Amnesia

by G. H. Ephron

  “What’s going on? You all right?” I asked when I got to her and put both hands on her bony shoulders, just to assure myself that she was really there.

  “I called the police because that person,” she said, outraged, pointing a shaking finger at the dark sedan, “was trying to get into your house. And then he got back into his car and sat there, casing the joint.”

  One of the uniformed cops was shining a light into the face of the driver of the dark sedan. Sergeant MacRae glared back through the open car window. The tips of his ears were scarlet.

  I clenched my fists and stalked over to him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? After what we’ve been through, don’t you think you could show a little consideration. Skulking around out here, scaring the living daylights out of an elderly woman? What’s she supposed to think?”

  “I needed to talk to you,” he muttered.

  “So you can’t call me? Make an appointment, like everyone else in the world?”

  My mother had come up behind me. Now she stood beside the car, her Nikes firmly planted about two feet apart, hands on hips, chin out. She rapped her knuckles on the car window. “Listen, Mister,” she said, “now you can tell the police why you tried to break into my son’s house.”

  “He is the police,” I told her.

  She looked at me, open-mouthed, then shook her head in disgust.

  MacRae got out of the car and tried to draw himself to a dignified stance, but he was withering in my mother’s accusing glare. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Zak,” he finally said. “I didn’t realize you’d be home. I needed to talk to him.”

  “You needed to talk to my son?”

  I could hear alarm bells going off in my mother’s head. “It’s about this case I’m working on, Mom. Tell her,” I urged MacRae. “Tell her it’s not about me personally.”

  He gave me a sideways look that I knew wouldn’t be lost on my mother. “It’s about a case.”

  Addressing the uniformed cop, she said, “Shouldn’t he be arrested for” — she looked at me for help but I threw up my hands — “loitering?” Her voice cracked. “Trespassing?” She started to weep. “Isn’t there anything illegal about frightening a person to death?”

  I turned and hugged my mother. She was tight and stiff. I glared at MacRae. “I’m going to go inside now with my mother. If you want to talk to me, you know my number.”

  21

  THE NEXT morning, I went to the Cambridge police station. I was filling out an accident report when MacRae came out from one of the inner offices.

  He glanced at the form I had nearly completed. “Another accident.”

  “Seems like that’s all you and I ever talk about. My accidents.”

  “When?”

  “About an hour before I got home last night. You going to tell me you were waiting for me in my driveway all that time?”

  He drew himself up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that I wouldn’t be surprised if you already know more about what happened yesterday evening than I do.”

  He didn’t get mad. He got huffy. “I’m a police officer, Dr. Zak, and I’ve been assigned to the Jackson case.” He puffed out his chest, doubled his chin, and strutted up and back on legs that were a little too short for all that torso. “My job is to make sure Sylvia Jackson stays in one piece so that she can walk, roll, or crawl to the witness stand. The hospital staff has standing orders to call if anything unusual happens to her. And I’d say last night was unusual.” He stopped in front of me and pressed a palm down on the accident form. “So, as it happens, I do already know about your accident. Though I’m not sure that’s what I’d call it.” About that, we were in complete agreement. “I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me what happened.”

  Grudgingly, I told him.

  “A sporty red car?” he repeated my description.

  “Sylvia Jackson said it reminded her of the one she drives.”

  “You get a look at the driver?”

  “No.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed at my incompetence, or relieved. He mused, “Accidents happen in parking garages all the time. People drive too damned fast. And they often hit and run because they’re not insured, or if they are, they don’t want to see their insurance premiums increase. But I think there’s a pattern here and I don’t like it. If I were you, I’d watch my back.” Yeah, right. A brilliant observation. “And I think we’ll give Sylvia Jackson a round-the-clock guard, just to be on the safe side.”

  From the police station, I went to get the damage to my car appraised. The appraiser did not share Sylvia Jackson’s enthusiasm for venerable old cars. The figure he came up with was underwhelming — fine if we’d been talking a Chevy Cavalier. But I didn’t argue. I’d be doing most of the work myself anyway, and I wasn’t up to another confrontation. I just wanted to get back to the hospital and crawl into the comfort of my daily routine.

  I was back at the Pearce before noon. Gloria was at the nurses’ station writing in a patient’s record. I’d just pulled Maria Whitson’s file when I felt a tug on the tail of my jacket and a familiar voice hissed in my ear, “What sartorial splendor have we here?”

  Kwan turned me around gently. There was mischievous delight in his eyes. “Well, let’s see. It appears to be a unique shade of — hmmm — green?”

  “Brown,” I corrected.

  Kwan looked doubtful as he held a bit of the sleeve fabric between his thumb and forefinger. “Wool?”

  “Camel,” I said hopefully.

  Kwan turned me around again. “Lapels a tad wideish, don’t you think? And bit low–slung back here?” He was pulling on the back panel. “And the double vent is a nice touch. Goes with those lapels.”

  “A perfect fist,” I insisted. I held out my arms to show how the sleeves just hit my wrist.

  “Don’t tell me. Filene’s Basement.” It was infuriating — he was right, of course. I’d bought it last spring and it had hung in my closet waiting for the right moment. Clearly, I’d jumped the gun.

  “Are you two quite finished?” Gloria asked. “Because if you’re not, I’d appreciate it if you’d take your clever banter elsewhere. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Killjoy,” I muttered. We moved down the hall and out of earshot. “I suppose you think I should go to your tailor at Needless Markups.”

  “I don’t think they’ll let you into Neiman’s in these clothes.”

  Before I could come back at him, Kwan peeled off to visit a patient. I went looking for Maria Whitson. It had been ten days since she was admitted. She wasn’t in her room. I found her perched on a window bench in the living room, off to one side behind the group of about a half dozen patients who were listening to our music therapist singing over a syncopated piano. In a falsetto voice that rivaled Little Anthony’s, he belted, “The joint is jumpin’ … .”

  And it was. A cacophony of tambourines and maracas accompanied the music. Mr. O’Flanagan was there, his foot pumping up and down. Mrs. Blum was singing along in her own inimitable falsetto. Silhouetted against the morning sun, her eyes half-closed, her mouth relaxed, Maria Whitson swayed gently to the music. Her strawberry blond hair was pulled back and she wore blue jeans and a dark, loose-fitting sweater.

  The song ended with a piano flourish. Maria raised her hands to clap. The din of maracas and tambourines continued haphazardly after the song’s end. She looked expectantly toward the piano.

  I walked over to her. “Ms. Whitson? I hate to take you away from this, but would you mind coming with me so we can chat for a few minutes where it’s quieter?”

  I led the way into the dining room. Maria took the seat she usually occupied during meals. I poured a cup of coffee for me, decaf with milk and two sugars for her, and brought them to the table.

  She stirred the coffee, set the plastic spoon on the table, picked up the cup, and took a cautious sip before setting it down again in front of her. I waited. Maria’s eyes darted around the room before coming to re
st on the bowl of fruit on a side table. She started to get up.

  “You seem to be a little better today,” I said. “Clearer.”

  She stopped moving but she didn’t stop looking, her hands twisting at the bottom of her sweater. I didn’t want to move the food away. Better if she could resist on her own.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think you definitely do.”

  She turned to face me and sank back into the chair. “I’m still not myself,” she said.

  “Remember, you’ve been on some very powerful medications. Your system is getting rid of their effects. You’re probably still feeling odd, less in control than you’re used to. But you’re definitely looking better.” In fact, Maria Whitson looked almost pretty. Cheekbones and a strong chin were emerging from her formerly doughy face. Her blue eyes were clearer, more focused. She must have realized it as well because she was looking past me to where I knew we had a large mirror hanging on the wall.

  She picked up the plastic spoon off the table and held it in her lap, staring at it.

  “How are you sleeping?”

  “Fine,” she said quietly.

  “I wonder if you could tell me a little about your family. Why don’t you start with how you feel about your parents?”

  “My parents,” she said, her face turning dark and angry. The spoon snapped in her hand. She closed her fist around the pieces. “My parents.” Her look softened. “You know, it’s like I still love them, but I know I shouldn’t.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It’s good because you’re being honest with yourself. Were there good times?” I asked.

  She stopped and thought. “My father always wanted a son, but they got me instead. Not that he didn’t love me,” she said, looking even more confused and starting now to pick at a thread in her pants. “Or he said he did, anyway. He taught me to throw a mean curve. I was about the only girl in Melrose who could throw overhand. But how could he … ?” She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye with the heel of her hand. “You see, that’s the whole problem. Just when I start thinking nice things, the flashbacks start. It’s like I’ve got these two channels going in my brain.”

  Maria folded one arm in front of her and with the other hand, pulled down a piece of hair from above her forehead and tugged on it.

  “You have images playing and replaying in your brain?” I asked.

  She nodded, now twirling the hair around.

  “I wonder if you could just hold that thought for a little bit and tell me about the car accident? I’m curious to know what started all of this, and afterwards, how you came to remember, what made you pull up all of these — uh — images.” I was trying to avoid the word “flashback.” It implies a faithful replaying of actual events, and one thing I’ve learned is that the brain can be a very unreliable historian.

  Maria took a brief sideways look at the bowl of fruit. She shook her head and gnawed at a cuticle. I set a box of tissues on the table and Maria took one.

  “It was two years ago,” she said. “Happened practically in my own driveway. I was out running. Sprinting the last mile. My husband got back at the same time.”

  “You said it was an accident?”

  “It was real dark out and my street isn’t too well lit,” Maria answered, avoiding my eyes. “I’m just coming up the driveway, the idiot pulls in without looking. We collided, only he was bigger.” Maria made two fists and bashed them together. “Kaboom.”

  “And your husband?”

  “He does what he always does when something unexpected happens. He gets angry. Furious with me. Always looking for someone to blame. That’s what happened later, too.”

  “Later?”

  “When I stopped wanting him to touch me. When I couldn’t stand even being near him. He got angry. First he blamed me.” She was biting at her cuticle between sentences, and now it was starting to bleed. “Then my parents. Then, when he heard about the sexual abuse, he was ready to kill Uncle Nino.”

  “Did he ever try to harm you?” I asked.

  She stared at the blood oozing from her finger and slowly licked it away. “No, not exactly. It’s more like he wanted to control me. To own me.”

  She glanced at me and shifted her attention to a little hole in her jeans, picking at it with a stubby finger.

  “And?” I asked, poking at the unsaid thoughts.

  “Oh, nothing.” She pulled at a loose thread. I waited. “It’s just that sometimes I wonder if I made it happen. The accident. Only I screwed up.” Maria directed the words into her lap as she scraped and dug, widening the hole in her jeans leg. “Maybe I’ve been trying to get it right ever since. Only I keep screwing it up. Because I can’t do anything right.”

  Despite three attempts, she hadn’t succeeded in killing herself. And now she was starting to ask herself why. Curiosity is a healthy impulse. I wanted to move her away from the depressive affect that hung over her, explore these same issues but focus on the externals of the events.

  “I read in your medical file that you hit your head on the windshield.”

  Maria rubbed her left temple and forehead. “Right here.” She sniffed. “Broke my arm, too. They gave me X-rays at the hospital. Supposedly there wasn’t any brain damage. But for months, I just couldn’t get it together. At first I was dizzy. I couldn’t even get out of bed without throwing up. I couldn’t focus or remember the simplest things. It was so frustrating. I couldn’t work, so I went out on disability. I felt, like, really lardy. Like some big enormous slug. I had nothing to do. And I couldn’t run. Just like when I was twelve years old, I started to obsess about food.”

  Maria stole a quick look at the fruit bowl and looked back at me. “I kept thinking, I’m not going to have enough to eat, like when my mother put me on a diet in junior high and we had tofu and grapefruits for weeks on end. So I kept a stash in the car. My husband wouldn’t go near that car after the accident. Even after it got fixed. Like it was somehow responsible. Oreos, Mallomars, Cheez Doodles, Doritos. Ring Dings,” she said dreamily, chewing again on that cuticle. “I’d eat and eat, and then feel so disgusted that I’d make myself throw up. I couldn’t stand to even look in the mirror, I was so fat and repulsive.”

  Maria was kneading and tugging on her sweater again. “Rehab was a joke. The PT helped my arm. But the rest? Give me a break. They treated me like a retard. They had me doing picture puzzles. Arts and crafts. Connect the dots.” Maria opened her mouth, stuck her index finger inside, and made a gagging sound to demonstrate what she thought of their so-called therapy. “It seemed so stupid. And the worst thing? I couldn’t do any of it. So finally I just stopped going.

  “Then I’m getting more and more depressed. I can’t sleep because I keep having these weird dreams. And I’m constantly afraid that something terrible is going to happen.” Maria paused and gulped for air, her face convulsing with the memory. “Honest to God,” she sobbed, “I couldn’t even go to the mall without having a panic attack in the parking lot.”

  She took another tissue and wiped her eyes, pausing a few moments to collect herself before starting again. “I kept going to my doctor and saying, ‘Help me!’ And he’d scratch his head and say, ‘Give it time.’ And my family would say, ‘Give it time.’” Her hands were jerking, tearing the tissue into shreds. “I got really desperate. There didn’t seem to be any way I was going to get better. I wanted to kill myself.”

  Maria took a long pause and a deep breath followed by a little hiccup. “That was when I started to see Dr. Baldridge.”

  “You must have thought you were going crazy,” I commented.

  Maria nodded, her face now red with emotion and slick with perspiration.

  This was the kind of story I heard over and over again from patients who suffer needlessly at the hands of health care providers who act like a bunch of robots, treating symptoms without paying the slightest attention to context. It was textbook medicine at its worst.

>   I tried to get past my own diatribe on this and say something helpful. “You know, it’s very easy for me to armchair quarterback at this late date, but let me tell you about two things that often happen to people who have minor head injuries like yours. First, even though the MRI didn’t show any damage, when your head hit the windshield, the sudden force probably stretched your axons — the nerve fibers in your brain. This results in a condition we call post-concussive syndrome and people with PCS get exactly the symptoms you describe: memory loss, concentration difficulties, dizziness. And your doctor was right — left untreated, it disappears in a few months.”

  As I talked, Maria stared at me and chewed on her thumb. Her breathing slowed as she took in what I was saying.

  “But then that second thing I mentioned kicks in. Your own psyche reacts to the fact that your brain isn’t functioning. You get upset and anxious,” Maria was nodding, “and the tricky part is that it looks like the post-concussive syndrome isn’t getting better. But what’s really happening is that post-traumatic stress, which is an emotional thing, is taking over. In terms of symptoms, they’re the same. You’re anxious, depressed, you have trouble remembering, trouble paying attention, you don’t sleep well, you have funny dreams. But because the brain really is healed, sometimes doctors think you’re malingering. And for someone who’s really sick, there’s nothing worse than to hear a doctor say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you! Why aren’t you getting better?’

  “Problem is, the doctor treats what is now post-traumatic stress — an emotional condition — as if it were post-concussive syndrome — a physical condition. And as you discovered in rehab, it’s exactly the wrong treatment. You’re already very anxious and they have you doing these repetitive exercises. Instead of experiencing success after success, relearning things gradually, you experience frustration after frustration, and your anxiety level climbs even higher. You become more dysfunctional, to the point where you can’t even do everyday tasks like going to the mall.”