I married an old man to save my sick father

Side effects

After the first month, the real horror began.

I began to wake up with thoughts that were not mine.

I’m lying in bed, and the first thing that crosses my mind is:
“I have to check the lab results of yesterday, otherwise the neural bridge experiment will fail.”

Except I don’t work in a lab. I never am.

I go to the kitchen and take a breath on the way – and suddenly there is a smell of expensive French perfume in my nose. I can recognize the notes: jasmine, orange blood, musk. I’ve never worn one in my life.

Sometimes my hands curl up like they were playing the piano. I knew how the fingers were stacked, how to press a key, how the tree vibrated under the wrists. And I don’t have a single piano lesson.

It was more terrible.

When Julian took me to Sofia for examinations or meetings, strangers sometimes stopped me on the street.

“My God…” a woman with white hair and a refined scarf whispered once. Her eyes filled with tears. “That can’t be…”

“I’m sorry, do we know each other?” I asked.

“No… sorry…” he turned and almost ran away.

Such moments were becoming more and more. Strange glances, trembling lips, smiles that stop in the middle.

They looked at me like they were seeing a ghost.

Who’s Catherine?

One night, while I was fixing the library in his office, I dropped a book. It fell, the pages flew over the floor, and a photo burst from the inside.

On it – a woman around the forties, with her hair up, in a white laboratory apron. He holds a test tube in his hand, smiles slightly. Beautiful, intelligent face.

On the back – inscription: “Katerina. 1999.”

My stomach curled up like a fist.

I recognized the smile.
Because I saw her in the mirror every morning.

The same slightly raised corner of the lips. The same tiny wrinkle on the left when the smile is semi-ironic.

I’d seen her on the portraits on the walls, but I always thought I was suggesting.

That night, when at nine I took the pill before I “disappeared,” a word appeared in my head that was not mine:

“Bridge.”

Just one word. But heavy as concrete.