The elevator dinged open only a second after Talvi pressed it with their right knuckle. The lobby of the grey apartment building was sparsely decorated despite it being well painted and with no weird smells lingering. Much unlike the apartment building Erik had woken up on. “So..” Talvi played with the skin around their fingernails, “We don’t exactly have a general practitioner. I lied to the police.”

Shaking and whirring, the elevator began to rise further and further up the apartment building. “What?! Why?”

“Well it's not like either of us make a lot of money so Oumar does check ins for us every so often because our insurance is in the gutters.”

“Oumar?” The name Oumar swirled in his mind, “Is he the doctor?”

“Oh,” They exhaled deeply, “Right…Oumar is your friend from college.”

“I went to college? Nice!” Him and Talvi walked out of the elevator and into the dark hallway of the building. The grey flooring wasn’t sticky like the last apartment floor Erik had walked on; a pleasant surprise.

Their head tottered for a moment, the end of Talvi’s nose scrunched slightly, “Well yes and no. You dropped out.”

“Oh.”

Talvi stopped abruptly in the middle of the hallway, “We’re here.” He nodded at them before they knocked four times on the door.

The dark oak door cracked open seconds later. Immediate relief befell the man’s face. “Erik! Thank God! Where have you been?” Short, cropped hair shone his carved, lean face. There was something familiar about him, despite not recognizing his face nor his tall stance. Erik somehow felt a comforting and radiating sense of camaraderie.

Despite that sense of camaraderie Erik found himself shifting from foot to foot as he drew his gaze over to Talvi at a loss of words. Then as fast as Oumar’s relief came it was swiftly overtaken with confusion.

Talvi stepped into the apartment, their voice “Oumar? Can I talk to you?”  His apartment was well-maintained; books neatly placed in dark oak shelves, barely a speck of dirt on his mahogany wood floors.

His eyebrows furrowed, his gaze switched quickly between Talvi and Erik, “Sure?”

“Somewhere private. We need a doctor’s help…” Talvi quickly scanned Erik’s taut figure, “I think.”

“I'll be back, okay buddy? I’m just going to get my kit.” Their feet clicked rhythmically as Talvi and Oumar disappeared into a nearby room. Erik couldn’t hear much of their conversation,  it was more along the lines of muffled voices.

As they spoke Erik found himself sitting on the creaky leather couch in the middle of the living room. Medical degrees filled the wall near the large television.

Oumar took a seat on his leather ottoman opposite Erik. He placed a small wicker basket filled with a bundle of medical supplies next to him. “Talvi filled me in on the situation so far, so I understand okay? I am going to begin with my examination, is that okay?”

Erik nodded statically, he shifted on the couch. The leather creaked squealed.

“Do you know your name?”

“Yes, Erik Nabokov.” Both of their eyes went wide, a buzzing in the air.

“You remembered that?” Oumar inquired.

“Well…no. Someone told it to me.” Quiet sighs filled the room. Oumar continued his examination, pressing an otoscope into his ears.

Feeling the silence, Erik tried to expand on what he still knew, “I know how to write and tie my shoes and clean but everything else is gone. What happened to me? I don’t want to be stuck like this.”

Oumar switched to an eye exam light. It was far too bright but Erik didn’t let himself wince away from it, “You won’t be…and even if you are, we’ll be here by your side to figure it out. Why don’t you tell me about your day? Where were you when you woke up?”

“Well…I woke up on the roof of a building this morning, I met this old lady, then I went to work, I saw some statues that I recognized and then the police picked me up. Now I'm here.”

Talvi leaned in, stopping their constant pace around the living room, “What statues? You recognized them?”

“First I recognized Brotnia-”

“Why didn’t you say you were bleeding?” Interrupting him with a brash, domineering voice of concern, Oumar put down the ophthalmoscope beside him.

“I’m bleeding?”

“You have a cut on the top of your head.” Grabbing a small cotton pad from his bucket Oumar began pressing it into Erik’s head and pulling away blood. “Do you remember how you got hurt?”

Like wading through black waters, Erik searched mercilessly for the answer. Only to come up empty, “What do you think?”

Talvi pushed forward, their body moving closer and closer to his. Like they were trying to find the answer in his eyes, “Tell us more about your day. You said that you recognized Brotnia, that’s good. That’s really good. What else do you know about her?”

“She’s the goddess of war and revenge in the Mirasen pantheon. Sister to Lekthys, Goddess of Death.”

“Good, your semantic memory is mostly intact. Not to mention you were obsessed with the pantheon before your memory disappeared so this is a good sign.” Talvi nodded as Oumar spoke declaratively.

Oumar pressed the black tips of his stethoscope into his ears, the metal of it reflected a distorted version of Erik. Face elongated, torso taller and face shorter. For a split second Erik wondered what his heartbeat would feel like. Everything in the past several hours felt like it was going a confusing mixture of million miles an hour and like he was stuck in still glass.

“Lift your shirt.” He commanded with a flick of his wrist upwards, slinking off his ink stained grey t-shirt, “Jesus! Erik, what happened?!”

Talvi almost jumped out of their skin trying to get closer, “What?” Both Talvi and Oumar leaned down and blocked the view to his torso.

Talvi’s voice was low, studying him as they spoke. “It looks like you got struck by lightning.” Staring down at his bare chest white lines extended and splintered from his heart.

“I don’t know how that happened.” His meek voice answered.

“It’s on your back too.” Oumar pressed a cold hand against his spine that immediately made Erik tense his back and squirm away. The lines curled over his chest and back like they outlined each vertebrae of his spine and each detail of his heart. Then, as they extended further from the appendage the lines changed into strikes, like streaks of white lightning.

“What happened to you over the last three days?”, mimicking Oumar, Talvi pressed their fingertips to one of the extending lines down the back of his ribcage. Eyes wide and back tense everything went dark for a second.

There was a feeling of shaking deep within his bones. Like his pitted bones, from skull to metatarsals trembled and oscillated despite standing completely still. His feet touched tile, a large room just beyond his eyesight in which he peered into. Like a mouse watching from a cut in the wall. There were muffled voices, ones filled with both deceit, despair and vexation.

The world felt hazy, like walking through thick fog. Though through the fog, Erik made out one shadow; a feather.

The world turned black once more as the shaking in Erik’s knees began to make him crumble.

Staring at him with shaking blue eyes was Talvi. Like a storm just beginning to surge. “Are you okay?”

Erik blinked back at them slowly, watching the waves in their eyes rise and fall before balancing out as he fell back to Earth.

“I just need some sleep, I think.” Leaning down just a touch Erik pressed a cold hand to his scorching forehead. The pulsing made it seem as though the floor shifted beneath his feet, gripping slightly into the leather, Erik tried to steady himself. Though the cold sweat appearing on his back and the irritation in his throat made that seem exceedingly more difficult.

Talvi nodded, unhurried as they leaned in without touching him. Their voice was like a gentle hum, “Let’s get you home, okay.”

“Okay.”

Oumar rose to stand squarely alongside them, putting his stethoscope to the side, “Before you go, yes I do think that you have amnesia but I am not a neurologist so I can’t formally diagnose you, not to mention I’m not actually your doctor also...But, wait,” His eyebrows raised excitedly just before he turned and disappeared into a room off of the living room.

Erik concealed the white lines on his back and chest by slinking his shirt back on as Oumar came back into the room. He held out a small white card which Erik took after a quiet moment. “I can give you a referral to someone who can. Luckily she can also try and treat you. She provides CBT to patients with amnesia.”

“CBT?” Erik inquired.

“Cognitive behavioural therapy. It’ll help you recover and cope with the memory loss. But I’ve also seen studies that say that it can help bring the memories back. Though that’s pretty controversial.”

“Bye Oumar.”

Oumar took a beat to respond before waving a half hearted goodbye, “Bye Erik. Get lots of rest, okay?” Though there was an absence of something in his eyes, all that was left behind was more likened to grief.

“Okay.”

“Come to ours tomorrow, we’ll finish talking then.”

“Does dinner time sound okay?” They seemed to be saying something with their eyes, shifting glances and furrowing eyebrows before letting their cheekbones relax between the two of them. Though Erik had no clue what they were communicating, and in all honesty the pulsing headache made him care all a little bit less.

“Thank you.” Wrapping Oumar in a quick hug Talvi returned back to Erik’s side.

Talvi and Erik began to make their way to the elevators. He could hear Oumar’s apartment door close at a turtles pace as they continued strolling away. “Oumar’s a nice guy. I like him.”