Me Again (3 page)

To assist me in attaining that goal, a speech therapist was assigned to me, a perky woman named Patti who seemed to be in a perpetually good mood. Over the months I met several speech therapists, and they were all equally perky – apparently such manic cheerfulness was a prerequisite for the job.

At times I wondered if it were the
only
requirement for the job – despite what I’m sure were very good intentions on Patti’s part, I found her approach lacked any discernible structure, and her tone was condescending and smarmy, as if she were speaking at all times to a small child. Worst of all was her habit of referring to me as “we,” constantly asking me if
we
were having a nice day, or if
we
would like to try saying that word again, and so on. It annoyed me.

That is to say, we were annoyed.

Chapter 3

I
T WAS A STRANGE EXPERIENCE, learning to speak at the age of thirty-four. For one thing, I probably put a bit more thought into what I wanted to say than most babies, who tend to choose some variation of “mama” or “dada” as their first word. And babies are of course far too young to remember their first words, which are either memorialized by family members or simply lost to the ages.

Not me. I remember my first word very clearly. It was “pencil.”

Several days before I was able to form the word with my mouth, I realized that I could envision words. I could write. Which meant I could read.

That sounds backwards, I guess. You’d think I would realize I could read before I tried to write anything. But I didn’t have the opportunity. For one thing, nobody had remembered I was nearsighted – apparently the eyeglasses I had historically worn got lost somewhere in the shuffle between medical facilities over the past six years. As a result, I couldn’t read any of the signs on the wall urging me to be quiet and not to smoke (guidelines with which I was already quite compliant). But beyond that, the simple fact of the matter was that nobody had ever offered me anything to read.

No, my caregivers weren’t being stupid. They just hadn’t thought of a way to determine whether I could read. Think about it: if they held a paper in front of me that said “see Dick run,” I couldn’t read it back to them. I could only grunt. Nobody thought to hold the same manuscript in front of me and simply ask, “Can you read this?” Plenty of trees. No forest.

Instead they chose to focus on speech therapy with me, teaching me to form the sounds that make up the English language. What about sign language? That requires a cooperative body, which I did not yet have. As a result I wasn’t yet able to mime the act of writing, at least not in a way anybody understood. I tried, though. Apparently my earliest attempts made my keepers think I wanted to wash my hands. A bowl, washcloth, and soap were provided forthwith.

So it was to my great relief that one morning while Patti was perkily trying to get me to say my name, I instead managed to croak “pencil.” I accompanied this utterance with hand gestures, at the risk of once again making what must be the universal sign for washing hands. But lo and behold, Patti understood. She sprinted off, returning momentarily with a pencil and notepad.

I crammed the pencil into the crook of my left thumb and forefinger and managed to scrawl
I CAN READ (I THINK).

Incidentally, I’m rather proud of that. How many other newborns make parenthetic remarks right out of the chute?

This created a new level of hubbub around me, and I was soon surrounded by people clad in medical scrubs, all scrambling to witness this latest development. A new series of interviews/interrogations promptly began, and one of the first things my slowly recovering body experienced was a righteous case of writer’s cramp. But my newfound ability to write was such a liberating tool – I was finally able to express things I’d been thinking for days on end, not the least of which was the need for a pair of eyeglasses.

Although writing was difficult, it got easier with practice. My penmanship was very crude, a condition no doubt exacerbated by the fact that I was writing with my left hand. I believe it was my father who first noticed this, and commented that he was pretty sure I was right-handed. He and my mother soon dug up some family photos that supported that claim. But the pencil felt even more foreign in my right hand, so I stuck with the left, and to this day I’m a devout southpaw. As I’ve observed, the brain is an odd critter.

It is rare that somebody with my level of brain damage is able to learn to speak
and
write, so efforts to develop my speech took a bit of a back seat while the medical staff handed me a stack of legal pads and Number Two pencils and picked my brain, poring over my written responses.

Through this mercifully grunt-free set of Q&A we were able to determine much more clearly just how much of my grey matter was still in working order. I had a lot of questions, too, and was immeasurably relieved to finally have a way to ask them.

But with this quantum leap in my ability to communicate with The Outside World came new difficulties. There was the issue of my parents, and this guy Teddy. It’s a lot easier to tell a lie with a grunt than it is to painstakingly write it out. But that’s what I had to do. I just saw no reason to crush my family’s hopes. Particularly my mother. There was something about her that made me want to
strive
, for lack of a better word. I wanted to make her happy, to make her proud. I wanted to earn the love that she was so obviously willing to give. Swiss cheese or not, I knew love when I saw it.

Love. That was a whole ’nother can of worms (I think I heard my father say that, one of the few phrases I’ve picked up from this taciturn man). I’ve already indicated that I had a mother, a father, and a brother. But there was another character in this play, whom I found out about belatedly.

My parents hadn’t mentioned her, for reasons that later became clear to me. So I was unprepared when Geraldine, one of the day-shift nurses, told me I had a visitor named Victoria.

“Who?” I asked. This was one of the handful of words I could currently enunciate with any consistency.

“Victoria,” said Geraldine, with a tone that suggested I should know who that was. As she walked out the door, opening it to admit my visitor, she clarified. “Your girlfriend.”

I would say that my jaw dropped, but the stroke had rendered such a reaction impossible. Suffice to say that my smirk was stretched to new lengths, and any gift for gab I’d been developing promptly escaped me.

Wordless, I watched as a beautiful woman walked into the room.

She was far more attractive than anybody I’d seen so far in the hospital, looking more like the starlets who populated the soap operas I was slowly becoming addicted to. (Part of my practice regimen for regaining my ability to speak was to watch TV – lots of TV – and try to mimic what I heard. You got Shakespeare; I got
General Hospital
. Oh, and
Gilligan’s Island
, from which I’ve gathered that a three-hour tour can be a very long time.)

Victoria stopped at the side of my bed, hands clasped in front of her, holding a tiny purse molded to look like a seashell. I noticed that she wore her hair just like Tiffany Grange, the actress who portrays Alexis Blake, the conniving heiress who would go to any lengths to manipulate the inhabitants of
Sunset Bay
. I then reflected that maybe I was watching a little too much TV.

Victoria broke the silence. “Hello, Jonathan,” she said, her voice husky and solemn.

“Hi,” I replied, demonstrating my mastery of the monosyllabic.

She was gorgeous. Her hair was a beautiful mixture of reds, browns and golds; her eyes a penetrating pale green; her lips pouty and pink. She wore snug-fitting grey pants and a pale, clingy grey sweater, and her body was... well... remarkable. I had enough brain cells left to determine that this woman was truly a knockout.

And as far as I could tell, I’d never seen her before in my life.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called,” Victoria said. “I – well – it’s been a long...”

Her words drew to a halt, so she took the moment to draw up a chair and sit down beside my bed before trying to start the conversation again. “I mean, this was kind of an unexpected surprise.”

I was gaining enough command of the language to wonder if there were any other kind of surprise, but I dismissed the thought and looked up at her in silence. She looked as awkward as I felt. Becoming aware of my gaze, she bit her lip timidly.

Eager to get past this moment, I grabbed my handy pad and pencil, and quickly scrawled
HARD FOR ME TO TALK. OK IF I WRITE?

I showed her the pad. She read it, and then looked at me and nodded eagerly, making sure I could see her gesture. Then she realized it didn’t mean
she
couldn’t talk, and she stammered, “Oh! I can still – I mean...”

She paused, collecting herself, and finally said, “Okay. I’ll talk. You write. I’m sure this is hard for you, and – well – it’s kind of hard for me, too.”

She smiled nervously, revealing an amazing amount of teeth of preternatural whiteness. I nodded encouragingly.

“So,” Victoria said, looking at me and changing her expression to one of great concern, “how do you feel?”

OK I GUESS
, I wrote.
MY BODY HASN’T CAUGHT UP WITH MY BRAIN YET. AND MY BRAIN HAS SOME PROBLEMS TOO
. I looked at my words, finding them grim and pathetic. I tried to lighten things up, closing with
YOU LOOK GREAT.

Handing the pad to her, I watched her read. Her face took on an expression of intense concentration, her lips pressed together, her brow somewhat furrowed. I began to notice she seemed capable of registering a variety of readily recognizable emotions, apparently on command, as if to help anyone watching – her audience? – to understand what she was feeling at any given moment. Intense concentration suddenly gave way to beaming delight: she had read the last sentence, and lit up like a Christmas tree.

Again, I actually
thought
that phrase, saying to myself, “She just lit up like a Christmas tree.” I could remember what a Christmas tree was, but couldn’t remember my own family. Or my girlfriend.

Strokes suck.

Chapter 4

V
ICTORIA DIDN’T STAY LONG. There were only a couple of key points she had come to communicate to me – it was sort of a good news, bad news thing.

She started with the bad.

“I waited a long time, Jon. A really, really long time. And the doctors all said you weren’t going to get any better.”

These remarks were punctuated with downturned eyes and the occasionally bitten lower lip. I’d been watching enough TV to recognize acting when I saw it. I mean, it was pretty good acting, I’ll admit, but her every gesture seemed so...
studied
. Then I wondered why I was focusing on such a thing, and finally decided it was because I just didn’t feel any emotional connection to this woman. Yes, she was beautiful, but I didn’t know her from Adam. And yes, I did remember Adam. And Eve. Just not Victoria.

“Finally,” Victoria said with a rather dramatic toss of her hair, “I had to move on.”

At this she leaned forward, placing one hand on mine. Doctor Lance Stone does that on
Surgeons in Love
whenever he’s delivering bad news with his trademark heartfelt empathy.
Surgeons
was a favorite with the day-shift nurses at the stroke unit, but I considered the storylines on
General Hospital
to be more compelling.

At any rate, as Victoria clasped my hand and stared into my eyes, she quietly said, “I’m with someone else now, Jon. I’m sorry. But I wanted to be completely honest with you. You deserve that.”

I could tell she expected a response, but I was literally speechless. I’d just received a dramatic farewell from a person I’d only just met, so my primary sentiment was one of confusion rather than loss. But I was gaining a larger sense of loss, an awareness that so much of the life I’d had was gone. I just didn’t remember enough of it to miss it – at least not yet. And that felt pretty crappy.

This latter realization must have shown on my face – Victoria then added her other hand to the one gripping mine, and leaned in even closer.

“Oh, Jon – I’ve hurt you. I’m so sorry.”

It looked like she was about to cry, and I knew I didn’t want that.

I nodded towards the notepad she had trapped under our clasping hands. Realizing she had effectively muted me, she pulled back.

“Oh! Sorry! There must be so much you want to say to me.”

Was there? She looked at me imploringly, so I put my pencil to the page. But what to write?

IT’S OK
, I finally scrawled.
I UNDERSTAND. LONG TIME, LOTS OF THINGS HAVE CHANGED
.

I showed her the pad, and she nodded enthusiastically, again falling into the habit of remaining silent around somebody who can’t talk – I got that a lot in those days.

I continued.
IT’S GOOD THAT YOU MOVED ON. WOULDN’T WANT TO KEEP YOU FROM BEING HAPPY. I’LL BE OK
.

This latest passage relieved her considerably, I could tell. Again she unleashed her dazzling smile.

Encouraged by this, I added,
THE NEW GUY – HOPE HE TREATS YOU WELL
. That looked pretty stupid, but I went ahead and showed it to her. Hey,
you
try to be a witty conversationalist under these conditions.

Victoria continued to smile, although she dialed it down a notch. “Yes,” she said. “He’s really good to me. He’s... well, I guess you could say he’s a lot like you. Well, a lot like you were. Oh, God, I didn’t mean—"

I waved a hand, trying to curtail her embarrassment. I was getting used to the idea that I was not the man I used to be. It seemed everybody I met found some way to make that point painfully clear.

IT’S OK
, I wrote again.
REALLY.

Victoria’s smile began to return as she read this. So I concluded with
I’LL BE FINE
.

This was evidently enough to satisfy Victoria. With that bit of unpleasantness out of the way, she abruptly moved on to the good news portion of her visit. She stood, and swiveled her torso back and forth, giving me a variety of angles on her extremely curvaceous body.

“Do you notice anything different about me?” she asked, her voice now taking on a teasing tone. Gone was any remorse or even concern. In its place was a little girl proud of some new acquisition or accomplishment. But what was it? Had she lost weight? Changed her hair?

Floundering, I pointed my pencil towards the top of the pad, where I’d written
YOU LOOK GREAT
. This was a trick I had learned from extensive communication in this manner: every now and then you can recycle a remark.

This time Victoria waved a hand, as if to say
oh, I know that, silly
. Lowering her voice, she said, “I finally got them done.” She smiled conspiratorially, then arched her back. My eyes focused on the most conspicuous feature of her anatomy. Both of them.

“You know, like we always talked about. I finally went ahead and did it. They came out great, don’t you think?” She offered me several more angles of perspective. Unsure of proper protocol for commenting on the aesthetic qualities of one’s ex-girlfriend’s breasts, I remained silent, and tried to smile appreciatively.

Victoria’s face grew more serious. “It’s something I did for myself. You know, part of my moving on. I had to cope with losing you, so I wanted to do something nice for myself and kind of make a fresh start, you know? So I guess you could say they’re kind of symbolic.”

I was still at a stage where I tired easily, and I was finding the introduction and subsequent removal of a girlfriend a bit overwhelming. The addition of her new-and-improved bosom and the philosophy that accompanied it were enough to push me over the edge. I yawned.

The yawn brought back Serious And Concerned Victoria (yes, I had already begun adding subtitles to her facial expressions – please pardon my cynicism), and she said, “Oh, you’re probably tired. This had to be an awful strain on you. I just needed to see you, you know, to get this off my chest.” She giggled, realizing how chest-centric our meeting had become.

She patted my hand. “I better get going. But maybe I can, I don’t know, visit you again sometime. You know, next time I’m in town. I take the train down here every now and then...”

Her voice trailed off, and I assumed she was reconsidering whether additional visits were really such a good idea. Not wanting to prolong this conversation, I faked another yawn and let my eyes droop, a technique I’d picked up for speeding up the endless interviews my doctors put me through.

Victoria took the hint. “I’ll go now,” she said. “You take care. And Jon, I’m really sorry about everything, but I’m so glad you’re back. We really missed you.”

I wasn’t sure who she meant by
we
. But at that point I wasn’t sure about much of anything.

After Victoria left, I looked at my notepad to review my side of the conversation, taking advantage of the instant replay feature inherent to this form of communication. My eyes fixed on one sentence.

I’LL BE FINE.

Yet another thing I wasn’t so sure about.