Absence of Mind

by H. C. H. Ritz

  Which would mean it was my fault after all.

  I realize that I haven’t updated my family in several hours, and I summon up the force of will necessary to call my dad.

  < Call Family. >

  My dad picks up on the first ring, which means he’s waiting by the phone, which is remarkable, given that the phone isn’t even in his house. It’s in the bishop’s house, where the religious authorities can monitor its use. Voicemail messages are transcribed by the bishop and delivered by his children to the relevant house, and unless there’s an emergency like this one, calls have to be scheduled with the bishop. “Inconvenient” barely touches it.

  “It’s about time, Phoebe. We’ve all been waiting to hear. You do know we’re worried sick.”

  “There’s no news, Dad. Nothing new to tell you. He’s still the same as he was. We’re waiting on the doctor to get here to make a diagnosis.”

  “After all—”

  I cut him off. “I’ll call back when there’s something to tell you.” And I end the call.

  I’m grateful that Dad doesn’t have a Navi. He can call and leave a voicemail message—that’s the extent to which he can invade my brain, and that’s enough. I can even have my Navi block his calls and auto-delete his messages if I need to. I hope it’ll never come to that, but let’s face it, I already had to leave the state of Ohio because of that man.

  Well, that’s not fair. My whole family is a product of the religious community they were raised in. It’s the community I hate, and everything about the community that expresses itself in my dad—the control, the guilt trips, the judgment… especially the judgment. Living Biblically, according to the Plain people, requires what I consider to be superhuman feats of self-discipline and self-denial on a daily basis—plain clothing, head coverings, no art, no musical instruments or recorded music, no computers, no TV, no dancing, no alcohol, and most of your time spent working or praying. If you deviate for a moment, you’re unworthy of God’s grace and sure to forfeit salvation. And if you go out into “the world” as Jamie and I have… well, the world is ruled by Satan. Enough said.

  Well, whatever. There’s nothing I can do about my family or my community finding me unworthy. All I can do is put as much distance between us as I can. Whether God will find me unworthy is something I try not to think about, although I always thought that a god who would make you a rebellious, free-spirited person and then punish you for it was kind of a jerk.

  Dr. Abadi finally comes in with the night-shift RN for the south wing, Deonte, behind her, and I breathe a huge sigh of relief. It’s funny how my perception of the doctor shifts when I’m a patient’s family member instead of a nurse. Suddenly, the doctor looks like a savior instead of the pain in my rear end.

  Dr. Abadi observes Jamie for a moment and probably runs through his chart via Navi. Then she surprises me by patching me in to her conversation with Jamie.

  << Hi there, Jamie. How are you feeling? >>

  << I’m getting tired, Doc. >>

  << That’s good. We need you to rest. You’re going to feel a whole lot better afterward. Tell me, what are you feeling right now? >>

  << Amped up. Super amped up. I’m so bored and pissed off about being tied up like this. I want out real bad. >>

  << Okay, I hear that you want to get out of those restraints, and we’re going to do everything we can do get you out of them as soon as we can, all right? But I have to ask you a lot of questions, and it’s going to get boring. I need you to stay patient with me, all right? >>

  Jamie nods.

  The doctor runs through the standard intake questionnaire and screening tools that I’ve witnessed hundreds of times. By the time we’re halfway through, it’s clear to me that this is another case like Davis—another case like all the other new ones we’ve been swamped with in the past couple of days.

  | Deonte: I just got the word. We’re officially on drive-by. |

  < God bless. >

  I put my head in my hands. A dozen questions later, Jamie reaches the end of his patience and starts thrashing around like a wild animal again. Nearly in tears, I shake my head. I want this to stop. I want Jamie to go back to being the adorable brat I know and love, not this monster who has devoured Jamie’s brain and is taking up his body.

  As a matter of protocol, Dr. Abadi gives Jamie the option of signing in to the neuro ward as a voluntary patient, and, of course, Jamie reacts with screaming and curses, so the doctor renews the involuntary commitment and leaves. Then, two techs come in and escort Jamie to a padded room, which he’s going to have to share with another patient, because we’re running out of rooms.

  Once the room is empty, I lose it. I bawl like a baby.

  I tell myself that I’m just not used to this. Normally, I meet patients when they’re seriously ill and then get to watch them turn into reasonable human beings as the medications start working and they get discharged. I’m not used to seeing it go the other way.

  But it’s not just that. It’s the fact that something is going on. Something is happening in Atlanta, something mysterious and horrible. But I tell myself that I might as well assume that Jamie and all the others will respond to treatment normally, regardless of what’s causing it, and I get the tears under control.

  I can’t bear to call my dad again. I send a voice mail message to the bishop’s phone with assurances that Jamie has been given medication that’ll kick in quickly and that he’ll be in good shape within a few days.

  I hope that was all true.

  I try to patch into the live feed to Jamie’s room, so that I can keep an eye on him, but the system won’t let me. I’m only authorized to watch the rooms on my wing.

  Well, it’s probably better that way. There’s nothing else I can do right now. It’s in the hands of other professionals.

  I realize that I’m exhausted, so I stand up with the intention of going home to a well-deserved mindless movie and a good night’s sleep.

  Naturally, that’s when the message comes in from the charge nurse.

  << Sorry to do this, Phoebe, but we need you here. We got put on drive-by, and we can’t handle the workload without you. It’s all hands on deck. >>

  I squeeze my eyes closed and groan.

  < Amusingly enough, I’ll be there in about three minutes. >

  The charge nurse, Mary Anne, calls a meeting with Sara, Deonte, myself, and the other night shift RN to catch us up on what’s going on. The hospital administration reported the influx of cases to the State of Georgia this morning, and they, in turn, informed the CDC—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They’re headquartered in Atlanta, not that that does us any good. Anyway, they’ve done some initial assessment to confirm that there’s an outbreak, and an epidemiologist from the CDC has already given the syndrome a name of its own: UAAD, Unspecified Anxiety and Aggression Disorder.

  As I pointed out to Dr. Green, most of these patients aren’t having delusions or hallucinations or any of the usual accompanying symptoms that would aid in a conventional diagnosis. There are also the extreme addicts I’d mentioned to Mila, but right now, no one is sure what to think about them, and apparently, nobody’s up to adding another A to the acronym.

  Then Mary Anne confirms my worst, secret fear. We’ve now had enough time with the earliest-admitted patients, like Davis, to know that not everyone is responding to the meds in the usual ways. Some patients are proving nonresponsive, and others are having unusual side effects.

  “We’re about to start a series of molecular MRIs to determine what’s going on with these patients. Also, the CDC is sending us a panel of investigators to hunt for common elements that would suggest cause or mode of transmission. They’ll be looking at possible diseases, environmental exposures, food supply, medical history commonalities—the whole nine yards. Cooperate with them, please, even though they’re going to slow us down during a time when we can’t afford that.”

  Then Mary Anne hits us with the scariest part. This may be happening
nationwide. Houston is seeing similar cases.

  I think all of us leave the meeting with a feeling of apprehension.

  I team up with the night shift RN on my wing, and we dive in. The next few hours are a whirlwind. I spend a lot of it jogging from one task to another, one emergency to the next. At first, I tell my Navi to let job-related messages through as they come, but within fifteen minutes, I’m forced to put it on sleep mode—otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to finish a thought, let alone a task. In sleep mode, nothing comes through except emergency messages.

  Even though I’m busy and I shouldn’t, every time I finish a task, I go back to normal text mode and look at all my messages, even the social ones. I reply to a few of the most enticing each time. It eats up a few minutes, and I feel guilty, but I’m helpless to resist the siren call. I hate being out of touch, knowing that there are unread messages piling up out there in the ether somewhere.

  My Navi flags me around two in the morning to tell me that I haven’t eaten in too long, and I stop by the break room. I get some snacks from the vending machines and then eye the coffee. I’ve been running on adrenaline so far, but I’m going to wear out soon. And then me and Past-Phoebe are going to have a little chat about coffee.

  < You guys, I quit coffee this week. I don’t know why I did that. Why did I do that??? >

  I get a surprising amount of commiseration, given the late hour.

  I glare at the coffeepot.

  Wait. I never promised I wouldn’t take caffeine in pill form.

  Take that, Past-Phoebe. Shoulda been more specific, Past-Phoebe.

  < Aha! Caffeine pills FTW! >

  I run down to the gift shop/pharmacy and grab some pills with caffeine and B12. Then I get back to work.

  Around four in the morning, the charge nurse broadcasts a priority message, not bothering to try to get us all in one place for a meeting this time.

  << Functional M-MRIs are showing excess activity in the amygdalae of patients with UAAD. Eight out of eight scanned so far. >>

  << Allan: Then it’s got to be either a disease or an environmental thing. >>

  Both possibilities make me nervous. I want to know what’s going on with Jamie.

  << Tolony: Could it be a mass hysteria thing? Or is that even an actual thing? >>

  << Allan: I dunno. Could be. >>

  << Sara: Okay, maybe this is crazy all by itself, but could it be a Navi malfunction? With the programming? >>

  That’s an interesting thought, although an odd one. I remember that Navis had some strange issues in the first year or so, like making people lose their short-term memory for a few hours. Of course, by the time I got mine about seven years ago—when I was eighteen—they were already perfected. The Navis were so exciting, so desirable, that the pressure to get them error-free and highly secure was intense enough to guarantee all the funding the companies needed to fix them fast.

  << Mary Anne: Not likely. That’s like blaming a pacemaker for heart disease. >>

  Dang. Quite the shut-down.

  Mary Anne’s answer makes sense, though. The Navis are an audio/visual tool and nothing more. That’s why it’s called a NAVI: Native Audio/Visual Interface—although the rumor is that the programmers who developed it borrowed the name from an old anime called Serial Experiments Lain.

  Anyway, the functionality is limited by design: pieces of the Navi are installed into each optic nerve and each cochlear nerve to make sure the signals can’t go wandering around in the brain. Well, to be fair, there’s also the subvocal receiver in the larynx. Not that I’m an expert on this stuff, but everybody gets the spiel right before they get the implant, and from what I remember of the diagram, no part of the Navi has any business doing anything to the amygdalae, which are in a different part of the brain.

  By eight in the morning, the disorder’s name has been changed from UAAD to UOAD: Unspecified Overactive Amygdalae Disorder. And yes, the hyper-addicted people have it, too.

  It drives me crazy how new diseases get renamed half a dozen times before everyone settles on something. Hospital staff pick their favorites and then fight about it. I’m confident that at least three people on my ward will refuse to stop calling it UAAD on general principle.

  I think only briefly about telling my Collective about what’s going on here at Grady, and I’m surprised at myself when I dismiss the idea. Normally, I tell my Collective all my personal news, no matter how trivial. I think it’s denial, like if I don’t tell anyone, it isn’t real, and Jamie will go back to normal soon.

  At nine o’clock in the morning, we’re released, and the alternate-shift people are called in. We’re all going to be trading twelve-hour shifts each day until this situation is resolved.

  The moment I clock out, I go check on Jamie, and I send up a prayer of gratitude when I see that he’s sleeping.

  I start to head home. As always happens when I work an overnight shift, I’m confused to discover that it’s daylight outside.

  Then I put on my sunglasses and head toward the parking lot and go right to where I normally park and stare at the empty parking spaces for an embarrassingly long time before I remember that my car is still at the shop.

  And then I remember Mila. It all feels like it happened years ago and to someone else.

  I head to the nearest metro stop. At least, now that it’s tomorrow, with all its bright sunshine, the light rail has resumed its daytime schedule. A few minutes later, I’m on board a train.

  I turn off busy mode at last, and I let my Navi tell me how many messages I missed, just to torture myself. It’s one hundred seventy-three. It’s so painful, everything I’ve been missing, but I know from past experience that it’s not possible to catch back up once I’m this far under.

  With busy mode off, I have about thirty-five messages that pop up that meet my criteria of favorited people and topics. I scan them, but I’m too wiped out to respond to them.

  < Navi, give me your best romantic comedy. >

  A few minutes later, my display fills with the opening frames of a movie, and my ears fill with a soundtrack designed to help me ignore my aching, exhausted body and anxious mind.

  As I get off the light rail, my Navi informs me that Sunlight bakery has hot, fresh donuts half a block down. It tells me this every time I get off night shift, but these last few months, I seem to have no willpower. I go down there and get a dozen donut holes.

  My Navi gives me increasingly dire warnings about going over my allotted calories for this twenty-four-hour period while I eat every last one.

  Screw you, Navi.

  The next day—Wednesday—I wake up early in the afternoon. Still sitting up in bed, I immediately check Jamie’s patient records. Since I’m family, I have access. What the records say is that he awoke at around ten in the morning with no emotions at all.

  Four

  On top of having a flat affect—inability to feel or express emotions—Jamie also has memory impairments. He woke up not knowing where he was or what had happened recently. But he’s totally docile and apathetic, so he didn’t even ask. They had to ask him.

  < Go dark, Navi. >

  I bury my face in my arms as my Navi shuts down all optical input and puts me into a blackout.

  I try to decide just how bad this is. At least he isn’t suffering. He’s not unhappy. But he will experience no joy, no pleasure, until some kind of treatment can be devised.

  With the expert pessimism I’ve honed, I start to think of other problems. If he doesn’t feel strongly about anything, he may become suggestible, and if his empathy is also impaired, he may continue to act anti-socially. And with the memory deficits to consider—well, he can’t be left on his own.

  It’s irrational, but I’m convinced that I’ve lost him, that I’m never going to have Jamie back the way I knew him. The certainty settles into my stomach, and I want to be sick. I give Tobi a big hug, as if that’s going to take away the pain or the anxiety, and it doesn’t. Then, immediately, my mind is working ag
ain, trying to figure out what’s going on and how to fix it.

  How could he possibly have shifted so dramatically overnight?

  < Navi, go bright. >

  Once my vision fades in, I notice that his chart also shows that he’s been scheduled for another M-MRI and CAT scan. I also see a notation that he had his court appearance this morning by video conference. On the recommendation of Dr. Abadi and another doctor—two psychiatrists have to agree to any commitment—his court order has been extended for seven days. Ironically, by the time the court appearance happened, he was agreeable to staying in the hospital, but they still made the commitment involuntary on the basis that his condition is “unstable.”

  Which means they have no idea what’s going on with him.

  I check my messages to see whether anyone from the hospital has sent out any new information about the disorder. Nothing new. Then I message my counterpart at the hospital to ask what they’ve learned today. After that, I do a media search to see whether there’s any news about it yet, but I don’t find anything. I set up a TellMeWhen trigger to let me know if anything comes out about it.

  Finally, with a heavy heart, I go ahead and turn on busy mode. I can’t handle any distractions right now.

  < Navi, Info-me about the relationship between emotion, memory, and the amygdalae. >

  The awesome Info-me app assembles the most relevant and best-validated information on any subject for me to scan. A few minutes later, I’m reminded that a lack of emotion and memory impairment can both be caused by severe damage to the amygdalae. The research talks about diminished fear and anxiety as well as effects on the reward center, which impacts motivation and motivation-based learning. Having a flat affect also happens with schizophrenia, which implicates the amygdalae, too, but schizophrenia has already been ruled out with these UOAD cases. And memory impairment is also common with amygdalae damage.