Reflection, page 3
part #1 of Reflection Series
This was dragging on way too long! At this rate, she wouldn’t get to talk with Creed until tomorrow, and the thought of spending another day without Nick made her breath catch.
“I attend Washington University in St. Louis,” she confessed. “I live in an apartment by the school and work at the apartment office part-time. Well, it’s supposed to be part time—” she half smiled, “but Bob, my boss, uses the other part of my time as much as possible.” She chuckled at the thought.
Doctor Adams whipped open the folder and ran his finger down the page. And Heather rolled her eyes at being treated like a four-year-old.
Her impatience surfaced vocally. “Is that sufficient information for you to discern my mental state or would you like me to continue?”
He didn’t speak for a moment. “I’m sorry, Heather, but your circumstance is a little different than the norm.” He removed his glasses with unmistakable bewilderment. “I’ve never seen someone come out of your state with such assertiveness. Typically, once the brain alters from its regular rhythmic patterns to a place where there are no days and nights, or wakeful and sleep patterns, a state unaffected by the passage of time, or what we refer to as ‘without time’, it doesn’t do so well. For most, the brain deteriorates to a vegetable state, even if it does awaken.”
She didn’t know whether to feel special or freakish, so she let herself feel both. And then she asked, “My condition, my predicament, my state? So what you’re saying is, I’m not well.”
“Precisely the reverse, you are very well. Much better than anyone anticipated.” The folder remained open, a good sign. And she was well, he said it himself. And now, her patience was used up. She was in a hospital, surrounded by strangers, completely lost to the world, feeling like her senses were bionic, and she wanted answers!
So she pulled a Heather. In agitation, she fiddled with the buttons on the bed, automated the head ascent, and moved gingerly till her backside was comfortable. Then she became as serious as a terminal illness. “Please!” she demanded with one last resolve; her final word until her questions were answered completely.
His eyes finally decided, promptly finding the folder again. And then, by way of introduction, he cleared his throat.
“It all started on a cold December night. You were jogging alone by a busy highway. A car driving along the highway lost control in the snow, swerving onto the sidewalk and hitting you. The accident was very serious. It was no short of a miracle you survived.”
All of a sudden a wall in her brain crumbled down and the words “Avoid the bright lights!” yelled out too loud to be silenced by her skull. But Dr. Adams crossed a leg, unaware, shifting the orange folder in his lap.
“You were rushed to St. Anthony’s Hospital here in St. Louis,” he went on. “The EMTs struggled to keep you alive during transport, but you flatlined. Fortunately, they were able to revive you. Yet you sustained severe head trauma from the collision, which kept you in critical care. You stayed with us for a short time, responding to stimuli.
“However the damage to your brain became progressively worse. We transferred you here, St. John’s Hospital. During the transfer, your friend Creed was by your side. You spoke a few words to him, and then your words stopped making sense. We were still hopeful you might stay with us, but instead you slipped deeper into unconsciousness. You have been in a comatose state ever since.”
“A comatose state.”
“Yes, Heather.”
“You mean, like a coma?”
“Yes.”
She laid her head back, wondering who made up such an incredulous story and blocking all validity of his words, though in the recesses of her fragile soul an uncomfortable seed of truth was planted.
“We immediately phoned your father, Bill.”
Bill . . . Bill . . . “My father?”
“Yes, Heather. Do you remember him?” His eyes were trying not to show excitement.
“Bill?”
His inflated eyes nodded.
Heather dropped her head, trying to navigate through her muddled brain.
“That’s fine if you don’t remember.” He referred back to the folder.
“Before we got a hold of Creed, like I said, we made contact with your father.” He shuffled through the folder and then held up a picture of Bill. “Maybe this will help. Do you recognize him?”
The picture catalogued in Heather’s mind, meandering through the archives until landing in a dark spot where negative people and places were kept.
“You don’t have to answer. I can tell by your face you remember him. You don’t like him, do you?”
“No,” she answered briefly.
“That’s fine. He’s your ‘step’ father Heather, did you remember that?”
No, she hadn’t remembered that. In fact, she hadn’t remembered him at all until viewing his picture just now. But for some reason, she nodded a lie.
“He was very uncooperative when we first called him right after the accident. Not much of a support to you. However, your friend Creed seems to be sufficiently supportive, like family.”
Still piecing together the previous information on Bill, she nodded uncertainly.
Another picture was presented. “Do you know this woman?”
A typical old lady with a face old and withered like a giant raisin, framed by wavy, silver hair. Heather recognized her instantly. Vindra Perkins from the college administration building.
Her eyes left the picture and focused on the doctor. “Is her name . . . Vindra?”
“Yes! Yes it is,” his face was in shock. “What else do you remember about her?”
Why was her picture in my file? What was her significance to me? Heather puzzled. “Vindra Perkins,” she guardedly responded. “She works at the college.”
“You are so close, Heather. That’s excellent. You worked with Vindra at the local library in Nevada, Missouri; the town you grew up in. Vindra was more than just your boss, and you and Creed refer to her as ‘Grandma V’.”
What was this, some kind of hidden camera joke that Creed was pulling on her? That would be so like him.
“You and her were extremely close. She was like a second mother to you.”
On that note, what did they know of her mom? And little brother, Max . . . If they knew Bill, they must know . . .
“When Vindra came to visit you upon your arrival here at St. John’s, a couple days after you fell in a coma, she said you squeezed her hand. She told the doctors you were still very alive and that she would pay all your medical expenses to keep you on the machines until you woke up. I guess you could say, in a physical sense, she is the reason for your survival. However, what kept you alive mentally I am very anxious to know.”
Another picture was brought forward. But before Heather zoomed in, she noticed Dr. Adam’s face sink. A family picture. There was Heather’s mother, smiling her benevolent, warm smile with her hand resting on Heather’s shoulder. And Max too, with his “picture” smile that she suddenly remembered he always gave, the one that manipulated his lips so he looked like the joker in Batman. Heather had to giggle at the sight.
“That’s remarkable,” Dr. Adams stated, again.
For some reason, Dr. Adam’s intrusion in her personal moment crept under her skin. And though she felt bad afterwards, she advised him, “You know, you can cut out all the cheerleader comments. I’d rather you just be straight with me.”
He didn’t seem shocked or bothered though. “You’re right,” he replied. “You don’t seem like the fluffy type. It’s just, you are an extraordinary exception to the recovery process after being in such a lengthy coma. Most patients have lost their vocabulary entirely and must relearn to talk. With them, I can be as vague or as direct as the situation calls for. But you are very different than the norm. So you can see why I’m completely excited about you, and a bit tentative.”
This was all so preposterous! But the growing seed of truth was sprouting and, as uncomfortable as the weed was, she couldn’t uproot it.
“Okay, Heather, if that’s how you’d like it, I will be straight with you. But then you must do something for me. Don’t doubt your feelings. I know you’re holding back. Truthfully, and as I said before, you’re doing exceptional. But the more you open up, the quicker the memories will return. And your brain will then start to sort everything out. Fair?”
Though slow to nod, she understood what he was saying. The only way she’d get to go home was to prove to him that she was all right. The problem was, she wasn’t all right, not since the quirks began.
“Will you tell me what you remember about your life?” he asked.
“Even if it sounds ridiculous?”
“Nothing about your situation is ridiculous.”
If he wasn’t so genuinely likeable, she may have resisted. But in the end, the combination of her two thorns—curiosity and impatience—always won out. “Okay.” She paused to find where to start. “I can’t really remember much of anything about my past. My first memory goes back a few months, the day I started college. I remember being nervous to start school that morning. So much so, that even waking up with all those gaps in my memory seemed ordinary enough. But I guess now that I think about it, nothing about that day was ordinary.
“I remember waking up, and not really knowing where I was. My brain felt like mush. All my memories, my entire past, was gone, completely erased from my mind. I knew the simple things, like my name and how old I was, but other than that, my head was totally blank. Oh, except for this obnoxious beeping sound in my ears that wouldn’t go away.”
Dr. Adam’s face fell into this odd mix of alarm and intrigue. Heather’s eyes followed his to the right, where they landed on the heart rate monitor by her bedside. “Did it sound like that?” he asked.
It took a moment, but when the beeps from her memories aligned with the current beeping in the room, goose bumps swarmed her skin. “Exactly like that,” she whispered, connecting another dot between her memories and the present. “Are you saying that while I was at school, I could hear the heart monitor from this room?—”
Dr. Adams stood, causing her to start. “What?” she asked. “What is it?”
But his dismount off the chair turned him around, causing him to face the other direction.
“Did I say something wrong?” she persisted.
He turned back toward her, his face white with amazement. “No, no, Heather,” he said in a voice that sounded like a strangled cat. “Please, please, sit back down.” After realizing he was the one standing and not her, he found his seat again and then with his entire hand, gave a hearty massage down his face and blew out a heavy breath.
“Maybe,” he began after a moment, when his face was pink again, “I should explain a few things before we start into your memories. Would that be all right?”
She nodded, still more curious than concerned, but feeling both.
“First things first, then,” he said, regaining his composure. “I should mention that as you talk about what you remember, you must expect for blank areas—blank areas in those memories, in relationships, especially in speech. It is very likely that you’ve lost some common vocabulary. For example, coma patients will wake up saying ‘cooker’ when referring to an oven, or ‘cold time’ when attempting to say ‘winter’. Don’t be alarmed by this; your vocabulary will return eventually, with practice.
“Next, and I don’t expect this to be much of a problem since your mind seems to be sorting out memories with tremendous precision. But it’s worth mentioning. Some of your memories might not be . . . exactly . . . um, should I say, accurate? You see, on occasion patients have dreams while in their coma. And you seem to be one of those special situations. These dreams can mix fantasy with reality, and memories of people and places sometimes jumble. But don’t worry too much about this. We’ll work through it together.”
Yeah, Heather thought to herself. Like Grandma V. “So, for instance, Grandma V,” she found herself commenting. “I remember her now. It’s crazy how I could have forgotten who she really is, now that I remember her so well, and what she means to me. But then the lady in the administration building . . . she wasn’t real? None of that was real?”
“It’s not that it wasn’t real. Let me see if I can explain. While you were dreaming in your coma, you may have been reliving some of your memories, calling them back to the surface, so to speak. And your mind thought you were living them for the first time. The problem that can arise there, is that in dreams we have the ability to modify or even embellish our memories. And you seem to have falsely plugged your Grandma Vindra into one of your memories.
“But we’re definitely getting ahead of ourselves here. I can’t be sure of any of this until we go over some of your memories.”
Heather was in a staring trance, the thoughts in her head too heavy to sustain. Were all her memories warped in a similar way? Were the experiences she remembered—the last few months of her first semester at college—nothing but a playground of imagination and dreams while she rested in a coma?
But when her mind caught hold of a tall, broad physique, and a face under the shadow of a baseball hat, the muscles in her face lost their strength and her words shattered her control, riding on her weak breath. “But I did come out here for school, right?” she begged. “I left Nevada City and came to college.”
“Yes, you did.”
Her eyelids closed against the impending moisture. Her toughness seemed to be fading, and rightly so. She’d lost almost everything: her memories, apparently her well-being, and she’d nearly lost her life. She could not lose him.
“Shortly after your high school graduation you packed up your car and took off . . . Is there something wrong, Heather?”
“No,” she shook her head, resting rearward to funnel the tears back into their ducts. “You were saying? My car . . . ”
He waited for more, urging her on with a guilt glance.
“Okay. Um, a brown BMW?” she asked in tentative syllables.
“Given to you by Vindra Perkins. Good.” He continued, “So, you packed up your car and took off. Creed told us it was very sudden. You got accepted before telling Creed you’d even applied. You registered for classes on your own and secured an apartment near the college, and then you just left.
“Understandably so, you had no one at home other than Vindra Perkins and Creed, and your grades were very good, so getting into college wouldn’t have been a problem. You didn’t tell Creed much detail other than you felt you needed to get away, felt a pull to come here. He tried to talk you out of it but I suppose making something of your life was your priority.
“Creed informed us you attended summer and fall semesters at Washington University here in St. Louis and were currently enrolled in winter semester classes.” Heather nodded vigorously as if to substantiate his words, though she figured he made a mistake about how long she’d attended college. She only recalled summer semester. “Creed dropped all your classes that were to begin in . . . ” he referred to the folder, “ . . . in January, so you wouldn’t get a negative withdrawal on your transcripts. He gathered your stuff out of your apartment but I’m assuming your landlord figured you walked out on your contract.”
When she thought of Bob the Boss her heart pinched.
Her mind was tugging in several diverse directions: Bob . . . Mom . . . Creed—right outside her door! And Nick . . . at the forefront of her thoughts. If Dr. Adam’s words were true, where did that put her truth? How did her life fit together? The confusion was still pressing upon her. She already knew that some of her memories were inaccurate, like Vindra Perkins working in the administration building.
“Please, Heather. Tell me your thoughts.”
“I do remember experiences. Most of them are compatible with what you’re telling me, but a few aren’t. How can that make any sense? And everything’s out of order. You said I attended school summer and fall semesters. But I only remember summer. And when I attended school, I could hear the heart monitor from this room. And Creed would pop in and out of my world like he was a ghost. How does that happen? Oh, and I was in California on vacation just yesterday.”
“Yes, it was all just yesterday, according to your mind. In response to school, though you only remember summer semester, I can assure you that you also attended fall semester. Your memories probably haven’t gotten there yet. I know it all feels very confusing. As I mentioned, I will help you sort out the facts as you share your story with me. But some of those discrepancies might come as a shock to you. There’s no doubt in my mind some of your memories are inaccurate. Are you okay with this?”
“I’m okay,” she said so he would know that she was. Also, she was beginning to believe him. He was telling her the truth.
“Okay, tell me everything you remember, beginning with your very first memory, the first day of school, right when you woke up. Start at the very beginning . . . ”
Chapter 1
I woke in the morning wrapped in my yarn-tied quilt, the same quilt that covered my squeaky twin bed for five years, the quilt my mom gave me on my thirteenth birthday. But the bed was too big and overly soft to be mine.
When I tried to make sense of this, my mind wouldn’t let me. In fact, my brain felt as if it had been wiped out, and my past, removed with an all-powerful eraser. My head was almost completely blank, evidently still trying to rouse itself and get a grip on the waking world. It took a disoriented moment, but my eyes at last adjusted to the dark room around me.
Fortuitously, the loud beeping sound and bright-red glowing numbers of the bedside clock, shouting five forty-five AM, triggered the “on” switch to my brain, and I suddenly realized where I was and what I was doing here. How could I have forgotten?
Comical, that after all the waiting and preparing and anticipating, it would take a moment to remember the importance of today. Soon, almost too soon according to the tight knots in my stomach, I would be in my first class of my first semester at college.
