Chameleon ✔️

18 truths

When I enter room 37 D, it is empty. It is much like any other office — a computer, a printer, a multi-line telephone, a multi-drawer file cabinet, a pencil cup, a stapler, a hole punch, a box of paper and binder clips, a box of tissues. Two chairs sit across from a long metal desk. I take a seat in one. A brass name plate stares at me. DR. JOSEPH I. TALBOT-LILLEY. I notice that there are no framed photographs of his family atop his desk or anywhere else in the office. Perhaps they serve as his screensaver instead. I think that I'll go over and take a look at the idle computer screen, maybe give the mouse a shake. But the door opens, and then I am not alone.

The man from my dreams steps into the office. He freezes just inside the door, looking at me like he hadn't been expecting me. His aura is again anxious. I stare back at him for a few moments, my gaze intrusive and unwavering.

He speaks. "Thank you for your discretion back there."

"Yours, as well."

He straightens up, clears his throat. Walks around his desk. Sets his clipboard down atop it. Sits. Folds his hands in his lap. All business. "Allow me to explain myself. Although, you should be warned, it may not make much sense to you."

"Try me," I say.

He takes a deep breath, and I sense that what he's about to tell me, he hasn't told many others. I can only hope that it means something to me.

"For the past twenty years-ish, I've been able to know things. Things I shouldn't know, or wouldn't know. But it's not like I'm pulling information out of thin air — it's more like I'm remembering it. Like it's always been housed inside of me, somewhere down deep, and I'm just bringing it up to the surface."

And he was right. This doesn't make much sense to me. But I've definitely heard crazier — I've felt crazier.

"Sometimes I have visions of memories that I don't remember living, people I don't remember meeting. For some reason I know things about real estate? Like I feel like I could probably take the licensing exam and make a decent percentage. I know the endings of movies I've never seen; I get the sense I've danced to songs I've never heard. I know that I'll like or dislike like certain foods before I've even tried them. And I've no idea why, or where this information comes from, or how it's triggered." He takes another breath, signaling the end of his speech.

"That's it?" I ask.

"That's it."

"So you just... remembered my name," I say, trying to make some sort of sense of it all.

He nods. "Crazy as it sounds, yes."

I choose my argument carefully. "But I don't even go by that name. No one knows that name except me and my dad."

"I don't know how I knew it, Aspen. I just did."

"Alyssa," I correct him. "Please."

"Joseph," he says. "Please." He rubs at his temples.

"What about Delia Brooks?" I ask. I hold no mercy for his headache. "You just remembered her, too?"

He looks down at his lap, and his aura tugs at me, and I can feel that there's more that he's not telling me.

"Tell me," I plead.

"Delia is your mother?"

I nod eagerly, encouraging him to go on. I hadn't told him that.

"I think I knew her."

My head is swimming. He knew her? My dreams had originally planted this theory in my mind, but I could only hope it to be true. And now that he has confirmed it... I feel like I need to sit down although I am already sitting. How can it be that this random emergency medicine doctor in Nowhere, Nebraska knew my mother?!