Chapter Text
The year was 2281, over 200 years since nuclear fire had rained down across North America, resetting the landscape. In the southwest of the once-great nation, a small town sat in a valley of the Bird Spring range, in a state that had once been Nevada. The desert was still hot with summer as it faded from late August towards the early September of the Mojave Wasteland, where the story begins.
The makeshift clinic was small, full of medical equipment, and separated from the rest of the tiny house by sheer room dividers made of yellowing plastic. The sun was bright, trickling into the room through a boarded up window. A generator growled nearby, surrounded by the noise of animal hooves, cawing crows, and the buzz of insects in late summer.
In one of the recovery beds, there was a girl, fast asleep in the warm morning sun.
Exhaustion weighed down her body, the small streaks of sun started to feel like licks of fire against her skin. She blinked through the haze in her vision as she tried to bring the small room into focus. The light made her head hurt, and she shut her eyes again. Pawing at the bed, she tried to untangle herself from the sheets before she sat up slightly, blinking as she looked around the clinic. A strange feeling twisted in her stomach.
Where am I? She asked herself as she glanced down at herself. Wait. Something’s wrong.
She sat frozen for a moment as a sense of dread fell over her. While she continued to search the room for any details to remind her of her whereabouts, the sound of footsteps approaching her caught her attention and induced another wave of fear. She whipped her head around to look in the direction that the sound seemed to be coming from. The movement sent a stab of pain down her head and neck and scattered little black stars across her vision. She blinked them away. With only precious few seconds to decipher what to do, she fell short as her thoughts struggled to catch up.
“Good morning. Glad to see you awake again.” A man said as he stepped into view. He was an older gentleman, white mustache and balding head. Wrinkled, yet friendly looking face. Dirt-stained farm clothes of dense jeans and a dark cotton shirt. He pulled up a chair, and the girl’s eyes tracked his movement. Seeing him, the fear waned, replaced instead with a heavy sense of discomfort. She was too distracted with this new feeling to even think of something to say in return. It was as though there was a word on the tip of her tongue, a pressure in her head like a thought that she couldn’t think. Familiar, and yet…
“How are you feeling today? Did you sleep well?” He asked, his tone friendly and genuine. The girl continued to stare in perplexed silence as she tried to gather up anything to say.
“You seem confused. That’s alright. We can go over everything again.” There was the slightest twang to his voice, like an old movie cowboy. “My name’s Doc Mitchell, you’re safe here, you’re in a town called Goodsprings. Can you tell me your name?”
“My name?” The girl shifted to sit up completely, which sent the world tilting. The feeling caused another shock of pain through her head, overshadowed only by the world spinning around her. She wavered for a moment as she tried to keep herself from laying down again.
“Your name — Do you remember your name?”
My name… She thought for a moment as the feeling of vertigo passed. A cavernous, hollow feeling spread throughout her chest as she reached around in her mind for something that fit that description and found… Nothing. Just an empty hole where she swore something must have, at one point, been. A name?
“That’s alright. Not the first time. Still haven’t remembered your name. Do you remember anything from yesterday?”
“No.” She didn’t have to mull the question over at all. There was a finality in the feeling of weighted emptiness in ehr mind. She had already accepted it: she had no memories before the moment she had woken up, a few moments ago. But there’s got to be something… supposed to be something… something…
But there was nothing there for her to recall.
“That’s alright. How are you feeling right now? Any pain?”
She gave a slight nod, and flinched again at the pain that came with even just that small movement. “My head hurts.”
“I can imagine. Let me get you something for that, and I’ll tell you what I can, alright?”
“What happened?” She asked, watching him closely as he stood and walked out of view, just behind the thin privacy screen. She could faintly see the shadowy outline of him through the makeshift wall as he searched for something.
“Roughly two weeks ago, you were brought to me by the town robot, Victor. Said he’d dug you out of a grave with two bullet wounds in your head. I had to go rootin’ around in your noggin to get all the pieces of lead out.” Mitchell returned, a glass of water in one hand, the other cupped with two little white pills for her. He handed her the cup and offered the pills to her. She went to pick them up from his hand, and found her hand trembled, her fingers struggled to find purchase on the pills. Mitchell waited patiently, watching as her face twisted in frustration as she finally managed to pick them up. She examined them for a brief moment in her shaking fingers.
“You’re fine. They won’t hurt you.” He took a seat again. The girl hesitated for another moment, then put both of them in her mouth at once and chased them down with the water. It was only then that she realized how thirsty she was. She proceeded to drink the rest of the glass in one go, not even pausing to breathe.
Mitchell waited for her to finish before he resumed speaking. “Now, where was I…?”
“I was shot.” She said, sucking in a breath before she handed the glass back. “Something about a robot.”
“Right, right. Yes — Victor brought you in. I got you all patched up. You were out cold for a few days after that. Been in and out since then. Had you up and about these last few days, but you’re got a pretty good case of retrograde amnesia.”
“Retro-what?”
“Memory loss. You haven’t been remembering anything.”
She took a moment to process everything she had just heard. “You said I’ve woken up before. I don’t remember that.”
“Like I said... C’mon, let’s get you out of bed, get you something to eat, alright? Let’s see if we can get you on your feet — we can talk more in the kitchen.”
That prickling frustration returned to her body as Doc Mitchell offered his hands to her. She tried to stand by herself, joints creaking in protest. A tilting sensation replaced the frustration and made her instinctively reach out and grab his hands to steady herself against the vertigo.
“Good, good. Take it slow now, it ain't a race. Let’s get you going.”
The girl was slow on her feet, off balance with the pain and disorientation. She let go of Mitchell’s hands to instead grip his shoulder and allowed him to guide her slow steps. They made it out of the clinic, past the entryway, and into a little kitchen. It was dimly lit, simple, a kitchen table in the center. Doc Mitchell helped her over and pulled a seat out for her.
She sat down just a bit hard and the movement sent another shock of pain through her head. She made a quiet noise as she touched her forehead to try to soothe the feeling. Her fingers were met with a rough gauze bandage across part of her forehead, her hand followed the bandage up and found part of her scalp tender to the touch. With a flinch, she pulled her hand away.
“Don’t touch it, don’t want it to get infected now, do we? You okay?” Mitchell stood by for just a moment. The girl gave an affirmative hum. He then stepped away towards the fridge. The girl closed her eyes for a moment and waited for the pain to subside.
“So… You got one bullet that entered through your forehead and into your frontal lobe…” He said as he worked, she could hear him moving things around. “And then another that just nicked the top of your head. That scar will be nasty, but it should be hidden pretty well once more of your hair grows in. I tried to avoid shaving it as much as possible.”
The girl looked over at him and opened her mouth, as if to respond, before she shut it again. She let the words hang there as Mitchell got to work cooking. Among his ingredients, a little green box, with a bold logo, advertising mac and cheese. BlamCo!
“I take pride in my needlework, you know. And I know my way around some staples too, of course. Another week or so and we can get it all out of your scalp, just need to make sure it’s healing well. Don’t need you bleeding out after all that work.”
The girl gave a scoff at the remark, though she mulled over his words. He’s talking about us, remember? It all felt surreal to her, despite the pain. Was he really?
“Do you want some more water?”
She nursed the glass offered to her by Doc Mitchell. As he cooked, the pain in her head started to subside, a dull and sleepy feeling replaced it. Better. So much better.
Eventually she was offered a bowl of the brightly colored pasta. Mitchell set it down in front of her.“Not exactly the best food in the world but… it’s better than nothing.”
The girl hesitated as she picked up a spoonful. She doubted it was poison. Something in her mind was nagging at her about it. She ignored it and took a small bite. It didn’t taste bad at all, though maybe a little bland. A gnawing feeling twisted in her stomach. She was hungry. She started making inroads into the bowl, practically trying to inhale it.
“Slow down, alright, don’t make yourself sick, chew your food.” Mitchell leaned forward and placed a hand over her bowl for a moment, thwarting her next bite. The girl paused and looked up at him. She had a pretty big mouthful, and took a moment to consciously chew the food. He gave a little smile, and removed his hand.
“The first time I tried to tell you to slow down, you tried to bite me.” Mitchell leaned back in his seat and took a bite of his own food.
“I tried to bite you?”
Mitchell nodded. “The first day you woke up, you fought with me. Had to sedate you almost as soon as you woke up. Second day, I managed to calm you down enough to get you to walk with me, enough to get you in here for food. You choked while you were trying to eat the whole bowl of soup at once, and I had to slow you down. Got damn near close, too.” He gave a little laugh. “It seems like you’re calming down though. That’s good.”
Her eyes were wide as she listened intently to him. Not that what he said was surprising, but instead that it felt like he was talking about someone else. Another person. It couldn’t have been me. I would have remembered.
Mitchell entertained the girl for the day. Little tests of skill and attempts to jog her memory. When the sun started to set, he offered to take her out to the porch. “The fresh air is good for you.”
The porch was well sized for such a small house. A bench swing, a table, a chair. The girl took a seat at the table and looked out across the little town. The sun was setting now, it cast hues of orange and pink across the sky, slowly painting the mountains black. There was still a little light left, and she could see the houses below them. Mitchell’s house was situated atop a small hill, overlooking everything. She could see lights in windows, smoke from firewood, and animals wandering the streets. Familiar ones.
“Bighorner.” She commented, pointing out one that was laying down by the road, chewing its cud. It had huge bone-white curved horns, a rough face of pinkish-brown skin, and long coarse fur. Mountain sheep, transformed by radiation.
“They’re all over town, it’s hard keeping them penned in, real prone to breaking fences. We keep them for meat and hide; you can’t put a saddle on ‘em, and you can’t put a pack on ‘em. They’ll just lay down until you take it off.” He chuckled. “Stubborn animals.”
The breeze was still warm, and with the sun no longer casting down on them, it was going to cool off soon. Mitchell switched on the radio on the table. A quiet, upbeat tune drifted through the air.
“Blue moon— you saw me standin’ alone—”
The girl rested her head gently against the railing. The sky was fading into a dark blue, little flecks of stars started to flicker to life above them, ever so slowly.
“Without a dream in my heart— without a love of my own.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and felt a wave of sadness come over her. Will I forget this, too? Everything I ever do, doomed to forget and relive a new day over and over again. Learning and forgetting, learning and forgetting.
“Blue moon- you knew just what I was there for-” The singer’s voice was smooth, the jazz band behind him was upbeat and exciting. “You heard me sayin' a prayer for— someone I really could care for!”
She opened her eyes again, her vision blurred with unfallen tears as she glanced up at the sky again, and found it filled with hundreds of stars. Just beyond the mountains, she could see the not-yet-full moon starting to peek through. A silver light, illuminating the waves of the mountains.
“You alright?” Mitchell asked from his seat. Her face was just out of view from him, and she was thankful he could not see her cry. She wiped her eyes dry and took a shaky breath in.
“Yeah. I’m alright.” Her voice was strained and quiet.
“We can go inside, if you want. It’s going to get cold.”
“No. It’s fine. I’d like to stay out here.” The wind was taking away the last bit of the day’s warmth. The song followed with it, the singer’s voice low and buttery as the tune faded. She was hoping she would remember it.
“Blue moon— Now, I'm no longer alone— without a dream in my heart— without a love of my own…’
“That’s fine then. I think it’s about time to get you another dose. I’ll be right back. Don’t go runnin’ off to get shot again, alright? You’ll ruin all my hard work.”
She was exhausted by the time the second dose of painkillers hit her. Despite the short day, the cool air and weariness that came with constant pain was making her doze off. Mitchell noticed and went to help her up.
“Come on, let’s get you to bed. We can do more in the morning. Or in the afternoon, whenever you wake up.” He helped her to her feet, looping one arm around her to help keep her upright.
“What if…” The girl paused, sadness tightening in her chest as he helped her through the door and into the hall. “What if I forget everything again?”
Doc Mitchell was silent as he guided her back to her bed. The breeze was sneaking in through the boarded window, cooling the makeshift clinic as the girl buried herself in her blanket, careful to avoid bumping her head.
“What if I forget everything in the morning?” The girl asked again, searching Mitchell’s face for an answer. The man gave a sad smile.
“If you do, I’ll just do everything again. We’ll keep going through it again and again until you do start remembering.”
She hummed quietly in response, the fear and sadness dulled by the fuzzy feeling of the drugs, before she drifted off into a comfortable, medicated sleep.