Authors: Brian Mercer
Aftersight (2 page)
Becky
New York City, New York
April 5
"Rebecca Reynalds?"
I clutched Mom's hand. My legs felt very heavy. Standing seemed impossible. My eyes were raw and swollen, drained of fluid, as if incapable of squeezing out another tear.
"Rebecca? Hi, I'm Dr. Singh." A slender, forty-something woman with cinnamon skin extended her hand as Dad helped me to my feet. Even after all the physical therapy, I couldn't get out of a chair with any more grace than a pregnant bear.
I closed my hand around Dr. Singh's. She was too pretty to be a psychiatrist.
Already I felt moisture leaking out the corner of my eyes. There, the façade of calm broken in less than fifteen seconds.
"Did you want anything? Coffee? Soda? Water?" Her large walnut eyes coolly surveyed me, from my loosely gathered ponytails and unmade-up face, to my simple day dress and ballet flats. What did she see? A typical high school senior recovering from life-threatening injuries? Or a seventeen year old who dressed like she was eight, clinging to her mom and dad as if this was the first day at school?
I felt the irresistible urge to bolt from the well-appointed waiting room. I imagined beefy men dressed entirely in white concealed behind Dr. Singh's office door. One was tapping the end of a loaded syringe, while the other fumbled with the straps of a gurney. If they weren't there now, they wouldn't be far away. Not after my secret was out.
I tried to say,
Nothing for me, thanks,
but it came out like, "Nayah." I covered it by clearing my throat.
Dr. Singh gazed into my eyes in the searching, nonjudgmental way that I would come to know well. "Hon, would you like to talk together first, just the two of us?" She cocked her head to the left and right, indicating Mom and Dad. They were the only thing keeping me standing.
I shook my head and when I squeezed Mom's hand, I felt her wince.
"Are you sure? Your parents can join us after."
"I want Mom."
"Sure. That's okay." Dr. Singh ushered us all inside her office, thankfully free of men in white. I glanced out Dr. Singh's large picture window at the stunning Upper Eastside Manhattan view before spotting the folder containing my medical records lying atop her desk. I could guess the contents:
Patient: Reynalds, Rebecca. Referred by neurologist. Recently sustained head trauma as a result of car accident involving three fatalities. Patient in coma for three days. Wakes disoriented for short periods, incapable of articulating thoughts. After a few days able to ask questions. Co
n
fused as to where she is or how she got there. When parents brief her on circumstances, memory of events just prior to accident gradually returns. Patient remains in hospital for seventeen days recovering from fractures, lacer
a
tions, contusions. Discharged into parents' care. Commences physical therapy. Gradual return to school
.
Patient experiencing social isolation, heightened emotional anxiety, loss of appetite, and other symptoms consistent with major depressive disorder. Parents notice blank stares, intermi
t
tent pauses in middle of sentences. Mumbling. EEG and MRI come back negative for indications of epilepsy or other seizure activity. No sign of tumors or other visible lesions. Results of cogn
i
tive tests are normal.
I settled onto the couch, nestled between Mom and Dad.
Dr. Singh offered me a tissue and pushed the box within easy reach. She set a clipboard on her lap and began making notes. It felt like the walls were closing in, folding around me like shrink-wrap. Dr. Singh was still reviewing a few points of housekeeping when I blurted, "You're not sending me to a padded room! I'm not living the rest of my life doped out of my mind and counting flowers on the wallpaper. I
won't
let that happen!" I tried to stand but my legs failed me.
"It's all right, Rebecca," Dr. Singh said. "No one is going to make you do anything you don't want to do. We're here to find out what you're experiencing and to help you feel better."
"Becky."
"What?"
"It's Becky. I'm Becky."
She wrote this on her clipboard. "What's happening to you is frightening, I know. The good news is that the brain has the ability to heal from trauma, though it may take a little time. The tricky part is that no two brain injuries are the same."
I took a tissue from the box, dabbed my face with it and crumpled it into my hand with the first one. "Okay, let's do this."
"My notes from Dr. Burke say that you've been upset a lot. Crying for long periods of time without stopping."
"Yeah," I said, failing to suppress more tears. "I get sad sometimes when I think about what happened."
"The car accident, you mean?"
"Yeah."
"The deaths?"
"Yeah."
"Were the boys who died your friends?"
"Yes. Well, no. Not really." How to explain Johnny? I couldn't even explain it to myself. "It's not just the accident. When I'm out where there's lots of people, I get all freaked out. It's like running in a nightmare, when you can't get anywhere. Crying's the only way to stop my head from exploding. Too much drama."
"So you haven't been going out then? Haven't been visiting friends?"
"Friends?" I wanted to spit. "What are those? No. I like being home where it's safe, where I can hear myself think."
"And you're having episodes where you stop talking in the middle of sentences?"
I looked down at the wadded tissues in my hands. Dr. Singh had studied up. What else was in my file? On second thought, I didn't want to know. "Yeah, I guess."
"Can you tell me about what that is like?"
A fresh barrage of tears flooded down my cheeks. I couldn't answer.
Mom scooted to the edge of the couch. Overly made-up, her face distorted from cosmetic surgery, she jangled when she moved, a result of several spangly gold bracelets. "It's like she'll be talking to you," Mom said, "and her eyes will kind of glaze over. After a few seconds, sometimes she'll start whispering, as if she's talking to someone who isn't there."
Doctor Singh wrote something on her clipboard. "How frequently do these episodes occur?"
Mom seemed to consider this. "Maybe once every couple of days."
"Any trouble concentrating in school?"
"No more than usual," I answered.
"Any dropping of words? Unable to find the words for what you want to say?"
"For a few days after I woke up in the hospital. Not since."
"And you haven't been eating?"
"Blah! Food. Gross."
Dr. Singh tapped her pen contemplatively to her lips. "What about having fun? Are you doing things you used to like to do?"
"Mom and me would sometimes go into the city. You know, shopping, makeovers. Lunch at the Four Seasons. The whole girlie-girl thing." I felt my eyes glaze over and shook my head to clear it. "It's just... stuff. None of it matters anymore."
"What
does
matter?"
I managed a shallow smile. For the first time since I'd arrived, the weight didn't feel quite so heavy. "What matters? These two, I guess. Mom and Dad. Family. People."
Dr. Singh continued to make notes. "Okay, why don't you tell me about these voices you've been hearing."
I felt my cheeks flush. Of course, she knew about the voices. Why else had Dr. Burke referred me? But she didn't know
everything
. I hadn't told
anyone
my secret.
I examined my hands again, as if I'd unexpectedly grown an eleventh finger. "Not voices," I admitted. "Voice. One."
"Okay. Tell me about it."
I sighed, weary of telling the tale. "It's a voice of a little girl. She's like, I don't know, seven or eight years old maybe. She talks funny, like with an accent. Her name's Jenny."
"Is this a voice that's in your head, like hearing your own thoughts, or does it seem like it's coming from outside of you?"
"It's kinda hard to explain. It's definitely something outside me. Yeah, I'm hearing it, like I'm hearing you now, but it's not quite the same."
"Are you hearing the voice all the time or once in a while?"
"Once in a while."
"Does it happen at the same time of day? Are you doing the same things?"
"No, it can happen any time. Usually I'm not doing anything. Like I'm daydreaming. That kind of thing."
Dr. Singh picked up my thick folder of medical records and paged through them. "It says here that you've been smelling things, too. Things that no one else can smell. Does this happen at the same time as you hear the voice or other times, too?"
"The same time, always at the same time."
Doctor Singh went back to writing. "And what is the particular smell?"
"Cedar chips."
She raised her eyebrows, as if surprised. "A pleasant smell then?"
"Definitely."
"What about visual disturbances? Blurriness or seeing auras, that kind of thing?"
"Auras, yeah. Bright colors around people and things. Mostly around people."
"This happens during the voice episodes?"
"No," I confessed against my better judgment. "I see them all the time now."
****
I'd promised myself I wouldn't tell her everything and, in the end, I managed to keep my big secret to myself. But Dr. Singh prodded on and on about Jenny until I had no choice but to tell her about what happened.
Two months ago, shortly after I'd returned home after weeks in the hospital, I'd started hearing a little girl singing. I'd still been in a wheelchair at the time, so Mom and Dad had set up a makeshift bedroom for me downstairs, complete with television and computer access. Still on a lot of pain meds, I'd slept a lot and, fading in and out as I did, the singing hadn't seemed unusual at first. It had sounded muffled and far away, like a little girl was playing in the neighbor's backyard.
I hadn't thought much of it until I heard the voice late one night. Mom and Dad had gone to bed hours before and now the only sound in the dark, slumbering house had been the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional clatter of the ice maker dumping its load into the freezer tray.
When the singing first started, I'd been dozing. The sound had jarred me awake and I had to squint to hear it: Singing and then the faint sound of giggling. A little girl talking, as if to another person, but I hadn't been able to hear another voice, like eavesdropping on one side of a phone call.
Only then did it occur to me that there hadn't been any little kids living next door at the Petersens'. All their kids had grown up and moved away years ago. The oldest daughter just had a baby boy, but he had been too young to crawl, let alone
sing
.
It had been snowing all day and though I hadn't been out in it, I knew this kind of icy weather well, when snow covers everything in layers of white. Nights like that were very cold and very quiet. But sound, when there was any, can travel a fair distance and in odd ways. It's possible the little girl's voice had come from farther down the street, but it seemed strange that anyone so young would be up playing so late.
I'd forgot all about the little girl's voice during the weeks of physical therapy and the torture of learning to walk again. I hadn't heard the voice again until one afternoon after school. I'd been encouraged to take walks whenever possible and had been making my usual circuit around the neighborhood when I heard that familiar giggling. Instantly, I'd recognized it from that cold winter night.
I'd glanced around the nearby yards and up and down the street, frantic to find the little girl who the voice belonged to. Whoever it was had seemed amused by my panic. The more frantically I'd searched, the more entertained the little girl seemed to get. Finally the voice had whispered, clear but directionless,
"She can't see me."
After that, I'd started feeling a presence, as if someone invisible was following me. Not all the time, but regularly enough that I'd started to get used to it. It hadn't really scared me, though. I'd liked to think someone somewhere was watching over me. I'd be lying in bed, gazing out the window at the yellow buds along the tips of the branches, and sense that I wasn't alone anymore. I had gotten to the point where I could almost pinpoint the presence. Almost.
Then it had come, the deliciously sweet fragrance of cedar, a scent that made me think of sweaters unpacked from antique chests, of walking in the woods after a dip in the lake at summer camp, of my old hamster, Milo, and the bedding that lined his cage.
"Be-e-e-ecky? Be-e-e-ecky? Can you hear me?"
It hadn't been just the little girl's voice, disembodied, in my own room that so unnerved me. It had been my name, spoken aloud, from someone who could see me, who I couldn't see. Had I been able, I'd have sprinted from the bedroom, but getting out of seated positions had still taken a bit of time. Instead, I'd answered the voice, and that began my strange relationship with Jenny, the disclosure of which had eventually landed me more visits with doctors, a neurologist, and eventually an appointment with Dr. Sudha Singh.
****
"It's like a different girl from the Becky I knew woke up from that coma," Mom told Dr. Singh. "She used to be talkative, to joke around, to go out with her friends. Now all she wants to do is stay home, lie in bed, sleep."
"When my wife says she thinks we brought a new Becky home from the hospital," my dad added, "she's not exaggerating." Dad was wearing a grey linen suit with a crisp white dress shirt and when he steepled his hands in front of him he looked every bit the six-foot-four power attorney he was. "I'd like you to see something."
He slid to the edge of the couch and picked up the black leather briefcase that he'd set down next to the coffee table. He withdrew a sheaf a papers. "These are notes Becky took in class in the weeks before the accident." He handed them to Dr. Singh.
They were from English Lit written in ballpoint pen. The text was in block letters, scribbled as if I'd been hacking and slashing at the page so aggressively that the paper was indented. The page curled upward like a lily pad. The handwriting itself was legible but just barely.
"Now this is a sample of her handwriting
after
the accident."
Dr. Singh accepted the notebook he passed her. This text looked like it had been crafted by a completely different hand. Written in fair, exacting cursive, the letters were neatly aligned and clear, full of loops and flourishes, as if penned by someone from another generation in a time when calligraphy had been something of an art.
"Just so I'm clear," Dr. Singh responded, "
this
is the before and
this
is the after."
Dad nodded. "That's not all. She drew this when she first came home from the hospital."
He produced a sketch of a long-haired Persian curled up along the edge of a bed, a reproduction of my cat Max in striking detail. His fur appeared to have texture. The detailed folds and curves of the blankets were precisely shadowed and three dimensional. The glow in Max's eyes suggested he might hop out of the page.
"She made this after she was able to get around a little more," Dad raised a second sketch, this one in colorful pastels. The winter scene showed snow melting to reveal a richly colored garden full of flowers and blossoming trees. The quality of color made the scene appear to glow with its own inner light.
"Becky hasn't drawn before," Dr. Singh surmised.
"She's shown no artistic talent before. No."
Thanks, Dad.
He'd always seemed to adore my fingerpaintings from preschool.
Dr. Singh tried to catch my eye, but I refused to look up from the sodden tissues in my hand. My face flushed guiltily, as if Dad had accused me of texting racy photographs of me in my underwear.
"This," he concluded with an attorney's sense of drama, holding up a third paper, "was done a week ago."
The last was a portrait of a little girl drafted in pencil and outlined in black ink. Though the drawing ended at the verge of the girl's hair, the details were crisp enough to appear animate. Dr. Singh seemed to lurch a little when she first took in the face. I'd done the same myself when I'd first seen it. When you looked into the portrait's eyes, it felt like the girl there was gazing back at you. There was life there, a soul.
"This, according to Becky," Dad said, "is Jenny."