They say that when a door closes, a window opens, or something like that.
Rain tapped gently against the hospital window, a soft, persistent rhythm that felt both calming and distant. Machines hummed their steady lullaby, and sterile white light spilled across the linoleum floor. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and something floral—perhaps the bouquet of daisies someone had placed on the side table long ago, now withered and forgotten.
Archie's first breath of consciousness was a shallow gasp, as though his lungs doubted they could still fill with air. He lay alone in a hospital bed, sheet tangled around one arm, a dull beep marking the seconds of a life once paused and now slowly unraveling. The world around him felt fuzzy, as if he were submerged in water—every sound muffled, every movement muted. He blinked against harsh fluorescents. His vision swam between darkness and light, his brain fighting to piece together reality. When his eyelids lifted finally, he found himself staring at a ceiling he didn't recognize, with unfamiliar rails at its edges and the sterile scent of disinfectant thick in his nostrils.
He tried to move his hand, but his fingers felt heavy and clumsy, as though weighed down by cement. A nurse gasped.
"Dr. Fields! He's awake!"
Voices buzzed. Footsteps. Hands adjusting monitors, checking vitals. Archie turned his head toward the movement, sluggish and confused.
"Mr. Collins? Archie? Can you hear me? Blink twice if you understand."
He did.
The voices softened, relieved but cautious. Words like "miracle" and "recovery window" floated through the air. Archie tried to speak, but his throat burned, parched and weak. A straw was placed at his lips. He drank gratefully. Another nurse—a kind-faced woman with creased smile lines—hovered at the side of the bed, clutching a clipboard. She offered him a gentle nod and spoke, but her words were distant echoes. Archie wanted to understand her; he felt something in his chest—fear? longing?—but the sentences he needed simply wouldn't take shape. The nurse's voice crescendoed in his ears: "Can you squeeze my hand, Archie? Let me know you're with me." She placed her palm in his trembling fist. He squeezed, and the relief in her eyes was palpable. She scribbled something on her clipboard: "Awoke at 3 years, confused. No recall of personal history." His heart hammered with disorientation. Three years had passed. Three full years. He knew this because she said it, but he couldn't reconcile it with the emptiness blooming in his mind.
Portraits of a life—his life—flickered in his mind like broken film: a face, a laugh, a warmth just out of reach. Something in him told him there was someone important waiting for him, a presence whose absence left a hollowness he couldn't name. The world beyond the hospital room lay shivering at the edges of his consciousness, and he felt small, a child afraid of falling. He closed his eyes again, willing the memories to surface. Nothing came.
The weeks that followed were a haze of physical therapy, whispered conversations, and unfamiliar routines. There were doctors who encouraged him to walk, to speak, to eat solid food again. There were nurses who helped him bathe and dress, all the while calling him "Archie" as though that alone would unlock his identity. He learned to sit up, to move without assistance—wobbly, unsteady. But through the fog, a blurry face kept returning.
Dark eyes. A crooked smile. Warmth.
Sometimes in dreams, sometimes like a flash in the mirror or a trick of the light. Archie didn't know who he was or why the thought of him made his chest ache in a way that felt like mourning.
He tried to describe him once to a therapist.
"Do you remember anything else? A name, maybe?"
Archie shook his head. "No. I think I just meant something to him".
The therapist scribbled something down, then met Archie's gaze. "Sometimes the heart remembers what the mind forgets."
It's 29th of May.
Archie left the hospital six months later, physically stronger, emotionally frayed. He moved in with his older sister Amber on their house on the quieter side of the city.
She filled the space with light, laughter, and coffee. Their mother died of cancer when he was 11, and their father moved in with his mistress somewhere far away from the city, leaving him with only the care of his older sister with some of their wealth.
"Everything seems bearable", he thought.