The Cut I Don't Remember Earning

Doc's Diagnosis

Doc had a way of asking questions that felt like conversation until you were three answers deep and realized she had been examining you the whole time.

"How's the wrist healing?" she asked, not looking up from the bandages she was rolling, like it was nothing, like it was small talk between two people folding laundry.

I almost answered without thinking. That was the problem with Doc. She made you feel safe.

"Fine," I said. "Barely notice it anymore."

"Good." She set the roll down and reached for my hand before I could pull it back, turning my wrist gently toward the light. Her thumb pressed along the edge of the healing mark, testing, careful. "This is healing clean. Faster than I'd expect, honestly, for something that deep."

"I heal fast, I guess."

"Mm." She didn't look convinced, and she didn't try to hide that she wasn't convinced, which was somehow worse than if she had. "You ever tell me how you got this?"

I hadn't. I couldn't. I didn't know myself, and the not knowing sat in my chest like a stone every time someone asked me something I should already have an answer for.

"Long night," I said, which was true in every sense that mattered and explained nothing at all.

Doc let go of my hand slowly, the way you let go of something you're not quite finished with. "You know," she said, "I patched you up plenty of times before all this. Small stuff, mostly. A burn from the stove, a cut from helping Tank with his bike." She paused, watching me the way Priest watched rooms, cataloging, patient. "You used to tell me the whole story every time. Whole thing, start to finish, like you needed someone to hear it as much as you needed the bandage."

I said nothing, because there was nothing safe to say.

"You don't do that anymore," Doc said quietly. "You just say fine now. Every time. Fine, fine, fine, like the word's doing the work of an actual answer."

My throat went tight. I made myself keep still, made my face do the thing it's good at doing, which is showing exactly as much as I want it to show and nothing more.

"Maybe I've just gotten used to it," I said. "The club. All of it. Doesn't feel like it needs explaining anymore."

Doc studied me for a long moment, long enough that I felt the silence pressing against my ribs.

"Nova asked me something strange yesterday," she said, changing direction so smoothly I almost missed the turn. "Asked if amnesia runs in families. I told her I didn't know why she'd ask that."

My stomach dropped, quiet and total, like a floor giving out somewhere below me.

"Kids ask strange things," I said.

"They do." Doc started packing up her supplies, unhurried, as the conversation had already ended even though it hadn't. "She's a smart girl, though. Sharper than most people give her credit for. If she's noticed something's off, it's because there's something off to notice."

I didn't answer that. I couldn't find a version of an answer that didn't confirm exactly what she was circling about.

I found Nova in the garage that afternoon, sitting on an overturned crate near Rowdy's half-stripped bike, chewing on the end of a pencil like it owed her money.

"You're doing homework in a garage," I said.

"It's quieter than the house." She didn't look up. "Everyone talks over each other in there. Nobody talks about each other here. Just the sound of Rowdy dropping things and swearing about it."

I laughed, and it came out easier than most of my laughs had lately. There was something about Nova that made pretending feel less necessary, like her honesty was contagious in a way I hadn't caught yet but wanted to.

"Doc said you asked her something odd yesterday," I said, sitting on the crate beside her. "About amnesia."

Nova's pencil stopped moving. "She told you that?"

"She mentioned it."

Nova set the pencil down slowly, and when she looked at me, there was something older in her face than there had any business being at seventeen. "I wasn't trying to get you in trouble," she said. "I just. I've been paying attention. To how you answer things. You do this thing where you wait a second too long before you say a name, like you're checking it against something first. Cole doesn't notice it because he's too busy being in love with you to notice anything, but I notice it. I notice a lot of things nobody thinks I notice."

I didn't have a rehearsed answer for that, which meant I had no answer at all.

"You don't remember, do you," Nova said, quiet, not unkind, just true. "Any of it. The night everything happened. You don't actually remember any of it."

I opened my mouth to deny it, the way I'd denied it a dozen times already this week, smooth and automatic and practiced.

Nothing came out.

Nova watched me not deny it, and something in her expression softened, like she'd been carrying the suspicion alone for longer than I'd realized and was relieved, in a strange way, to set it down somewhere finally.

"I'm not going to tell anyone," she said. "If that's what you're scared of."

"Nova."

"I mean it." She picked the pencil back up, turning it over in her fingers instead of writing with it. "I don't know what happened that night. I know it was because of me. I know that much, because everyone gets weird and careful whenever it comes up around me, and careful is the loudest thing in a room if you're a kid used to being lied to for your own good." She said it like she'd rehearsed it, like it was a sentence she'd been carrying around waiting for the right moment to use. "Whatever you gave up, whatever it cost you, I know it was for me. I don't need you to remember it to know I owe you something for it."

My eyes stung, sudden and unwelcome, and I blinked hard against it.

"You don't owe me anything," I said.

"That's not how debts work," Nova said, with the flat certainty of someone who has clearly thought about this longer than seventeen years usually allows for. "Doc's going to keep asking questions. So is Priest, probably, even if he doesn't say it out loud. You should think about who you actually trust enough to tell the truth to, before someone figures it out the hard way instead of you choosing to say it."

I sat with that for a long moment, the garage quiet except for the distant clang of Rowdy dropping something else and swearing right on cue.

"Since when did you get so wise?" I said, half a joke, mostly not.

"Since I started noticing that everyone around me treats honesty like a last resort instead of a first option." She shrugged, going back to her homework like the last five minutes hadn't happened, like she hadn't just handed me something heavier than she probably understood. "Might want to think about that."

I did think about it. I thought about it for the rest of the day, Doc's careful questions and Nova's quiet certainty circling each other in my head, both of them arriving at the same uncomfortable place from two different directions.

The people closest to me were already starting to see the cracks.

The only question left was if I would tell them the truth myself, or if the truth would end up being on me instead.