Page 5 of Brain Damage

I look down and see there is a plate in front of me. On the plate, there are three mounds of food. They all sort of look like mashed potatoes, but one is gray, one is white, and one is yellow. Multicolored mashed potatoes. I wonder how they do that.

The girl spoons a bit of the gray material and then lifts the spoon to my lips.

“Open your mouth, Charlotte,” the girl says.

I look down and see the badge hanging from the pocket of the girl’s bright purple scrub top. Written in big letters is the word Amy. The girl’s name must be Amy. That’s a pretty name too. Almost as pretty as Charlotte.

“Come on, Charly,” she says to me. Amy. Her blue eyes are wide and hopeful. “Open your mouth for me.”

She demonstrates by opening her own mouth. She has a little pink tongue.

I really want to make Amy happy, so I do what she did. I open my mouth. Amy’s face lights up like a Christmas tree. She’s even prettier when she’s happy, although I’m not entirely sure why opening my mouth made her so happy. “Great job!” she tells me.

My reward is a mouthful of gray material on a spoon. It’s not a very good reward. The spoon tastes metallic and bitter, but the food tastes even worse. It almost tastes like meat, but with an odd aftertaste. I don’t like it and I don’t want it in my mouth. I want to spit it out, but I don’t think Amy will like that.

“Now chew, Charlotte,” Amy instructs me as she removes the spoon.

Amy demonstrates this one by letting her lower jaw fall slack, then raising it up again, then lowering it again as if I didn’t understand what chewing is. I mimic her movements and Amy looks like she may faint from happiness. Her standards for happiness seem ridiculously low.

“You’re doing amazing today, Charlotte,” she says.

Amy’s standards for “amazing” seem ridiculously low too.

“Now I need you to swallow.”

I understand what she wants me to do. I mean, I do and I don’t. I know what swallowing is, and I know I’ve done it before, but I don’t know how to do it right now. I’m not entirely sure why.

I see a little crease forming between her brows. Amy isn’t happy anymore. I want to make her happy, but I don’t know what to do. Whatever it is, I’m obviously not doing it.

“Swallow, Charly,” she says. “Come on, swallow.”

I stop the chewing motion. I feel some of the gray material sliding out of the corner of my mouth. Amy allows the food to trickle down my chin before she dabs at my face with a napkin.

I feel terrible. I want to let Amy know that I am trying my best, I don’t mean to disappoint her. I want to do what she’d like me to do.

But when I open my mouth to tell her those things, I lose the rest of the food that she placed in my mouth and it leaks down my chin and splatters on a napkin across my chest.

Amy just sighs and shakes her head.

4

BEFORE

My long, exhausting day ended with a funeral.

It was for one of my patients. It isn’t often that I lose patients, but when I am extended an invitation to a funeral, I always attend if at all possible.

I wasn’t specifically invited to today’s funeral, but I went anyway. My patient was an elderly man named Harold Branham, and I was the one who diagnosed him with melanoma after he came to me with a suspicious mole. He didn’t have much in the way of family support, so I tried to get him in for appointments at the end of the day so I could spend extra time with him without the clock getting in the way. He fought hard against the cancer, but in the end, he lost the battle.

I was practically the only person who attended the sparse ceremony. Branham was an only child who never married or had children of his own. The only people who attended were a couple of friends and some former work colleagues from before he retired. As I sat in the nearly empty church, I couldn’t help but wonder about what my own funeral will be like someday. After all, I am also an only child who has, as yet, not married or had children. I don’t have many friends either, since my work consumes my life.

As I shed a few tears for Harold Branham, I wondered if I was also shedding them for my own future.

Because of the funeral, it’s quite late by the time I finally get home to my apartment near Central Park. My feet are aching, and I have an inexplicable stain that appeared on my blouse at some point during the afternoon, so I nearly collapse with relief when I reach my own apartment.

This apartment is my one indulgence, and I can barely afford it. I have a great view, a spacious living room, a beautifully furnished kitchen, and two bedrooms—and I pay for it through the teeth. People seem to think physicians are rolling in dough, but I’m here to tell you that’s just not so. I left medical school with half a million dollars in debt, between the tuition and college loans. Then I started a four-year residency, where I calculated my hourly salary to be approximately half the minimum wage in New York. I’m doing much better now, but I’m still scraping my way out of a very large hole.

Still, when I saw this apartment, I knew I had to have it. For a while, I was holding off on buying anything until I was engaged or married, but then I realized that might never happen, so why shouldn’t I have my dream apartment?