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His name was William Simmons, but no one he knew really cared about that.
Social workers asked him for his name when they gave him a meal, or if he checked in for a cot on a particularly cold night, but they wrote it down without paying much attention. He could have said “Adolf Hitler” or “Kim Kardashian” and they probably would have dutifully made the notation without so much as looking up. He was a number, a placeholder, so his identity was of no consequence.
On the rare occasions when they spoke to him or referred to him by name, they called him Willie. It was as if they felt William carried a dignity he did not deserve, and they neither knew nor cared that he had never been called Willie in his entire life.
He didn’t think of them as bad people; on the contrary, he recognized that they were performing selfless and much-needed work. But they were so consumed with the task of helping people that they didn’t have time to really see the people they were helping.
William had been on the streets for almost sixteen months, but he probably didn’t really know, at least not exactly. One day just went into the next, and into the next. He measured time in seasons, and he measured seasons by the weather. And he never looked back; that was much too painful.
The vast majority of the people on the street hated winter the most, but not William. He couldn’t stand summer; in his mind that was the worst. He could guard against the cold by covering up with cloth and paper, or by getting into unlocked hallways in some buildings. When it got really bad he could go to a shelter; all he had to do was give them his name. Or any name.
But when it was hot, and the streets of Hackensack, New Jersey, could get really hot, there was no escape. The shelters weren’t air-conditioned and thus provided no relief at all. So he spent the summers anxiously waiting for the fall, for football weather, which unfortunately reminded him of his high school playing days.
Complicating every day of William’s life was the fact that his eyesight was maybe 20 percent of normal. He had suffered from macular degeneration for almost fifteen years, and was no longer able to get treatment of any kind for it.
This particular November night the temperature was in the mid-forties, no problem at all for William. He was lying in the alley behind the Italian restaurant, where it was quiet and he could snack on the discarded food. They threw everything away in containers and plastic bags, so it was clean and safe to eat.
At night, William liked to be off the beaten path like this, where it was peaceful and pedestrians wouldn’t be coming by making noise. In the morning, he’d be out front, trying to get money from the people heading to work.
He sometimes thought about one day getting enough money to get a place to live, but he was fooling himself, and down deep he was smart enough to know it. He also thought about getting a job, but he didn’t think he could face the real world again. And besides, listing your address as “behind the Italian restaurant” was unlikely to motivate potential employers.
But the night was for resting and sleeping, and that was what William was doing when the man came by. He woke William up; not with his foot, like most people would, but by leaning over and shaking his shoulder. Not aggressive at all, almost like they were on a train and he was telling his fellow passenger that they had reached their stop.
“Wake up, fella. Come on.”
It took William a little while to get his bearings and focus on what was happening. He looked up, but in the darkness, and with his very limited eyesight, he couldn’t tell what the man looked like. He also couldn’t tell how big he was; from his prone position everyone would look big. “What do you want?” he asked.
“I got some stuff for you,” the man said. “Drugs. Whatever you need. Free.”
In his groggy state, it didn’t make sense to William. It wouldn’t even have made sense if he was clearheaded and totally awake; people didn’t come along and offer him free drugs.
“I don’t do no drugs,” William said, because it was true. He never had and never would. By then he was thinking that maybe the man was a dealer looking to get him hooked so he would have to pay for the stuff down the road. Which was ridiculous on its face; how could a man sleeping in an alley be considered a future source of profit?
“Come on, of course you do,” the man said.
“Leave me alone, will ya? I don’t do drugs. Let me sleep.”
“Sure. My mistake. No problem,” the man said, smiling at his good fortune. “Go back to sleep.”
William laid his head back down on the little towel he used as a makeshift pillow. The man suddenly and swiftly pulled the towel away and brought his foot down on William’s head. The entire two hundred and ten pounds of the man’s weight came down, crushing William’s head into the pavement.
The man reached down and expertly felt William’s neck, searching for a pulse. He found a weak one; William was still alive. Rather than finish the job, the man calmly walked away. William’s injury would no doubt be fatal, and the man knew he would die later, at the hospital.
With his gloved hand, he took a cell phone out of his pocket and dialed 911. It was a phone he had purchased for cash that day, the kind there is no contract for.
He told the 911 operator about having discovered a body behind the restaurant, and when asked, said that he had no idea if the man was alive, but at the very least he was hurt badly.
The man promised to wait there until the police arrived. Then he hung up and just walked away into the night, dropping the phone in a trash can. He wiped it clean, even though he was wearing gloves and could not have left any fingerprints. He was very careful about things like that.
Behind him he could hear the sirens, and he allowed himself another smile.
“I don’t really want to be here,” I say.
I don’t mean to offend her by saying that, and her smile indicates she understands.
“That’s as good a place to start as any, Doug,” Pamela says. “If you feel that way, then why are you here?”
“My girlfriend … my fiancée … Jessie Allen … suggested it. She thinks it might help.”
“But you don’t?”
I shake my head. “Not really.”
“Why do you feel that way?”
“How much do you know about me?” I ask, hoping that I don’t have to tell the story from scratch. I’m tired of telling my story, and thinking about my story, and worrying about my story, and living my story.
“Maybe a lot, maybe very little,” she says. “I’ve seen your story in the media, of course. It was rather impossible to avoid; you’re something of a celebrity. So based on that, I would say you’re a state police officer who is considered a hero for preventing a huge terrorist attack on many buildings in New York City. I know that you were shot, and that you’ve had some memory issues.”
“Memory issues,” I repeat. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“But all of that is from media reports. I usually find that I
don’t really know anything about a person until I hear from them directly.”
“What you heard is all true, especially the part about me being ‘considered’ a hero,” I say, emphasizing “considered.”
“That’s not how you see it?” she asks.
“A lot of people did a lot of good things. I was one of them. I was doing my job.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it from your perspective?”
So that’s what I do; I tell her about it. I don’t talk much about the nuts and bolts of what happened on the police side of things, since the media reported it pretty accurately. I helped stop a terrorist attack, and I killed an organized crime figure named Nicholas Bennett in the process.
I got much more praise than I deserved, but I’ve stopped saying that publicly, since people just frown and say I’m being too modest.
But I do tell her about my being shot and falling off that balcony and sustaining the head injury that caused me to lose ten years of my memory. And I tell her that I’ve learned that losing ten years of my memory is the same as losing ten years of my life.
Of course, I remember nothing whatsoever about the shooting itself; that’s one of the periods I have been completely unable to recall. But I’ve been taken through how it happened, and even visited the scene.
“I had, or I should say I have, what they call ‘retrograde amnesia.’ Are you familiar with it?”
Pamela nods. “I am, Doug. Although it can take a number of forms. Are you still experiencing symptoms?”
I nod. “They’re getting better, but at the same time they’re getting worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got quite a bit of my memory back; it’s hard to say how much, since I don’t know what I don’t know … but probably a third of it. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. I remember some older things but not some that are more recent. Some important stuff and some meaningless events. And I’m very slowly remembering more all the time, so that’s good.”
“You said it’s also getting worse.”
“Yeah. I’m also experiencing more memory loss from that period. Some of the things I’ve remembered, I’m losing them again. It’s a weird feeling; I remember remembering something, but not when it actually happened. Am I making sense?”
“You are,” she says, but I’m not sure I believe her.
“Are you forgetting current things? Or just things that happened before you were shot?”
“Nothing current,” I say. “I remember everything that has happened since then. I’m able to form new memories.”
“Good. So what is your goal in coming to see me?” she asks.
“Jessie thinks that all of this is affecting me emotionally, that it’s a strain. She thinks you can help with that … getting me to deal with it better.”
Pamela smiles. “So now I know what Jessie thinks. What do you think?”
“I think it’s probably a waste of time,” I say. “Sorry about that.”
She smiles. “No problem; I appreciate the honesty. Have you ever been in therapy before?”
“I don’t think so.” Now it’s my turn to force a smile. “But I can’t be sure, you know?”
“Do you think you’re under an emotional strain?” she asks.
I shrug. “I guess so; it’s certainly on my mind all the time. But the problem will exist, no matter how long we talk about it. So if I know that’s the bottom line, I just have to deal with it and accept it. No one can do that for me but me. Not you, not Jessie, nobody.”
“So that’s what you think you’ll get out of coming here. Now tell me what you would hope to get out of it in a perfect world.”
“I know you can’t help me get my memories back. I just don’t want to be a basket case when I go back on the job.”
“You haven’t been working?”
“No. I took some time off. With all the publicity and stuff, and with all I went through, it seemed like a good idea. And believe it or not, I actually earned much more money. Groups and companies paid me to come talk to them, which is about as ridiculous as it gets.”
She smiles. “Nice work if you can get it.”
I return the smile. “And I got to throw out the first pitch at a Mets game, which was very cool.”
“What have you been doing to help yourself?” she asks.
“I’ve been going to an amnesia recovery group,” I say. “Another one of Jessie’s ideas; she’s pretty much desperate to help me. I’m going there later; a lot of talking going on today.”
“How is the group working out?”
I shrug. “It’s an okay way to waste time. Nobody seems to be recovering in the recovery group. We just talk about not recovering, and wanting to recover.”
She nods as if she knows what I mean; for all I know she runs a group just like it. Then, “So you’ve told me you don’t want to be a basket case when you get back to work. What other goals do you have? Personal ones.”
I think for a few moments, trying to decide if I should go where I’m about to go. “I guess I’d like to find out who I am” is what I finally say.
“What do you mean?”
“People, like Jessie and my partner, Nate, tell me that I’ve changed a lot. For example, I used to be much more of a risk taker, especially on the job. I was hard to control; I would sometimes act too quickly, before I thought things through. ‘Impulsive in the extreme’ is the way Jessie describes it, and Nate nods when she says it.”
“And now your actions and behavior have changed?”
I nod. “Yes, or so I’m told. But I don’t care so much about that. What I care about is that I don’t remember being like that. And I’m not talking about events; it’s like I have no internal connection to the person they are describing. Yet the person they are describing is me.”
“That must be disconcerting,” she says.
“You got that right. So I don’t know whether I’ve changed because I’ve changed, or because of my injury.”
“People can undergo change as the result of a number of factors, certainly including a catastrophic physical or emotional event,” she says. “It’s quite natural and normal for that to happen. And you and the people around you would notice some of the changes, and not others.”
“Right now I feel like I’m standing outside my body, watching my behavior. That is also pretty damn disconcerting. So, bottom line, there’s one thing I want to know when it comes to me.”
“And that is?”
“What’s real and what isn’t?”
“Doug, my name is Sean Connor. Can I talk to you about something?”
It’s one of the other members of the amnesia recovery group, coming up to me after our meeting. I’ve seen him here a couple of times, but he’s been quiet.
I’m not thrilled with the request. I’m sort of talked out right now when it comes to memory loss, and I’m sure that’s what this is about. My hero status in the media has made me something of a celebrity in the group, when I’d much rather be anonymous. I’ve been thinking of bailing out of the group entirely; I feel worse when I leave a session than when I went in. I don’t think it’s supposed to work that way.
“You mean now?” I ask. “Because I really need to get home.”
“No, not now. There’s something I have to show you, and I don’t have it with me.”
“Okay. Maybe before the next meeting?”
“I was hoping that maybe we could meet somewhere away from here. It’s pretty important, and I want to keep it private.”
He seems nervous about making the request, and I’m feeling a little bad for him. “What’s it about, Sean?”
“I really can’t say right now; you need to see what I have. But I wouldn’t be asking unless…”
I finish the sentence for him. “… it was important.”
He smiles a nervous smile. “Yeah. I promise I’m not going to waste your time, although in a way I hope I am.”
That’s a little cryptic, but I don’t really
want an explanation right now. “Okay, Sean, but I don’t know any more about this stuff than you do. I’m just taking it one day at a time, trying to figure it out.”
He shakes his head again. “It’s not about memory loss. Well, it is, in a way, but that’s not why I’m coming to you.” He pauses for a moment, as if trying to decide whether to go on. Finally, “I’m talking to you because you’re a police officer.”
I don’t feel like I should be asking more questions; it seems like he’s going to let the information dribble out when and where he wants to. I’m also not all that interested. “When would you like to talk, Sean?”
“I was thinking tomorrow, maybe eight in the morning?”
I tell him that’s fine with me, and we make a plan to meet at a small coffee shop that he says is near his house in Clifton. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” he says, “no matter how it turns out.”
Nate Alvarez is waiting for me across the street when I come out.
He is still parked in his unmarked police car, in front of the Dunkin’ Donuts, just where he was when I went in. He is finishing off a cup of coffee as I get in the car.
“You been talking all this time?” Nate asks.
“It seemed longer in there, believe me. But mostly I’ve been listening. You didn’t have to drive me here and wait like this.”
“I got nothing else to do; I’m off today.” He points to the Dunkin’ Donuts. “You want some coffee?”
“No.”
“I’m gonna get another cup.”
“There are a lot of donuts in there,” I point out. “It’s a danger zone. Might be safer to use the drive-through.” Nate is six foot three and two hundred and eighty pounds, and is always claiming to be on a diet. If that’s true, it has been the least successful diet in history.
“No problem,” Nate says. “I was in there before. Just coffee all the way; no donuts for me. It’s a mind-over-matter situation.”
“I think matter might have won the last round. You’ve got powdered sugar on your face.”
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