My Life, Deleted Read online

From the way Taylor smiled at me, touched me with so much care and compassion, I could tell that we must have had a very special relationship, and I so wished that I could have felt more for her. I sensed I was supposed to feel an emotional bond with my wife and children, but I couldn’t access any of the good times and tender moments I’d shared with them. My memory bin was like a giant black hole of nothing. All I had to go on was what was going on in front of me now—their warm touches and their worried expressions.

  Even though my family was there beside me, I still felt very alone, as if I were trapped in a person I no longer knew. The more questions they asked and I couldn’t answer, the more panicky and overwhelmed I felt. I wondered if perhaps my memory would never improve. Is this the way it is always going to be? How could this happen to me? And, as if I’d had a choice, I wondered how I could have let this happen to my family. Not remembering that I’d been a strong patriarchal figure, I had no sense of how much I meant to them or how much they had always relied on me for love and support. Still, deep down, I knew I wasn’t the same person. I feared I would never be normal again.

  Taylor had to go to cheer practice, and Grant had to drive her there, so I tried to send them off reassured by parroting back what the doctors had been telling me: I was going to be okay, they shouldn’t worry, I’d be coming home soon. By this point, I’d picked up that home was someplace they were going once they left the hospital.

  As strange and unimaginable as it was to forget my children and the love of my life, I was trying to stay positive and have faith in the doctors’ prediction that my memory would return. I clung to that hope, but after losing part of my sight, I was also scared that my condition might get even worse.

  Dr. Derek Kunimoto, the retinal specialist, stopped in about 6:00. He was young, articulate, friendly, and confident, and he seemed very capable, which helped me feel more confident too. After shining a light in my eye with a silver tube and adjusting a little wheel, he gave us the first piece of good news we’d heard so far: my retina was still intact. He said he didn’t know what had caused my dark spot but suggested that I might have a microhemorrhage in my optic nerve, which Joan later explained meant bleeding in my eye that was too small for us to see.

  After I was discharged, he said, I should go to another specialist for additional testing and an opinion on whether my full vision would ultimately return.

  Joan looked relieved after he left. “Thank God,” she said. It was nice to finally see her happy.

  I liked having her there. I had to trust someone, and she was by far the best candidate. But now that the kids had left, saying they were going “home,” I figured she would want to leave too, so I thought I should repeat what the kids said and send her off. Even though I really didn’t want her to go.

  “Go home,” I said.

  Joan could see from my lost expression that I was just trying to please her. “No,” she said. “As long as you’re in the hospital, I’m not going to leave this room.”

  She told the staff she was spending the night, so they brought in a foldout chair that flattened into a bed, which they positioned in the small space between my bed and the wall, which had a tiny bathroom on the other side of it.

  I still didn’t understand who she was to me and why she cared so much for me, but if I felt alone with her there, I didn’t even want to imagine what it would feel like with her gone.

  I got little sleep that night because the nurses came in every two to four hours to shine lights into my eyes and check my pupils, ask for my name and birth date, and have me do the push-pull tests. Every time one of them woke me, Joan got up too, asking them more questions, fluffing my pillow, and putting cool washcloths on my forehead.

  I was still throwing up, so Joan asked the nurse to try switching my nausea medications. She did this assertively but without angering them, and the new meds finally quieted my stomach. It was reassuring to have someone so medically informed to advocate for my needs.

  As morning approached Joan ordered breakfast for both of us—scrambled eggs and oatmeal for me, something my stomach would accept.

  “That should be easy for you to swallow,” she said.

  Before breakfast we tried to formulate the questions we were going to ask Dr. Walker. Joan was growing increasingly concerned about the severity of my incessant pain and my profound memory loss, which only served to heighten my own anxiety.

  When Dr. Walker asked how I was doing, I told him my headaches were still unbearable. He asked me the same list of questions, and I was still giving him Joan’s birthday.

  “I know that’s not it, but that’s the only one I know,” I told him.

  When he asked me who the president was, I thought I knew the answer this time.

  “Barack,” I said.

  “That’s his first name. It’s Barack Obama,” he said. “You’re getting closer.”

  He also asked me for the date and day of the week and the name of the hospital. I was still getting those answers wrong, but after he left I noticed that the nurses had written the date and day of the week on the whiteboard across from my bed. So when Dr. Goodell asked me those questions later that morning, I looked at the board and was able to give him the correct answers. I don’t think I was really fooling anyone, but at the time I thought I was outsmarting everyone.

  After Joan reiterated her concerns about the memory gaps, Goodell tried to reassure her that my confusion would likely resolve in a few days to a week. However, he finally agreed to order an MRI to see if they could find something that wouldn’t show up on the CT scan.

  Not wanting to leave me alone, Joan stayed while we waited for the test, describing past events and sharing more of our family history. Still on the morphine drip, I listened as best I could, but I kept fading in and out as she talked, so she waited patiently until I came to before starting up again.

  She told me, for example, that when we met at Northern Illinois University, she was on the gymnastics team and I was on the football team. I’d gone on to play professional football in the NFL for the New England Patriots and Cleveland Browns. None of this meant anything to me; I just nodded and tried to take it all in.

  The television was always on, so we often took breaks from the conversation to watch the shows I used to like. As she was flipping around on the remote, she found a Blue Angels flyover on one of the education channels. I was intrigued by the way the planes flew so close together in a V formation, spinning around without crashing into each other.

  “That would be a cool job, to be a pilot,” I said.

  “You are one,” Joan said.

  “I am?” I asked. “I don’t remember that.” Tears welled up in my eyes as the magnitude of this hit me. I not only didn’t recall the little things, I couldn’t even remember a high-powered activity that required experience, skill, and a love I’d probably felt my entire life.

  “Not that kind of pilot,” Joan said quickly. Not wanting to overwhelm me with information, she briefly explained that we’d worked together for the past several years on two aviation businesses—one that chartered jets, which we’d recently sold, and one that managed and maintained planes for other companies.

  By then Joan was crying too. I didn’t know exactly why but thought maybe we were thinking the same thing—how could I have forgotten so much just from hitting my head? It wasn’t until about a month later that I learned that if my vision problem didn’t clear up, I would never fly again. That’s what Joan was thinking at that moment; she just didn’t have the heart to tell me.

  Joan stood by my bed, kissed my forehead, and rubbed my chest through the gown. I didn’t really like being touched like that, but I went along with it.

  “I know how I can make you feel better,” she said, moving her hand down under the hospital covers and playfully touching my private area. Startled, I batted her hand away, wondering what the hell she was doing. I felt uncomfortable, that her hand didn’t belong there. Joan looked surprised, as if this was completely out of characte
r for me, but I was in too much pain to worry about her feelings. I had unwittingly become a forty-six-year-old virgin who didn’t even know what sex was.

  When Grant showed up around lunchtime, Joan went home to shower and change. She told me she was dressed up because she’d been heading to a fancy charity luncheon—whatever that was—when she got the call to come to the ER.

  Grant described more memories, trying to find a trigger to retrieve some of the moments we’d shared while he was growing up. He told me that he’d started riding motocross dirt bikes at twelve and that I used to watch him compete in hockey and motocross. He competed in several national races and at the pro level in Arizona, quitting when he was eighteen, just a year or so ago.

  “Do you remember any of that?” he asked hopefully.

  “No, I’m sorry,” I said.

  It was clear from his disappointed expression that this wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but I was trying to be honest with him. I was starting to pick up on how much my memory loss was making my family sad; it was as if I’d taken something precious away from them by forgetting the positive events that had shaped our relationships and strengthened the bonds between us. And no matter what the doctors said, none of us knew if we would ever get that back.

  Valiantly, my son asked more questions, still searching for something I could remember—anything—until, drugged and fatigued, I dozed off.

  When I came to, Grant was curled up on the foldout where Joan had slept the night before, sobbing. I didn’t understand why a young man would be so emotional. It seemed a bit over the top; it wasn’t like I was going to die from this head injury.

  “Why are you crying?” I asked.

  Grant sniffed and grabbed a tissue to blow his nose. “It just makes me sad that you don’t remember anything that we did together,” he said.

  I didn’t know what else to say other than to repeat the doctors’ optimistic prognosis. “It’ll get better,” I offered.

  This seemed to calm him down, and I felt I’d done all I could. So, like any two typical men, we stopped talking about our feelings and watched TV in silence.

  Joan returned soon afterward, and Taylor showed up after school later that afternoon.

  Joan, who kept leaving the room to make phone calls, told me she still hadn’t heard from Thomas. I didn’t know she was talking about my business colleague, but I eventually got the picture: she, Taylor, and I were all supposed to take Thomas’s private plane to Las Vegas in a couple of days to watch Taylor’s cheerleading team perform at a national championship. I’d seen cheerleaders on TV during the playoffs, but Joan said Taylor’s team did moves that were more like dancing and gymnastics—two more terms for me to tuck away and figure out later.

  After months of training, Taylor was torn between wanting to go and staying home until I got out of the hospital. She didn’t want to go without us. As she tried to describe her conflicted feelings, she broke into tears. “I don’t want to leave Dad,” she said. “I’m scared. I don’t like that he doesn’t know anything.”

  She was worried, she said, because I wasn’t bouncing back like I usually did. Joan told me that I’d had nine surgeries on my ankles, knees, and shoulders, and I’d usually felt well enough to stop at the office on my way home from the hospital. I honestly didn’t know what to think about the man I used to be because everything I knew about him came from stories like these, filtered through my family’s perceptions. That said, they were all I had to go on. My new life depended on them.

  Joan took Taylor into the hall, but I could still hear them talking. “This is your national competition,” she said. “Your team is counting on you. He’s going to be discharged. He’s going to be fine, and we’re just going to go home.”

  I would soon learn that Taylor had been on the team for more than eight years, she’d been practicing several days a week for this contest, and she was one of the best on her team. Joan had gone to most of Taylor’s competitions with her, but the three of us usually went to this national event together to cheer her on.

  Joan continued to juggle calls with the charter company handling the flight and also with the other family that was supposed to fly with us as she developed a contingency plan. She kept me abreast of what was going on, but I maintained my poker face, not revealing that I didn’t know any of the people she was talking to. Oddly enough, I still had my critical thinking skills and a vague sense of how some things worked, so I was able to suggest other options for Taylor, such as taking a later flight after I was released. But often when Joan thought I was exercising my previous problem-solving skills, I was actually just parroting back what I’d just heard her—or someone on TV—saying.

  For example, when I reassured Taylor that it was okay for her to go on her trip, I was actually reinforcing the parental message I’d heard Joan delivering to her in the hallway. “You should go be with your team,” I said. “Make us all proud, and don’t worry about me. I’m going to be just fine.”

  When I told her to focus on doing well for the team and to keep her mind off the stresses that my injury was causing her, I later wondered if I’d been somehow drawing on my years of team sports and leadership as a captain even though I couldn’t remember a single play on the field. Taylor, not entirely convinced, went to the gym to practice.

  Around 7:00 P.M. there was a knock on the door.

  “There he is,” a big booming voice said. “Scottie, what are you doing here?”

  The voice came from a fit-looking black man in his midfifties. His graying, closely cropped hair was balding in spots, he was dressed in casual business attire, and both he and the heavyset black woman who came in behind him looked concerned.

  Feeling the hair stand up on the back of my neck, I sat right up in bed. I didn’t understand why this guy was coming into my room unannounced, and I didn’t like feeling unprepared for this visitor.

  How do these people know me?

  With nothing to rely on but my friend-or-foe senses, I felt that this guy was the latter, and I wanted him out as soon as possible.

  “JD,” Joan said, “I don’t think he knows you.”

  “Oh, he knows me,” the man said, shrugging off Joan’s remark.

  I didn’t like the way he ignored Joan’s attempt to smooth things over, which put me off even more. I didn’t like his attitude, and I felt my fear turning to anger.

  The couple stayed for about fifteen minutes, during which Joan explained what had happened to me.

  JD had a big personality and wasn’t the type of guy you’d forget. Still, I had no recollection of him. Nonetheless, as he was talking, I tried to act as if nothing was wrong, and when he asked me to pray with him, I didn’t refuse. But as he closed his eyes, bowed his head, and started to pray to the “Heavenly Father,” I left my eyes open and kept a close watch over him.

  After he and his wife left, I felt relieved.

  “Who was that?” I asked Joan.

  How many more people am I going to see that I don’t know? This could be endless.

  Joan explained that he was a recent business acquaintance who had been a wide receiver in the NFL and was now a minister; this woman was his wife. We hadn’t thought to ask how he’d heard about my accident, but we assumed that he must have called my office. We’d had a recent business disagreement, she said, and she was as surprised to see him as I was. It was curious that I seemed to have retained my emotional memory of him and nothing else. Other than my medical issues, this was the most anxiety-provoking episode I’d had in the hospital so far.

  Finally at 2:30 A.M., on our third day in the hospital, the attendants came to take me downstairs for my MRI. Because this was a trauma center, the machine was in constant use, and this was the first available slot. It was reassuring that Joan had held to her promise to remain by my side, especially when I had to have tests in the middle of the night.

  I was fine in the elevator, but when they tried to put me into that small narrow tunnel, I became irritated, fearful, and combative
.

  “There is no way you are putting me in that tube,” I said.

  Concerned that the outburst could further damage my brain, one of the staff went to fetch Joan to see if she could get me to agree to the test. But I was having so many problems expressing myself that my fear had morphed into anger by the time she arrived. I was so furious that my hands were turning white as I gripped the sides of the metal cart. I sat upright, thinking that if Joan tried to make me go inside that machine she wasn’t my friend after all.

  “There has got to be a different machine that they can use because I am not going in this one!” I yelled.

  After some back-and-forth—heated and adamant on my side, cajoling on theirs—it was decided to reschedule the MRI so an anesthesiologist could administer a sedative. Joan acknowledged that I’d never liked confinement, and in years past I’d been tested in an “open” MRI because my shoulders were too wide for a regular testing cylinder like this one. She seemed surprised by my extreme resistance to this important test, but she proved she was, in fact, my friend by standing by me and persuading them to listen to my concerns. About 7:00 A.M. they took me back down for the second attempt, and this time an anesthesiologist gave me a Fentanyl-Versed cocktail, which produced a sense of euphoria and relaxation for a few seconds before I fell asleep. Apparently, my shoulders did fit into that narrow tube, where they kept me for about twenty minutes, out cold.

  When I came to, I was being wheeled back into my room, where Joan was waiting for me.

  Within a couple of hours Dr. Walker came by to tell us that the MRI results were normal, so they were sending me home and I should follow up with Dr. Goodell. Joan and I asked a lot of the same questions about why my pain and memory weren’t improving, but the answers and the prognosis were still the same: I should get my memory back within the next couple of weeks.

  Then the waiting began while my discharge papers were being prepared. As the hours went by, Joan grew increasingly agitated, which only made me more uneasy and anxious. “What is taking so long?” she kept saying. “I can’t believe the staff hasn’t taken care of this yet.”