Left Neglected (8 page)

What’s the matter, Sarah, you don’t want your lunch?” asks the nurse.

I’ve been staring at yet another bowl of chicken noodle soup for a while wondering how to tackle it. It smells good. I’m sure it smells infinitely better than it will taste, and it looks a bit congealed now, but I’m starving. I want to eat it.

“I don’t have a spoon.”

The nurse looks at my tray and then back up at me.

“How about the brownie?” she asks.

I look at the tray I’ve been keeping company and then back up at her.

“What brownie?”

Seemingly out of nowhere, the nurse produces a spoon in her hand and plunks a cellophane-wrapped brownie on the tray next to the bowl of soup. I stare at her as if she’s about to pull a quarter out from behind my ear.

“You didn’t see these on your tray?” she asks, handing me the spoon.

“They weren’t on my tray.”

“But you see them now,” she says, more conclusive than curious.

“Uh-huh.”

I slurp a spoonful of broth. I was right. The soup is dish-water. I move on to the brownie. Chocolate is always edible.

“I’ll be back with Dr. Kwon in a few minutes,” she says.

Okay. Can you abracadabra me a glass of milk when you do?

A
N
A
SIAN MAN IN A
white lab coat is standing at the foot of my bed holding a clipboard, clicking and unclicking his ballpoint pen as he peruses the pages of what I assume is my medical chart. His face is hairless, smooth, gorgeous. His face could be eighteen. But I’m guessing this is Dr. Kwon, my doctor, in which case he’d better have age-defying genetics and be at least thirty.

“Sarah, good to see you awake. How are you feeling?”

Anxious, tired, scared.

“Good.”

He clicks his pen and writes something down. Oh, I’m being interviewed. I’d better concentrate. Whatever he’s testing me on, I want to get an A. I want to go home. I want to get back to work.

“How would you say I’m doing?” I ask.

“Good. Things look pretty good considering. You came in pretty banged up. You had a depressed skull fracture and some bleeding on your brain. We had to go in and drain it. We got it all, but with the bleed and the inflammation, you sustained some damage. Your scan shows you’ve lost some real estate. But you’re lucky the insult was on the right and not the left, or you probably wouldn’t be talking to me right now.”

I think his answer started with “good,” but I’m having a hard time hearing any semblance of “good” in any of the words he uttered after that, even as I play it back. “Brain damage.” That sounds like the opposite of “good” to me. I think he also said “Lucky.” I feel dizzy.

“Can you get my husband? I want him to hear this with me.”

“I’m right here,” says Bob.

I turn to see him, but he’s not there. The only people in the room are me and the handsome Dr. Kwon.

“Why are you looking at the chair? I’m over here,” says Bob.

“Bob? I can’t find you.”

“Stand on the other side of me,” says Dr. Kwon.

“There you are!” I say, like we’re playing a game of peek-a-boo.

Weird that I couldn’t see him a second ago. Maybe my vision was affected by the accident. Maybe he was standing too far back. Dr. Kwon adjusts my bed so that I’m sitting upright.

“Sarah, focus on my nose and tell me when you see my finger.”

He’s holding his index finger up near my ear.

“I see it.”

“How about now?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“No.”

“How about now?”

“No.”

“Is she blind?” asks Bob.

Of course I’m not blind. What kind of crazy question is that? Dr. Kwon flashes a light into my eyes. I study his black coffee eyes as he studies something about mine.

“Follow my light. Good. No, the areas of her brain responsible for vision weren’t damaged, and her eyes look fine.”

He pulls out a sheet of paper from his clipboard, places it on my tray table, wheels the table in front of me, and hands me a pen. Uppercase and lowercase letters are scattered across the page.

“Sarah, can you circle all the A’s for me?”

I do this.

“Are you sure you’ve found them all?” he asks.

I check my work.

“Yes.”

He pulls out another sheet.

“Can you draw a vertical line through the middle of each of these horizontal lines?”

I divide the nine lines in half. I look up, ready to ace the next puzzle.

“All done? Okay, let’s move this tray out of the way. Can you hold both arms straight out for me, palms up?”

I do this.

“Are you holding both arms out?”

“Yes.”

“Is she paralyzed?” asks Bob.

Again, what kind of nonsensical question is that to ask? Did he not just see me move? Dr. Kwon taps my arm and leg with a small rubber hammer.

“No, she’s got some weakness on the left, but that should come back with time and rehab. She has Left Neglect. It’s a pretty common condition for patients who’ve suffered damage to the right-hemisphere, usually from a hemorrhage or stroke. Her brain isn’t paying attention to anything on her left. ‘Left’ doesn’t exist to her.”

“What do you mean, ‘it doesn’t exist’?” asks Bob.

“Exactly that. It’s not there to her. She won’t notice you if you’re standing to her left, she won’t touch the food on the left side of her plate, and she might not even believe that her left arm and leg belong to her.”

“Because ‘left’ doesn’t exist to her?” asks Bob.

“Right,” says Dr. Kwon. “I mean, yes.”

“Will it come back?” asks Bob.

“It might, it might not. With some patients, we see symptoms resolve over the first few weeks as inflammation goes down, and the brain heals. But with others, it persists, and the best you can do is learn to live with it.”

“With no left,” says Bob.

“Yes.”

“She doesn’t seem to notice that it’s missing,” says Bob.

“Yes, that’s true for most patients in the acute phase immediately following the injury. She’s mostly unaware of her unawareness. She’s not aware that the left side of everything is missing. To her, it’s all there, and everything is normal.”

I may be unaware of some unawareness, but Dr. Kwon and Bob seem unaware that I’m still here.

“Do you know you have a left hand?” Bob asks me.

“Of course I know I have a left hand,” I say, embarrassed that he keeps asking these ridiculous questions.

But then I consider this ridiculous question. Where is my left hand? I have no idea. Oh my God, where is my left hand? How about my left foot? That’s also missing. I wiggle my right toes. I try to send the same message to my left foot, but my brain returns it to sender. Sorry, no such address.

“Bob, I know I have a left hand, but I have no idea where it is.”

I’ve been in the hospital for twelve days now, and I’ve moved from the ICU to the hospital’s neurology unit where I’ve been Dr. Kwon’s pet guinea pig for the past couple of days. He wants to learn more about Left Neglect before they move me out of this wretched room and over to rehab. He says there’s not a lot understood about this condition, which is news that I find more than a little depressing. But maybe he’ll learn something from me that will advance the clinical understanding of Neglect. And maybe that will help me. I’m also happy to cooperate because learning more about my condition only involves questions, puzzles, pen, and paper and does not involve needles, blood draws, or brain scans. And it keeps me occupied for a good while, time that would otherwise be filled with nothing but obsessive worrying about work, missing Bob and the kids, and staring at the fluorescent light and peeled paint on the ceiling. So Dr. Kwon and I have been spending lots of quality time together.

As I answer questions and do word searches, I try to join Dr. Kwon and find it oddly fascinating instead of hopelessly terrifying that I never notice or include anything on the left. I’m not even aware that I’ve ignored anything until Dr. Kwon or one of my therapists or nurses tells me what I’ve missed. Then, when I realize the magnitude of what isn’t there to me, instead of dissolving in a puddle of my own tears or wailing
This is bad, this is really, really bad,
I force the most positive thing I can think of. Usually something like,
Wow.
It feels like the mayor of Doomsville is offering me a key to the city, but I’m doing my best to stay out of town.

I do enjoy the drawing tests. It feels like a million years ago that I carried an artist’s sketchpad everywhere I went. I majored in economics in college, but I took just as many courses in graphic design, art, and art history. I try imagining where in my cluttered attic those pads might be stored, but I can’t find them. Maybe they’re on the left. I hope I didn’t throw them out.

Dr. Kwon asks me to draw a flower, a clock, a house, a face.

“You’re good,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“Did you draw a whole face?”

“Yes.”

I look at my picture with pride and love. I drew Lucy. As I admire her features, doubt creeps into my consciousness.

“Didn’t I?” I ask.

“No. How many eyes do people have?”

“Two.”

“Did you draw two?”

I look at my picture of Lucy.

“I think so.”

He clicks his pen and writes. He’s writing something negative about my drawing of Lucy Goose, and no one should do that. I push the paper toward him.

“You draw a face,” I say.

He draws a simple smiley, done in two seconds.

“Did you draw a whole face?” I ask.

“Yes.”

I click my pen as emphatically as I can, high in the air, and then pretend to write my evaluation on an invisible clipboard.

“What are you writing, Dr. Nickerson?” he asks, feigning deep concern.

“Well, don’t faces have ears, eyebrows, hair? I’m afraid you have a very serious but fascinating condition, doctor.”

He laughs and adds a tongue sticking out from the bottom of the line for the mouth.

“True, true. Our brains normally don’t need every piece of information to assume a whole. Like our blind spot. We all have a blind spot where our optic nerve leaves the retina, but we don’t normally notice this blank space in our field of vision because our brains fill in the picture,” Dr. Kwon says. “That’s probably what you’re doing. You’re relying on only the right half to assume a whole, and your brain is unconsciously filling in the blanks. Wonderful observation. Truly fascinating.”

While I’m enjoying his attention and flattery, I know that what excites a nerdy doctor will probably be perceived as freakish and scary by the world outside this room. I want to draw both of Lucy’s eyes. I want to hug Charlie with two hands, kiss both of Linus’s feet, and see all of Bob. And I can’t get away with reading only the right half of an Excel spreadsheet. I need my brain to see the left again, wherever it is, and stop making huge assumptions. Assumptions only get everyone into a lot of trouble.

T
ODAY’S LUNCH IS CHICKEN, RICE
, and apple juice. The chicken needs salt, the rice needs soy sauce, and the apple juice could use a generous shot of vodka. But I apparently have high blood pressure, and I’m not allowed any salt or alcohol. I eat and drink every bland thing they bring me. I need to get my strength back. I’m moving to the rehab hospital tomorrow, and from what I hear, it’s going to be a lot of work. I can’t wait. As much as I like Dr. Kwon, this guinea pig wants out of her cage forever.

Dr. Kwon comes in to check on me before his rounds.

“How was your lunch?” he asks.

“Good.”

“Did you use the knife to cut your chicken?”

“No, I used the side of the fork.”

Click. He writes down this fascinating piece of data.

“Did you eat everything?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you full?”

I shrug. I’m not, but I don’t want seconds.

“What if I told you there was a chocolate bar on your plate?” he asks, smiling.

I’ve got to hand it to him for trying. Chocolate is definitely the right bait to use with me. But I don’t need an incentive. I’m highly motivated. It’s not that I’m not trying to see what he sees.

“I don’t see it.”

Maybe I can feel it. I wipe the clean, white plate with the palm of my hand. There’s nothing there. Not one kernel of rice, not one morsel of chocolate.

“Try turning your head to the left.”

I stare at the plate.

“I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to get to where you’re asking me to go. It’s not a place I can turn to or look at. It’s like if you told me to turn and look at the middle of my back. I believe the middle of my back exists, but I have no idea how to see it.”

He writes this down and nods while he writes.

“Intellectually, I understand that there’s a left side of the plate, but it’s not part of my reality. I can’t look at the left side of the plate because it’s not there. There is no left side. I feel like I’m looking at the whole plate. I don’t know, it’s frustrating, I can’t describe it.”

“I think you just did.”

“But is there really chocolate there?”

“Yup, the kind Bob brought yesterday.”

Lake Champlain. The best. Without understanding how this might work, I grab the top of the plate and rotate it to the bottom. Tada! Almond Butter Crunch. Bob’s the best.

“That’s cheating!” says Dr. Kwon.

“Totally fair,” I say, chewing a sublime mouthful.

“Okay, but answer this. Where did that chocolate come from?”

I know he wants me to say “the left.” But there is no left.

“Heaven.”

“Sarah, think about it. It came from the left side of the plate, which is now on the right, and the right, which you just saw, so you know it exists, is now on the left.”

He might as well have just said something about Pi times the square root of infinity. I don’t care where the right side of the plate went. I’m eating my favorite chocolate, and I’m moving to rehab tomorrow.

I
T’S BEEN TWO WEEKS SINCE
the accident, and Bob’s been taking a lot of time off from work to be here with me, which can’t be good for his chances of surviving if there’s another layoff. I told him he shouldn’t be here so much. He told me to be quiet and not worry about him.

My favorite test aside from drawing pictures is called the Fluff Test. Rose, the physical therapist, tapes cotton balls all over me and then asks me to remove them. I love it because I imagine I must look like one of Charlie’s or Lucy’s art projects, like the snowmen they’ll probably make in school in a few weeks. God, I miss my kids.

I pluck off the cotton “snow” and let Rose know when I’m done.

“Did I get them all?”

“Nope.”

“Close?”

“Nope.”

“Did I get any on the left?”

Wherever that is.

“Nope.”

Weird. I truly believed I found them all. I don’t feel any on me.

“Hold on a sec,” says Bob, who has been sitting in the visitor’s chair, observing.

Bob holds up his iPhone and says, “Say cheese.”

He clicks a photo and shows me the LCD display. I’m stunned. In the picture of me on the screen, I’m covered head to foot in cotton balls. Crazy. That must be the left side of me. And there’s my arm and leg. I’m beyond relieved to see that they’re still there. I’d started to believe that they’d been amputated and no one had the courage to tell me.

I notice my head in the picture. It’s not only covered in cotton balls, it’s not shaved. My hair, aside from looking oily and matted, is exactly as I remember it. I reach up to touch it but feel only bald head and the Braille-like bumps created by my incision scars (a neurology resident removed the staples a couple of days ago). According to the picture, I have a full head of hair, but according to what my hand feels, I’m completely bald. This is too bizarre.

“I still have hair?”

“They only shaved the right side. The left still has all your hair,” says Rose.

I stare at the picture while I run my fingers along my scalp. I love my hair, but this can’t look pretty.

“You have to shave the rest,” I say.

Rose looks over at Bob like she’s checking for another vote.

“It’s the best of the two looks, Bob, don’t you think?”

He says nothing, but his lack of response tells me that he agrees. And I know it’s like asking him,
Which do you like better, church or the mall?
He’s not a fan of either.

“Can we do it now before I chicken out?”

“I’ll go get the razor,” says Rose.

As we wait for Rose to come back, Bob stands and checks email on his iPhone. I haven’t checked my email since I’ve been here. They won’t let me. My heart races when I think about it. My inbox must have a thousand emails waiting for me. Or maybe Jessica has been forwarding everything to Richard or Carson. That would make more sense. We’re in the middle of recruiting, my most critical time of year. I need to get back to make sure we get the right people and place them where they’ll best fit.

“Bob, where’d you go?”

“I’m over by the window.”

“Okay, honey, you might as well be in France. Can you come over here where I can see you?”

“Sorry.”

Rose comes back with the electric shaver.

“You sure?” she asks.

“Yes.”

The shaver has been buzzing for a few seconds when I see my mother walk into the room. She takes one looks at me and gasps as if she’s beholding Frankenstein. She covers her mouth with her hands and starts hyperventilating. Here comes the hysteria.

“When did you tell her?” I ask Bob.

“Two days ago.”

I’m impressed she made it here in two days. She doesn’t like to leave her house much, and she panics if she has to leave the Cape. It’s gotten worse as she’s gotten older. I don’t think she’s been over the Sagamore Bridge since Lucy was born. She’s never even seen Linus.

“Oh my God, oh my God, is she dying?”

“I’m not dying. I’m getting my hair cut.”

She looks much older than I remember. She doesn’t color her hair chestnut brown anymore; she’s let it go silver. She wears glasses now. And her face is sagging, like her frown finally became too hefty and is pulling her entire face down.

“Oh my God, Sarah, your head. Oh my God, oh my God—”

“Helen, she’s going to be okay,” says Bob.

Now she’s sobbing. I don’t need this.

“Mom, please,” I say. “Go stand over by the window.”