Amnesia

by G. H. Ephron

  “Maybe if I explain …”

  “No need to explain. I’m your mother. Not your keeper. So you don’t apologize and I won’t complain.” She bounced up on the balls of her feet. “Deal?”

  How could I turn down such an offer? “Deal.” I gave her a hug and felt as if I’d been given absolution.

  She held me at arm’s length. “Cigarette smoke.” She sniffed. “Beer.” Then she leaned in close for another sniff. “Watermelon?” She shook her head and yawned. “Now I can sleep.”

  8

  A WEEK later, I was on my way to evaluate Sylvia Jackson. My appointment was scheduled for ten. At nine I was circling the hospital complex, an enormous, three-winged granite building tucked in the crook of an elbow where two highways meet. The Big Dig — Boston’s massive, federally funded attempt to straighten the cow paths they call streets — had turned the hospital into a moat-surrounded fortress. The normal access road was now one-way, and the surrounding blocks had become staging arenas for earth-moving equipment.

  Cursing the always courteous Boston drivers who cut me off, I hunkered down over the wheel and peered out through a rain-spattered windshield as I tried to figure out where the powers that be had hidden the temporary entrance to the parking garage. Boston has a strange philosophy about signage: If you don’t know where you are, you don’t belong here.

  The garage was, of course, packed. My tires squealed each time I had to double back and climb to the next level of wall-to-wall vehicles. I passed up sliver after sliver of semi-spot left over after one of suburbia’s answers to that pressing question, what to drive on a safari into the veldt, plumps itself into a space and a half. In an act of desperation, I left my classic Beemer in a space on the roof marked “Maintenance/Reserved.” It was either there or squeeze onto the end of a row where I was afraid I’d get clipped.

  By nine-thirty, I was staggering across a rickety wooden walkway that connected to the building entrance. I must have looked like a refuge, laden with bundles — two leather portfolios of testing materials, an enormous cloth shopping bag stuffed with binders and boxes, and a white Dunkin’ Donuts bag that was slowly turning wet and brown as the coffee sloshed around inside. By the time I reached the building, my arms ached. As I entered the revolving door, the bag gave way and the coffee plopped down on the floor, splashing my pant leg and mingling with the mud on my shoes.

  “Figures,” I grumbled to no one in particular.

  I entered the cavernous lobby, looking back to watch the empty cup roll around as the revolving door swept it inside, then outside, then inside again. I sighed and approached the circular granite reception desk. The brunette roosting there was on the phone. I dropped my burdens, cleared my throat loudly, and waited, counting the hoops that pierced her left ear. I reached twelve before she swiveled around to me.

  “I’m here to see a patient, Sylvia Jackson,” I told her. “Can you tell me what room she’s in?”

  With the phone still attached to one ear, she squawked, “It’s not visiting hours. You’ll have to come back at eleven.”

  I interrupted her mid-swivel. “I’m Dr. Peter Zak and I have an appointment to see her.”

  Without acknowledging what I’d said, she tap-tapped at her computer, paused, and then conceded, “Seven-Twelve West.”

  I stopped in the men’s room to wipe the mud and coffee from my shoes and pants. Then I continued to the elevator. I got off at the seventh floor, headed down the west wing corridor, and stopped at the nurses’ station.

  Two nurses were standing behind the counter, watching me approach. I smiled, hoping for but not getting a smile in return. It was going to be one of those days.

  “I’m Dr. Peter Zak. I have a ten o’clock appointment to evaluate Sylvia Jackson. I’d like to check her chart before I begin.” I let my voice rise to a question mark at the end.

  The taller one, with the unlikely name LOVELY pinned to her starched white chest, shifted her position to block the gap between the counter and the wall. A tornado wouldn’t have mussed her blond helmet.

  “I assume you have a release?” she asked, planting her hands on her hips.

  I dropped my bags on the floor, wiped my forehead, and groaned. Nothing was going to be easy today. I took off my coat and folded it deliberately over the back of a chair, straightened my tie, and approached her.

  “My understanding is that the lawyers have arranged for that.”

  She looked unmoved. “I’ll need a release.”

  “Look. I have an appointment with Ms. Jackson. The court arranged it. Believe me, I wouldn’t be here dragging all this stuff with me if it hadn’t been set up properly.”

  “I need to see authorization. I’m not the one in charge around here, you know. I don’t make the rules.”

  “Well, why don’t you check with whoever does?” I paused and counted the holes in a ceiling tile. “My time is being paid for by the Commonwealth. I can wait.”

  I sat down with what I hoped was a look of infinite patience.

  Reluctantly, Nurse Lovely went over to the desk and looked at the telephone. I could tell she was trying to decide on her next move. After a few beats, she sat down, flipped through a Rolodex on the desk, and punched in four numbers. She waited, frowning.

  I watched the clock on the wall as the minute and hour hands met at ten minutes to ten. I looked longingly at a coffeepot, just visible through a glass door at the back of the nurses’ station. When I glanced back toward the desk, Nurse Lovely was glaring at me. She quickly looked away, checked the Rolodex again, and punched in a bunch more numbers. Someone must have answered because she cupped her hand over the mouthpiece as she spoke. Apparently, the answer she got didn’t please her. She shot the receiver back into its cradle.

  I wondered about the animosity that radiated from Nurse Lovely. Nurses are often protective of their patients, especially when a patient needs the kind of long-term care Sylvia Jackson had required. Still, it seemed a bit excessive. Maybe I could kill her with kindness.

  I approached the counter, smiling one of my most cheerful. “All set?” I chirped.

  She muttered, “Help yourself.”

  “Thanks.”

  First I went over to the medication Kardex. I flipped through the cards on the metal rack until I found Sylvia Jackson’s. I needed to know if she was taking anything that could affect her test results. She was on low doses of an antidepressant and something for seizures. No problem there. If she’d been sedated, that could have thrown off the cognitive tests.

  As I leaned over to read, I could feel Nurse Lovely’s eyes drilling holes in the top of my head. She stepped back when I passed in front of her to reach the metal chart rack.

  “Okay if I sit here for a few minutes?” I asked, carrying the chart over to one of the desks.

  Nurse Lovely gave me a tight little nod.

  I hunched over the chart, checking the most recent entries in each section. Sylvia Jackson was making progress with her walking. Her speech was improving. Several times her therapists had noted “episodic dyscontrol.” I could understand why she might be irritable and easily frustrated. She could probably remember precisely what it was like to be completely physically functional. Her injuries had left her far from that mark.

  Lovely directed me to a conference room at the end of the hall. There, I unpacked my notebooks and test instruments. While I waited for Sylvia Jackson to be brought in, I thought about the gradual progress she was making in her recovery. Superimposed on an upslope of slow, steady improvement were sine waves, blips of emotional upheaval. Brain trauma affecting her memory and executive functions could account for her slow progress and her lack of emotional control. Even a nontraumatized brain would be overwhelmed by her ordeal. I imagined a pathetic, wheelchair-bound invalid, racked by depression, torn by frustration.

  I didn’t hear the wheelchair rolling into the conference room. I didn’t notice the little squeak as the brakes locked. I looked up sharply when a light, whispery voice broke the
silence, first with a breathy exhale, followed by, “Hello, you must be Zap.”

  She extended her left hand as I reached across to shake her right.

  “Dr. Zak. Pleased to meet you,” I said.

  Pathetic she was not. She had a short cap of well-cut, shiny black hair with a curtain of glossy bangs that hung down over dark eyes fringed with long lashes. She wore jeans and a fitted, long-sleeved western-style shirt that showed off the swell of her breasts and a slender waist. Her generous lips, the color of a ripe persimmon, parted to a toothy smile in a smooth face devoid of any age lines.

  I squeezed her hand and then tried to let go. But she held on as she settled back in her chair studying me, her head tilted at an angle. There were dark smudges under her eyes, her skin pale and translucent.

  She exhaled and whispered, “Doctor.”

  Finally, she dropped my hand. Annie’s cryptic comment, “You’ll see,” came floating back to me on a wave of warm, tropical air.

  “I’m sorry I’m late, Ms. Jackson,” I said.

  “Please, call me Syl,” she said as she gazed at me speculatively.

  Already, I felt a pang of conscience. She was a heartbreaking combination of ripe and vulnerable, without a clue as to what I was about. “Well, Syl, shall we get started?”

  “Mmm,” she purred, looking with interest at the test materials I’d arranged on the table.

  “I brought a lot of tests. We probably won’t get through them all today.”

  She gave me a slightly lopsided look. After an exhale and a pause, she said, “I was a little worried.” She exhaled again before talking, as if she had to blow up her own voice balloons. “I do everything a little slower these days than I used to.”

  It occurred to me then that the tilt of her head, that angle of cool appraisal, probably wasn’t intentional. The kind of brain damage she’d suffered would have caused everything on one side to droop. Likewise, the little breath that made me hang on the silence that preceded her words probably wasn’t intentional. We take for granted that breathing and speaking are a single activity. But after brain damage, they can part company like a pair of gears that get wrenched apart. Anyone who is concentrating at every moment on the simple act of breathing will tire quickly. I made a mental note to keep that in mind.

  I moved a chair away from the end of the table so she could pull her wheelchair in close. I rearranged my materials and riffled through the papers to find the first test protocol.

  She locked her wheelchair in place and watched me expectantly. She leaned over, rested her hand on my thigh, and breathed, “Ready when you are.” She squeezed my leg. “You are misleading.” I felt a frisson of electricity and a tightening in my groin. Purely the autonomic nervous system kicking in, I told myself. “You don’t look like a weight lifter, but you sure do feel like one.”

  I stood up to adjust a window shade that didn’t need adjusting. Coming on to people wasn’t something she could control. I sat again, this time beyond reaching distance.

  “Do you?” she asked. “Do you lift weights?”

  Normally, I would have discouraged this. Sharing personal information cuts across exactly the kind of boundary that’s essential to a therapeutic relationship. But Sylvia Jackson wasn’t my patient and our relationship wasn’t therapeutic. To do the job I’d come for, I’d need her cooperation. Testing could take four or five hours. I smiled and shook my head.

  “Run marathons?”

  “God forbid!”

  “It’s got to be something,” she insisted. “Give me a clue.”

  “Actually, I row.”

  “I never thought shrinks were athletic. Now, rowing — isn’t that something they do at Harvard?”

  “And BU, MIT …”

  “I used to date a guy who took me out on the river. We’d go out at sunset with a six-pack. Watch the students row.” She arched her back and purred. “So romantic. Is that where you go? On the Charles?”

  “I’m there every morning, six A.M., rain or shine.”

  “An obsession?”

  Her remark left me momentarily speechless. It had turned into an obsession. I pride myself on being somewhat opaque, difficult to read when I need to be. She’d be easy to underestimate.

  “It’s just something I like to do,” I said mildly, picking up my interview protocol and placing it between us. “Ready?” I asked.

  “Shoot,” she said.

  The conference-room door opened and Nurse Lovely rattled into the room. She was pushing a metal cart loaded with cups of medication lined up in orderly rows and columns.

  “What the — ?” I started.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Lovely cut in, “but it’s time to take these.” The cup that Lovely handed Syl was like a miniature Easter basket filled with multicolored eggs. She poured a cup of water and patted Sylvia gently on the back.

  “Oh, Carolyn, already?” Syl groaned. “Seems like we just did this.” She stared at the pills. She looked at me, then at Nurse Lovely. Then she gave a sly smile. “Did you meet Dr. —”

  “Zak,” I filled in the blank.

  Nurse Lovely nodded.

  “He’s got the most amazing leg muscles.”

  “He does, does he?” Nurse Lovely raised an eyebrow in my direction and gave me a sour look. Was the lacquered hair real? A croquet mallet wouldn’t dent its plastic perfection.

  “You know those college guys who row on the Charles? That’s what he does. Every morning. Crack of dawn.”

  “Remember?” Nurse Lovely tapped her clipboard. “Pills. Then you can get back to your tests. That is what you’re up to here, isn’t it, Doctor? Tests?”

  Slowly and deliberately, Syl took three little whites. She gagged when she tried to swallow the big red, took an extra sip of water, and finally got it down. She took a deep breath and stared at the two green capsules, a yellow tablet, and the pink, torpedo-shaped pill that remained.

  “You just take your time,” Nurse Lovely said, waiting patiently.

  The two greens went down. Then the yellow. When Syl had swallowed the last pill, Lovely delivered a final checkmark to the paper on the clipboard, turned, and exited with a clatter. But not before giving me a withering look.

  I started with the standard questions of person, place, and time. Syl knew who she was, where she was, but she thought it was still August. Not surprising. Hospital routine doesn’t change from one day to the next. People often lose track.

  When I told her she was a month off, she shrugged. “I guess I don’t pay much attention to the calendar. I stopped reading the paper and I can’t stand to watch the news on television either.”

  Again, I wasn’t surprised. People who have been through severe physical trauma try to keep their environments as neutral as possible. It’s a healthy form of self-preservation, as long as it doesn’t last too long. And for Syl, only six months after the nearly successful attempt on her life, it seemed entirely appropriate.

  I expected the next question to be more stressful. “Can you tell me what you remember? What happened?”

  There was a pause, then a little outrush of breath again preceded her words. “I can remember Stuart calling up that night … on the eighth. He wanted to come by but I said no.”

  She spoke slowly, one word smearing slightly up against the next. I wrote down her words and waited for her to continue.

  “ … Mainly because I had someone else there.” She paused and shifted slightly in her chair. “Then Stuart came … No, Stuart was in bed with me …” I continued writing. “No. Tony was in bed with me. The next thing I knew, I heard Stuart’s car. Stuart’s car makes this sound.”

  Syl paused. I looked up from my notes. She was gazing down at her hands lying loosely in her lap. Slowly, as if the words had multiple syllables, she said, “I was shot.” I felt my heartbeat jump and anxiety, like dots of sweat, prickled at my hairline. I concentrated on breathing evenly, in and out. Compartmentalize, I told myself. “ … He was dressed like a guerrilla, in a camouflage
suit. He told Tony to put a pillowcase over his head. He belted it and told him to put his hands in front and belted them, too. Tony went down the stairway because Stuart told him to.”

  She paused. She was still looking into her lap. And though one fist was now clenched, her voice held little affect. She was telling a story she’d had to tell over and over and over again, and in the telling and retelling, it had lost its power.

  She looked up slowly and held my eyes as she said quietly in her whispery voice, so I had to lean forward slightly to catch all the words, “Tony slipped at the bottom of the stairs. He … fell. Stuart gave him time to get up and ordered the two of us into the living room.” There was a long pause before she continued. “Then he beat Tony with fireplace tongs. I guess I was too scared to do anything.

  “Stuart ordered me out to the garage and into the car. I drove. Or … yes, he drove. We were going toward the cemetery. There was a tower in the cemetery. We went up into it. It was so cold there. Then he shot me.”

  “He shot you in the tower?”

  “No.” Syl looked confused. “On the grass. I was outside the car on the grass. That’s where he shot me. I remember hearing the gun go off.” She stopped and sighed, rubbed her forehead and gave me a questioning look. “Is that bad?” she breathed. “Does that put Stuart in a bad light?”

  She made him sound like a swell guy — beat the shit out of her boyfriend, shot and left her for dead in the cemetery. Does that put him in a bad light? It certainly didn’t put him in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize.

  “What was the first thing you remember on awakening?” I asked

  This answer, like her others, came slowly, after a pause and on the heels of a breath. “I was wondering why Stuart never showed up. And then I remembered why. It was like a dual memory.”

  I wondered about the differences between this story and the story Sergeant MacRae had recorded in his interview notes. What happened to the part where Stuart ordered Tony into the trunk? I made a mental note to check the police reports for other inconsistencies. And I reminded myself that if Sylvia Jackson’s story had changed, it didn’t necessarily mean she was lying. People with head injuries have malleable memories. Memories of the past get folded in with new information and fantasies. It becomes impossible to tell where truth ends and fabrication begins.