The Memory Thief

by Don Donaldson

  “Bobby, give me your T-shirt,” Marti yelled. “Now.”

  Bobby tore off his white coat and his outer shirt and pulled his T over his head. He gave it to Marti and she dropped to the wounded woman’s side, where she pressed the balled-up fabric against the woman’s throat, ignoring the blood that splattered her own clothing.

  Because of the victim’s falling blood pressure, it would have been best to lay her down, but Marti was afraid that would cause the wound to gape and make it harder to stop the bleeding, so she left the woman sitting up. Regardless of her position, she was going to need some decent collateral circulation from her other carotid if she was going to avoid brain damage, which, considering her status at Gibson, would be like throwing water in the face of a drowning woman.

  “Has anyone called nine-one-one?” Marti shouted.

  “I did,” the third orderly assigned to the floor said, joining the crowd. “They’re on their way.”

  “Who’s responsible for this?”

  “She did it to herself,” Bobby said.

  Marti held the bloody T-shirt against the woman’s wound for the entire twelve minutes it took for the ambulance to arrive. When she was finally relieved by a paramedic, her legs were frozen in a kneeling position, so that Bobby had to help her up.

  Looking at the blood on her hand and arm and splattering her clothes, she turned to Bobby and voiced the concern that hadn’t even occurred to her before this moment. “She didn’t have HIV or hepatitis, I hope.”

  “No problem there, Dr. Segerson. Nice job. You probably ought to wash up in the ward bathroom. I’ll get you some fresh towels and soap.” He turned to the other two orderlies. “You guys better get started on this mess.”

  The ward door had barely closed behind the paramedics taking the injured woman away when it opened again and Ada Metz arrived. Seeing the blood on the floor and on Marti, she hurried over to the scene. “What happened?”

  “Lois Wilkie broke a mirror in the bathroom and cut her own throat with a piece of it,” Bobby explained.

  “She was catatonic,” Metz whined. “She never did anything but stand in one spot and stare at the floor.”

  “Well, she did something today,” Marti said, heading for the bathroom. As she went, she heard Metz berate Bobby for not paying more attention.

  After washing up, Marti left the hospital and drove home to change clothes and take a shower.

  When she was once again clean and had dried her hair, she called the local hospital on the bungalow’s phone, identified herself, and asked about Lois Wilkie’s condition. They told her that Wilkie would live and likely not be any the worse for her injury. Rather than feel good about saving the woman’s life, it just made Marti wish she also knew how to fix Lois Wilkie’s mind.

  That call reminded her she had another one to make: to Delta Airlines. Having saved their number on her cell phone, she went to the kitchen table and got her bag. Standing there, poised to make the call, she thought about the one-way ticket she was about to buy for next Monday—or more precisely, her destination.

  For now, it would have to be LA, because there would be things to do there in the aftermath of what was about to take place here. But when that was done . . . where was home?

  Her father was gone from a heart attack, and her mom, who was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease, didn’t even recognize Marti when she visited. She didn’t really have any friends. Where was home?

  That question still haunted her after she bought her ticket. So, instead of going back to the hospital, she took a walk, following paths she hadn’t yet explored.

  She found a weathered old barn that looked like those she’d seen in watercolors, and a blackened, shattered tree that appeared to have been struck by lightning. She saw a bird the most incredible color of blue, and a black one with bright red patches on its wings. Entering a small clearing, she surprised a rabbit that wiggled its nose at her then darted away. In the woods, she saw vines as big around as her wrist, and a lovely little brook that rippled and splashed over a rocky bed that created dark little pools dappled by the leaf-shaded sun. There were large stands of primeval ferns and stretches of soft green moss that looked as though it had been growing there forever. The area had apparently experienced a major windstorm, because a number of big trees in the woods had been blown over. But even uprooted, the fallen giants were still part of a harmonious natural tapestry. It was a place where everything she saw, even if damaged, seemed to belong.

  But where did she belong?

  In her present frame of mind, the woods and fields seemed a better place to be than the hospital, so she took the rest of the afternoon off and roamed the property’s many paths.

  BY THE next morning, Marti was in a better mood and ready to return to work. Arriving at her office a little before nine, she found a message on her answering machine.

  “Dr. Segerson, this is Pat, Dr. Rosenblum’s administrative assistant. It’s now eight thirty-five A.M. Thursday morning. Dr. R would like to convene an inquiry this morning into what happened yesterday with Lois Wilkie. The meeting will begin at nine-fifteen in Dr. R’s office. Please be prompt. The necessary records are already here.”

  In addition to Marti, the inquiry participants included Ada Metz and Trina Estes. The meeting lasted less than half an hour and ended with Rosenblum concluding that Lois Wilkie had given no prior indication she was capable of what she’d done, and no one was culpable for what had taken place. On the way out, Trina and Marti walked down the hall together.

  “I hope yesterday wasn’t typical around here,” Marti said.

  “Events usually don’t get quite that dramatic. Wouldn’t you know, I take a couple of personal days, and all kinds of things happen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Harry Evensky escapes. If he had shown up in my bedroom, I would have freaked.”

  “Why did you say that?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Trina, I’m lost. Didn’t I what?”

  “Freak when he came into your bedroom the night he got out.”

  Marti was so shocked at what Trina had just said, she stopped walking. “He didn’t.”

  “The report in his file says the sheriff picked him up at your house.”

  This conversation was becoming surreal. “I can’t imagine why that’s in there. Someone got the story wrong.”

  Trina looked at Marti as though she were a creature from another planet. “The report was written by Olivia Barr, the senior night floor nurse. Unlike a lot of the folks around here, she’s an extremely meticulous person. She would have included that detail only if she knew it to be true.”

  Somewhere deep in her brain, Marti felt a sensation like a downed wire snapping and fluttering on the ground, its circuit disrupted.

  Locks . . .

  She had new locks installed on her bungalow because . . .

  Why had Clay done that?

  “Marti, are you all right?”

  “I’m not sure. Come on, I need to check something.”

  Marti started walking, much faster than before, so that Trina had trouble keeping up. When they arrived at Marti’s office she went inside, picked up the phone, and dialed information. “County Sheriff’s Office, please.”

  They answered on the first ring.

  “This is Dr. Segerson at Gibson State. One of your officers brought an escaped patient back here Monday night. Could you check your reports and tell me where he was found?”

  Marti and Trina waited while someone went through the records.

  A couple of long minutes later, the female voice at the other end came back on the line. “Dr. Segerson, he was picked up at your home.”

  Trina could tell by Marti’s shocked expression what she’d just been told. “I guess that’s where Olivia heard it.”
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  “There’s something very wrong here,” Marti replied, putting the phone down and grabbing her handbag. She got her cell phone out and called Clay Hulett.

  “This is Clay.”

  “It’s Marti. Why did you change the locks on my doors?”

  “Because you asked me to.”

  “Why did I do that?”

  “You said a patient from the hospital got into your house.”

  “When did I tell you this?”

  “The next morning . . . Tuesday.”

  Marti let her arm with the phone drop limply to her side. Then, regaining her composure, she put the phone back to her ear. “Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.” She put the phone down and looked helplessly at Trina. “That was my landlord. He said I told him Evensky broke into my home the night he escaped.”

  “And you don’t remember that?”

  “I absolutely have no knowledge of such a thing happening.”

  “Have you had memory lapses before?”

  “Small things, sure. The occasional name of someone I met a long time ago, a phone number, a star in an old movie. But nothing like this. This was a major event. How could I forget it?”

  “If you were asleep when it happened, maybe you dealt with the whole thing in a stupor.”

  “But I apparently told my landlord about it the next morning.”

  “Or that old man frightened you so badly you’re suppressing the memory.”

  “I don’t scare easily, and I’m not that fragile.”

  “Could you have scuffled with him and hit your head? That could have disrupted the memory so it got lost before being stored.”

  “An injury severe enough to cause memory loss should have left some lasting physical evidence. I’ve felt fine. No headaches, no contusions.”

  Trina took a breath as though she was about to say something, but then didn’t.

  “What?”

  “I was thinking you might have had a tiny stroke, but the brain isn’t so discretely organized that one memory and nothing else would be affected. So I don’t think that’s the explanation.”

  “Trina, I need to sit by myself and sort this out. Do you mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything about this to anyone.”

  Trina put her hand gently on Marti’s shoulder. “I understand. You can count on me. I’ll see you later.”

  Marti could think of only two other possibilities for her memory loss: transient global amnesia or a spontaneous subarachnoid hemorrhage. The former was the most innocuous of the two possibilities, because it often occurred only once in a person’s life and wasn’t a harbinger of something worse. The other condition could signal the existence of an aneurysm in a cerebral blood vessel that had developed a small leak. And if that aneurysm should burst big time . . .

  Marti was not prepared to accept the diagnosis of an aneurysm. It just couldn’t be. Her problem had to be TGA. But how could she verify that?

  There was one way.

  She left her office and headed for the wards. As much as she didn’t want to believe she had an aneurysm, she found herself moving more slowly than usual to keep her blood pressure down.

  Reaching the second floor of the patient’s wing, she went to the male ward and let herself in. She made a quick scan of the dayroom looking for Harry Evensky. At first she thought he wasn’t there, but then she spotted him sitting in front of the TV, which in this ward had a fairly good picture.

  She walked over to him and leaned close to his left ear. “Mr. Evensky, could I speak to you in the interview room please?”

  He jumped in surprise and looked to see who was there. Then he grinned. “You figured it out.”

  “Let’s talk in private.”

  When they reached the interview room, she let Evensky go in first and she shut the door behind them.

  “Okay, what’s tall and fair . . . you think it’s here, but it’s really there?” he said.

  “I need to ask you about the other night . . . when you came to visit me.”

  “I haven’t told anyone about that, just like you asked.”

  “When we spoke, did I appear . . . normal? By that I mean, did I seem to know where I was?” As worried as she was about her loss of memory, she could still see the irony in this, asking a mental patient to vouch for her own behavior. It was bizarre, but necessary, because Evensky was a better witness to what happened than she was.

  His brow furrowed, Evensky said, “You’re spookin’ me, Dr. Segerson. That’s not the kind of question we expect from our doctors.”

  “Frankly, it’s spooking me, too.”

  “Well—” He rolled his eyes in thought, then said, “You were more concerned about how I got there instead of how you did.”

  “So our conversation focused on you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Did I move around my home as though I were familiar with every part of it?”

  “Seemed that way to me. You gave me a diet Coke. Went right to the fridge and got it.”

  “Did I give you a glass?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did I have any trouble finding one?”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “Thanks. You’ve been a big help.”

  “I could do more if you’d just work on that riddle.”

  In the hall outside the ward, Marti took stock of what she’d just learned. One of the hallmarks of TGA is incessant questioning by the victim about their immediate circumstances while it’s happening. From what Evensky said, she had been in complete control of herself that night, which left the more ominous possibility.

  THE CT scanner began to move smoothly, and Marti slid from its confining cave into the open, where a nurse helped her up. The neurologist on call at Linville Methodist Hospital, a silver-haired fellow that looked like he’d fought many a brain war, came out of the control room.

  “Dr. Segerson, I see no blood on your scans, and the contrast study showed no evidence of an aneurysm. So I don’t believe you’ve had a hemorrhage of any kind. We could do further tests, of course, if you wish.”

  “What are the chances that would change your opinion?”

  “I’d be very surprised.”

  Knowing that one of the other tests he might do was a spinal tap, Marti said, “That’s good enough for me.”

  On the way to her car, Marti mulled over the situation. Patients who’ve had an episode of TGA usually have a headache that persists beyond the acute onset into the phase where normal mental function is restored. A subarachnoid hemorrhage causes an even worse and longer-lasting headache along with mental confusion that persists for days. She’d had no headaches and no mental confusion, so there was no question she had reached the correct conclusion about those two conditions. She hadn’t been a victim of either one.

  Then why the hell had she lost the memory of Evensky’s visit? Even if it never happened again, this one incident could come back to harm her later when she would have to appear perfectly healthy in front of a jury.

  The question of her memory loss remained foremost in her mind as she drove back to Gibson, for the moment, pushing aside all thoughts of Vernon Odessa. By the time she arrived at the hospital, she found herself focusing on the mind-reading test she’d been given the day before, and the unexpected nap she’d taken after drinking the Coke Quinn’s assistant, Nadine, had given her. If there had been any other explanation for her loss of memory, she’d never have questioned that event. But now, left with no other possibilities, she decided to go up and have a talk with Nadine.

  Chapter 11

  MARTI TRIED the door to Quinn’s lab, but found it locked. She knocked and waited for an answer.

  No response.

  It was
a little after two o’clock, so it seemed too late for Nadine to be at lunch. Not in the mood to wait around and see if she’d show up, Marti hiked back down to Quinn’s administrative office and went inside.

  “Dr. Segerson, good morning,” his secretary said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Helen, I need to speak with Nadine, Dr. Quinn’s lab assistant, but she’s not there. Do you know if she took the day off?”

  “I don’t handle any of her scheduling. Dr. Quinn does that himself.”

  At that point, Marti thought about asking for Nadine’s telephone number, but she didn’t want to talk to Nadine on the phone and didn’t want to give her any advance notice of their coming conversation. “Do you have her address?”

  Helen looked at her with such an expression of surprise, Marti wondered what she’d said that was so startling. “Have I said something odd?”

  “I thought you knew. Nadine is a patient here.”

  “A patient?”

  “She suffers from bipolar disorder, or at least she did before Dr. Quinn took over her care personally. She seems to be doing much better now. In fact, she doesn’t even live on the ward anymore.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “In an apartment Dr. Quinn had built for her in the vacant ward next to his lab.”

  “What did she do before she came here?”

  “I believe she was a lab tech at St. Jude Hospital in Memphis.”

  “Does the state know he’s spending the hospital’s money that way?” It was a dumb thing to say aloud, and as soon as she’d said it, Marti wished she had it back.

  “That’s between Dr. Quinn and them, I’m sure.”

  “Of course,” Marti said, trying to back and fill. “It’s none of my business, I agree. Thanks for the information.”