Erased - Changes and Discoveries

The first thing Rhea learned about her past was that the country no longer used analog television.  In fact, the hospital room was equipped with TiVo and Netflix.  HDTV and smart phones were a part of daily life for everyone around her, including the nurses who chatted over the latest app they downloaded to help them keep track of their overtime wages accrued and diet fads accomplished.  Rhea also learned that most of her favorite weeknight shows were off air and replaced by new shows with the same theme but different actors.  Twilight was a descendant of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Friends was replaced by comedic antics of employees for a paper supply company featured in a mock documentary about medium sized corporations.

Everywhere she went, Rhea was reminded that she always had an option to rewind and repeat what she missed.  Rhea watched the shows and listened to the music she missed during the car ride to her parent's home, while she got refreshed in her parent's bathroom, and as she got comfortable on the bed which still belonged to her, even after ten years of being the guest bed.  This was comforting for Rhea.  Though she woke up with ten years of her life missing, she was able to catch up with ten years worth of television within the first few months of her discharge from the hospital.  Now if they only made TiVo for real life, Rhea would've relived her entire life in one sitting.

Rhea had to get used to sharing her bed very quickly with people she did not know.  The biggest hurdle was how do tell a two-year old girl that she can not sleep with her mommy after weeks of visiting her mommy in the hospital.  Rhea did not know this two year old girl, but felt enough love for her that she let the little girl drift off on what used to be Rhea's favorite pillow ten years ago.

That night, Rhea did not sleep.  While her daughter slept, Rhea searched her room quietly for answers, clues, and reminders of what life was like now and ten years ago.  On her night stand, the AM/FM alarm clock was replaced by a digital docking station for an mp3 player.  The glow in the dark stars on the ceiling were overshadowed by a nightlight for her daughter which accurately reflected the entire solar system as seen from Earth.  The biggest change was that Rhea's IBM computer with Windows XP and a DVD drive was also replaced by a Mac with Windows 7 and a DVR drive.  Rhea could not even begin to imagine why there was a huge flat screen monitor with an apple icon staring at her from across the room. How was this possible?

Rhea used MACs in school when the screen was black and green and the best games were Snake Byte and Oregon Trail.  As she grew up, schools and pop culture gradually shifted to PCs like IBM and Hewlett Packard.  In fact, it seemed like yesterday when Rhea set up DSL in her college apartment so she and her roommates can share illegally downloaded music on a home network.  Ten years later, how did the MAC get in the room.  Rhea's hand gradually began foraging through the bag brought home from the hospital for answers.  The bag had Rhea's clothes, purse, and other belongings which could be salvaged from the car accident.  The most astonishing item was an object about two inches in height and width that was engraved with Rhea's name and New Years Eve 2010.  When Rhea's husband Keith walked into the room, Rhea was tossing this object in the air trying to figure out what in the world she was supposed to do with it.  Keith explained that this device was the Fourth Generation Ipod Shuffle and had 2 GBs worth of Rhea's favorite songs.

Erased - Tragedy Tuesday

Her life was ideal enough.  A decent job put Rhea in a middle class tax range and a brand new Lexus made her even more valuable to her social counterparts.  Her husband Keith was a scholar who spent most of his time crunching data into a machine to evaluate trends and predicted patterns that were not yet explored.  The remainder of this couple's life involved a charming 2 year old daughter, who had wavy hair flowing to her shoulders and could spell almost any one syllable word with her alphabet cereal.

Rhea would have spent her whole life doing exactly what she did on a normal Tuesday.  The problem was, she did not remember her normal Tuesday.  In fact, the last Tuesday she remembered, Rhea was at her favorite college pizzeria playing a decent game of beer pong.  That was the last Tuesday Rhea remembered.  That Tuesday happened ten years ago.  The Tuesday which Rhea did not remember happened about a month ago, when a slightly intoxicated driver was busy texting his girlfriend when he slammed his Tacoma into Rhea's Lexus, causing Rhea's Lexus to hit the corner of a UPS truck that was making a left turn on the adjacent lane.  The slightly intoxicated driver was not badly hurt, just some whiplash and a broken arm - the arm that he was using to hold his phone while texting.  The UPS truck driver was badly traumatized since this was his first day on the job, luckily he did not sustain any injury due to the crash.  It was Rhea who felt the worst pain.  

The doctors in the hospital and forensic examiners on the scene could not determine whether Rhea's head was injured as a result of the crash, or due to the airbags which exploded on her face moments later.  Either way, Rhea suffered severe brain injury.  They say that different parts of the brain use memory in different ways.  Some memories come from learned behavior, while others come from distinct stimuli embedded through our daily experiences from birth onward.  After the crash and subsequent coma, Rhea lost memories worth ten years.  She did not remember how she met her husband, when she had her daughter, or even how she landed her mid-career level job at a Fortune 500 company.  Rhea simply remembered drinking too much beer on a Tuesday and waking up in a hospital attached to an IV drip on a Wednesday.