Dream On(3)

Maybe the hospital only allowed family to visit? No, that couldn’t be, because Brie’s here and she’s not family. Wait. Maybe Devin didn’t even know I was in an accident. Panic constricts my lungs. I look around automatically for my phone, but it’s not on the nightstand. “Where’s my phone? I need to call Devin and tell him I’m okay. He must be worried sick.”

Mom frowns. “Your phone was destroyed in the accident.”

The door opens and Brie returns, holding two cups of coffee. She passes one to my mom and takes a sip from the other.

“Brie, can I borrow your phone? I need to call Devin.”

She splutters. “Huh? Who now?”

I let out an exasperated huff. What the hell is wrong with everyone? “Come on, Brie. Devin, my boyfriend. We talk every week, so I know I’ve told you all about him.” At her blank stare, I continue. “We met at a bar in April, hit it off, and we’ve been dating ever since? He grew up in Cleveland and he helps run his family’s business? You haven’t met him yet, but I’m sure you’ve seen pictures. He’s six two, dark brown hair, brown eyes. You know—Devin Bloom.”

Brie’s cheeks pale as she slowly sets her coffee on the nightstand. The doctor looks between me, Brie, and my mother, opens her laptop, and begins typing. Dread slithers into the pit of my stomach, coalescing into a writhing ball.

Brie stares at me with wide, confused eyes. “Who the hell is Devin Bloom?”





Life with a head injury is nothing like the movies.

A bandit gets conked on the forehead with an iron and, minutes later, shakes it off and continues his scheme to burglarize a young boy’s booby-trapped home. No, fool, you should be in the hospital with a blow to the head like that! Or a woman runs into a metal pole only to wake up in a world where every gorgeous man wants her. Ha, I wish. Film characters fall off subway platforms, step on rakes, and absorb knockout punches, banging their skulls so often you could stitch the scenes together and make the concussion noises play “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Then they simply pick themselves up and continue with their lives like nothing happened. In reality, a head injury is a hell of a lot more life-altering—and in my case—strange.

Crawling across the crumb-strewn back seat of my mom’s minivan, I scoop out the cardboard box I’ve carefully stashed on the floor. Cassidy Closet is printed neatly in big, innocent letters. As I wiggle back through the open door, I glance out the window and catch sight of a trash can sitting on the curb.

Guilt needles my stomach. I should have thrown away what’s inside this box months ago. Not the various knickknacks or get-well cards from my law school classmates—I mean the other thing. But I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it for reasons I don’t want to explore.

Rolling my neck, I stand and lift the box out of the car.

“Where do you want this?” one of the movers calls from the double-parked moving truck. Broad-shouldered and bald, he’s pulling my dresser on a red dolly behind him. I blink at his T-shirt, which features an eight-bit kitten riding a rainbow and the words Call me Mr. Cat Daddy scrawled beneath it.

“In the—” I begin, but a familiar song blares from the radio on the porch and the back of my neck tingles. Oh no. It’s happening again. There’s nothing about Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You, Babe” that should inspire this level of dread-soaked anticipation (unless you’re Bill Murray in Groundhog Day), but I’m not exactly normal. The opening lyrics drill into my brain, and I squeeze my eyes shut as an unwanted memory flickers to life.

No, not a memory.

In my mind’s eye, I’m no longer standing on a tree-lined street in Cleveland on a cool June day. I’m swaying on a dim stage in a beer-soaked karaoke bar, microphone in hand. And he’s there—Devin Bloom. He’s smiling at me, cheekbones illuminated by a spotlight, dark eyes crinkling as he changes the lyrics so the chorus includes my name: “I got you, Cass.” I clutch the cardboard box so tightly its contents threaten to rattle.

Most people wake up from a coma with memory loss. I woke up with memory surplus—specifically, countless memories of a man named Devin Bloom.

Except Devin isn’t real. He’s a figment of my coma-rattled imagination.

At first, I didn’t believe it. But the cloud revealed the truth: I didn’t have any photos of Devin, any text history, or even a contact labeled Devin. There was absolutely, positively no evidence that Devin Bloom, my supposed boyfriend of three months, was a real person. No one in my life had met him, knew him, or heard of him. Googling and obsessively searching social media revealed nada as well.

There have been cases before of coma patients waking up with false or conflated memories, but waking up with a full-on imaginary boyfriend? The doctors called it a “medical anomaly.” I call it a heart transplant without the heart and an unnecessary distraction from getting my life back on track.

Not that I feel sorry for myself or anything. In fact, I have a lot to be grateful for: I’m thinking, walking, talking, and back to my normal self—mostly. I could have died in that car accident. Or never recovered at all from the coma. If an imaginary boyfriend is the worst thing I have to deal with, I’m lucky. Shutting my eyes, I take a deep, reassuring breath.

“I’m here. I’m real. He’s not real,” I mutter my therapist’s mantra to myself.