Read My Life, Deleted for Free Online Page B

that nothing did. Even though I felt like we were racing along, all the other cars sped past us.
    Joan told me the names of the streets and the businesses along the route, reciting the numbers of the major roads and highways nearby, but she might as well have been speaking Chinese. I had no idea what direction we were heading or what town we were in until I saw the signs saying we were entering Gilbert, where she said we lived.
    â€œDoes this look familiar?” she kept asking.
    â€œNo,” I repeated.
    We’d sat at many stoplights and made numerous turns when Joan finally said, “We’re turning onto our street. Do you know which house is ours?”
    â€œI have no idea,” I replied.
    She slowly pulled up to our one-story beige stucco house, entered the driveway, and hit a button in the car.
    Well, this has to be it if the door opened.
    My head throbbed with the pain and the stress of entering yet another foreign place that I was supposed to recognize.
    Joan hit another button to close the garage door, and as we walked into house, she said, “Welcome home, honey.”
    Taylor was in the kitchen to greet us and gave me a big hug. As we walked into the living room, with its high ceilings, wide, deep armchairs, never-ending couch, and grand fireplace, all I could think was, This is huge .
    But the enormity of it, coupled with my pounding head, was too much to bear. All I wanted to do was rest for a while and close my eyes.
    â€œWhere is the place that I can lie down in?” I asked.
    â€œThe bedroom?” Joan asked, looking at Taylor in shock.
    â€œYeah. How do I get there?”
    Taylor grabbed my hand and proceeded to lead me back into the master suite, which was yet another huge room.
    Apparently I’m a big man with big tastes.
    As Joan later explained, that assumption proved to be true: I hated to feel cramped by low ceilings and small rooms. Even so, the king-size bed seemed rather expansive, standing tall in its massive bed frame, with a nightstand on either side of it. Across from the bed was a table with some books on it and a broad wooden cabinet that encased a flat-screen television. A row of windows spanned the entire north side of the room, providing a view of a stone fountain and swimming pool outside.
    I changed into some sweats while Taylor and Joan pulled back the covers and helped me get into bed. Then Joan left to fill the Percocet prescription—a mix of oxycodone and Tylenol—they’d given me before leaving the hospital.
    Joan had explained that we’d lived in this house for more than three years, but as I lay in that bed, where I had slept for at least a thousand nights, it felt like the very first time.
    As tired as I was, I couldn’t actually fall asleep, so I lay there, thinking and examining the contents of the room: the family photos hanging on the wall and the strange but comfortable-looking armchair that had cup holders and a power cord plugged into the wall. I later learned that this was a massage chair I enjoyed using to relax my back muscles.
    I was puzzled by the round, flat pillow on the floor, covered with a blanket, which turned out to be the bed for our dog, the brown Lab named Mocha.
    The bedroom door was closed and I could hear voices in the next room, so I decided to take advantage of being alone to look around. I padded into the master bathroom, which also seemed huge compared with the tiny toilet stall in my hospital room. It was also much nicer, with its shiny granite countertop, two sinks, and the beautiful tile on the floor, which I later learned was called travertine. The walk-in shower was shaped like a clamshell and had two shower heads—one high up and the other set low and adjustable. Now I was no genius, but even with a head injury I was able to figure out that the tall one was my side and the lower one was Joan’s.
    At the far end was a wall of two mirrored doors, so I opened them to find a walk-in closet the