Me Again (4 page)

Chapter 5

I
CLOSED MY EYES and started to drift off. I know, you’d think after six years in a coma, I’d have had my fill of sleep, but I still found it necessary to nap frequently. Doctors assured me that as my strength increased, my need for so much sleep would abate.

But like everything else they told me, there was a certain lack of conviction to their words. Some of the best medical minds in the country had determined that I would never awaken from my coma, so I think my return to consciousness had shaken my doctors’ professional confidence, leaving them groping for explanations. A
miracle
– that’s the word they resorted to most frequently, although some preferred the more scientific-sounding
medical miracle
, perhaps because the term implied that their medical efforts revived me. But they didn’t.

They did sustain me; I don’t deny that. The comatose are not big participants in life, and require a lot of attention and effort from others in the areas of feeding, hygiene, and waste management, to name a few. For this, I had several hospitals and insurance companies to thank. But as far as me waking up was concerned, nobody had really that figured out, so I tended to consider my doctors’ predictions with some degree of skepticism.

At any rate, just as I felt myself falling into that feeling of increased gravity that precedes sleep, I heard a man clear his throat. Startled, I fought through a haze of semi-consciousness and opened my eyes to see a blurry figure standing in the doorway. I reached for my glasses.

“Jonny?” the man said, stepping tentatively closer. As he came into focus I realized I recognized him, which was something I couldn’t say about very many people. I recognized him, but I had no memory of him – that was strange. Then I realized how I recognized him. My parents had been showing me photo albums when they visited, in an effort to jog my memory. That’s where I had seen this man. That meant this had to be –

“Teddy?” I asked.

The man smiled, then came closer. “Jesus, Jonny – I was afraid you maybe didn’t remember me. I mean, Mom and Dad said you’d forgotten a lot of stuff. But I was hoping to God you hadn’t forgotten your little brother.”

Teddy leaned down, offering me his hand.

“How ya doin’, bro?” he asked, crushing my hand in his.

“Hi,” I said. Okay, so today wasn’t my day for clever conversation.

Teddy let go of my hand and plopped into the chair next to my bed.

“Man, it’s good to see you,” he said. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

I groped for my notepad and went through the familiar litany of asking if I could write rather than talk.

Scanning the note I showed him, he said, “Sure, bro. That’s cool. Whatever works for you.” Then he scowled at me. “You can hear me okay, right? I mean, you don’t need me to write, too, do you?”

I shook my head and tried to smile. I was getting better at smiling – it was something I’d been practicing in the mirror. Smiling seemed to put the people around me more at ease. My condition caused most of them to approach me with a level of exaggerated diplomacy that attempted to ignore all the ways in which I was not quite up to snuff. I think one of the main differences between my kind of brain damage and mental retardation is that at least I was aware of people’s discomfort with my plight. But I’m not sure I’d call this an advantage.

I decided to take the lead, and wrote
SO WHAT’S NEW?

I reflected that literally anything he might say in response would qualify. Sort of like those commercials I’ve seen for TV reruns, where the network proudly proclaims “It’s new to
you
” – that pretty well summed up what every day was like for me.

Teddy read my words, then laughed. “Jesus, where do I begin?” He pulled a heavy gold ring off his pinky and began to fidget with it. It was molded to look like a rough gold nugget.

“Well, for one thing, work is going great. I’m kicking ass and taking names. Bro, you wouldn’t believe how good I’m doing. I mean, things got a little weird after all that Enron and WorldCom shit. They’ve really tightened up on things since then, you know, with everybody paying a lot more attention to the books these days. But we came through without a scratch, thank God. The old man just put a couple of guys quietly out to pasture, you know, real low-profile like, and nobody has said boo.”

“Boo?” I said. The word made no sense to me. Then again, neither did anything else he’d just said.

Teddy looked at me, picking up on this. “Maybe I should slow down. I mean, did you get any of that?”

Here I’ll confess to falling into my old habits from my grunting days: since the answer to his question was no, I remained silent.

“Jonny, did Mom and Dad tell you about my job?”

THEY SAID YOU WORK IN CHICAGO
, I wrote.

“Did they tell you where? Or what I was doing?”

I shook my head.

Teddy slipped his ring back on his finger. “Jonny, I’m at Fisk and Tucker. Just like you. Well, like you were. You know, at your old firm.”

He seemed nervous about telling me this. I couldn’t understand why. Clearly we’d grown up with similar interests and had thus pursued the same profession.

Teddy went on. “Let me tell you, a lot has changed in the last six years, bro.” He was watching me intently, looking for some reaction that I didn’t know how to provide.

“I mean, I know I was never any good in school. Hell, that’s why I quit – which was a dumb-ass move, I finally realized. Shit, I only needed eight credits.” Teddy laughed again, shaking his head at whatever he was remembering.

“Anyhoo, a year or so after you got sick, Mom and Dad finally talked me into going back and finishing school. I got the sheepskin, and then started looking for work in Chicago. I mean, Mom and Dad are cool to live with and all, but shit, I was pushing thirty, you know? It was time to get the hell out of Springfield. You know what I’m talking about – hell, you left skid marks out of here when you split town.”

This last bit corroborated what my parents had told me. Apparently I’d not been a fan of Springfield, although I couldn’t remember why. All I had seen of it so far was this facility, and the only unusual thing I had observed was an inordinate profusion of Lincoln-related items in the hospital gift shop.

“Christ, I thought Mom and Dad had told you about this. About how your buddy hooked me up. You know, Brandon? He was awesome, man. Promised me a job as soon as I passed the CPA exam.”

Incidentally, abbreviations and acronyms were still tricky for me. But my parents had told me enough about my old job for me to have remembered this term. And my old job had apparently become my brother’s new job.

I guess I haven’t mentioned yet that I used to be an accountant. A licensed CPA.

And now I couldn’t even count.

* * * * *

As if he had read my mind, Teddy spoke up.

“Mom and Dad say you’re having some trouble with numbers and stuff.”

He smiled as he said this, an odd smile. I guess he was trying to encourage me.

YEAH
, I wrote,
CAN’T REMEMBER HOW NUMBERS WORK. I FORGOT A LOT OF THINGS
.

Like you, for instance, I thought silently.

Teddy nodded thoughtfully as he read my words, still managing to keep that encouraging smile going. Then his face grew concerned.

“Is that going to be permanent? Or will it come back eventually?”

I shrugged, another gesture I’d mastered that had simplified communication for me significantly. When you know as little as I did, a shortcut for saying “I don’t know” can come in
very
handy.

“Well,” Teddy said, his smile returning, “probably best not to rush things. You just take it easy and keep on getting better.”

His smile was beginning to annoy me – it was seeming less sympathetic and more, I don’t know,
triumphant
. But I was probably just getting cranky. I should have been happy to hear about how well he was doing, but it had been a taxing day, what with me gaining and losing a girlfriend in a matter of minutes.

That reminded me...

VICTORIA WAS HERE
, I wrote.

“Really?” Teddy’s smile dimmed a little. “Wow – that must have been kinda strange, after all these years.”

IT’S OVER
, I wrote, then thought of the exact words she had used.
SHE MOVED ON
.

Teddy grimaced in sympathy as he read. Come to think of it, he had probably assumed Victoria would have given up on me – hell, everybody else had – and had been waiting to see how badly I’d take the news.

“Wow,” he said again. “That’s, uh... that’s rough, bro.”

I shrugged again. Versatile thing, this shrugging.

For the second time today I wrote
LOTS OF THINGS HAVE CHANGED
.

Teddy’s smile was returning to its original wattage. “Ain’t that the truth,” he said. “Things have changed
completely
.” The big gold ring came off his finger and was back in play.

I decided to change the subject. Time for some small talk – talk that didn’t focus on yet another aspect of my life that sucked.

HOW LONG ARE YOU IN TOWN?

“Just for the day,” Teddy said. “I’ve got to take the train back home tomorrow. Listen, I’m real sorry it took me ’til now to get down here. Things have just been crazy at work, you know?”

IT’S OK. DOCTORS ARE KEEPING ME BUSY.

“I’ll bet they are,” Teddy said. “Well, you just keep taking it one step at a time, bro. Slow and steady wins the race, right?”

Well, I had the slow part down. The steady, not so much. And I wasn’t yet taking
any
steps at a time. My physical therapy sessions were focused mostly on restoring my ability to flex and move my limbs, but I was far from being able to support my own weight yet.

“Slow and steady,” he repeated, apparently running out of things to say.

I couldn’t even talk, and I felt the same.

“You just stay focused on what’s important, bro,” said Teddy. “I mean, you can’t be thinking about coming back to work any time soon. You’ve got bigger fish to fry, what with the fascia and all.”

I wrote
YOU MEAN APHASIA?

“Yeah, whatever it’s called. That thing with the talking. So you’ll probably have your hands full for a while.”

I nodded. Currently my hands were full of a pencil and paper, but I knew what he meant.

Teddy continued to speak. One downside of my current form of communication was that it left a lot of silence, which I’ve found people feel compelled to fill.

“Probably just as well. I know I told you I’m doing great and all, but there’ve been some cutbacks at the firm. So I probably wouldn’t get my heart set on coming back there anytime soon.” Teddy had now taken to repeatedly slipping the ring first on his left pinky, then on his right.

“But me and Brandon, we’ll be sure to put in a good word for you with the other firms up there. You know, if you get the whole math thing together and all.”

I had a feeling that
the whole math thing
wasn’t coming back to me. Ever.

It was strange how I could sense that, but it was like I was walking down a long narrow hallway, lined on both sides with a seeming endless series of doors. Some of them were wide open – those were the memories I hadn’t lost. Some doors were slightly ajar – things that had escaped my mind, but easy enough to retrieve by opening the door and walking in. Then there were some closed doors. The parts of my mind that lurked behind them were much harder to access. In some cases I felt I was making some headway. But some of those doors were locked, and I didn’t always have a key. That’s how it felt with numbers. I could just tell that door was never going to open.

And I could tell that’s what Teddy was hoping. But why? I decided to push things a bit`, and started writing.

DOCTORS SAY MY RECOVERY IS A MIRACLE
. Well, that much was true. But I continued with
SO I BET I’LL BE COUNTING IN NO TIME
.

Bull’s-eye. Teddy’s eyes bulged as he read. And the smile he’d adopted when I handed him the pad became tight and forced.

“I bet you will, too, bro,” he finally said. “And I’ll do everything in my power to help you.”

I smiled. He smiled. We were a very cheerful pair.

The silence went on. I was used to it, and assumed that he would crack first. Sure enough, he finally spoke, his face growing serious once again.

“Man, I still can’t get over the fact that you could even
have
a stroke when you did. Christ, bro, you were only twenty-eight.” Teddy shook his head. “That just blows my mind.”

A blown mind was a subject I knew a little something about.
IT’S RARE
, I wrote,
BUT NOT UNHEARD OF
.

I looked at my words and realized I was parroting a phrase my doctors had used to describe the likelihood of a young man having a stroke:
rare, but not unheard of
. Those same doctors had repeatedly found it necessary to quote statistics supporting this fact. Perhaps they thought I might take some consolation from hearing the demographics of my fellow stroke victims quantified, forgetting that the numbers they recited made no sense to me. Or maybe they were just trying to convince me that yes, it could happen to somebody my age. I was convinced. Really.