“I’m not at all surprised there are a few gaps with work,” Dr. Kay said. “We would expect that in a case like yours, where large chunks of your memory have been wiped out or altered.”
“But it all seems so random. What I remember and what I don’t,” I said. “Like, I know I don’t like wearing wool because it itches—I remember my grandmother knitting me a sweater when I was a kid and my mom making me wear it when we visited her despite the rash I would get. I remember all my passwords, and how to write a press release, and the names of every one of my colleagues. I also remembered why I don’t like slices of lime in my drinks, but forgot I never stopped eating meat.”
I was ramped up now, my words spilling out. “And apparently my body remembers I’m a runner, because I went for this unplanned jog on the weekend and it was like my feet knew exactly what to do, you know?” Dr. Kay nodded. “But I would swear on my life I had never run farther than half a block.” Now I held up three fingers. “Matt told me I’ve run three half-marathons. Three!”
“I’m impressed,” Dr. Kay said. “I once signed up for a Couch to 5k program and never made it off the couch.” She smiled.
“Well, I can’t remember a thing about any of the races, so did I do them?” I shook my head. “Am I a runner if I don’t remember running, even if my feet do? Am I good at my job if I can’t remember the very valid reasons I was going to fire my coworker? Am I a meat eater or a vegetarian, because my brain can’t seem to make up its mind? Oh, and apparently I like eggs again, after hating them for years because of a food poisoning incident I can’t remember. So, which is it? Do I like eggs, or don’t I?”
My questions came out quickly, my voice rising with each one. I tried to breathe into my belly but was too hopped-up to bother with the simple relaxation technique Dr. Ted had taught me in the hospital months ago. Dr. Kay watched me, stayed quiet as I took another ragged breath.
“Can I have a boyfriend if I don’t remember being his girlfriend? Can I feel married even if I’m not? Who am I now if I can’t remember who I was? The life I used to have doesn’t exist anymore, and I have no idea how to get past that.”
Dr. Kay allowed a few moments of silence to fill the room, giving me time to catch my breath, before she spoke again. “Those are tough questions, Lucy. Not because there aren’t answers to them,” she said. “But because it’s not for me to say.”
Tell me what to do!I wanted to shout at Dr. Kay.Your job is to help me figure out who to be.She shifted forward on her chair, leaning toward me. “Look, Lucy, you’ve made fantastic progress in the short time we’ve been seeing each other. And I do understand it feels like you have little control over your life at the moment,” she said. “You’ve mentioned before feeling like you’re a passenger in a car, versus the driver.”
I nodded. That was exactly how it felt many days.
“So what happens if you step back from everything? Stop holding yourself responsible for everyone else’s happiness so you can focus on your own? Put your memory confidence list away, and think about what you want. Not what preaccident-Lucy wants, but what you want, right now. Today.” She put her hand up, stopping my inevitable argument that Iobviouslyhad no idea. “Don’t think too hard about it. What’s the first thing that popped into your mind when I asked the question? What is the one thing you want, right now, more than anything else?”
The answer came to me fully and completely, no hesitation, and I quaked with the force of it. “I want to remember being in love with Matt.”
“Okay. Good. And now the harder question,” she said. “What if that memory is locked away forever? Then what will you do?”
I considered the question for a moment. “Then I figure out how to fall in love with him all over again.”
* * *
It had seemed so obvious, what I wanted to do about Matt, when Dr. Kay asked me during our session. But once I got outside her building and had a moment to think it through, I felt paralyzed. Matt and I had tried—really tried—hadn’t we? There were the photo albums, the reminiscence therapy, the play-by-play re-creation of our first date. So much effort for such little return. Shouldn’t I feelsomethingmore by now, even if my memory wasn’t back?
And then, in a flash, I realized the problem. Matt had really tried, that was true. But what about me? Could I say the same?
No, I couldn’t. While Matt did everything he could think of to jog my memory, all the while accepting it might never work but sticking by me nonetheless, I played along but kept one foot outside the circle. I had allowed myself to stay distracted—mostly by Daniel—and that had hurt all of us, but Matt especially.
Dr. Kay’s office was beside a parkette, and I had a sudden urge to take off my shoes and walk barefoot in the grass. Jenny was working on a documentary on something called “earthing”—walking barefoot on dirt, or sand, or grass, or some other natural surface—to eke out electrons from the earth. It sounded a bit (a lot) out-there, but its proponents swore to a host of benefits: everything from generating feelings of happiness to reducing anxiety to helping with insomnia, and Jenny had been pretty psyched about the whole thing. Told me she’d been doing it every day for fifteen minutes at the park near her work, and felt ridiculously joyful afterward; she suggested maybe it could help with my memory. “But if not, trust me, you’ll still feel fantastic.”
And for whatever reason, it seemed like exactly the right thing to do at this moment. So I sat on the bench, took off my shoes and rolled up my pant legs into wide cuffs. Then I started walking, the soles of my feet initially ticklish as they settled into the grass. Soon I was walking in a large circle around the grassy parkette, furiously typing a message to Matt on my phone as I did.
My ten minutes of earthing didn’t jog my memory or change my life, but as I slipped grass-stained feet back into my shoes I reread my message to Matt. Then with a grin, I hit Send.
42
After sending Matt the text, I walked back to the office while I waited for him to respond (what was taking him so long?), and with every block closer, the more my anxiety ramped up. Because while I had made a decision about Matt—which I couldn’t do anything about until I heard back from him—I’d also made one about the Brooke situation.
All weekend I had been running scenarios through my mind, everything from backing off and biding my time until I could build up examples showcasing Brooke’s incompetency, to going into HR today with a printout of my grievances and a plan to replace her. But none had sat quite right with me. I didn’t want to work indefinitely with someone who was gunning for my job, and willing to use my accident and aftereffects to get it. Nor did I want to end my time at the firm by marching into HR and ruining all the goodwill I’d built up. Unless I had hard proof, going in and accusing Brooke of such a thing would be the equivalent of career suicide.
It was Dr. Kay, again, who helped me figure out what to do in the end. The whole “it’s time to get back in the driver’s seat” thing had been effective, and I appreciated how right she was. I had been waiting—for someone else to sort out my mess, for my memory to reboot, for an obvious answer to every difficult question to be revealed, to get back to the Lucy I had been before the slip and fall. And by letting everyone else—my parents, Jenny, Alex, Brooke, Daniel and Matt—drive the car for me, things had gotten seriously off track.
“Even though I know nothing about cars,” Dr. Kay had said with a laugh at the end of our session. “Let’s stick with this analogy for a moment. You, Lucy Sparks, have the map. You always have—it’s been inside you all along, even if you can’t remember every street name, or shortcut, or which route is free of construction delays. So when you’re feeling confused, or angry, or lost, remember—you have the map.”
It was time to make my own choices, and good or bad I would deal with them. Finally back at the office, I answered outstanding messages and emails, shared a quick coffee with Mary in the break room, then typed out the letter I’d been writing in my head for the past couple of hours.
* * *
“Lucy, hello,” Greg said when I knocked on his door later that afternoon. “Come on in.” He gestured at the chairs in the sitting nook in his office and got up from his desk to join me as I sat down.
“How are you doing?” he asked, his brow crinkling.
