The fifth was one of the first people I remembered, one of the first humans to sit down with me and tell me I didn’t have to be defined by my accident and my memory loss, that I could learn to be a full, productive member of society despite the way my life had changed. He’d been lying all along, of course—he’d known exactly what I was, and that each of the skills I learned would be learned for the very first time—but he’d always known what to say to get me to come around.

