The weather was now cold and windy. It wasn't like this some minutes ago!
Maria hissed and cursed the bad weather. She never liked the cold weather….
Wait… did she not really like cold weather? Maria shrugged.
"Who cares if I've forgotten about my favourite weather?" She said indifferently.
The more she tried to convince herself that it was not that bad, the more she felt it was weird.
Can someone with amnesia forget such information?
She feared that she would wake up one day and find that this house had become foreign to her. She didn't know why her case was so different. Why was she losing memories every day?
Maria sighed and threw a jacket over her sweater and prepared to head out. She was meeting with Dr Adama today.
She dropped the keys to the house under the door mat in case Frederick came home earlier. He had the habit of always dropping by, though not often, for some things.
Maria found something else strange. Her brother was behaving rather secretively these days. She was sure that he wasn't always like this. Even if she forgot everything, she felt that her brother was the only thing she could never forget.
After waiting for a while, she walked out to the street. It was still cold despite the fact that she wore over three layers of clothing.
She maintained her usual habit— not saying "hi" to anyone and not responding to anyone, not that anyone actually talked to her. She liked it that way.
She decided not to inform Frederick of where she was going. She believed that she wasn't a child who had to report all her movements and therefore, she didn't bother to drop by the Friendly Café.
….
Maria had to wait for a few minutes before she could meet the doctor. It seemed like she had to rush her meetings with other patients just to attend to her.
Personally, Maria didn't mind waiting a little longer, after all, her treatment was handled by the doctor for free and she always got priority over other patients.
Maria didn't know why she was so benevolent towards her and Frederick but she guessed that she might have had a good relationship with her parents or something.
"The doctor is free now." An assistant announced and led Maria into the office.
"Sorry I kept you waiting." Dr Adama revealed a broad smile, "Please sit down."
"Thanks." Maria took her seat.
"So, how have you been?" The doctor asked looking directly at her.
Maria shifted a bit on her seat before tersely replying that she was fine.
"Have you remembered anything else?"
"No."
"Any more spasms and headaches?"
"Only a few."
"Okay. So do you still have memory fragmentation?" The doctor flipped through an open file in front of her and kept asking the questions.
She was well aware that Maria had suffered from severe memory fragmentation which caused the information stored on her brain to be divided into certain portions.
Maria could only access the fragments at a surface level which would result in her remembering things from different time periods.
To her, this wasn't a bother since she had handled similar cases before, but what was odd about Maria's case was that an existing memory fragment would split up again and form a different fragment which became harder to access.
The next thing that puzzled her was that she couldn't even recall a thing from her youth, it seemed like that part of the memory was an abomination. It is normal for the mind to repress some memories of traumatic events that happened in the past; and this was mainly true for her case since she didn't suffer any brain damage or suffer from brain atrophy.
All she knew was that she encountered something really terrifying and went into a coma and after she woke up, she had lost all her memories.
"That's the point doctor, I keep feeling like large chunks of my memory are gone each day!" the doctor could spot agony in her voice.
"Did you recall anything else about the memory fragment you claimed you could access?"
"Hugh…" Maria tapped her head twice and put out her hands with her palms facing up, "nothing. I can't even remember what I remembered."
"You told me a name, of a boy," the doctor paused and observed her for a while, "you told me the name Damon."
Maria frowned and shook her head indicating that she didn't recall such things.
Dr Adama fell silent. This wasn't a normal occurrence. Was someone messing with her memories? As the doctor mulled over the situation, an idea hit her:
Frederick!
He had warned her before to do everything possible to ensure that Maria never remembered anything.
Just what happened back then?
"You don't have to worry. I'll run some few tests on you to be sure." The doctor wanted to find out if she had been taking any substance that could affect her brain in any way and also some other important tests. She had a bad feeling about this strange loss of memories.
"But in the meantime," the doctor pushed forward a swinging pendulum, "I need you to focus on the bob."
Maria nodded and trained her eyes on the bob.
Dr Adama sighed; she knew she was courting death again. Frederick would destroy her if he found out, but she wasn't afraid, she also knew his secret and was about to add more to her arsenal.
"Now, let's talk about your father…"
Dr Adama's voice sounded in Maria's ears.
Suddenly, a white fog that seemed intense appeared in her mind and enveloped her vision. A searing pain rampaged her head. She couldn't see anything in the fog.
Just when she was about to give up, a pair of strong arms grabbed her…
Several fragments of light surrounded her and each seemed to contain immense power and information.
At this point, she felt like she was floating and had lost all her balance…
She turned her head to look at the owner of the blurry hand that had grabbed her.
"Father…?" Her voice trailed off.