The building loomed before Ahce, old but steady, its walls weathered by time and filled with the quiet weight of lives once lived. Faded paint peeled along the stairwell, the faint scent of old varnish and rain lingering in the air.
As she climbed the narrow staircase, each footstep echoed softly, a rhythm of solitude rising up the concrete steps. She reached the second floor and unlocked the door to what was now her new beginning, or perhaps, her refuge.
Inside, the apartment greeted her with silence. Bare walls. A faint trace of dust. A single bed stood tucked into a corner, beside a small counter that tried to pass as a kitchen. A wooden table sat in the center, large enough for one, too small for many.
It was nothing compared to the warmth of her parents' home or the quiet order of her little house. Yet somehow, it suited her, unadorned, detached, anonymous.
Her bag fell onto the chair with a hollow thud, startling in the stillness. She sighed, shoulders heavy, the sound of her own breath the only thing grounding her.
She needed time. Time to think. To breathe.
She didn't want to see anyone, not him, not Patrick, not even the well-meaning friends whose kindness always came wrapped in questions she wasn't ready to answer.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Ahce buried her face in her hands. Memories, or the void where memories should have been, pressed against her like ghosts demanding to be recognized. A man who claimed to be her husband. A past she couldn't recall. An ex who refused to disappear. And in between it all, she was lost in the fog of truth and illusion.
Lifting her head, she gazed at the window. Sunlight filtered weakly through thin curtains, turning the room golden, yet inside her, it still felt like night.
"Who am I," she whispered into the emptiness, "if I can't even remember the life I lived?"
The silence swallowed her question whole.
Days slipped by in an indistinct blur. Ahce stopped searching for answers, stopped chasing fragments of the past that refused to surface. Instead, she drowned herself in lesson plans, paperwork, and the constant chatter of students who had no idea their teacher was slowly suffocating beneath her own silence.
Routine became her armor. The summer camp became her excuse to keep moving.
Until the call came.
It was the kind of call that cracks the stillness of a person's life, sudden, sharp, and uninvited.
"Are you the wife of..."
Her heart skipped.
"Huh?" she stammered, voice trembling.
"Your husband has been in an accident. He's in critical condition. He needs blood. Can you come?"
For a heartbeat, Ahce couldn't breathe. Her fingers gripped the phone so tightly it creaked. The words echoed in her skull.
Husband...
My husband?
That word again, a title she couldn't wear, a bond she couldn't feel.
"What… what hospital?" she managed to ask, her voice barely a whisper.
"City X Medical Center," the voice replied.
City X. He's in City X?
Far from here. Far from everything she knew.
Her thoughts spun faster than she could catch them. He was a third-year college student, a boy still crossing the threshold to adulthood. Her supposed husband, a student? The logic unraveled, the puzzle pieces didn't fit. And yet, before she could question further, panic, guilt, or perhaps something buried deep within her took over.
She didn't think. She just moved. Within the hour, Ahce had booked the earliest flight to City X. She didn't check the price. She didn't pack properly. She simply went.
Now, standing at the hospital entrance, she felt the chill of the glass doors sliding open, releasing a gust of sterile, cold air that smelled of antiseptic and fear. Her heart pounded against her ribs as she hurried down the white-tiled corridor, her shoes clicking sharply on the floor.
Everywhere she turned, faces wore the same expression, worry, waiting, and quiet despair.
Her family's long-standing membership with the Eagles Club, a humanitarian group partnered with the Red Cross, ensured her name was already in the system. Within minutes, the blood bank had been contacted. Forms were signed, procedures explained, and nurses rushed about with clinical urgency. And then Ahce found herself standing before the heavy doors of the operating room.
A red light glowed above the entrance, a silent warning, Do not enter.
Beyond that door, life and death were negotiating over a man she couldn't even remember. Her legs trembled. She leaned against the wall, her breath uneven.
She realized, with a hollow pang, that she knew nothing about him. Not his favorite color. Not how he took his coffee. Not what made him laugh, or what dreams filled his quiet moments. He was a stranger whose blood now mingled with hers, whose name she bore without memory, and whose life teetered between survival and loss. And yet, her chest ached at the thought of losing him.
With trembling fingers, she unlocked her phone. Her instincts, sharp and precise from the life she once led, took over. She began searching for his name, tracing his digital footprints through social media.
Her hands shook so badly she nearly dropped the phone, but muscle memory guided her, the habits of an old self she had not forgotten how to be. And then, as the search results unfolded, her stomach turned cold.
His family. His relatives. They were not strangers. Their faces were there, scattered among her own online connections, friends, followers, familiar names she had long scrolled past without notice. Their posts intertwined with hers, casual likes and comments forming invisible threads of connection. She scrolled faster, her pulse racing. And then she froze.
A photograph filled the screen. Her parents and her, smiling at a grand celebration, a silver wedding anniversary. Behind them, a backdrop of cascading white flowers and silver balloons shimmered under soft light. Standing beside them were his parents. The resemblance was unmistakable.
Ahce stared at the image as though looking at a stranger wearing her face. She couldn't remember it. Not the event, not the laughter, not even the warmth of that night.
Her throat constricted. She scrolled again. More pictures appeared. Her and his sisters, laughing together in candid snapshots, holding drinks, hugging, eyes bright with joy. Each image felt like a betrayal of her own mind.
She touched the screen, her fingertip tracing the outline of her smiling face, a face that seemed to belong to someone else entirely.
"I don't understand…" she whispered.
Why couldn't she remember?
Why did it feel as though her life had been rewritten, her memories erased and replaced with shadows?
Her chest ached as she dropped the phone onto the cold metal bench beside her. She pressed her palms against her face, fighting the tremor in her hands. Everything pointed to one unbearable truth.
She knew him.
She knew his family.
She had once been part of their world.
And yet, her mind, the very essence of who she was, had erased it all.
A vast emptiness opened inside her, swallowing everything she thought she knew about herself. Between the woman she believed she was and the one smiling in those photographs stretched a chasm she could not cross, a void filled with silence, loss, and the faint echo of a life forgotten.