I had a quiet day on Friday. I couldn't relate to the rest of the kids on the ward, and courtesy of Mike, I had my own TV. Not that there was much on worth watching. It made me wonder why I had been so addicted to the boob tube when I was 14 the first time around.
The physiotherapy nurses were up and had me walking and decided that I could get around without a wheelchair. I read the newspapers, listened to the news, and just mostly ambled around. The nurses were great and even though they were technically a lot younger than me, they made for good company and being 'one of the girls' I was privy to a lot of gossip.
I was polite and friendly with the doctor when he made his rounds, and was waiting for the shrink to come back and test me again. I still didn't have all the answers, but I figured I could show enough recovery for him to believe that it would all come back in time.
I hadn't seen Patrick all day and wondered how things went last night. I was dying to ask, but decided I would wait and find out from Linda and Julie.
After supper, I was surprised when a head popped into my doorway. A freckled strawberry blonde head with a turned up nose led the way for a body that was not quite five foot tall though very curvy. Farrah Fawcett hair, I liked it. She was wearing a halter top and cut-offs.
"Hey Pete, how ya feelin'?"
"Cathy?"
"Duh, who else?"
I shrugged.
"Jeez, your folks weren't kidding about your brain attack."
"You've talked to them?" I asked. For some strange reason, I wanted the familiarity of them. It was like I missed them.
"Yeah, they talked to me, told me that you might not even remember your old partner in crime. I thought you were just trying to stay out of school."
"Cathy, you've got to help me," I pleaded. "I can't remember anything important and, you know, stuff that only my best friend would know about me, that maybe Mom and Dad don't. If you don't help me, I might be stuck here for months!"
I could see genuine concern on Cathy's face. I got the impression that she had been a good friend to Patricia. It was a pity that post puberty hormones would take her away. She looked over her shoulder and seeing nobody there whispered, "Okay, but I can't do it now. Your folks brought me here with them. They're downstairs talking to some doctor."
"That's probably the shrink," I said. "I could be released on Monday but only if he says that I know who I am."
"How much do you remember?" she asked.
Being Einstein had only been able to give me a Reader's Digest condensed version of my life, I told Cathy all that I knew.
"That's it?" she asked in shock.
"That's more than I knew three days ago," I replied with a sigh.
"Wow. No details at all eh? Not even serious stuff like when we smoked our first cigarette together?"
"Ugh, please don't tell me that I'm a smoker already!"
"Already a smoker? God, Pete, you need some serious memory jarring. Remember? I got one off Jimmy Broadbent in exchange for his getting a look at my titties? Creep that he is. Told me they weren't worth half a cigarette and then you ended up coughing until you puked."
I laughed so hard that my stitches hurt. "I'm sorry I put you through that Cathy. That had to have been embarrassing for you."
She raised her eyebrows. "Embarrassed? Hell, I would have shown him anyway," she snickered. "Besides, they were big enough to interest him cause a month later he scored a coke bottle of his Dad's homemade wine for us just for another look!"