Prognosis

by Vallance, Sarah

  We arrived at the airport, hired a rental car, and drove straight to my mother’s house, where we planned to stay for a couple of days, until the furniture was moved back inside our house. I was so excited to see George I could barely contain myself. As soon as we arrived, I left the key in the ignition, slammed the car door shut, and leapt up the front steps. George was asleep on the sun-filled porch, wearing his crimson Harvard collar. “George!” I squealed. He glanced up, squinted at me for an instant, then got up and wandered inside the house.

  “George! It’s me!” I called after him, following him inside and ignoring my mother. He refused to even glance at me. My mother hugged Laura. “It’s so good to see you!” she said. We shared a perfunctory hug before I set off in pursuit of George again. He loped toward the kitchen and drank water from his bowl, spilling most of it on the floor. I knelt on one knee in a puddle of water, threw my arms around him, and squeezed him. I kissed the top of his head. He fought his way free of me and wandered through the house to the front porch.

  He had not forgotten me. He was giving me the cold shoulder. I spent an hour following him from room to room as he did his best to ignore me. I tickled him behind the ears; I tried to roll him on his back so I could rub his belly; I told him how much I loved him, how much I had missed him. He wasn’t interested. I had abandoned him. Left him alone for eternity with my mother. Surely, I of all people should have known what that would be like! How was he to know I was ever coming back?

  I’m only a dog! he seemed to say as he sat with his head pointed in every direction but mine.

  Relations between my mother and George appeared frosty.

  “He was not an easy houseguest,” my mother said, looking at him as though she had just found a stash of crack in his bedroom.

  He shot her a look that said, You are a nightmare! I jumped out a glass window and crossed a highway and a railway line to get away from you! That’s how bad it was!

  I tried tickling him under the chin, but he eyed me coolly and then stared at the floor.

  “He likes his afternoon visits to KFC. Don’t you, George?” my mother said, trying to be funny. “I lost count of the times he rolled himself back up the front steps looking pregnant.”

  George glanced up at her quickly and walked into another room. What I really wanted to ask was why she had left the front door open for George to go wandering the streets, but I thought better of it. My mother had always been one to leave her front door open. I could almost hear her shriek, Why should I live like a prisoner in my own home! Just because I’m looking after your bloody dog?

  Two days later, on the morning we were due to move back home, George finally thawed. Laura and I were sitting on my mother’s sofa drinking tea when he ambled across to me and rested his head in my lap. He prodded me with his muzzle, and I tickled the hair behind his ears. He closed his eyes, and I started to cry. We stayed like that for nearly half an hour. He had forgotten his anger. It had been a hell of a long year, but we were together again. That was all that mattered.

  My body needed the better part of a year to recover from my bout of chemically induced hepatitis. Home in Sydney, I visited a respiratory physician who studied my test results and ordered a CT scan of my lungs before telling me he could almost guarantee I didn’t have, nor had I ever had, TB. My mother remembered that I had been vaccinated against TB when we lived in England for the year of my father’s sabbatical, when I was seven. That would account for my borderline positive test result. Why hadn’t she mentioned this when Laura had rung her from Cambridge to tell her I was starting treatment for TB? I wondered.

  Laura had finished her master’s degree in America, and she found a job in a large advertising agency within weeks of us returning home. When Laura went to work, I spent most of each day in bed, stirring myself only to walk George or to do the grocery shopping. Home from work, Laura tended to me, cooking healthy meals and being kind enough to drink in private so I wasn’t tempted to do more harm to my poor, poisoned liver. Slowly I started to feel better.

  I had given up my job in aged care before we moved to America and found myself back home with no source of income. I contacted the bank and made arrangements to reduce my mortgage repayments until I was feeling well enough to work. Money we’d collected from letting our house while we were in America had paid down the mortgage, and I was still ahead with my repayments.

  To save myself wasting yet more of my life on something I knew wouldn’t be a long-term plan, I enrolled in a graduate diploma program in Human Resource Management at the University of New South Wales. My goal was to find work in the corporate sector. Switching from government or the not-for-profit sector to private enterprise is difficult at the best of times, and it didn’t help that I was innumerate. A qualification in HR might make the move simpler. I had set up my career with the intention of working only in government, but there was no way I could go back; not after Rosie, the social worker, had told my boss in the Premier’s Department I was brain damaged and incapable of returning to work.

  If I had the talent and the means, I would have stopped work to write full time. I dreamed of writing a novel or some short stories. But I feared that my mother had been right when she dismissed my early attempts at writing, and I had convinced myself that while not writing would make me unhappy, trying to write and failing would be heartbreak. I might never recover. A delusion can be a handy thing to cling to, and by not writing—and therefore not failing at it—I could kid myself into thinking I still had the possibility of succeeding.

  If there was an easier option, something I had less chance of screwing up, I would grab it. There was also the matter of money. I had a mortgage and a dog, and I needed an income. I dragged myself to lectures a couple of evenings each week, learned about recruitment and employment law and remuneration, and was delighted when I came first in three subjects. Nearly four years had passed since my accident, and I was starting to feel normal again. My brain was a lot better than it had been at any time since the accident. I thought more clearly, I could hold an argument, and I no longer had periods when my brain shut down midthought.

  I used the period of my convalescence to rewrite the case study chapter for my doctoral thesis. By the time I had finished, I was confident that I had done the best that I could. My supervisor read the revised chapter and agreed; it was ready. I resubmitted my entire thesis and hoped like hell my three examiners would be satisfied with the result.

  Within a week of finishing my HR exams, I found myself inside the offices of a newspaper company, interviewing for a job as HR manager. I sat in front of the publisher, the executive editor, and someone whose job title I didn’t catch. It was the first HR job I had ever applied for. My CV boasted a stint at Harvard, a glowing academic record from my graduate diploma in HR, and the word “submitted” next to the words “PhD in Government and Public Administration.” On paper, no one would ever suspect me of having a damaged brain.

  As we approached the end of the interview, the publisher inched forward in his chair and asked me if I was a “people person.”

  “Um, no,” I said, deciding there was no point in lying. “I’m afraid not.”

  “When can you start?” he asked.

  I started work in December 1999 at one of the largest papers in the country, with an editorial, advertising, and circulation staff of around four hundred. A desk had been cleared for me in a small room in the Finance Department while a permanent office was prepared. I had a phone but no computer. A huge pile of old newspapers sat underneath my desk waiting to be transported to the library for safekeeping. In the meantime, the pile spawned colonies of paper lice that feasted on my legs. I spent my days scratching at my shins like a madwoman, waiting for something to happen that required the services of an HR manager.

  One morning, after I was relocated to my permanent office and given a computer, everything changed. It started slowly, with a trickle of people wanting to talk to me. Within weeks a line of people snaked outside my door.
The issues raised were mostly trivial, sometimes strange, and occasionally disturbing.

  Someone had smeared feces over the walls of the men’s toilets, and the cleaners had—justifiably—complained. I was expected to establish the identity of the perpetrator. Inexplicably, everyone I spoke to seemed to believe the culprit was one of the paper’s section editors. Eventually I put this one in the “too hard” basket and gave up.

  Another time, a senior sub editor had been caught watching granny porn on his office computer, in full view of his female colleagues. A photographer had “stolen” a company car for the weekend and driven his family to Brisbane. A sub editor picked his nose and arranged his snot in patterns on his computer screen, while participating in a virtual-reality game in which he referred to himself as the “Clit Commander.” My graduate diploma in HR had not prepared me for any such incidents, so I made things up as I went along. That was the fun part of my new job.

  Months after I started at the paper, I returned home from work to discover a letter from the University of Sydney. Less than six months after I sent it off for review, my examiners had reread my thesis. I tore open the envelope and was delighted to find that I had satisfied the requirements for a doctorate, and that I would graduate in October 2000. My legs started to give way, so I sat down on my old IKEA sofa, beneath that long-forgotten pockmark, and read the letter again.

  So much had happened since I had returned home from Tim’s farm on the night of my accident and placed my toaster inside the freezer. That night I had no clue I had sustained a traumatic brain injury, no clue I would lose my job and end up on a disability pension, no clue about what lay ahead. Five years later I had achieved what I once feared might have been impossible. In a matter of months, I would be standing on a stage in the Great Hall at the University of Sydney, wearing my father’s square academic hat, and receiving a doctorate.

  For four years I had clung to the idea of that PhD as the benchmark of my recovery. Only when I had been awarded the degree would I consider myself to be normal again. I had sat at a desk in a room that stank of dog urine and taught myself to read and write. I had spent days scouring a dictionary to comprehend words I no longer understood, and weeks writing each of those words and their meanings into a notebook. I had spent months copying slabs of text onto a writing pad, and reading and rereading things until I was certain my words matched the words on the page of a book or journal article. I had spent years trying to teach my brain to think on its own, to analyze and interpret ideas, and to make judgments of my own based on what I had learned. When I knew nothing but depression and anger, I’d poured myself into those self-assigned tasks. My PhD had given me a goal and kept me going, even at my darkest times, when I feared I had no chance at all of finishing.

  My dissertation was not very good. I knew that. But my circumstances had been extraordinary. Years after I had started my PhD, I had received a letter, which started with the word “Congratulations,” telling me I had satisfied the requirements for a PhD. I sank back into the sofa and read the letter a third time. I wished my father was alive so I could tell him.

  I called Laura, and she guessed my news from the tone of my voice.

  “You did it!” she shouted into the phone.

  “We did it!” I said. “You deserve it as much as I do! Where shall we go to celebrate?”

  My new job as HR manager was the first position I had ever held where I was at everyone’s disposal. A lot of unhappy people worked at the paper, and they were delighted to have a sounding board. I tried to point out that my job wasn’t to buy people new laptops, or to restock the stationery cupboard, or to shift the panels of a workstation to improve someone’s view. No one seemed to hear me.

  My days were suddenly filled with listening to people who wanted a new chair or a promotion or a pay increase because they were worth a lot more than $200,000 a year. The fact they had penned only two stories that ran in the past twelve months, one with an error that had cost the paper hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills, had nothing to do with anything.

  Then there were the ones who wanted a gratis parking spot because they worked such long hours, or a three-day-week arrangement on the same salary so they could write a book. Plenty of nice, diligent people worked at the paper too, people who never asked for anything. I just didn’t get to see much of them.

  Every now and then someone would come to see me who genuinely needed help. The paper was dealing with changing technology that had made twelve people redundant. One of them, a short, slender man, came to my office to talk to me. He was timid, with light-gray eyes that darted around like tiny reef fish.

  He stood in my doorway and smiled at me nervously. “I’m sorry to waste your time,” he said.

  “Please come in and take a seat,” I said, getting up to close the door behind him.

  “I just received this.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a letter of termination. He placed the letter on my desk, using his right hand to uncrease it, and pointed to the line that said his termination payout would be $50,000. “I’ve worked at the paper for ten years,” he said. “And I don’t want to make a fuss.” He stopped.

  I looked at him and nodded.

  “The problem is,” he started, before tears welled up in his eyes, “that my wife is dying.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said, passing him a box of tissues.

  “She has a couple of months left, at best. We have five kids, all in school. They’re helping to care for their mum so she can die at home. Our mortgage is four times the amount I’ve been offered. And there’s no way I’m going to be able to get another job like this. No one needs us. Machines do everything now. I’ll have to sell the house. Like I said, I don’t want to make a fuss, but I’m not sure what to do.” He paused for a moment, put his head in his hands, and sobbed.

  I looked at him and tried to compose myself.

  He stopped crying and glanced up to see a trail of tears running down my cheeks. He held out his hand to squeeze mine. “I’m sorry!” he said. “The last thing I wanted to do was to make you cry.” His concern for me made me even sadder.

  “Leave the letter with me,” I said. “Let me talk to the publisher and see what we can do.”

  As soon as he left my office, I went upstairs to talk to the publisher. He agreed to increase the termination sum and to pay for a job placement service. All the people in his department who had lost their jobs would have that service available to them. But this would go down as the saddest story I encountered in all my time in HR. My patience for the people who wanted a leather chair instead of a vinyl one or free parking wore thin, and I discovered the line between sadness and anger was a flimsy one.

  Some days I went home after work and was so frustrated that I thought I would burst. Laura needed only to utter an expression such as, “Whatever,” for me to erupt. Sometimes all it took was for her to show me the facial expression that accompanied her “whatever” without her even saying it. Almost anything would ignite me. Laura was a calm, easygoing person, and I was a lunatic.

  One night I started an argument with her over something small—maybe she forgot to tell me she was going out or had neglected to walk George if she had arrived home first. Without warning, I started shouting. Veins protruded in my face and neck, and I frothed at the mouth. “Psycho!” Laura spat, and she was right. I ran at her, brandishing a wishbone from a chicken. I held it up to her face and shouted. She turned on me and kicked me in the shin, and I crumpled in a heap on our living room floor. The pain caused by the kick from the hard toe of her boot was excruciating. I helped myself up and limped to the bedroom to examine my wound. A huge black bruise that looked like someone had spilled a bottle of ink down my shin had appeared almost instantly.

  Days later, the skin started to ulcerate and eventually I had a gouged, yellowing leg that looked like it belonged to an old person.

  “You’re lucky that’s all I did to you,” Laura said when I reappeared downsta
irs.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t help it!” I reached out to hug her, but she pushed me away.

  “Sorry doesn’t help. You’re always sorry. Stop saying it and do something about it.”

  I had been trying to contain my temper ever since Laura moved in with me. Controlling it had been easier when I worked in aged care. My job wasn’t stressful, and I could work on my own. Then we moved overseas, and there were so many distractions, I rarely became angry. America had lulled me into the false belief that I’d conquered my rage. But back home in Sydney, I had a job that involved constant contact with people. Pressure built up inside me until I burst. Laura had no experience with bad tempers. She thought angry people were unhinged. I tried to explain that my brain damage had made it almost impossible for me to regulate my emotions. I reminded her that I had never experienced rage before my accident.

  “There’s nothing wrong with your brain!” she shouted, and those words triggered another eruption.

  “Of course there’s something wrong! Do you think I made it all up? That I want to be like this? I can’t control it! And you not acknowledging the root cause doesn’t help! On the outside, I’m fine! Inside, there are times when my brain turns me into a monster!”

  “Funny how you say you can’t control it, yet you never lose your temper at work. Or with the dogs.”

  She was right. I did manage to control my temper with the dogs and at work, and I couldn’t explain how I did that.

  “If I lost my temper at work, they’d fire me! And what kind of person loses their temper with an animal? The dogs are the reason I’m still here. They stuck by me through the worst of this.”

  “I’ve stuck by you too.”

  “I know you have, and I am so thankful to you. Truly. If it helps at all, I hate myself as much as you do.” And I did. Probably more.

  My temper became a roadblock between us that wouldn’t budge. Every noise was amplified. I couldn’t focus on reading something in the living room while the TV was on, or while pots and pans were being loaded into the dishwasher. My ears hurt. My head was a dormant volcano.