Sleep never becomes her friend.

Priyanka tossed and turned on her comfortable mattress almost the whole night. The pills did not help either. The distant memories occupied her empty mind, urging her to remember her unworthy past. The vivid image of her father leaving through the same door below her window haunted her.

She was healing physically but mentally was stuck in the concrete memories. The darkness didn't lull her to sleep but instead brought destructive thoughts and hot, burning tears that dampened not only her pillows but also her dreams.

Finally, after the horrific torture of sleep deprivation, Priyanka's mind dives in as her body slumps into a heavy slumber. Her enigmatic mind kept working, though, seeking to join the pieces together of a forgotten pattern.

Where is she lost?

Nothing specific filled her dreams that night, just a radiant face, igniting her search for something lost not so long ago.

A guy with intriguing, cold eyes stared deep into her soul, invading her dreams. He spoke thousands of words, but none that she could comprehend. The blurred spots appear on his face, making it impossible for Priyanka to remember him after she wakes up. Maybe she'll never remember him, or does not recognize him from somewhere. He had a face that Paris had never seen before or utterly couldn't remember him. She searched for him as soon as she saw him. She followed him to the ultimate till she had to open her eyes.

Beside the guy was a girl with the same blur spots all over her, crying by his side as he held her close. Priyanka saw their lips moving but could not hear any sounds emitting their mouth. The girl seemed frightened and panic-stricken, but Priyanka was more desperate. Being a lucid dreamer, she decides to move closer to them to eavesdrop on them, but still, no sound she could surpass.

Unconsciously, Priyanka thrashed around in her mattress, sweating profusely, trying to reach the people in her dreams.

Suddenly, the guy froze and met the gaze of Priyanka. With the fear of being caught, Paris stumbled and saw herself fall off the rooftop before she abruptly jolted up in the bed.

Her trembling self, feeling unsteady with anxiety, cautiously took in her surroundings, registering every detail—the comforting familiarity of the room, the gentle play of moonlight through the windows, the reassuring solidity of the walls. A deep sigh escaped her as she came to the profound realization that she was still cocooned within the safety of her own home, far from the terrifying precipice of any towering building.

She breathes heavily while clasping her furious beating heart. She has swept away in the flow of the dreamy lie as she registered the path of truth. Her eyes fill with water at the realization of the closeness of her death, yet again. She doesn't remember the first time, though.

Is this how I almost died? She asked herself. But couldn't answer the question herself. She shook her head as she remembered the cause of her accident was because she was drunk driving. She did not stumble and fall from any height. It was an accident, her car collided with the roadblocks, and it flipped.

Priyanka rose, feeling the strong impact of her dream as she staggered across her room. She felt her lips and throat dry but did not stop to hydrate them. She was exhausted and lost but still dragged herself to the never-ending misery of writing.

Writing was the only thing she knew, and she was good at it. It was an easy escape from her every misery. She couldn't survive a living day without writing; she outlived the coma exceptionally. The fiction series she drafted succeeded in providing for her and building a career for her. Her books were the most elementary monetary support for her.

In the middle of the night, she holds her pen and runs it across the clean sheet. The ink filled with the whirlpool of words poured onto the empty sheet, filling it with the jumbles of her exhaustive emotions. Her hand kept working till dawn. Her mind swirls around the blurry image of the guy from her dream and the sensations his cold eyes held. He intrigued her and ignited something within her. He lured the dormant curiosity within her.

The girl lost Priyanka's interest, but not entirely. Her horrified expression never left her mind. She seemed troubled, and Paris had never ignored a troubled soul before. Priyanka just kept her aside for the time being. The guy was her priority, her sole attention for the meantime. He was fictional: she acknowledged that. Like any other fictional character, she had created till now.

Her mind has always played tricks on her, but she has never questioned and complained about them. She considered it a blessing in disguise. It gave her ideas that have been a success so far. Neither did she complain about the torment it brought with it. After all, the only thing that her amnesia spared was her imagination.

Her eyes puffed from the lack of sleep, her short hair a total mess, but her mind diligent towards the world her distress had created. The dream meant nothing to Paris. It was just a vague idea for her following work.

Her moving fingers stopped as she again fell deep into the much-needed sleep.

The guy was introduced in her new work: he was brought alive.

____

"Did you ever wonder how much you lost in the last four months of your life?" Sara asked. Priyanka's fingers grazed across the freshly trimmed lawn as she lay beside her sister. They lay tiredly in their backyard, star-gazing in the early evening. Mud sticks to their clothes and bare skin after a session of plant manor.

Priyanka sighs and lets her mind ramble around the question. "Not really."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Oh."

The silence followed the silly replies between the sisters. The same monotonous question yet again bothered Priyanka. She's been asking herself the same since the day she gained consciousness four weeks ago.

"Why?" Sara asked again. She rolled onto her stomach with her elbow support to face her sister. The younger brunette's stare made Priyanka undeniably uncomfortable. She stole little glances at her curious little sister. Priyanka almost hid from her interrogating stare, but she couldn't give her the satisfaction of knowing her question bothered Priyanka.

Sara was way more mature than her age could recognize. Her decisions have always been way better than Priyanka has given her the deserved credit, even way better than Paris's life choices.

Priyanka just shrugged in response, inarticulate to say anything. She couldn't believe she would be discussing her life problems with a much younger person than her, who actually understands her more than she understands herself.

"You are curious to know what happened to you in the past four months, right?" Sara asked when Priyanka failed to answer such a simple question. Priyanka saw the pity in her sister's affectionate eyes, bringing tears to her own.

Priyanka finally averted her eyes, not able to handle the sympathy Sara had to offer. Priyanka loathed the unwanted pity; it made her feel really vulnerable. She did not appreciate it; it was unnecessary, anyway. Priyanka learned from her past mistake, a mistake that almost killed her. Though she couldn't remember the exact details of the incident, no one knows what happened to her that night, but it was a clear case of drunk driving, according to the people who witnessed such a tragic accident. The gap in her memory of the past four months seemed to expand as the days elapsed, but no image appeared. Her amnesia did not spare her even a glimpse of her past. Every moment of the past four months was missing, as it vanished into thin air like she never lived that time.

She had to fight for her own convenience. Priyanka had lived the same life every day: work, feeding herself, and mending her old heartbreak, all alone. She doubted if anything important happened in the period of the forgotten two months that could explain her desperation in fighting against her incurable amnesia. Pretending was the only way out of the misery: deceiving oneself as if nothing has happened, as she always has done, and presenting the world with the perfect image of Paris August.

Sara could feel the depth of emotional turmoil her sister had suffered through the course of the last four weeks. What could she say, though? They were never close enough to share such devastating problems in their life. All she believed was that her older sister needed a shoulder to rely on, and she was more than willing to provide her with that. People have misunderstood Paris all her life and have labelled her selfish, but Sarah knows differently, because she has experienced differently. Priyanka was the bravest, most beautiful, loving, and caring person Sara had ever seen. Her cold exterior was just a facade to protect herself.

"I was in the coma for two months of the past four months," Priyanka said, "And I don't remember two months before that, nor the night of the accident." They both fell silent.

"I am sorry," Sara's lip wobbled at her sister's teary eyes while hugging her tight. Priyanka couldn't describe the feeling of loss to her younger sister as she silently cried in her arms. But she was glad at the affection she received from her once broken family. They cared for her, making Priyanka exhilarated to be able to rely on someone after suffering alone for so long.

Love and affection were all that Priyanka could feel at the moment. Maybe this was the opportunity for Priyanka to reconnect with her family again, the only chance Priyanka wouldn't let go.

Maybe Priyanka could finally sleep without her past taunting her because her past was healing.

______________