Gasping awake and alive to the sounds of beeping and...cheering? Or was it crying? A little of both, and there were hands cupped around my neck then, stroking softly. Pulled toward a warm chest by tanned arms. Unfamiliar, it all smells unfamiliar.
"Tara," he mumbled in my ear.
Who is Tara?
Tara is a young woman, I learn later. She's been in an accident. Jason wants to marry her. After six years of dating, he's finally decided that he wants to start presenting her as "My wife, Tara." He is handsome, with loose limbs and floppy hair and a lopsided grin. I like him, but I'm not sure why. My body responds but my mind is strangely empty.
My mind clouds over sometimes and things recede into rainstorms of tears. I never fancied myself a writer before but now I sit at the computer at four A.M. frantically typing a story that's coming to me in flickering waves. There is a black-haired girl who dreams of becoming a biochemist. Not a horse-trainer or an artist or a ballerina or anything romantic, but someone who wants to begin as a lab assistant and draw up strange charts and exercise molecules on their tiny axes. She has green eyes and a habit of eating cherries in bed. She's living with a man named Benjamin. For some reason Benjamin has been walking around in a funk, and she heard him whisper on the phone: Christie this, Christie that.
Subject A arrived at the hospital at approximately 22:00 hours on January 5, 2018. An MRI revealed normal cognitive activity, however, there was extensive and inexplicable motor neuron damage. The subject was placed immediately on life support to avoid further damage to the brain. No family history of ALS or other motor neuron disease was evident. Subject had not displayed any symptoms (unusual weakness, falling, unsteady gait) prior to collapse. Such sudden and severe damage to a specific set of neurons indicates possible exposure to toxic contaminants or severe and prolonged hypoxia. The subject's employers were evasive when asked what types of chemicals they had been researching.
Tonight, Christie is working late and hoping that Benjamin will bring her dinner. She has a terrible headache and just to emphasize the seriousness of this headache, I will have her collapse on the bench. I see her collapsing over and over again, falling just-so, hair in her mouth, ungainly.
"Are you coming to bed?"
Jason stands in the doorway, leaning on the doorframe, eyes half-aware and body hunched with sleep's gravity. I tell him soon, as soon as I figure out what Benjamin does when he arrives and finds Christie sprawled like a flattened swan on the floor. Jason exhales and goes back to bed. When I awaken, he is stroking my hair and my neck is cramped and my keyboard is emitting a constant chirp because I've been holding down the keys with my ear.
Later, I play absently with my earrings only to find that they're gone. I ask Jason if he's seen them. The ones with the little fake rubies, I swear I had them on last night and if you could maybe check in the bathroom?
"You've never had pierced ears," Jason looks at me in this new sideways half-stare. He's been doing that a lot lately. I wonder if I should see a psychiatrist: my sleep schedule is taxing and I still don't know what I'm doing here. I should be looking for a job but it all seems so pointless. Jason tells me that before the accident I was a mechanic. A cute lady mechanic who fixed his engine and damn near broke his heart. Jason can be so corny sometimes. Part of me thinks it's cute while the other part of me is saying, PLEASE. He rolls my eyes right back at me.
Subject B arrived at approximately 08:00 hours on January 6, 2018 displaying signs of severe cerebral trauma. The subject had been discovered on the shoulder of U.S. 101, near San Jose, CA. Investigators at the scene determined that the subject had skidded while riding her motorcycle and fallen into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Her head was literally run over by one of the vehicle's front tires. The driver apparently stopped the car, moved Subject A to the side of the road, and left the scene. No witnesses have come forward so far and the case is being treated as a felony hit-and-run. Crime scene investigators are attempting to determine the make of the vehicle from the tire marks on the subject's helmet, which was crushed.
I feel this scar under my hairline, and the psychiatrist tells me that it's natural to feel anxious after such an accident. He asks me about Christie and Benjamin and I laugh and explain that I've got writers block. For some reason I can't figure out what made her fall over. I can't quite capture Benjamin's expression when he walks in the door, I can't force his tear ducts to trickle, or his voice to go hoarse. I simply don't know.
The good doctor gives me sleeping pills, like all doctors. He says I've got that post traumatic stress disorder. Isn't that what the veterans get? The psychiatrist asks me more about Benjamin. I tell him about how he never wants to be called Ben, or Benny. I talk about his cat, Rufus, and the little shop he works at. Benjamin repairs computers and doesn't get paid much for it, but he gets very involved in his work and therefore loves it. He pouts when things don't come together, but he dances around the room whooping when stuff works. Like a little boy. He has brown hair and green eyes and a voice like the ocean. Christie laughs like a terrier, but Benjamin doesn't mind. I am to go home and draw a picture of Benjamin and bring it to my appointment next week.
I spend some money and come home with an easel and some paints and nice brushes.
"You're going to be an artist now or something?" Jason looks interested.
"I don't know. I thought painting might help me finish these stories."
"Maybe some stories weren't meant to be finished,"
"Nobody says things like that in real life," I scold Jason.
He's stopped arguing. I have a feeling I'm turning into the crazy sick girlfriend. At least I still shower and eat. I'm not going to let myself go and let my hair get all stringy. But Jason doesn't try to plan the wedding with me anymore. He just plays on the computer all evening when he gets home from work. Some nights he doesn't come home, but I only know this because he wakes me up when he walks in the front door.
I paint my picture of Benjamin. It's a portrait, front view, shoulders-and-up. He's got this sweater on. It's brown and I manage to get the texture just right. Maybe Jason will cheer up a little if I can get into this art thing. Maybe I got clocked on the head hard enough to jar some talent loose. Maybe if I keep exercising my right brain I'll remember more.
The psychiatrist is impressed. "Looks like you spent a lot of time on that."
"I don't have anything else to do right now," I told him.
"What's Benjamin looking at? He looks upset."
"He's looking at Christie, right after busting in the door of the lab."
"You've got kind of a...soft focus effect going on. Was that intentional?"
"It's part of the overall composition, I suppose."
"Can you finish your story now?"
"I don't know. I don't think so."
This might be a story that can be finished only in pictures.
So here we have fragments of Tara: Jason has pulled out the old photo albums, which show a tiny blonde teenager eating ice cream. Riding a skateboard. Red-faced in a fluffy prom dress. Scowling at a dead bird: what a weird thing to take a picture of. We also have Tara's bathroom cabinet, filled with cosmetics and powders. Did I really used to smell like this?
We got cable. I think Jason wanted those channels you can watch in bed when your girlfriend insists on painting and pacing in the living room all night. He closes the door now.
I've been leaving the Disovery channel on. And the Learning channel. I think maybe the accident took something away from me because I seem to remember having much quicker speech and different tracks of knowledge. That radio everyone plays in their head when they're idle or working on drudgery: the one I have now is all pop music and commercial jingles and love scenes between Christie and Benjamin in there. It used to run more academic tracks: I feel empty places where I used to be good at math and interested in esoteric matters. Jason says my vocabulary is funny now. I'm hoping that having educational stuff on in the background might help reinfect my subconscious with more substance.
I hear the TV blaring about monkeys. They do a piece on that Dr. Robert White who switched the heads of two monkeys and found that they lived for a few minutes. This is interesting. I turn up the volume.
Subject A's employers presented a contract signed by the subject stating that in the event of any disabling injury leaving her unable to communicate, she wanted to donate her body to the laboratory for their human biotechnological studies department.
Christie would watch this sort of thing, I realize, so I add it to the story. Another picture this time: people don't normally paint pictures of people watching television, but this one works for some reason. Christie has her elbows on her knees, and they're all pokey but she doesn't really notice. She's not wearing any makeup. It's kind of a side view. She has a half-filled glass in front of her, stained with what might be wine.
"That's a very interesting question you've asked, and there is some exciting research going on right in this very facility to that end."
A man with a kindly-uncle voice is being interviewed by a group of sixth-graders. This is the public access channel now, but they're doing a science program. I think that's so great that people are trying to get kids interested in science.
"So you can, like, take someone's BRAIN, and..."
A little girl's voice is cut off by one of those emergency-broadcasting system tests. Drat. I wanted to hear that.
The signal blips back on after about five minutes. By that time, Dr. Whatsisname is standing in front of a big glass window. The kids are gathered around him.
"We can't go in here because you all have germs that could make the people inside very sick. But you can peek in. They're asleep so they won't even see you."
Subject B was placed on full life support in the intensive care unit. We were unable to locate any relatives; the subject's fiancee later informed us that Subject B had been estranged from her parents since the age of sixteen, when she'd left Canada. She was insured through her employers at ______ (name is blacked out) Motor Works, Inc., and was a full U.S. citizen. The fiancee presented a large sum of money and insisted that "everything possible be done" to keep Subject B alive. He was persistent to the point of having to be physically removed from the ICU room.
Giggling from some of the children, and scattered cries of, "I don't have germs, YOU have germs!"
The camera does a panoramic sweep of the room behind the glass. A row of five beds along the back wall, filled with unconscious bodies of varying size. All of them have strange metal-and-plastic shields over their heads and upper torsos. There is a thin strip of red carpet on the floor.
"...and this is one of our technicians here," the doctor says as a man in his twenties tries to edge by the crowd. I can see him trying to edge by the crowd of snickering preadolescents. I can see his eyes scanning over the scene and I know he is wondering what all the cameras are doing there. "Benjamin just started here last week," the doctor says.
My heart is pounding like crazy. Tara's hands are threading in and out of her hair, which is sticking to her sweaty neck. Jason comes rushing out of the bedroom and finds me gasping. He turns off the TV and leads me to bed. For the first time in months, I let him.
Subject B's condition continued to deteriorate. Her brain swelled severely and she had to be heavily sedated and restrained to prevent convulsions from causing further damage. She was pronounced brain-dead on January 18, 2018, 12 days after her accident. Activity in the cerebral cortex was indetectible, however, reflexes seemed intact.
"It's just a story. You're...superimposing your fictional fantasies on reality," Jason tells me. "It's not him,"
"You sound like you've been seeing a shrink," I remark.
"Well, I kinda have. It's hard to deal with a...with a brain-injured girlfriend. God, I can't believe I just said that out loud."
"I still want to know what's so terrible about this accident that you can't talk about it at all. And I know that was my - Christie's - Benjamin on that show. I need to find out where that lab is. I need to go there."
Jason rolled his eyes. "So there can be only one brown-haired dreamy-eyed computer technician named Benjamin in the whole world?"
"You think I'm delusional."
"I don't think it's healthy to dwell on the past so much. I mean, I said I'd marry you. I had all this money put away to get a house for us! And you're...you're beautiful and talented and sweet. I love you, Tara. I love you and I will never stop loving you."
I watch Jason's gaze flit over my form as he says "love". Each time he focuses on something different: face, chest, hips. He loves my body, he loves Tara, but his words sting me like betrayal. I don't know why.
I don't return the "I love you." Always a bad sign, I guess.
The psychiatrist looks very concerned when I tell him I saw Benjamin on TV. He writes a different prescription for me: risperidone.
That night I am out in blackness and I can't feel the sheets or my own hands. Jason sits up in bed next to me. In the morning he tells me that he could barely tell whether I was breathing.
Subject A arrived here at Martin Hoang Laboratories on January 10, 2018. Exposure to experimental neurotoxic agent was confirmed when rats in her former work area displayed similar sudden collapse. Remarkably, the rats recovered when their damaged motor neurons were bypassed by an implant spliced into their basal ganglia. 8 out of 10 affected rats regained full movement abilities and are currently under observation.
It was immediately surmised that these implants might have the potential to help humans with debilitating motor neuron diseases such as ALS, as well as victims of injury-induced paralysis. However, the human nervous system is far too complex for the implants we used in the rats to be effective. It has been theorized that the cerebral cortex from one individual's brain could be attached to a "partial brain" from another individual, including the motor cortex and the parietal lobe. Ideally, this procedure would result in a fully functional human being with the ability to move, breathe, process information, and maintain a sense of identity.
I've stopped writing and painting now. The well is dry. Now all I can think about is traveling. I can't go anywhere because they won't let me drive yet so I walk everywhere. Around the house, to the park. I buy things at the store just to feel like I've accomplished something: transactions define us. This story continues with the accumulation of trinkets: a cat figurine, colored marzipan, comic books.
And it continues with every night I spend in the arms of a man whose name is not Benjamin. It might eventually end when I accept that some memories were never meant to be mine, even if they are the memories of characters in one of my stories. The best fictions of all know how to keep secrets even from their authors.
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