My Brain is a Fragile, Terrifying Archive
The pen feels cheap in my hand, tethered to the clipboard by a grimy beaded chain. It scratches across the pulpy paper of the emergency room intake form, C-6. Another one. The boxes are too small, the questions too big. List all previous surgeries. I start with the gallbladder in 2006, then the knee reconstruction in 2016. Was it the left or the right? I pause, the pen hovering. It was the left. I’m sure. 96% sure. I write ‘Left Knee’ and my own handwriting looks like a stranger’s.
The air smells of antiseptic and something vaguely like burnt toast. A nurse with tired eyes and impossibly clean sneakers asks from across the counter, not looking up, “Any known allergies?”
And there it is. The question that always makes the blood drain from my face. The weight of it. Not his weight, but my weight. The weight of being the sole, walking, talking archive of another human’s life. I am the library. I am the hard drive. I am the single point of failure.




















