Siblings for a D8 street rat?

It’s funny how when you’re about to die your whole life flashes past your eyes. A simple memory from here and there just return to you. Your mother’s laugh. Your father’s smell. The blood dripping down your forehead from that time you knocked it on your polished kitchen table as a kid.

For some, memories like that might be normal, frequent, even. But for me, memory was not something that came naturally. I had to strain to remember my own name, to recall who my family was and who my enemies were. The line between familiarity and unfamiliarity were blurred beyond my recognition. I couldn’t even remember things that happened last week.

Each morning when I woke up, my family would rush into the room. One by one, they’d introduce themselves and then tell me what had happened lately, what was wrong with me. They’d tell me why I had no ability to recall things, why I didn’t know the strangers in this foreign bedroom I didn’t remember falling asleep in the night before.

Sometimes, they’d have to restrain me, hold me down until my aggressiveness subsided. There was never anger in their eyes when this happened though, only sadness, hopelessness. They didn’t blame me for lashing out. After all, when random people are all crowded around you in a new room, a place you don’t remember, being civil isn’t really that easy. It’s never easy, seeing people calling what you assume is your name on the street and not recognizing them, having things happen to you and seeing the expectant stares of your family, waiting for it to bring all your memories back, to connect to some event that had happened long ago that you should have been able to call to mind.

When I was three, I was in a car accident with my parents. The accident was so severe that the car actually blew up while my parents got me out of the car, sending us all flying to the other side of the road. The brain trauma was so bad that they died instantly, while I lay in a coma for the next twelve months with intensive brain damage. Being so young, hope was not that abundant, but due to my quick healing and still growing body, they hoped for the best when they could. Of course, the extent of my injuries was not clear, having only been walking and talking for a short while and not being able to understand mind tests. They said I’d never walk again, thought I was mute. The only noise I made was the crying and screaming of fear in the morning when a stranger would pick me up and hold me. Little did they know that I couldn’t recall who they were, what their intentions were. I knew nothing and understood nothing.

As I grew older, it became apparent that I had amnesia of a severe level. I remembered nothing, zilch. The only memories I had were those I had retained throughout the day and recalled at night, and then, they were gone. I wasn’t even one of those cases where I’d sometimes know or remember things, I was just always without any knowledge. The doctors at the hospital had been at a loss as to what to do. What could you do for a 17 year old girl who didn’t even know her own name in the morning? Rehabilitation didn’t work. Games didn’t work. Therapy didn’t work. Nothing did.

I still find it funny how, as my heart gallops towards its last beat, as my blood trickles from a neck wound, as my breathing shallows and my screams of pain subside, that I finally remember all the things I had forgotten. I wanted to try and think about all the memories I didn’t have until now before I died, for which I knew was going to happen. I wanted to enjoy the last sixty seconds on this earth, as the fire around me from another explosion closes in on my limp body. My name. Sabina. I knew my name. I was delighted by this, and a smile spread across my face. How ironic that an explosion took my memory, and now it had given it back to me, at twenty years of age. Seventeen years I’d lived in darkness, and now, as I gasped in my last breath into my blackened lungs, I’d stepped into the light.