he says. ‘We’re not sure about the cause yet. Retrograde, maybe post-traumatic. Maybe even trauma related.’
When you hear amnesia from a man in a white coat it’s serious. Final. I forgot, sounds casual, oh, I’m forgetful.
I have amnesia, I’m not forgetful after all. Is he going to ask me what year it is? Who the President is? If I remember my birthdate? That’s what they do in movies. I don’t have to rack my brain, I know the answers. But why don’t I remember the accident? What else did I forget?
‘Retrograde means you don’t recall events that happened just before the onset of the memory loss. Post-traumatic is a cognitive impairment, and memory loss can stretch back hours or days, sometimes even longer. Eventually you’ll recall the distant past but you may never recover what happened just prior to your accident. Amnesia can’t be diagnosed with an X-ray, like a broken bone. We’ve done an MRI test and a CAT scan. Both tests came back inconclusive. Basically there’s no definitive proof of brain damage, but absence of proof is not proof of absence. There could be microscopic damages and the MRI and the CAT scan are just not sophisticated enough to detect those. Nerve fiber damage doesn’t show up on either test.’
I remain silent, not sure if I should ask anything else, not sure if I even understood him at all. All I grasp is that he can’t tell me anything definitive, so what’s the point?
‘There’s the possibility that you suffer from dissociative amnesia. Trauma would cause you to block out certain information associated with the event. There’s no test for that either. You’d have to see a psychiatrist or a psychologist. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The neurologist will order some more tests. Like I said, time will tell.’
I take a deep breath. The medical facts he’s relaying to me are one thing, but I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s something he is not telling me.
‘They found me where again?’
‘In a ravine, in Dover, upstate. You were transferred here from Dover Medical Center.’
Dover? Dover. Nothing. I’m blank.
‘I’ve never been to Dover.’
‘That’s where they found you, you just don’t remember. It’s part of the memory loss.’ He slips the pen back in his coat pocket. ‘You were lucky,’ he adds. He holds up his index finger and thumb, indicating the extent of the luck I had. ‘The bullet was this far from doing serious harm. There is extensive damage to your ear but I want you to remember that you were really lucky. Remember that.’
Remember that. How funny. My hand moves up to my ear, almost like a reflex. ‘You said there’s damage to my ear. What happened to it?’
He pauses ever so slightly. ‘Gone. Completely gone. The area was infected and we had to make a decision.’ He watches me intently. ‘It could have been worse, like I said, you were lucky.’
‘That’s some luck,’ I say but when I think about my ear I don’t really care.
‘There’s reconstructive surgery.’
‘What’s there now, I mean, is there a hole?’
‘There’s a small opening draining fluids, other than that, there’s a flap of skin stretched over the wound.’
An opening that drains fluids. I’m oddly untouched by the fact that a flap of skin is stretched over a hole in my head where my ear used to be. I have amnesia. I forgot to lock my car. I lost my umbrella. My ear is gone. It’s all the same; insignificant.
‘And you call that lucky?’
‘You’re alive, that’s what counts.’
There’s that buzzing sound again and then his voice goes from loud to muffled, as if someone’s turned a volume dial.
‘What about my ear?’
He looks at me, puzzled.
‘I remember you told me it was gone.’ Completely gone, were the words he used. ‘I mean my hearing, what about my hearing? Everything sounds muffled.’
‘We did an electrophysiological hearing test while you were unconscious.’ He grabs my file from the nightstand and opens it. He flips through the pages. ‘You’ve lost some audio capacity, but nothing major. We’ll order more tests, depending on the next CAT scan, we just have to wait it out.’
‘My ear, did that happen during the accident?’
‘They recovered a gun in the car. They are not sure how the injury came about, if someone shot you or you shot yourself. Hopefully you’ll remember soon.’
Bullet. Was shot or I did I shoot myself? That explains the police officer sitting outside my door and I wonder if he’s guarding me or if he’s guarding someone from me. This talk of bullets and guns and ravines, my missing ear. I’m blank, completely blank. Except …
‘I remembered something.’
The words come spilling out and take on a life of their own.
‘I need to know if what I see … I … I think I remember bits and pieces, but it’s not like a memory, it’s more like fragments.’ It’s like flipping through a photo album not knowing if it’s mine or someone else’s life. Blood. So much blood.
‘It’s a humpty dumpty kind of a situation, maybe you just can’t put it back together. You may not be able to remember minute by minute, but you’ll be able to generally connect the dots at some point.’
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men. Wild horses. I make a decision. The blood was just an illusion. A figment.
‘I’m very tired,’ I say and feel relieved.
‘Let the nurse know if there’s anybody you want us to call. Don’t forget the spirometer – every two hours …’
He points at something behind me. ‘Behind you is a PCA pump. It delivers small amounts of pain medication. If you need more,’ he puts a small box with a red button in my hand, ‘just push the red button and you’ll get one additional dose of morphine. The safety feature only allows for a maximum amount during a certain timed interval. Any questions?’
I have learned my lesson from earlier and barely shake my head.
I watch him leave the room and immediately a nurse enters and I try to concentrate on her explaining the yellow contraption to me. I’m supposed to breathe into the tubing until a ball moves up, and I have to breathe continuously to try to keep the ball suspended as long as possible. Because there’s fluids in my lungs.
I have amnesia. My ear is gone. I feel … I feel as if I’m not connecting like I should. I should yell and scream, raise bloody hell, but Dr Baker’s explanations of my lack of emotions, ‘blunted affect’ he called it, seems logical. Logic I can handle, it’s the emotions that remain elusive.
There’s something they’re not telling me. Maybe because they don’t subject injured people – especially those who’ve been shot, who lost an ear, who
