I

I wake expecting pain.

For a moment I lie perfectly still, waiting for it to come.

I feel the pressure at my back, propped up on the bed. The room is quiet. A white grid ceiling. Fluorescent light. A low hum. Muffled voices. A narrow window white with sky. Anna's coat on an empty chair.

I remember the pain. The crushing, throbbing, stabbing, searing pain, unequal but everywhere. The acrid tang in my mouth. The room drifting. And I remember not being able to move.

All I feel now is the pressure of the bed against my body. I try my fingers, and they curl to my palm. I curl my toes. Nothing hurts. I lift my arm and turn my hand over, and over again. There are the two large freckles on the back of my hand—‘your snakebite,’ Anna calls them. But my skin somehow looks younger. My middle finger, broken in childhood by my brother’s overzealous basketball pass and left permanently bent. Is it straight now?

A nurse enters and notices me. ‘You’re awake,’ she says with a professional smile. ‘I’ll go get the doctor.’

I can move. Can I speak?

‘What happened?’ I ask, but the words come slowly, and the squeak-squeak-squeak of the nurse’s shoes is already fading down the corridor. 

I rest my hand flat on my leg and feel the weight of it. I rotate my feet. Where is the pain? I remember the blood. I remember the machines beeping. The surgical-masked faces coming, going, looming, just pairs of eyes peering down at me like at a broken bird on the road. ‘Can you hear me?’ The ceiling blurred and swayed. ‘Can you look at me? Good. Can you squeeze my hand?’ The white ceiling. The pain. ‘I want you to blink once for yes and twice for no, can you do that for me? Do you know where you are?’ Anna was there. I heard her voice. ‘Will he still know me?’ I couldn’t turn my head to look at her. I think I was crying. ‘We have every reason to believe he’ll retain his memory, his language, his personality.’ I felt her soft hand against my face. I found her beautiful, hazel eyes. ‘It’s me. I’m here.’ Her thumb gently stroked my cheek. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

Anna walks in and stops. ‘Hey,’ she says softly, as though trying not to startle me. She crosses the room slowly. I can’t tell if she’s trying to stay composed, or hesitant to reach me.

‘Anna.’

She laughs through her tears. I hold out my hand, and I see her take it. She cradles my upturned palm and with her fingertip traces the familiar infinity symbol, and I recall the first time we said “I love you”, the evenings on the couch half-watching TV, her head on my shoulder on the midnight train home from the city, her mother’s funeral, all the quiet, tender, solemn, mundane moments that connected us. Our infinite love. Always and forever.

She seems to wait for me.

‘I was so worried I’d lose you,’ she says eventually, and studies me, holds my hand, gently brushes my face. ‘Your eyes. It’s incredible.’

She withdraws slightly as the doctor arrives, suddenly doubtful again, but she keeps hold of my hand.

‘Good morning,’ the doctor says. ‘Can you hear me?’

Why does his voice sound... sharp, or hollow? ‘Yeah.’

‘That’s good. My name is Doctor Aspley. Can you tell me where you are?’

‘The hospital.’

But there's no beeping like before.

‘That’s right. Do you know why you’re here?’

‘I was in an accident.’

Anna folds my hand into hers.

‘Can you remember what happened afterwards?’

‘I... No.’ I look at Anna. ‘I couldn’t move, and...’

She’s crying again. Am I crying?

The doctor gives us a moment. ‘Can you tell me your wife’s name?’

‘Anna.’ Why is he asking me this?

‘And how long have you been married?’

‘Seven years.’

‘Where did you meet?’

‘At my cousin’s thirtieth birthday party.’

Anna can’t contain her smile. ‘What do I do that annoys you?’

‘You leave the cupboard doors open.’

She chokes out a laugh and I find myself smiling too. ‘It’s really you.’ She wipes the fresh tears from her face. ‘So it worked?’ she asks the doctor.

‘Why can I move?’ I ask. ‘Why doesn’t anything hurt?’

‘I’m going be completely honest with you, and this may be difficult to hear,’ he says. He gathers himself, like it’s going to be harder to say than to hear. ‘The impact caused catastrophic injuries to your body. You had multiple severe fractures in several areas, including your limbs and your spine.’

‘But you fixed it?’

‘No, I’m afraid we were unable to fix your body. We were able to stop the bleeding, but your spine was damaged beyond repair.’

I lift my free arm. I drag my feet towards me beneath the blankets, and feel a smoothness in my knees. But I can’t feel the crispness of the sheets under my heels. Anna watches my movements as curiously as I do.

‘The body you’re using is entirely synthetic. The exterior has been reconstructed to match your original biological markers. Your skin, facial structure, fingerprints, even your old scars have been replicated.’

Again I examine the back of my hand. The two freckles. ‘It’s not my skin.’

‘No.’

‘Hey,’ says Anna, turning my head with her hand. I feel the touch, but the softness I remember, is it there? ‘Don’t worry, though,’ she says. ‘It’s okay. You’re still you.’

The first time I go outside, the sun feels strange. Not unpleasant. Just precise.

I walk through our home room by room, and nothing has changed. The chip in the kitchen bench. The leaf-shaped rattan basket filled with our collection of pinecones. Her heated throw blanket bunched on the couch. My books stacked on the nesting tables.

I pick up the photo of us on the console table. Our first holiday together. She’s smiling, I’m kissing her cheek, and together we hold a heart-shaped rock. I remember the day. I remember the cold mountain air. The smell of pine. The uphill climb we thought would never end. Holding her in my arms at the top. I remember feeling happy. I remember feeling my heart thumping in my ears as we stopped to catch our breath.

As the weeks go by, I learn what my body can do. I can run. I can lift things I couldn’t lift before. The clicking in my knee is gone. I can go without food, but I eat anyway.

It’s left unspoken, but Anna has stopped resting her head on my chest.

I sit in our garden and practice feeling the breeze. A bee gets stuck in the bird bath, so I gently scoop it out with my hand and set it down on a leaf. I wish I could feel the water. Its wetness, the subtle weight of it pooled in my palm. But it’s only cold.

I miss hunger.

I long to feel my chest slowly expand, to draw in a deep breath. But I don’t tell Anna these things. And she doesn’t question why I’m looking at my hands again. She brings me a sandwich with the bread warmed, the way I’ve always liked it.

Some nights I still dream.

Some dreams are of the crash, and I’m jolted awake in the dark, expecting sweat and a racing heart, and finding my panic beating at the walls of my mind. Other nights I dream of Anna. I dream of us lying on the grass beneath the oak tree, and the long, broad grass feels spongy and chilled by shade. The dry air smells of baked earth and carries the drone of summer insects. Her hair feels like silk through my fingers. The feather-light touch of her warm lips that linger, tender and yielding. Everything is still. The world fades away, and yet I feel us in it, a part of it. My head feels light, and the soft flutter of another’s love courses through me like a gentle elevator drop. And as I wake, the feeling fades, and fades, until it’s beyond my desperate reach.

We walk around the same blocks, and visit our favourite restaurants. One night I ask, ‘Do you remember the time we drove to the beach after dinner just to watch the sunset?’

She smiles, and I see the recognition in her eyes. ‘Of course. And as soon as the sun went down, you got eaten alive by mosquitoes.’

We both laugh. And I think back to the warmth leaving the sand, and how she gently dragged her fingernails up and down the back of my neck. And how it gave me goosebumps.

She’s happiest when she sees the little things. Her smiles are more heartfelt. She’ll take up my hand when I sit beside her with my “World’s Okayest Husband” mug. She’ll kiss me after I’ve caught the security door with my foot because I can’t stand the rattling slam. She’ll snuggle closer when I laugh at a joke on the TV.

And I know that I love her.

I remember the shimmer of her auburn hair on our wedding day. I remember that my stomach hurt that day we were laughing on the carpet, and I remember wanting to hear that laugh again and again. I remember loving her, even if the memories have nowhere to go.

And as we lie on the couch, my arms around her, she runs her fingers up and down my forearm. She takes my hand in hers and opens it. I can’t help but notice my straight middle finger. She draws the familiar invisible loops, and I know what it means.

‘I love you,’ she says. ‘Always and forever.’

I turn her hand and unfurl her fingers. And I know what it meant. And I bring my fingertip to her palm.