“Unh . . .” she stammered.
Dirk caught a glimpse of the photo before she grabbed it back, and he started laughing hard at the hair. I looked at the pair of them, two incorrigible cheaters, thinking, This is my life? These are the people I surround myself with? This is sisterhood? And by the way, Dirk, I saw you with that toothpick with tits yesterday and I know that you’re cheating on me and if I wasn’t faking amnesia you would really get a piece of my mind right now! But I refrained from saying any of it. I had to. It was fun just watching him get all distressed because the mere presence of his handsome manly-man self wasn’t jogging my memory.
Samantha and my mom left me to get reacquainted with Dirk. What I didn’t understand was why he even showed up. Could it be that he actually felt a little guilty? “So you don’t remember anything that happened right before your accident?” he asked, eyeing me closely. Aha—he had seen me at Alice’s, then.
“I don’t remember anything—period.”
“Wow . . . that’s . . . I’m really sorry to hear that,” he said, setting off bullshit detectors everywhere. And then he sat with me for a total of four more minutes before saying he had to “bail,” but that he’d be back to check on me.
* * * * *
Todd was at home researching amnesia for me so that I’d know the dos and don’ts of not remembering who you are and how you got wherever you happened to be. He called my room just in the nick of time. I’d practically memorized the hospital menu and was dangerously close to getting completely wrapped up in All My Children.
They have more useless meals in hospitals than you could imagine, and they trick you into thinking you have options by providing an actual menu. It’s actually more like an SAT test, with the similar portent of a perilous future if you blow it. One page, double sided, with circles to fill in with a number two pencil. I’m not kidding. So you look and you shade. And sometimes you get surprised by what they bring you, either because you forgot what you picked or perhaps it’s that what they bring just doesn’t quite resemble what you thought you’d ordered—if it even resembles food at all.
“Two weevils started life together,” Todd said, and instantly I knew it was going to be a joke. Todd was famous for his silly G-rated jokes.
“Uh-huh . . .” I answered.
“One was an immediate success; the other was a complete failure. Naturally, it became known as the lesser of two weevils.”
“Very cute.”
“Okay,” he said. “So the good news is there really are no hard and fast rules. These people don’t just forget their memories; they have no recollection of how they used to behave. Sometimes a different part of their personality emerges while their memories have submerged.” He was sounding all doctorly—it was sort of cute. Amazing what you can find on the Internet.
“So a timid, pushover type might all of a sudden be aggressive and assertive?”
“If she were so inclined,” he said, and I could hear the conspiratorial smile on his face. Some people in this world you can always count on. They will be there for you no matter what, through thick and thin. If memory serves—and contrary to present outward appearances, mine generally did—it was the comedian Dave Attell who said, “A friend will help you move. A best friend will help you move . . . a body.” How right he was.
That was Todd. And, ironically, he was helping me move a body right then. Mine. The old me. Here lies the body of Jordan-the-Pushover, may she rest in peace. She lived a mediocre life, was loved by few, and is survived by her materialistic mother, her well-meaning but clueless stepfather, and her spoiled brat of a sister. In lieu of flowers please send donations to the New-and-Improved-Jordan fund. She will require tons of extra cash to buy a new wardrobe, eat at fancy restaurants, and perhaps take a class in something she’d always been interested in but never knew it.
“There is a ton of stuff on the Web,” he went on. “By the way, did you know there’s something called Korsakoff amnesia? People can develop that from drinking too much.”
“And?”
“I’m just saying. I think I may have suffered from that in college and not even known it. I was graded unfairly . . .”
“Anyway . . .” I prompted.
“Okay. So there’s this whole online site dedicated to amnesia treatment. But I couldn’t get in. You need a user name and a password, and that costs ninety-nine dollars.”
“Genius,” I said. “They probably hope that the poor amnesiacs will keep forgetting that they signed up so they have to keep forking over the ninety-nine bucks.”
“But what I did find out is that there are two main ways we access memory,” he explained. “Recognition and recall. Recognition involves a process of comparison of info with memory. With recognition, an experience stimulates the memory. Because it’s somehow like the memory, so it awakens the memory.”
“I feel like I’m the one suffering in college, Todd.”
“Could I make this up? Quit interrupting and listen. Recall involves a search of memory and then the comparison process once something is found. You recall by focusing your attention in the direction of a memory.”
“Okay . . . so recognition is like a feeling of familiarity?”
“Exactly. Like recognizing someone you know.”
“So it’s possible to have recall without recognition?” I said.
“Right. But if you had recognition without recall, you’d be like me taking a test in school. I was fine so long as I was looking at the answer sheet.”
“And I might not recognize my mother . . .”
“Yeah, but you might recall Angelina Jolie as someone famous,” he said.
“And then recognize Ms. Jolie when she comes to visit me?”
“Yes. And when you guys start making out—”
“Are we doing my fake amnesia or your twisted fantasy?”
“Why can’t we do both?” he implored. “Let’s see what else. Okay, this is huge . . . There’s also a big difference between what this one specialist called subconscious memory and process memory. Like the difference between emotion and pure facts . . . pictures . . . numbers . . . steps.”
“So I still know how to ride a bike, but I don’t remember a bad emotional investment like Dirk.”
“Precisely,” Todd said. “What else . . . what else. Oh! I can’t remember any more data, but I did find some good stuff in this search. Like herbal treatments—”
“You’re not supposed to be finding out how to cure me,” I whispered, “you’re finding out stuff to help me fudge this.”
“I know. But there’s a lot of interesting stuff. Brahmi booti is apparently big in herbal remedies.”
“Brahmi booti?” I asked.
“Brahmi booty?” echoed the unmistakable voice of Cat. “Is that like Veggie Booty? Or Pirate’s Booty? I love that stuff.”
I looked up at her as she slowly approached my bedside with a sad smile soaked in worry. I felt terrible. Like I was deceiving my best friend. Because . . . I was.
“No, I didn’t ring my call button, but thank you for checking on me,” I said to Todd and hung up on him. Now, I was going to have to fake it in front of Cat. Here was someone who truly understood the mindscape. Who made a living off it. And who knew me well. It wouldn’t be easy, but I had no choice: I pretended not to recognize her when she walked in. That was my least favorite part of the whole thing and it was already getting old. But I knew I had to get through this initial discomfort in order to re-create my life and reinvent myself.
“Hi,” she said, with that feeling-sorry-for-me look that I totally didn’t deserve. “How are you?” I couldn’t know her. I had to think to myself, You don’t recognize this person.
“Hi,” I said and looked blankly at her.
“Do you recognize me?”
“Sorry,” I said with an apologetic shrug.
“I’m Cat,” she said with a reassuring smile. “We’re best friends. Have been since we were kids. Me, you, and Todd. We’re the Three Musketeers.�
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“I’ve met Todd,” I said. “He was here. He’s nice.”
“How are you feeling? Does it hurt?”
“I’m doing okay, I guess. My head hurts,” I said leaning over and indicating the general area of my head. “I’m sorry I don’t remember you,” I added pitifully.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You will. I’ll help you get your memory back.” And then she just sat on the chair at the side of my bed. We didn’t really have a lot to say since we were essentially strangers, but she seemed unwilling to walk out—so we sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes.
Then something terrible happened. All My Children appeared on the TV, and sensing it was an escape hatch from the oddity of being with a best friend who doesn’t know you, Cat began to catch me up. On everything.
“You’re watching this?”
“Not really,” I said and looked away indifferently. “Kind of hard for me to follow.”
“Well, if you’re going to get anything out of it . . .” And she commenced an epic verbal journey through a dozen seasons of All My Children, each new meaningless plot twist requiring a backfill of ten others to explain it fully, each new character’s startling revelation leaving me closer to full anesthesia. Worst of all, I already knew every bit of it. I remembered every marriage, birth, brawl, affair, divorce, double cross, death, wait—she’s not really dead! And I bore not only the shame of having devoted myself to so pointless a cause but also the boredom of having to relive every last moment of it. At one point, I began to think she was going to interweave the gripping history of the commercial breaks that had framed our story. But I smiled and remembered, This is why I love this girl. Now, if only I could reach the leg of her chair. And tear it off. And clock her with it.
“Hello!” I practically screamed when my mom showed up at last. “This is . . . this is . . .”
“I know who it is, Jordan,” Mom said. “Cat, so sweet of you to come keep her company.”
“Cat,” I said, staring intently at my loquacious friend as she said her good-byes and choked back tears. “Cat. Cat.” I pointed at her and let them know I was making a mental note of the fact. This was Cat.
“Thanks for coming to visit me,” I said. I fought back an intense urge to ask her about the baby she was carrying, her husband, the apartment . . . but I remembered something: I wasn’t supposed to remember any of it.
And I thought about the legend of a medieval French torture device, the oubliette. Prisoners were shoved into narrow holes in the ground and forgotten and left to die. Real amnesia must be like that, I thought. But in reverse. The agony of the struggle to recall . . . where the hell did I dig that hole?
* * * * *
“Jordan does, in fact, have a slight concussion,” the neurologist said as he flipped back and forth between pages of test results. Eureka! A concussion would be a perfect accessory to my amnesia. “Loss of memory of events taking place before the accident is called retrograde amnesia.”
I pretended not to have much interest, eyes wandering about the room, fingers twirling my hair. “Is that what she has?” my mom asked.
“We believe so. Jordan’s concussion is the most likely cause of this type of memory loss. She’ll probably experience some degree of post-concussion syndrome—fatigue, dizziness, headache, and difficulty concentrating. Even following the mildest concussions, there is generally some degree of temporary memory impairment.”
“This would happen to Jordan,” Samantha said. “Her life was so lame, who wouldn’t want to forget it.” And as she said that last bit, her eyes narrowed at me to see if she was actually onto something. My heart started racing, but instead of freaking out I licked my lips and pretended to have cotton mouth, to deflect from her vile existence. And the fact that she was right.
“So how long will this go on?” my mom asked, and I could swear the tone was impatience, the implication being this little bout with amnesia was a major inconvenience for her.
“The symptoms of post-concussion syndrome usually resolve within two to five days.”
Two to five days! No, no, no, dear doctor! That was not going to work for me at all. I needed time. I wanted to milk this baby for all it was worth. I hadn’t even begun to forget. Surely there was a mistake.
“However, the more severe the concussion, the longer these symptoms may remain. In cases of severe head trauma and concussion, it can take up to six months.”
When I heard that, it was all I could do to keep myself from jumping up and down on my hospital bed. I’d just received a six-month green light! I was beaming. Grinning from ear to ear, and my mom looked over at me.
“Odd,” the doctor observed. “Notice how she seems elated by the news. Clearly some elements of euphoric delusion.” Right, I checked myself quickly. Who in her right mind would be so tickled by word of a concussion? I quickly changed my expression from one of glee to that of worry. Ecstatic to concerned.
Then back. Just like that. I was a natural.
Lights . . . camera . . . amnesia.
“So I won’t know . . . I’ll be like this for six months?” I asked.
“Hopefully you’ll regain your memory much sooner. We have some encouraging new treatments that I’d like to get you involved in right away. We’ll keep you here for another night and then move you into the rehab ward.”
I feigned a hopeful look, though I knew that none of those treatments was going to work on me. And then a nurse walked in with a giant—and I mean giant—bouquet of flowers.
“Delivery,” she sang out cheerfully as she placed the flowers by my bed. My mom looked all kinds of intrigued.
“Who are they from?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s look at the card.”
As I was opening the card, Mom was hedging her bets. “Must be Dirk. What a sweet thing.”
“Travis,” I said, and suddenly I wondered if I really did have amnesia. I looked at the card to make sure I was reading it correctly, and I even turned it over to make sure it was my name on the outside. “Do I know a Travis?”
“I don’t know.”
The nurse came back in with another gift. This time it was a humongous box of chocolates.
“These came too.”
“Those must be from Dirk,” my mom said with certainty.
I opened the card. They were from Travis too. I read it out loud. “‘Don’t know what you like . . . just want to know how you are. Feel terrible about what happened. Hope you’re all right. Travis.’”
“Who is Travis?” my mom asked.
“Do you think he was the guy in the car?” I wondered.
My mom swiped the card from me. “Let me see that.” She looked at it and read it over about five times. “The nerve of him trying to weasel his way out of a lawsuit.” She glared at the card. “Well, fat chance. We’re going to get him for everything he’s got!”
* * * * *
It was nearly impossible to fall asleep in the hospital bed, and every time I did fall asleep, a nurse came in and woke me up to do a neurological assessment. They’d check my pupil size and start asking me random questions.
“Who is the president?” they’d ask me. “Do you know what time of day it is?” They weren’t looking for an exact time, they just wanted to know if I could tell the difference between day and night. And my least favorite question, only because it posed such a major dilemma, was “Do you know where you are?” And every time I’d have to fight back the overwhelming need to screech, “You’re in the jungle, baby!” in my best Axl Rose.
They’d have me squeeze their hands and then they’d press my feet and tell me to “push down like it’s a gas pedal.”
I was on a mannitol IV drip to reduce any swelling in my brain, so sometimes when they came in to wake me, they’d stay even longer to hook up a new drip. I’d have to do this three or four times during the night. It was exhausting. And even more exhausting when I got different nurses, who felt like they had to explain what they were
doing every step of the way.
“This is dehydration therapy to reduce intracranial pressure by osmotic diuresis,” the nurse would say. “Sounds complicated but it’s basically a diuretic for your brain.” They’d already told me this several times—the first time when my mom was in the room, and she looked oddly pleased by the explanation. Diuretic was a term my mother knew and loved, and she must have thought it meant I might lose weight. Only my mother would view a hospital stay as a lucky dieting opportunity.
11.
i’m a c cup—dammit!
The next morning I got transferred to the rehab ward. I was assigned a new doctor, and subjected to about four thousand neuropsychology tests that I didn’t want to pass but didn’t want to fail. It was strangely taxing to guess which set of answers would indicate temporary, six-monthish amnesia resulting from a mild concussion, leaving the patient functional and not a danger to herself or others, and which would land me in a locked room under close supervision until I came out of it.
They eased into things with a Rorschach test, which was tons of fun. I’d always wanted to take one of those but never really had the occasion. There were ten inkblots, five of which were in black and white, three in black and red, and two multicolored. I was supposed to say what I saw in each of them and, distracted as I was by the whole how-deep-is-her-forgetfulness exercise, took it as an opportunity to have fun. Bizarre responses could indicate brain damage and neurological pathology, or they could merely demonstrate creativity and capriciousness.
When the doctor held up the first one, I said I saw a butterfly. It looked like a butterfly and I’d bet that 80 percent of the people who see that one say “butterfly.” The second one looked like a blob, so I said it looked like an early Picasso. I said the next one looked like Florida.
When he held up the first black-and-red one, I said it looked like a gnome and then quickly changed my mind. “Arnold Schwarzenegger!” I shouted.
We moved on to a drawing test, which was meant to measure my visual retention. They’d hold up a drawing for ten seconds, and then I was supposed to draw what I’d seen. They were mostly simple geometric shapes, but I drew a tree and a rainbow when I got bored of the shapes.
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