating immensely, his boiling rage only adding to the heat.
“Please, Sean. Sit.”
Sean obeyed. He was beginning to feel lightheaded.
“How about taking that coat off now?”
The coolness of the air-conditioned room seemed oddly harsh, like being dunked in ice-cold water.
“There we go. Much better, huh?”
Sean could barely hear Dr. Stanport's voice through the ringing in his ears.
“Now. Tell me about your morning.”
Sean could see a woman's face. She was laughing. She was staring back at him with big brown eyes. She was staring at her palms, holding them up to the light to see every line and detail with perfect clarity. She was slipping—
“My wife, is she okay?”
Dr. Stanport sighed.
“Guess I should go get the 'tapes' now,” Chris said with heavy exasperation, forming quotation marks in the air.
“Shut up, Chris,” Dr. Stanport said again, this time more harshly.
“C'mon, let me just stick him and call it good,” Chris argued.
“No, wait. Not yet. Sean, don't you remember?” Dr. Stanport persisted in his most soothing voice, slowly, deliberately. “Remember last week? What did we talk about last week?”
“I don't think we met last week, did we?” Sean was full-on confused now, his mind flicking through images he couldn’t identify. Memories, he thought they must be, days spent in this very office. Across from Dr. Stanport, talking. But he couldn’t remember what about. The woman again. She was there. Only she wasn’t. She was wrapped in white linen being poked and probed--she hated needles.
“We meet every week, Sean. Do you remember why? Look at me, Sean. Do you remember why?” Sean could hear Dr. Stanport’s voice, but he couldn’t shut out the woman’s face. Who was she? No, she didn’t belong here. He pushed her away, thumbing through memories, looking for Dr. Stanport, their conversations. Sean’s arm felt numb and sore, remembering a pang just below the top of his shoulder as his memories of Dr. Stanport resurfaced.
“The car accident…” Sean said quietly, slowly.
“What car accident? Tell me what happened.” Dr. Stanport continued to coax it out of him.
“No, we've done this before. You know what happened.” Sean said, annoyed as everything started coming back to him.
“Yes, but I need to know you know what happened.”
“Of course I know what happened, I'm not an idiot!”
“Okay, okay. No one's calling you an idiot, Sean. I'm just trying to help you.” Dr. Stanport smiled.
Sean could feel a tingling under his skin, he felt dizzy, irritable. He could see yellowing skin, hair falling in clumps in his hand, her discolored hands clutched in his. At the same time he could hear her laughter, he could feel himself laughing, he'd forgotten he could do that—
“I don't understand.”
“What don't you understand, Sean?”
“Why would she leave me right after I got in a car accident? Because she wasn't there, I was working, she was at home—”
“Sean, you've never been married. This woman doesn't exist, these are hallucinations, and you're better than this,” Dr. Stanport's blurted finally. But his words seemed rehearsed. How many times had he told him this?
“Oh give it up, Craig.” Chris said, already advancing towards Sean.
Dr. Stanport sighed and placed a small rectangular box on the desk in front of him. He placed his thumb on the center and a blue light scanned it back and forth. The light glowed green, and he withdrew his hand.
Had Chris not already silently injected the needle into Sean's arm, Sean would have clearly seen a holographic image sprout from the center of the box moments later. He would have watched as it showed a semi-truck and a smaller, unrecognizable car collide in a silent tumult of metal and blood, then rewind to show a slide-by-slide sketch of a life not his, but plastered with his name and face all over it. He would have seen Dr. Stanport grab a recorder and move to the window. He would've heard Dr. Stanport's tired voice as he spoke into the small, electronic speaker: “The 22nd of July 2025. Subject 28843. Subject's eighth round of injections. Still not fully severed from dependency. Effects barely last a week. Subject reported the same circumstances as last week; his brain appears to be permanently replaying the same winter morning. Significance of the morning still unknown. Subject does, however, believe in the car accident scenario streamed during initial injection. Subject still remembers lost one’s name, but remains unaware of death or cause thereof. His brain seems to have explained it away in terms of ‘leaving,’ implying perception of conflict, but he shows no sign of recognition of death. However, today he displayed fluency in the terminology of death, his first recognition of its existence, but it appears only to be on an idiomatic, figure of speech level of understanding. Recommended close monitoring for further signs of cracked perception buildup. End session eight.”
Had Chris not already injected him, Sean would have heard Chris ask Dr. Stanport why he even bothered to talk to patients, that clearly the drugs were working. He would've seen Dr. Stanport shrug his shoulders, and heard him mumble, “The reason we began the clinic was to stop people from remembering their hurt, but clearly this man is still hurting.” Sean would've then heard Chris’ matter-of-fact reply, “Every cure has its minor drawbacks.” He would've seen Chris leave, but Dr. Stanport remain. He would've felt the doctor’s eyes as he stared at Sean’s lonely face. He would've watched him pull out the files and take one last look at the picture of his patient’s dead wife before throwing it into the pile of a dozen files stuffed with pictures of other dead wives, husbands, fathers, brothers, children, pets.
But the instant the needle hit Sean's skin he felt its substance enter his body and rinse out his thoughts, draining out words such as “death” and “cancer” and “Alice,” and wringing out his limbs and mind until both were suffocatingly numb. His eyes and his subconscious were the only parts of him that stayed awake, and the instant the holographic images popped up in front of him, his eyes locked onto them and fed the lies to his subconscious: a quiet life alone as a trucker, shattered windshield shards, waking up alone, unhurt.
