The Man Who Forgot His Wife (2 page)

It was the first compassion anyone had shown me and suddenly I felt like crying. ‘Of course – medical help!’ I thought. ‘That’s what I need.’

‘Thank you! Thank you!’ I gushed to my best friend in the whole world. The location of the hospital was confirmed by a map on the side of a bus shelter; you just went straight up the road and turned left at the giant lump of chewing gum. Now I was going somewhere; just this mission gave me a fragment of hope. And so I strode up the busy main road like an amazed time traveller or an alien from another planet, trying to take it all in, some of it strangely familiar, some of it completely bizarre. There was a brief moment of hope when I saw a sign on a lamp post with the headline ‘
MISSING
’. Underneath was a photocopied picture of an overweight cat. And then the towering concrete block ahead turned into the hospital and I felt my pace quicken, as if the people in there might somehow immediately make everything better.

‘Excuse me – I really need to see a doctor,’ I gabbled at the front desk of Accident and Emergency. ‘I think I’ve had a sort of brain freeze or something. I can’t remember who I am or anything about myself. It’s like my memory’s been completely wiped.’

‘Right. Could I take your name, please?’

There was a split second when I actually went to answer this question in the casual manner in which it had been posed.

‘That’s what I’m saying – I can’t even remember my own name! It’s like, all personal information has suddenly been erased …’

‘I see. Well, could I take your address then, please?’

‘Um – sorry – I don’t think I’m making myself clear. I’ve got this extreme amnesia – I can’t remember a single thing about myself.’

The hospital receptionist managed to look harassed and bored at the same time.

‘Right. Who’s your registered doctor?’

‘Well,
I don’t know
, obviously. I was on a train, and then I suddenly realized I didn’t know why I was on it, where I was going or anything. And now I can’t remember where I live, where I work, what my name is, or even if this has ever happened to me before.’

She glanced up at me as if I was being particularly uncooperative. ‘NHS number?’ Her exasperated tone at least conceded that this was a long shot. The phone rang and she left me there in limbo while she dealt with someone more amenable. I stared at a poster asking me if I had remembered to examine my testicles. I didn’t know, but felt this probably wasn’t the moment.

‘I’m sorry, but we’re not allowed to process you without asking these questions,’ she said, when she returned her attention to me. ‘Are you currently on any prescriptions or regular medications?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘Do you have any allergies or follow any special diet?’

‘No idea.’

‘And could you please provide the name and contact details for your spouse or next of kin?’

That’s when I first noticed it. The indented ring of white flesh on my fourth finger. The ghostly scar where a wedding ring had
been.
All the fingertips were crowned with badly bitten nails, red raw around the edges.

‘Yes, next of kin! I have a wife maybe?’ I said excitedly. The ring could have been stolen, along with my wallet and phone. Perhaps I had been robbed and concussed and maybe my dear wife was looking for me right now. The shadow of a wedding ring filled me with hope. ‘Maybe my wife is at this moment ringing round all the hospitals, trying to find me,’ I said.

A week later I was still in the hospital waiting for her call.

Chapter 2

MY FINGERNAILS HAD
grown back and the skin was no longer gnawed away until it bled. I had a label on my wrist that said ‘
UNKNOWN WHITE MALE
’, though the hospital porters had dubbed me ‘Jason’ after the fictional amnesiac in
The Bourne Identity
. However, it turned out that knowing absolutely nothing about yourself was not quite as exciting and eventful as it appeared in Hollywood blockbusters. My status seemed to have evolved from emergency in-patient to layabout lodger at King Edward’s Hospital in West London. Already I found myself feeling sufficiently established to refer to the place as ‘Teddy’s’; the fundraising posters featured a friendly teddy-bear character that had presumably been chosen ahead of the image of a 1950s Teddy Boy or an item of lady’s lingerie.

I had no illness as such. I had been examined on the first day for a possible blow to the head, but there was no such logical explanation for why on Tuesday, 22 October, my brain had suddenly decided to restore factory settings. Each day I had woken up hoping that I might have woken up. But the split second of disorientation that you experience on stirring in a strange bed had now lasted an
entire
week. I kept reaching in vain for my missing past life, but it was like the ghostly sensation when you imagine your phone just vibrated in your pocket and then check to find that no one called.

I had been seen by a regular stream of doctors, neurologists and attendant students, for whom I was paraded as something of an interesting novelty. They were all united in their diagnosis. None of them had the faintest idea what had happened to me. One medical student asked me rather accusingly, ‘If you’ve forgotten everything, how come you can still remember how to talk?’

One of the neurologists, on the other hand, was particularly focused on my claim that I hadn’t lost memories of general current affairs or the wider world. ‘So would you remember, for example, the publication of
The Computer Under Your Cranium
by Dr Kevin Hoddy?’

‘Er, Kevin, lots of people might not remember that …’ interjected one of the other doctors.

‘Okay, what about the BBC Four series
The Brain Explorers
, co-presented by Dr Kevin Hoddy?’

‘No – I don’t recall that.’

‘Hmm, fascinating …’ said Dr Hoddy. ‘Absolutely fascinating.’

It only compounded my depression to realize that, at the moment, my very best friend in the whole world was Annoying Bernard in the next bed. In one way Bernard provided a valuable service to me during those first seven days. On the inside I was almost crippled with anxiety about what had happened to me, who I was and whether I would ever recover the rest of my life. But it never seemed like I had much time to dwell on this, due to being in a constant state of mild irritation at the man in the next bed congratulating me for remembering what I had for breakfast.

‘No, that’s not a symptom of my condition, Bernard. Remember, you were there when the consultant explained it all.’

‘Sorry, I forgot! It must be infectious!’

Bernard meant well; he wasn’t an unpleasant person – in fact, he was unremittingly jolly. I just found it a bit wearing to have to spend twenty-four hours a day with someone who seemed to think that my neurological disorder could be overcome if I was just upbeat and cheerful about the whole ‘bloomin’ business’.

‘I tell you what, there’s a few embarrassing things in my past that I wouldn’t mind forgetting, I can tell you!’ He chuckled. ‘New Year’s Eve 1999 – know what I mean?!’ and he mimed drinking as he rolled his eyes. ‘Oh yes, I wouldn’t mind forgetting that one! And a certain lady from the Swindon Salsa Dance Club … oh yes, I wouldn’t mind that episode being struck from the official record please, Mr Chairman!’

Eventually one doctor in particular seemed to take the lead on my case. Dr Anne Lewington was a slightly mad-looking consultant neurologist in her fifties who was supposed to be at this hospital only two days a week, but was so perplexed by my condition that she made a point of seeing me every day. Under her supervision I had a brain scan, I had wires attached to my head, I had audio-visual stimuli tests; but in every case the activity in my brain was apparently ‘completely normal’. It was a shame my brain had no button just to switch it off and then switch it back on again.

It took me a day or two to work out that Dr Lewington’s excitement at examining my results bore no relation whatsoever to any progress or understanding of what had happened to me.

‘Oooh, that’s interesting!’

‘What? What?’ I asked optimistically.

‘Both hippocampi are normal, the volumes of both entorhinal cortices and temporal lobes are normal.’

‘Right – so does that explain anything?’

‘Nothing at all. That’s what’s so interesting! No bilateral damage to the medial temporal lobe or diencephalic midline. It would appear that your extra-personal memories have been consolidated in the neocortex independently of the medial temporal lobe.’

‘Is that good or bad?’

‘Well, there’s no discernible logic or pattern to any of it. But then that’s typical of brain scans as a whole – such a mystery!’ she said, clapping her hands together in delight. ‘That’s what makes it so utterly compelling!’

I felt my body slumping back in the chair again.

‘And as for how memories are processed and stored – that is one of the most baffling areas of all. It’s such a thrilling subject to be researching!’

‘Hmmm, great …’ I nodded blankly. It was like having open-heart surgery and hearing, ‘Wow – what’s this big muscle in here pumping away of its own accord?!’

It was quite a few days before Dr Lewington had reached her conclusion and came and sat by my bed to explain what she thought had happened. She talked so quietly that Bernard was forced to turn off his radio on the other side of the curtain.

‘From cases similar to your own in the United States and elsewhere, it seems that you have experienced a “psychogenic fugue”; literally a “flight” from your previous life, possibly triggered by extreme stress or an inability to cope with whatever was happening.’

‘A fugue?’

‘Yes, this only happens to a handful of people every year in the whole world, though no two cases seem to be identical. The loss of personal items such as your phone or wallet was probably deliberate on your part as you slipped into the “fugue state”, and it’s usual to have no recall of consciously abandoning all traces of your former life. Clearly you have not forgotten everything or you would be like a newborn infant, but typically with “retrograde amnesia”, the patient would know, say, who Princess Diana was, but might not know that she had died.’

‘Paris. 1998,’ I said, showing off a little.

‘1997!’ came Bernard’s voice from the other side of the curtain.

‘Your recall of these
extra-personal
memories suggests you stand a good chance of getting your
personal
memories back and returning to your old life.’

‘But when exactly?’

‘Thirty-first of August,’ said Bernard. ‘She was pronounced dead around four a.m.’

Dr Lewington was reluctant to make any promises, and had to concede that there was no guarantee that I would definitely recover. And so I was left alone with this frightening thought, staring at the green curtains around my bed, wondering if I would ever make contact with my previous life again.

‘Maybe you’re a serial killer?’ said Bernard’s nonchalant voice.

‘Sorry, Bernard, are you talking to me?’

‘Well, she said it might have been caused by a need to shut out your past; perhaps it’s because you couldn’t stand the torment of being the undetected murderer of homeless vagrants whose bodies are stored in freezer cabinets in your basement.’

‘That’s a lovely thought. Thank you.’

‘It’s possible. Or perhaps you’re a terrorist.’

‘Well, let’s hope not, eh?’

‘A drug dealer. On the run from the Chinese triads!’

I resolved to say nothing in the hope that the speculation might peter out.

‘A pimp … A compulsive arsonist …’

There were some headphones somewhere. I looked under my bedside table for a way to block out the list of appalling crimes that might have precipitated my breakdown, most notably ‘paedophile’, ‘vivisectionist’ and ‘banker’.

I dismissed Bernard’s speculation as completely ridiculous, and then later that afternoon felt a flush of fear and guilt as I was informed that there were two policemen waiting for me in the ward sister’s office. In fact, they had not come to arrest me for war crimes against the people of Bosnia, as Bernard suggested. It
turned
out that they had come with a large file of ‘Missing Persons’ which they now went through very slowly, staring carefully at each photo before looking studiously at me.

‘Well, that one’s clearly not me,’ I found myself interjecting, desperate to see if I was on any of the later pages.

‘We have to give due consideration to every single file, sir.’

‘Yes, but I’m not that fat. Or black. Or a woman.’

They looked at me suspiciously to see if I might have attempted to cover up my African, feminine features and then reluctantly turned the page.

‘Hmmm, what do you think?’ said the officer, looking between my face and the photo of a wizened old pensioner.

‘He’s about eighty!’ I objected.

‘A lot of these people look older than they actually are, sir – they might have been on drugs or living on the street. How long have you had that beard?’

‘Er, well – since before I can remember …’

‘Just roughly speaking. A month, a year, ten years?’

‘I don’t know! Like the nurse said, I am suffering from retrograde amnesia, so my mind is a blank about everything prior to last Tuesday.’

They looked at each other, gently shook their heads in exasperation, then continued looking for any similarities between my appearance and the photos of a teenage girl, a Sikh, and a Jack Russell terrier, which at least they conceded had been put in the wrong file.

The fact that no one had reported me missing seemed to tell a story of its own. There had been no urgent reports on the news, no tearful appeals from a loving family, no full-page adverts in the newspaper for this dearly missed husband, father or work colleague. Had I been this lonely before my fugue, I wondered; had that been the stress that provoked my mental Etch-a-Sketch into shaking the screen clear to start again?

Whatever my past, all I could think about was being rescued from this desert island in a city of eight million people. I wanted to build a big fire on the beach, put a message in a bottle, spell out giant letters for passing aircraft.