Charlotte Had A Boyfriend : 3

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

 

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"The horror of that moment," the King went on, "I shall never never forget!"
"You will, though," the Queen said, "if you don't make a memorandum of it."
— Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking Glass

---

 

When I say that my mind goes blank at times, I don't mean anything bad by it. At least, I don't *think* it's bad. It's just that... there isn't a whole lot going on inside my head. Could it be that my brain goes quiet because it has no memories to play with, to play off? Is this why I drift into mental doldrums?

But then, see? That word doldrums! I know the word, somehow! It conjures up a picture of huge sailing ships, far out at sea, utterly still, unmoving, *becalmed*... their sails slack for lack of wind. Where there's no wind, theres's no movement.

The same with my brain: it wasn't broken; not really. It was becalmed. My mental sails hang slack. Since they aren't driven forward by memories, my cognitive gears slip into idle.

And it's weird, yes, that I can come up with all those words, concepts, and metaphors: doldrums, cognitive gears, and so on... Honestly, it's disturbing! Almost infuriating! I have no problem pulling words out of my invisible vocabulary, and yet I can't remember my home, my family, my friends... I can't remember my own life! I can't even recall my birthday.

In spite of all I can't remember, I *do* know that when a person is still, with no immediate task and no one to talk to, what would otherwise be internal silence is filled by visuals playing on an inner screen — like a TV left on in the next room. You can hear it, though the volume goes up and down. You glimpse its images through the doorway, but you can't necessarily change the picture. You might have the remote control at times, but if you aren't paying attention your subconscious will grab the remote and change the channel, and of streams, images, snippets, music... he has an endless supply.

I know this; I remember experiencing it. Don't ask me how. Thistlewaite would say different parts of the brain; different components have different functions as if that explained everything. It doesn't.

Well, my TV — the one inside my head — was on the blink, as though I had no cable hookup; no network connection. The power was on, but the screen was dark. My streaming services were disconnected. Apparently my subconscious, with so little to do, had gone on vacation. All quiet and dark back there. System reboot required.

Time passed, or didn't pass... I wasn't aware of either state. I mean, I knew time was passing. That's what time does. But how much time was passing? I had no way of measuring the quantity. A little time? A lot of time? My inner status was... Waiting... I was simply waiting. Not waiting for anything in particular. I had no impatience or concern about when whatever-it-was would arrive — whatever waterever-it-was was. A clock would have helped, but only as a measuring stick. If I could see a clock, I'd be able to say, "I've been sitting in this ER for two hours" or "It's been thirty minutes since anyone's poked their head in here." Instead, I only knew that I'd been here, sitting, doing nothing, knowing nothing, with little to do but listen to the occasional cough of the old man behind the curtain to my right.

At some point an anonymous orderly pushed open the curtains as wide as they could go, and he rolled my gurney out of the Emergency Room. Down a hallway, into an elevator, up to the sixth floor. Room number 632. He didn't say a word to me the entire time. I searched my brain for a conversational prompt or ice breaker. All in vain! In the end, I didn't say a word to him, either.

The bed in room 632 was, like most hospital beds, raised up to waist high, so I had a great view out the window. It happened to be a view of a river, snaking its way to the horizon. There were roads and rooftops on both sides of the river, filling all the available groundspace, ending in the distance at a rough arc that traced the city limit.

The orderly pushed the now-empty gurney out of the room and away down the hall, leaving me alone with a nurse. She was young and blonde. She radiated positive energy, and looked very soft. I don't mean *fat*. I mean that she struck me as a person without any hard edges. She gave the impression of a person who is kind, empathetic, a bit excitable and emotional. A person in whom all those traits were reflected in her physiology. Soft. In a nice way.

She hadn't spoken yet, but clearly she was brimming over with barely-suppressed excitement. She subliminally bounced. I thought she might explode at any moment. She bit her lower lip; her eyebrows danced high on her forehead.

"Hello," she greeted me in a stage whisper. "My name is Jen, and I'll be taking care of you. How are you feeling? Oooh, that's a nasty bump on your head!"

"Um, I'm okay, I guess," I responded, cautiously.

She drew a deep breath and her eye lashes fluttered. "Are you the woman with amnesia?" she asked, all breathy, still whispering.

"Yes, that's me." I replied. "But you don't need to whisper. It isn't a secret." I meant it to be funny, but it sounded a little mean when I actually said it.

"Ah, right," she acknowledged, biting her lower lip again. "So... you don't remember anything?" she asked.

I shrugged. "I remember everything since the accident, but nothing from before."

"So, you don't know your name?"

"Nope."

"Oh my God! I can't imagine!"

I really didn't want to have this conversation, honestly. I didn't want to sift through the details of my not-remembering. At the same time, I didn't want to hurt the poor woman's feelings. So I tried to change the subject. Gesturing with my chin, I asked, "What's the name of that river out there?"

"Oh, that! It's the Robbins River."

"And we're in Robbins, the town of Robbins?"

"Right. Robbins. Robbins River. And we're in Robbins Memorial Hospital right now. We're not very original with names in this town." She smiled at her little joke.

"Hey, you know something?" she began, now speaking at a normal tone and volume. "My boyfriend and I, we were watching this new series called The Tourist — do you know it?"

I lifted my arms and shoulders slightly in a helpless shrug.

"Oh! You wouldn't, would you! Well, it's about this guy — Jamie Dornan — do you know who he is?"

I took a breath and looked at her. I wanted to ask Are you kidding me? but instead I only shook my head. Gently, so as not to agitate the bump on my forehead.

"Fifty Shades of Grey? No? Right. Right. So he is in a car accident — just like you! — but he's in Australia and he has NO IDEA who he is."

I scratched my head. I wanted to ask Why Australia? but instead I prompted her to continue by saying, "Like me."

"Right! Like you! Pretty much. And he doesn't even know what kind of FOOD he likes — and he doesn't know who the Spice Girls are!" She let out a little giggle. "Can you imagine?"

As she spoke, I realized (to my chagrin) that I, too, had no thoughts or memories of food types and food preferences. I know what food *is*, but I have no idea what I like... and as for— "Did you say Spice Girls?" I asked. "Are they, like, famous cooks or something?"

With a gasp, the nurse put her hand on mine, and exclaimed, "You don't know either, do you! Oh my GOD!"

It was distressing, to say the least. Not the bit about the Spice Girls, whoever or whatever they were, but this sequence of reminders of all the elements of life that I didn't know or couldn't recall.

I saw she was about to launch another unintended offhand assault, so this time I cut her off, saying, "Listen, I know you mean well, but I have to tell you that this is not in the least bit funny for me. Honestly, it's pretty frightening."

She was so shocked, her face went white. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't think— I didn't mean— it's just— it came pouring out of me. I mean, I don't — we don't — we don't see people with amnesia very often..."

"How often *do* you see people with amnesia? I mean have *you* personally dealt with an amnesia patient before?"

"Well," she replied, calming down a little, "Not a patient, no, but a friend once, yeah."

"You had a friend who lost their memory?"

She seemed embarrassed by her recollection, but after a brief inner squirm, she came out with it. "Okay, so, when I was 16 — right, I was 16 —, my boyfriend and I were climbing a really high fence, and he fell off and hit his head. I jumped down and asked him if he was alright, and he gave me the strangest look, and he asked me Who are you?" (Here she grabbed my arm, a little hard.) "I thought he was joking, so I laughed and laughed. He didn't laugh, though. He kept saying, No really, who *are* you? Please stop laughing! But I couldn't stop laughing until he grabbed my arm really hard—" Here she squeezed my arm more tightly— "and I realized he was afraid... and angry, too, but mostly afraid."

She drew a breath and held it a moment, reliving the events, as if they were happening now. "Later he told me that he would have run away from me, except that he had no idea where we were or what was nearby."

Jen let go of my arm (thank goodness!). She stopped and looked at the floor for a moment.

"What happened next?"

"I brought him home, to his house. He had no idea where we were going — he kept asking me where I was taking him, like he didn't trust me. His mother was there. He didn't remember her, either, and he didn't recognize his house or anything. He afraid to be left there, so I wanted to stay, but his mother made me leave. It was pretty freaky."

She stopped, as though that was the end of the story. "And then?" I demanded.

"Oh, well," she admitted, "The next day he was fine." I could tell from her face, from her eyes, that she was looking into her past, seeing it, watching it happen, living it all over again. I got the feeling that her boyfriend's bout with amnesia changed him ever after. Made him foreign to her, maybe. As though he'd gone to some strange land, and returned, forever altered, yet unable to describe where he'd been or what he'd experienced.

And yes, I really did get all that from the look on her face, from the reflection in her eyes.

I had to ask: "Was he still your boyfriend after that?"

"No," she said, scoffing, regretful. "His mother blamed me, as though it was MY fault." She frowned. "It wasn't fair."

Still, there was one encouraging thing for me in her story; one glimmer of hope: the next day, his memories had come back.

"Hey," I asked, "that TV show you mentioned... was it a true story?"

"Oh, no," she laughed. "It was too crazy to be true."

"Did that man get his memory back?"

"Oh!" she softly exclaimed, her eyes widening. "Well, yes and no. He took, uh—" and then she stopped, and looked me in the face. "Um, well, it's kind of a spoiler. Are you sure you want me to tell you?"

"A spoiler!" I exclaimed, not so softly. "I couldn't give a— look, I don't care! Just tell me what happened."

"Well... and so... he took LSD, and he remembered all kinds of things, but it came to him in weird bits and pieces, all mixed up. Afterward he wasn't sure how much of what he remembered was even true. And it wasn't everything anyway. Important parts were missing."

"Hmmph," I grunted, and scratched my cheek thoughtfully. That was one show I'd be sure to miss.

Then, remembering her duties, the nurse took my blood pressure, temperature, and did my neuro checks. "I'll be back in a bit," she promised. "Oh — do you need any pain medication? It's been four hours since the last dose. You can have Tylenol if you like."

"Yeah," I told her. "Somehow my headache returned."

She nodded and left the room.

 

---

 

While she was gone, I stared out the window, empty-headed, like before.

Strangely, I liked it better up here, in room 632, much better than the Emergency Room. Definitely better than the ambulance or the desert. "The best place I've been all day," I said aloud, and laughed.

Talking to myself... should I worry that I was talking to myself?

Strangely — as I was saying — strangely, in this room, looking out the window at the river, I felt fairly peaceful. Up to now I've been pretty... how was I? Unsettled? Nervous? Worried? Fearful? And a hint of something else. A sense of betrayal? What kind of sense did that make? But yes, that was definitely one of the flavors in my blend of emotions. Before I could unravel myself any further, the nurse returned, holding a tiny scalloped paper cup, and a huge glass of water. Same type of enormous water container as they had in the ER. I popped the two white pills from the little paper cup into my mouth and took a big sip of the icy water to wash them down. As I did so, I read the nurse's name tag: Jen Columbus.

She saw me reading her tag, and smiled, pointing at it, and in a cutesy voice said, "1492, right?"

"Ah... 1492?" I repeated. I gave my head a little shake.

Her mouth fell open. Her eyes grew big as saucers. "1492? Sailed the ocean blue?" She gaped at me in utter disbelief. I shrugged.

"Columbus!" she exclaimed, her body bent forward, her arms thrust out in child-like disbelief. I couldn't help but burst out laughing, even if it hurt my head a little.

"Oh," she said, calming down a little bit. "You're pulling my leg, aren't you?"

"No," I told her. "I have no idea what on earth you're going on about."

She made a "Hmmph" noise and tossed the tiny paper cup in the trash.

She stood there in silence for a few beats, looking down into the little trash can, as if studying the crumpled paper cup she'd thrown there.

At last she took a breath, straightened up, and looked me in the face. "I'm sorry," she said. "I realize that this is probably scary and weird and frustrating for you—"

I nodded and gave my eyebrows a little bounce.

"—but you know, from the outside, like, for me, it's one of the most exciting things that's ever happened! I mean, look at you! You could be anybody! Do you realize that?"

I didn't know what to say to that, so I cocked my head and listened. Jen went on:

"It's like a movie, isn't it? I mean, in a way, isn't it just glorious?"

I couldn't help but give her a puzzled, frustrated frown. "In what way is this glorious? I'm lost, Jen, do you understand that? Do you really think I could be anybody? Anybody at all? It's a hell of a lot more likely that I'm nobody! Nobody at all. A person alone. Connected to nothing. Nowhere to go, nothing to be or do. I mean, everybody keeps telling me that my memories will come back, but what if they don't? That must happen sometimes. I don't find that prospect 'glorious' at all."

"Okay," she replied in a cautious tone, as if walking on eggshells, afraid of offending or setting me off any further, but unable to let go of her excitement. She sincerely believed I had soap-opera, fairy-tale possibilities, so she couldn't stop herself from insisting. Her palms faced forward and down, pumping the emotional brakes. "Okay. Okay. Maybe so. Maybe so. But keep in mind that what you just said is only *one* possibility. Even if that's how it goes, we'll find a way to work things out. You won't be alone. Robbins is a nice place, full of really nice people. Everyone who hears about you will want to help."

"I'm a curiosity," I acknowledged.

"Yes, I guess you are." She gave a little smile. "There are worse things to be, though, aren't there? And even so... you know, the nobody thing — like I said, that's only ONE possibility. On the other side... I mean, really: you could be anybody. You could be somebody's evil twin!" Her eyes lit with another possibility: "Oh! You could be like Jason Bourne!"

I gave a loud, unapologetic sigh. "Who's Jason Bourne?"

"He lost his memory when he fell into the ocean, and he turned out to be an international assassin!"

I couldn't help but chuckle. The idea was beyond ludicrous. "No." I told her. "That's not remotely possible." And then, suspicious: "This Bourne guy, was he a real person? Or is this another TV show?"

"No, neither: it was a movie."

"Oh." Disappointing.

"Or... you could be a lost heiress, or the president's daughter! Or a princess, like, um, Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries."

"Another TV show?"

"No, a movie."

I shook my head. "All of those things are extremely unlikely, if not impossible."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, her hand to her mouth, suddenly remembering something.

"What?"

"Anne Hathaway didn't have amnesia in The Princess Diaries."

I smiled. "I guess that means I'm not a princess, right?" and I laughed.

"The point is..." Jen insisted, turning a slight shade of red, "the point is, that now we — you — don't know anything. Everything is potential, right? The sky is the limit."

"That's only the upper limit," I countered.

"Whatever," she replied dismissively, sweeping my lower limit away with her hand. "I have to check on my other patients. I'll be back later. Press that button if you need anything."

 

---

 

The conversation with Jen Columbus left me irritated and frustrated. It wasn't only because she kept harping on the things I didn't remember... and it wasn't entirely her fault. What bothered and puzzled me were the things that I *did* remember. For instance, I knew about movies and TV shows — at least, I knew what they *are*, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember a single film or TV program, least of all the ones Jen mentioned.

And vocabulary! How could I know so many words, in spite of forgetting everything else? Sure, the neurologist said it was "different parts of the brain," but his explanation struck me as a bit glib. And see? Right there? How could I know "vocabulary" and "glib"?

Honestly, it pissed me off.

 

---

 

The feeling didn't pass. I sat there stewing for I don't know how long, until the sun slipped down and rested on the horizon.

The sky filled with rosy light, which for some reason disgruntled me even more.

At that point, Dr Thistlewaite came in, beaming. His smile faltered when he saw the look on my face.

"What's up?" he asked. "Did something happen?"

"No," I grumbled. "Everything's fine."

"Everything's fine? You need to tell that to your face."

I gave a little scoffing laugh. "It's this stupid amnesia," I explained. "It's got to be the most idiotic... whatever it is! Can you call it an illness? An injury?" I frowned as I cast about for the right word.

"You can call it a syndrome," he offered.

"Well...," I responded, rolling the word around in my mind, "As a syndrome, it leaves a lot to be desired."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I *do* remember a lot, but it seems like... nothing particular. I mean, like, a nurse was in here, talking about TV shows and movies. What's weird is that I know what movies are, right? But I can't remember a single one. What kind of sense does that make? I know what food is, but I can't name a single dish. See? And I know all those words I just used, but I don't know my own name. How is any of this possible?"

"For one thing," he replied, "It's pretty lucky."

"Lucky?"

"Imagine that you couldn't remember anything at all AND that you forgot all about words! You wouldn't be able to talk or understand."

I could easily imagine that. It would be like being a prisoner in my own head. "That would be horrible."

"Right. So, while *some* of your internal connections are down, at least you're still in contact with the outside world."

Okay, so things were not as bad... or as awful... as they potentially could be. I grudgingly admitted it, and then I fell silent, in a sulky funk. Conversationally, emotionally, I found myself in a cul-de-sac.

Thistlewaite bent down, so he could peer into my eyes. "Where are you now?" he asked.

"In a cul-de-sac," I told him. Another vocabulary word! I looked up at him. "At a dead end."

He nodded. "Downstairs you wanted to talk about your name. You didn't think Deeny Mason is your name. How do you feel about it now?"

"I don't know. Deeny. Deeny? What kind of a stupid name is that?"

"I don't know. It sounds like a nickname. In any case, where did it come from? Why did you think it's your name?"

I thought for a moment. "*I* didn't think it was my name. First time I heard it was after the accident. Wade told me that Amos told him that I said it, before the crash."

He opened his mouth; tried to recollect. Couldn't. He asked, "Who are Wade and Amos?"

"The drivers in the accident. I was in Amos' car. Amos told Wade that I'd said my name was Deeny."

"Well..." the doctor ruminated, "Not to throw another wrinkle into the mix, but Amos might have heard it wrong from you, and Wade might have heard it wrong from Amos... like a game of telephone."

"Or I might have lied to Amos," I found myself saying.

Thistlewaite, taken slightly aback, asked, "Why would you do that?"

"I don't know."

"Why did you say that, just now?"

"It was spontaneous. Like I said, I don't know. The words just came out of my mouth," I assured him, in all truthfulness.

"Okay," he said. "Let's go with this, then. We've thrown the name Deeny up in the air, or out the window. What about Mason?"

"Mason sounds about right," I said.

"Okay. What comes to mind when you think about the name Mason, when you say the name Mason, when you hear the name Mason? Or if you take Mason simply as a word?"

As I weighed Mason in my mind, Thistlewaite prompted me: "Just whatever pops into your mind. Don't worry about making sense. Just—"

"Police." I interrupted. He nodded.

"Cops." I added. "Detective." I tried saying the name Mason several times aloud, then: "Black and white."

Thistlewaite smiled, as if he knew something I didn't. "That's interesting. Black and white?"

I didn't know, but I ventured the very next thing to pop into my head: "TV?" And then, finally, I came to a name.

"Perry Mason," I said. It felt almost as though I was repeating sounds from a foreign language, but in spite of that, it sounded right. Very right. One word led to the next, and the trail ended up at Perry Mason, and there it stopped. "Could that be my name? Perry Mason? I like the sound of it."

"Uhhh," he temporized, drawing out the sound. "Hmm. Do you get any mental pictures when you hear the name Perry Mason?"

Irritatingly, I did get an image in my mind. It was the image of a *man*. A big guy. Not a fat guy, but a solid man with wide shoulders, and an intense, unblinking look on his face. Oddly, only in black and white. Oddly, only in flashes. "I don't know," I confessed. "A man? I don't know! Who is he?" I heard the word he come out of my mouth, and it stopped me. "Wait. Damn it, is Perry Mason a man? Does that mean it can't be me?"

"I don't know — I suppose Perry *can* be a girl's name," he said. "It's an unusual name, anyway, for anyone, man or woman. Still, many people do have unusual names. Could Perry be your nickname?"

"So who was the *man* Perry Mason?" I repeated, a little impatiently.

He hesitated, as though he didn't want to tell me. I gave him an impatient look, and he responded. "Perry Mason was a fictional detective, on an old-time TV show of the same name. The show was based on some noir mystery novels. Oh, wait — the courtroom... right. He wasn't a detective per se; he was a lawyer. But he solved crimes. Sorry, I don't remember it very well. The show was before my time. It had a great theme song, though: horns, piano... strong, cool jazz. Very noir, as I said."

All of that sounded right and fine to me. "Okay," I acknowledged. "In spite of all that, I can more easily accept that my name is Perry Mason — a hell of a lot more easily than Deeny Mason. Jeez! I'm *sure* that Deeny is wrong. It's not my name. Perry Mason sounds right."

As I spoke, Thistlewaite nearly squirmed in discomfort. "What's the matter?" I asked.

"Okay," he said. "I understand that you don't like the name Deeny. But if you're going to call yourself Perry Mason, people— well, people are going to, uh, react."

"React? React to what? Do you mean they'll laugh? Or they won't believe me? Because of the old-timey TV guy?"

He rolled his shoulders and tilted his head as a mushy affirmative.

"People will laugh?" I demanded, growing a little angry. "And if it's really my name? Fuck them! That's what I have to say: Fuck them!"

My fury stopped him cold. For once, he didn't know what to say.

"Look," I demanded, "Can I insist? What if I told you that I remember that it's my name? Do you realize that this is the first thing I actually remember?"

"Do you?" he queried cautiously. "Do you remember?"

"I don't know... I don't know!" I admitted, nettled, "I don't even know what remembering feels like, but THIS is the first thing that's felt right to me since this stupid amnesia thing began."

The two us shared an awkward silence.

"Okay," I asked, trying to calm myself. "What if I had no name at all? What if neither name came up? What if Amos hadn't said Deeny and I hadn't said Mason?"

"Do you mean, what would we call you, if you didn't remember your name at all?"

"Yes."

"Jane Doe," he replied as if the answer was obvious.

"Why?"

"That's what we call an unidentified female. Would you rather be called that? Jane Doe?"

"Why Jane Doe?"

He let out a breath. "Well, John Doe, Jane Doe..." he said it as if were somehow obvious.

"So?" I didn't get it.

"I don't know," he fumbled with his answers, as though I'd knocked him off balance. "I don't know how it started or where it comes from. It's a convention. It's what we call people when we don't know their names."

I thought for a moment. "What would you call a *second* unidentified female?"

He seemed surprised by the question. "She'd be Jane Doe number two."

"Oh." I was disappointed. "That's pretty prosaic. And then a third would be Jane Doe number three? I was hoping you'd have a list of names to choose from."

"No, nothing as clever as that. Besides, this way, if you say Jane Doe, everyone knows it's not a real name."

The name Perry Mason drifted into the front part of my brain. It was so concrete I could almost feel it, see it. As I looked at the name in my mind, I drifted into a meditative silence. I gazed off into space. I didn't realize I had floated away... forgotten where I was... forgotten that the doctor was standing there.

Dr Thistlewaite watched me, let me muse a while, before he asked, "Where are you?"

"Robbins Memorial," I replied, waking back up to the present reality.

"No," he clarified, "I meant, what were you thinking about?"

"Perry," I said. "The more I think about it, the more sure I am."

He opened his mouth to speak, then stopped himself.

I covered my face with my hands for a moment, rubbing my eyes, my eyebrows. I was angry, a little angry... and frustrated, but just a little. I dropped my hands and looked at him. "Listen: I can see you're trying to convince me that I'm wrong, but you can't. I will fight you on this. I'll insist. I'm going to tell everyone who walks in here that my name is Perry Mason."

He took a deep breath and opened his mouth to speak, but I pre-empted him. "If I can't trust myself on this, how can I trust anything I remember?"

That stumped him. He made a gesture of surrender with his hands. "Okay," he said. "I don't want to rile you up or argue. I don't want to make you upset. I'm sorry." He looked down at himself, at his jacket, right and left. "Here, let me give you this, and then I'll get out of your hair."

He reached into one of the pockets in his long, white doctor coat, and extracted a small notebook. From his breast pocket he took a pen, a nice one, and he handed the book and pen to me.

I opened the book, fanned through the pages. It was blank, just like my mind.

"This might help," he explained. "You can write whatever you like in here. Things you remember, questions you have... anything at all."

It was a nice little book, bound in brown faux leather, pages lined with faint horizontal blue lines.

"Is this, like, homework?" I asked.

"No. This is just for you. No one else needs to see it, unless you want them to."

"What do I do? Write random shit in here?"

"Yes. Whatever happens to pop into your head."

As soon as he said pop into your head, a phrase did exactly that. So I said it out loud.

"Person woman man camera TV."

He looked surprised. Very surprised. His lips twitched as if he wanted to laugh.

"Does that mean anything?" I asked.

"Does it mean anything to you?" he countered.

"Oh Jesus!" I exclaimed. "Never mind! Why does everything have to be difficult?"

He gestured at my book and pen. "Just write it down," he suggested, a little lamely. "Just write it."

"Why?"

"Because one string pulls another. You've already remembered Perry Mason and this... you're going to keep remembering things. If you note each memory as it emerges, more will follow."

"Do you really think so?" I asked, doubtfully. "It sounds like BS to me."

"Do you have a better idea?" he asked, eyebrows raised. My resistance was getting him rattled. When I didn't answer, he said, "Well, all right then. I'll come see you in the morning. Okay?"

"Don't push the river," I called to him, as he was leaving. I meant it as a joke, but it sounded like an oblique fuck you.

"I'll try," he replied. He seemed a little offended, but that was fine with me.

"Don't block my river," I muttered, once he was out of earshot.

 

---

 

Now that I was alone, I opened the blank book, and wrote my name inside the front cover: Perry Mason. I opened to the first page, smoothed it with the back of my hand, and uncapped the pen.

"Assignment One," I announced aloud. "Random nonsense phrases, please."

I wrote down Person Woman Man Camera TV

I wrote Don't Push The River

I wrote Don't Block My River

I chewed the end of the pen for a moment and scribbled Asa Nisi Masa

"It popped into my head!" I explained (to no one), justifying. "If it doesn't mean anything, there's no harm."

Then: Better dead than wed — even I was taken aback by that one, but it popped into my head, so I wrote it down.

I closed the book and capped the pen. I looked up at the ceiling and one more phrase came to me. This one felt significant, like it had weight:

Charlotte had a boyfriend

"Who is Charlotte?" I asked aloud, and I wrote the question on a fresh page. Maybe Dr Thistlewaite would know. Maybe Jen, the nurse, would know. Maybe Charlotte was famous. Maybe it was an old saying. Maybe it didn't mean anything at all.

Then, something else came to me. A song. First as an echo, then bit by bit... The first line... chunks of the next lines. I half-sang it to myself silently, and recovered the next three lines. At first they were full of something-something and meaningless rhymes, but with effort and repetition, I unearthed the whole thing: a full-fledged, discrete chunk of an actual song.

Deep Space Nine, the cow said 'fine'
The monkey chewed tobacco on the railroad line
The line broke, the monkey got smoked
And they all went together in a little motor boat

I wrote it all down. It made no sense to me, but that didn't matter, did it? It wasn't about making sense, it was only about remembering. Maybe I had to clear my remembering pipes of a bunch of junk and trash, before I could remember any of the important stuff. All the nonsense that floated on the surface was meant to get skimmed off (like dead leaves in a swimming pool) and thrown into my little book.

Apparently, though, those four lines of song lyrics busted my recall pipes. Nothing more came to me, not even after I put the little book away.

About a half hour later, Jen Columbus came back to take my vitals and to babble about yet another amnesia-themed movie. This one starred Tom Berenger (whoever he was). "See — he had amnesia, from a car accident — like you! — and this woman convinced him that he was her husband. She even had plastic surgery done to him, so he looked like the guy!"

Once again, for Jen, it was only a story. A movie. Something she'd seen on TV: a little moving picture with dramatic music in the background.

To me, it was a vivid, existential threat. I sat up stiff and straight in bed and froze, still as a block of ice. My whole body went white with fear, I could feel it. My breathing was shallow and I found myself unable to swallow or blink.

It took a while for Jen to notice my state. She very nearly left the room without seeing the effect her recitation produced in me.

"What's wrong?" she asked, grasping my arm. "Are you alright? Are you in pain, are you in distress?"

She gave me some water, which I gratefully drank. "Should I call for a doctor?" she asked, gasping with concern.

"No," I said. "No. Just— talk to me."

"About movies?" she asked.

"No," I said firmly. "For God's sake, no. No more fucking movies."

It took maybe five minutes before I was calm enough to explain why I was frightened.

She couldn't relate to my fears. Not in the least. "You honestly believe someone would come in here, pretending to be your husband or your father or brother or whatever, and he'd carry you away?"

"Yes!"

"That couldn't happen," she assured me.

"Why couldn't it?"

"Well...," she began, but I could see she didn't know. She no idea whatsoever. Were there any safeguards in place? If so, Jen Columbus was not aware of them. She could only give me assurances, based on nothing. She didn't have any answers. But after a few moments she said, "Well, they'd have to prove it, wouldn't they?"

"Would they?"

"Sure! And... and you'd remember, wouldn't you?"

"I hope so," I told her, feeling helpless, vulnerable. "So far, all I remember is Deep Space Nine."

"The TV series?"

"Is that what it is?" I asked. "I thought it was a song."

Jen gave me a strange look, shook her head, and left the room.

"Maybe it's the theme song," I hazarded, as if Jen was still there.

 

---

 

Nothing happened for a couple of hours. All I did was look out the window and try to deduce what I could about Robbins. There weren't many tall buildings. The only structure as tall or taller than the hospital was a brick chimney — a smokestack? — on the edge of town, off to my left. There were two steeples, neither of them very high: one of gray stone, the other of wood, painted green. The rest was a sea of roofs — rooves? No, 'rooves' was wrong: they were roofs. From my point of view, from six stories up, it looked as though a person could walk from one end of Robbins to the other, in any direction, simply stepping from one roof to the next. I was sure it couldn't be that simple in reality, but from this angle, I couldn't see the gaps. There were only a handful of streets that followed my line of sight to the horizon.

Spring-heeled Jack came to mind. I took my book and wrote it there. I didn't want to think about it; I didn't care what it meant. It was something I remembered; that's all. Writing it was enough. If I had to analyze every single thing, I'm sure I'd stop remembering entirely.

At some point I zoned out. I went on test pattern. I had the empty mind that Zen practicioners seek.

I picked up my little book and wrote Zen practicioners. By now I think I'd caught onto the trick. There wasn't any point in asking myself how I knew something or why I was able to remember it. The thing was remembering and nothing more. What and why didn't lead me anywhere; only remembering: the action, the process, the wheels in motion.

Don't push the river. Don't ask where it comes from or where it's going. Just let it flow.

It was already dark outside. The only light in my room came from the hallway, from the door, which was both wide and high. There came the sound of a heavy cart, of metal doors, of food trays and cutlery. In moments it came into view: I knew it was called a food truck, although it was more like an a big steel box on wheels. It stood about five feet high, with louvered doors on the side, hiding shelves full of food trays for us patients. There was a large electric cord coiled and hung on the front. When plugged in, it would power the heating elements in the cart, to keep the food warm. Somehow I knew all this.

As big and heavy as it was, the juggernaut was pulled by a single, skinny girl with jet-black hair. She, like the nurses, was dressed in white, but with the addition of a blue apron and a blue paper cap that covered most of her hair. I liked her right away.

When she entered my room, she held her hand near the light switch. "Lights on? Lights off?"

"On, please," I replied, and she complied. Then she asked, "I don't have an order for you, so I brought all three choices: chicken, beef, and vegetarian. What'll it be?"

"Oh," I said. "I'm not sure..."

She paused for a minute, then a glimmer came into her eye. "You're the one with amnesia, right? Yeah, that must suck. Don't remember what kind of food you like?"

"I guess not."

"I'd go with the chicken," she suggested, and so I did.

She waited until I'd taken a taste and nodded before she turned to go.

But she stopped at the foot of my bed, her hand resting on the footboard. "How's it going?" she ventured, "If you don't mind my asking." She seemed genuinely interested. Sincere.

"No, I don't mind," I replied. "I'm okay. Physically, I'm fine. But I'm afraid that my memory won't come back at all, and I'll never know who I am."

She nodded. Made no comment.

"And I worry that somebody could come here and lie and pretend that I'm their family or wife or whatever, and the hospital will let them take me away."

She froze. Clearly she didn't expect that response, but she seemed to be the first person to understand the sense in what I was saying. She stood silent a moment, mouth slightly agape, blinking. She rubbed her eye, unsure of what to say.

Before she could comment — and expecting that she'd only tell me not to worry — I continued, "Most of all, I don't know where I'll go or what I'll do if the hospital lets me go before I get my memory back."

Her expression changed from alarmed and puzzled to simply uncomfortable. She shifted from one foot to the other... made some small gestures with her hands, and moved her lips as though she was about to speak.

I sighed.

"Hey, look, I'm sorry," I told her. "You were being nice, and I dumped all my angst on top of you. Sorry."

"No, no, it's fine," she assured me, with a half smile. "I asked. You answered. This was my first dose of — what was it? Angst? My first dose of angst today."

She stood at the foot of my bed for a few beats, tapping the footboard thoughtfully. She looked at me, nodding, not speaking. Then she turned her gaze to the window, as though an answer was out here, written in the sky. At last, she spoke and said, "Okay, listen. My name's Lucy. I'll be back for your tray in an hour, and we can talk then. No promises, but I might have, uh — a solution for you. Maybe. But mum's the word." She put her finger to her lips.

"Okay," I agreed, without knowing what exactly I was agreeing to.

"No promises, though!" she cautioned, pointing at me with a serious face.

"No promises," I repeated.

She turned to leave, then stopped with her hand on the door frame. Turning back, she told me, "Seriously, though: Don't tell anybody that I said anything, okay?"

I nodded, and she was gone.