by Howard Engel
I looked at my belongings stretched out on a low table to the right side of my bed, under the window. I recognized most of them, but others I had to pick up and handle before finding some past echo attaching them to me. A portable radio was out of place lying next to a familiar pair of sunglasses. The glasses were mine; the radio wasn’t. Both facts I could deal with. I sat on the edge of my bed for a few minutes, wondering why it was that I got up and put my feet on the cold floor with such dispatch. After a few minutes thinking about it without success, I tried not thinking about it, with better luck.
Then, it hit me: if I had a brain injury and it wasn’t caused by a stroke, then it must have been a blow of some sort, a rap on the head. Was it that train I’d been dreaming about? What hit me? I looked around to see if Rhymes With was within hailing distance. No. I knew that I’d better calm myself or I’d go off the deep end again. I needed calmer thoughts. Think calm thoughts.
I remembered that the names of all the patients were printed in large letters outside our rooms. I slid into my slippers and examined the printed names from the hallway. It took only a moment or two to recognize and eliminate my own name, then I painfully sounded out the letters on the other sign: “Fos, no Suc, Suc-hard, no, the c and the h go together.” It took me a few minutes to decipher it, solving one letter after another. It wasn’t speed-reading, but it was a beginning. My roommate’s name was Jerry Suchard. By the time I had walked down the hall to the nursing station and back, refreshed my memory by looking at the name on the wall again, and then climbed back into bed, I could remember only the first name. I remembered struggling several times to recall my nurse’s name. I had to face it: names were going to be a continuing problem. I tried scribbling Jerry’s name on a scrap of paper so it would be handy when I needed it. My inventiveness impressed me, even when the aidemémoire took me three minutes to decipher.
I had always had a horror of forgetting names. At the same time, I was always doing it. I could think of dozens of occasions where memory had failed in the middle of an introduction.
Now, of course, it wasn’t a matter of not remembering one name in a crowd. Now I could no longer remember any name. I was going to live in a world where friends, colleagues, and relatives looked their familiar selves, but their names were all crowded into the lock-up at the end of my tongue. An oubliette, in more ways than one.
The funny thing was that I wasn’t panicked. I didn’t rejoice and embrace it, naturally, but I wasn’t broken in half by it either. I’d get on; I’d manage. I’d never been heavy on the vocative before I got hit on the head. Now I had a good excuse, one that didn’t put a dunce cap on my pointed head anyway.
Maybe I dozed off for a while. When I was myself again, my roomie had company. She had a thick Hungarian accent; he called her by a name I’d never heard before. Listening in shamelessly, I learned that she had just returned from Europe, where air travel had been upset for days because of some political crisis that seemed to excite both of them. I made a mental note to try to find out what the trouble in the old country was, not that my mental notes were worth anything; my mind was made of Swiss cheese.
“Dagmar,” that was her name. I drifted off to sleep again into a dream of my train wreck punctuated with distant echoing voices repeating “Dagmar” and “Jerry.” Then I remembered that a question had been nagging me. Something about the bang on my head. But what was it?
FOUR
“How are you holding up, Benny?” My eyes were closed; I was just starting the cycle that led to the train wreck. It wasn’t Dagmar or my roommate, Jerry. It was Sam, my brother. I still couldn’t get used to the idea that my dear brother would come all the way to Grantham to see me. Maybe he knew something about my condition the nurse hadn’t told me.
“Damn, it’s good to see you, Sam. You’re a doctor, give me the lowdown on this thing. And don’t spare my feelings.”
“Sure, Benny, as you like it. You were hit on the back of the head with a blunt instrument about eight weeks ago. You started waking up only just this week. We thought we’d lost you a couple of times, but you held on. Technically, you’ve got a fractured skull. There was some displacement, but it’ll never show now we’ve fixed it, unless you lose all your hair. The people here on this floor are going to help you while you’re still an inpatient, and then, for a while, after you’ve been discharged. They’re going to work on your problem areas and get you the best help available.”
“What are my problem areas, Sam? I seem to be able to walk and talk. I can still cut my meat and remember who I am.”
Sam, my dear older brother, was looking down at me over his half-moon glasses. His hair was showing grey around the ears and his suit dealt with his middle-age paunch effectively. There were laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. He looked comfortable and happy. I took courage from that.
“Look, Benny, you’ve been very lucky. Lots of people up here are much worse off than you.”
“Damn it, Sam! I’m not trying to win a disability contest.”
“When they found you, you were in very bad shape. You’d lost a lot of blood from your head wound. Not from the brain itself. But the scalp and tissue around the area made it look as though you’d been shot in the head. You understand? Dr. Collins says that your immediate memory is in a shambles and that you’re going to have some difficulty reading. You can write, but you can’t read what you’ve written.”
“Sounds like a case for that American doctor, the one who wrote The Man Who Mistook His Wife for His Hat.”
“Oliver Sacks? This would be right up his alley. But before we sell your story to the movies, let’s get you back on your feet and functioning as well as we can.”
“Great!” I said through my teeth.
“Sacks, by the way, is English. I’ll see if I still have his latest book in my office.”
“It’s a picture book?”
“Sorry, Benny. I forgot. Maybe it’s available on tape.”
“Okay, I’ll stop dreaming of TV contracts. How long am I going to be in here?”
“Don’t be in such a rush to get out. Rod Collins knows what he’s doing. I’ve talked to him. He’s going to send you for tests …”
“What kind of tests?”
“Don’t be so suspicious, Benny. They want to map your visual fields, to see what damage has been done. That will help when you apply to get your driver’s licence back.”
“My licence was in my wallet.”
“It’s been suspended.”
“What?”
“Now don’t bend yourself out of shape about this, Benny. They suspend the licence of anyone who’s had a serious brain injury. You’re not special.”
“They didn’t take away that actor’s licence! In Los Angeles. I read it in the paper just last month.”
“Last month? Last month you were still in a coma.”
“Well. Whenever it was. Before I learned not to read. I saw a piece about What’s-his-name, the movie actor. He got his licence back!”
“Ontario isn’t California and you aren’t Douglas Kirk. Doug Kirk had a different sort of injury. He had a stroke, for one thing. The effects are similar, I grant you, but not identical. Different strokes hit different folks. That’s why they are not trying a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s not the Hollywood lobby ganging up on a poor Canadian private eye. Frankly, I think you got the better deal.”
“Thanks, and while I’m at it, thanks for driving out to see me so often. The nurse told me. I appreciate it, Sam.”
“Drive? I don’t under—Oh, Benny! You think you’re still in Grantham!”
“Well?”
“Benny, you are in Toronto. This is the hospital where I work. Remember the Rose of Sharon? You did some work for me here last year.”
“The Rose of …? Not Grantham General?”
“Right! It’s Mom and Dad who have been coming in from Grantham to see you every few days. I’m putting them up at my place. My kids have never had a visit with their grandparen
ts like this before. We’re in your debt, Benny.”
“Did I know about this?”
“About what?”
“Coming from Grantham to Toronto?”
“Benny, we just want what’s best for you! We brought you to the best place for what ails you. You needed—”
“Forget about that! I’m just trying to find out where I am, when I got to Toronto, and whether I was here when I got hurt. Where did I get hurt? Here or at home? What can you tell me?”
“Benny, brother dearest, you lost me.”
“Sorry I jumped at you, Sam. It’s just that I get confused. I’ve been looking down at University Avenue all day. I know it’s Toronto. How is it that in another part of my head I think I’m in Grantham? Can I carry two mutually contradictory notions in my head at the same time?”
“You’ll get through the confusion. You received your injury here in Toronto. According to the police report, you were pulled out of a Dumpster.”
“A Dumpster?”
“That’s right, a Dumpster. One of those large garbage-collector things. In the middle of Toronto. Do you remember that part?”
I nodded, just to keep him going. I asked him whether he had known that I was in town, whether we had seen one another before the accident. He said that the first he heard about it was when he got a call from the cops.
“The Dumpster was on the property of a building on Spadina Avenue, where the university owns and operates a residence for fourth-year students and graduate students. Under the O that hangs over the street. Clarendon House. I’ll show you the spot. Don’t worry.”
“Had I been in touch with you, Sam? I mean, was I staying at your house?”
“No. Nobody at the house had heard from you. I figure that you must have just arrived in town, since you usually stay with us.”
That wasn’t always true, but Sam didn’t need to know that. He was faster than I was at figuring out that I must have just driven in from Grantham, where I still live and where Sam and I were brought up. The truth of the matter was that there have been times when I’ve been in Toronto and have chosen, for one reason or another, not to contact Sam and stay with him. Even my damaged pate could see the delicacy of not exploring this line further with my brother.
For some reason, Sam was making me nervous. I couldn’t put my finger on the problem. But then, I had never looked down at my brother in a hospital bed. How long did he say I had been in a coma?
“Sam, I want to know all about what happened. You seem to be rationing the information. Tell me about the accident. Did my car run into the Dumpster?”
“Benny, there was no accident. Your car wasn’t involved. It wasn’t a traffic accident of any kind, not a hit and run.”
“So, it wasn’t random, not an accident?”
“That’s right.”
I caught my breath and looked at the remaining possibilities. “Then it was some kind of assault?”
“That’s what we think. It wasn’t robbery; your wallet was still in your pocket with sixty-seven dollars in it.”
“Who lives in that residence? Anybody I know?”
“Mostly grad students with a handful of senior undergrads. The residence is at the corner of Spadina and Wessex, just north of Harbord.”
“Place with the big letter O hanging over the street?”
“That’s the place.”
I remembered seeing it before, while it was being built. In fact, it became one of the sights I counted on seeing when I came to Toronto, like the CN Tower and the SkyDome. I could never be sure whether the giant letter was a design feature or a temporary part of the construction process. But it was still there when the scaffolding came down and the students moved in. Now the O appeared as the last letter in the word “Toronto.” Soon it was dripping icicle meltwater over the intersection.
“I know that the cops have been taking an interest in what happened.”
“How do you know that, Benny?”
I paused for about ten seconds. “I don’t know how I know that. Maybe it was one of the nurses.”
“They weren’t supposed to tell you.”
“What do you mean, not tell me? Who declared a news blackout? Sam, you know I don’t like being manipulated.”
“Settle down. Don’t lose your cool.”
“I always lose my cool when I’ve got a cracked skull.”
“Don’t have a stroke on me. Calm down.”
“Do you know which cops are taking the biggest interest?”
“No, I don’t. They’ll be in touch when you are feeling stronger. Meanwhile, what do you need?” At this point, the conversation grew domestic. We discussed razors and underpants with a seriousness that was new to both of us. Sam jotted down my suggestions on the back of an envelope and in about ten minutes was saying his goodbyes.
So, I was working or visiting in Toronto when I got hurt. I hadn’t a clue why I had been in Toronto, nor why I was a hundred kilometres from my office, where the mystery could be cleared up. My records might not satisfy the more scientific of my colleagues, but I’d always been able to give a fair account of my activities both in court and to the tax people. I always kept track of my cases and where my money came from. If I was in Toronto on business, then there had to be some record of it. It was a two-hour drive from Toronto in the middle of the afternoon. Then I remembered that my driver’s licence was suspended. Damn it! I was further away than ever from getting to the bottom of this.
I tried to find a piece of paper and something to write with. I found the stub of what might have been an eyebrow pencil or a failed crayon and tried to use that to make a note on the fly-leaf of a book some predecessor had left behind.
If I had driven from home to Toronto in my own car, then certain things had to follow: after this length of time, my Olds must be somewhere collecting parking tickets or beginning to attract attention of some kind. Locating the car was a first step in tracing my reason for being in Toronto. There might be an address, a note, a name. Something. I made a note on the fly-leaf of the old book, again surprising myself that I still remembered how to make my letters. I took my eyes off what I’d written, looked out the window for a moment, then tried to read my writing. I got the first letter wrong, tried again, working out the relationship between the letters that made them into words. When I got about halfway, I remembered how the rest of it went. I sighed, then closed the book.
The book was The Lady in the Morgue by Jonathan Latimer, as I discovered after three minutes of hard work breaking the code of the letters. I flipped to the title page. It had been written before I was born. But it had real staying power in the hospital library. I remembered the author’s name. It was buried in the farthest colonies of my memory. An aunt, who was always reading, had told me about him. The author had got himself in trouble with Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee during the 1950s. Why did I remember things like that when I still couldn’t get my nurse’s name straight?
I fished my wallet from my clothes, which were stuffed into the small closet near the bathroom. I was tired. Being kept in bed steals all kinds of resources. Strength tops the list.
Pulling my cards and papers from my wallet was a peculiar exercise, like pulling out the wallet of someone who could no longer do the job for himself. The wallet itself could have belonged to a stranger. There were no clues that announced, “Hey! Remember when you tore this bit of leather? Remember this photograph of Ma and Pa?” The photographs did reassure me, but the feeling that I was going through the papers of “the deceased” lingered. And at the back of my mind there remained the half-formed question: how did these pictures get here? It was as though the contents of my wallet existed independently, without reference to anything I had done. Then there were pictures of people I didn’t recognize, as well as others of faces that were familiar, but whose names had fallen off the table of my memory.
Once I was back sitting on my bed, facing the window, I pulled the phone toward me. I punched in the fa
miliar number of the Motor Vehicle Registry. Of course, it was the Grantham number, so I hung up. I felt like I was handling the phone wearing boxing gloves. I tried to find the phone book: nowhere in sight. I dialled information, and told the mechanical voice that I wanted to reach Motor Vehicles: Lost or Stolen, at Toronto Metropolitan Police. An operator came on the line and told me that there was no longer any such municipality. She referred me to the Bell directory. I swore that there wasn’t one in sight. She asked me a couple of questions about the nature of my business and which part of the city I was calling from. Soon, I became flustered and ended the conversation by hanging up. I’d become confused between answering her questions based on where I was now and trying to guess where the car might have been when it went missing. I could smell the sweat on the back of my neck. I couldn’t understand this; I wasn’t facing down a gunman, I was trying to get through to a police department to find out whether or not my car had been towed into the police garage or to the local pound. As I hung up, I was shaking, overcome by a wave of inertia. Suddenly, telephone operators had become as unfriendly as the Gestapo. Obviously, I had a long way to go in trying to figure out how to work around this brain injury of mine.
FIVE
Dr. Ron Collins came by the next morning accompanied by three interns and an equal number of nurses. They came in a tight formation, like a phalanx of warriors, shoulder to shoulder. The doctor addressed me directly in a friendly, bantering tone; he had another voice for his submissive entourage.
“So, you’re Cooperman’s brother, are you? (Harper, have a good look round the back.) He’s a good fellow. Plays a terrible game of golf. (The fracture’s coming along nicely. No displacement, you see, Harper.) Glad to see you getting on. (Let someone else see, Garbett.) Lift your right arm, Mr. Cooperman. (He was comatose for seven weeks.) Now your right leg. Touch the tip of your nose, Mr. Cooperman, with the middle finger of your right hand. Very good! Left hand. Thank you very much.” It was quite a performance; he could patronize Sam and me while entertaining his captive audience.
