NaNoWriMo Story
Word Count: 14,136
Goal: 14,000
I return to looking around the room. I wonder if I have been to this Emergency Room before. This is probably my local hospital, so I may well have been here. I wonder why I would have come. A broken bone from some wild extreme mountain biking expedition? Perhaps alcohol poisoning after a night of hard partying?
Drinking does not seem like something I would enjoy. Getting so drunk I cannot remember the weekend does not sound like fun. Whether that is because this is my opinion or because the prospect of forgetting anything at this point is quite abhorrent is difficult to tease out.
The kindly nurse knocks politely on the door before opening it. When she comes in, I see that her name badge identifies her as Rebecca. That sounds like a nice name. I wonder if I know a Rebecca. Sounds like the name of someone who would be a really good mother.
“Mr. Marcus, before we head up, I need to take some blood so we can run some tests.,” she says gently.
“Alright. But, I don't feel like I'm a Mr. Marcus. Just call me William,” I request, as I start rolling up my sleeve.
I seem to have amused her. “Certainly. Not Will?” she offers, as she arranges the blood taking kit with clearly practiced hands.
“I don't rightly know,” I reply.
“Really? You don't know if you prefer Will?”
I shrug. “No idea. I remember nothing about myself. Not even my name preference. Mr. Marcus just sounds wrong to me.”
She laughs. “Sounds like an interesting situation to be in.”
“Beats a sucking chest wound as a reason to be here,” I say before she deftly puts the needle into my arm to take the blood. She is pretty good at it. I really do hardly feel a thing.
“There we go,” she says, as she places the gauze on the puncture mark.
She leads me up to the CAT scan room. We don't talk much on the way up. She seems like a chatty sort of person, but I imagine that she feels a bit awkward not being able to use any of her usual icebreaker questions. What do you do for work? I don't know.
When I get to the CAT scan, I am pleased to find that I do not have to get into one of those sexy hospital smocks. You know, the kind that exposes your hind quarters to review by all passers by. The CAT scan itself is nothing to difficult. There are some space age machines and loud whirs and buzzes, and $20,000 billed to my insurance later, they are done, and I am sent back to the Emergency Room. This time, I do not get the escort. I guess they figure that by this time I should know the place well enough to be able to find my way around. This probably means that they did not find any errant gushing blood vessels.
I return to my examining room and wait for Dr. Zimmer to return. After a few minutes, there is another polite knock at the door and Dr. Zimmer enters looking at something in a folder.
“Good news and bad news, Mr. Marcus.” Somehow it seems right for a doctor to refer to me by my last name, so I do not correct him. “The good news is that nothing shows up on the CAT scan. Your brain appears to be in perfect working order physically. There are a couple of blood tests that have come back right away, and they show nothing unusual either. Your electrolytes are a bit off, but that makes sense given that you probably walked to Staples for whatever reason.”
He looks up at me. “There are a few other tests that will take a few days to come back, but I do not expect they will show anything either.”
“OK, what's the bad news?” I ask.
With a straight face, he replies, “you still don't remember who you are, and we have no idea why.”
I laugh. I like this guy. Good sense of humor. That's important in a doctor. If I had to have someone tell me that I have six months left to live, I would want it to be this guy.
“Well, at least I'm not about to drop dead or start drooling like an idiot. That's really what I came here to be sure of. I didn't actually expect too much in the way of answers to the memory thing,” I reply.
Dr. Zimmer holds up the file. “Well, I never make guarantees, but from what I see here, no you are unlikely to drop dead or start drooling like an idiot in the near future. As for the memory, wait here. Someone from psych is on the way down to talk to you, and see if they can figure anything out.”
At hearing that, my pulse quickens a bit. “Right. Sounds great.”
The doctor smiles reassuringly. “Don't worry, they're nice here. They hardly bite at all.” He heads out of the room and closes the door behind him.
I sit again in the empty room, going over my exam questions in my head. I really do not know what he will be looking for. Perhaps he will just as a few questions and send me on my way. Or maybe he already intends to try to hold me here, and I will need to fight my way out like some kind of cheap action movie. I guess I will find out soon.
There is a knock at the door, and a middle aged man in a tan polo shirt comes in. “Good morning William. My name is Doctor Cohen. Doctor Zimmer tells me you are having a little trouble with your memory, is that right?” he asks as he pulls up the rolling chair, and sits down to face me.
He sits in a very non-confrontational posture. His gaze is kindly and unassuming. At the same time, I can feel a professional edge to it, like he is taking in every movement, every facial twitch without seeming to look at anything at all. He is the kind of man who is used to assessing just from looking at someone if they are likely to leap at him with a rolled up copy of Newsweek or start washing themselves like a stray cat.
“That is correct. I woke up around 4:30 in front of Staples in Hadley with no memory of who I was or how I got there,” I explained matter of factly.
He writes something down on a note pad and makes a hmmm sound. He looks back up at me. “Do you have these kinds of episodes frequently?”
Ah, we are dealing with this kind of doctor. Right by the script. “I do not believe so,” I reply evenly.
“You are not sure?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
“I still don't have any memory, so I really cannot be sure, but it does not seem like something common.”
“Does not seem common? How so?” he asks.
“Well,” I begin to explain, “If this happened often, I suspect that I would carry a note to myself. 'Dear William, if you have lost your memory, let me explain a few things you need to know.' That kind of thing.”
“Hmmm,” he says as he makes another note. He looks up again. “William, have you had any thoughts of hurting yourself or others?”
“No, sir, I have not.”
“Not at all?”
“No, sir, not at all.”
Another note. “Have you had any trouble remembering anything since this morning?”
“Not since I woke up, no.”
Another note. He asks a few more questions before pausing and writing for a while. They are those same sort of question. Very probing, and unclear as to their intention. I answer truthfully, since I do not know any better answers. Finally, he leans forward and look me in the eye and says, “William, I think that you should stay here with us for a few days so we can get an idea of where you come from.”
“362 Amherst Road, Sunderland, Massachusetts,” I reply formulaicly.
“Excuse me?” he asks.
“That is where I come from. That's my address.”
He seems a bit surprised by that one. “I thought you didn't remember who you were.”
“Correct, but I still have use of my senses, and I can read my license. How do you think I filled out the form when I got here?”
“Ah,” he replies slowly. This seems to be off script. He does not seem to like off script. “But the fact remains that I think it would be good for you to stay here with us, just in case.”
My heart is beating a bit quicker now. Here seems like exactly where I do not want to stay. “When you say that you think it would be good, do you mean that you would like me to choose to sign myself in or that there are large orderlies in the hallway to escort me to my new home?”
He gets a look in his eye that makes me think he wishes that he had large orderlies in the room. Dr. Cohen is clearly a man who feels that the moment he loses control of a patient is the moment that he is about to be torn limb from limb by wild animals.
“I mean that I believe it would be wise for you to sign yourself in for your own safety. Without your memory, there is a great danger that you could be taken advantage of or get into difficulty.” He presents a document and a pen. “Why not stay here a couple days until you can get a handle on things.”
I stand up and collect my coat. “Thank you Dr. Cohen for your generous offer, but I do not think that will be necessary.”
He stands up as well. “I really wish you would reconsider,” he says more strongly.
This situation seems to be going well, except that he is not backing off. This makes me think that perhaps this situation can go from in control to out of control very quickly. Let us keep it in control.
I thrust out my hand and shake his. “Thank you Dr. Cohen. This has been very valuable,” I say as I give him a strong handshake. Before he can answer, I disengage and stride briskly out of the room.
I continue boldly down the hallway towards the exit door. I get a vague flash of walking this way in a crowded hallway. Bold steps, chest out, eyes forward, boring a hole with sheer force of will. High school. Striding to class. Is this a memory of some kind.
A voice calls out to me as I am almost to the door. The words sound nothing like 'freeze or I'll shoot' so I keep walking. It is the nurse. She wants me to sign something.
“I'll come back later for it,” I call over my shoulder as I burst through the door to the waiting room.
Allison is surprised to see me come out so quickly, and she gets to her feet. “Time to go,” I say, without breaking stride to the door. I have no reason to think that Dr. Cohen is behind me, but I have no intention of sticking around to find out.
Allison rushes out with me. We move swiftly across the parking lot. Allison unlocks the car, and we both get in. She is backing out of the parking space before she asks with a mix of trepidation and excitement, “Did you just flee from custody or something?”
“Not exactly. I am pretty sure I was free to go, but the shrink was starting to make me think he might try some of that psychological legal mumbo jumbo, and I wanted to get out of there before he had the chance,” I explained, realizing that I was slightly out of breath, more from the anxiety of the encounter than from exertion.
“Probably wise,” she replies. “How'd it go otherwise?”
I take a deep breath to calm my nerves. “No obvious mortal danger. It's all in my head as I thought.”
She lets out a slight sigh of relief as well. She is getting caught up in this story, or she might care about me. Who knows? “So, now what?”
Goal: 14,000
I return to looking around the room. I wonder if I have been to this Emergency Room before. This is probably my local hospital, so I may well have been here. I wonder why I would have come. A broken bone from some wild extreme mountain biking expedition? Perhaps alcohol poisoning after a night of hard partying?
Drinking does not seem like something I would enjoy. Getting so drunk I cannot remember the weekend does not sound like fun. Whether that is because this is my opinion or because the prospect of forgetting anything at this point is quite abhorrent is difficult to tease out.
The kindly nurse knocks politely on the door before opening it. When she comes in, I see that her name badge identifies her as Rebecca. That sounds like a nice name. I wonder if I know a Rebecca. Sounds like the name of someone who would be a really good mother.
“Mr. Marcus, before we head up, I need to take some blood so we can run some tests.,” she says gently.
“Alright. But, I don't feel like I'm a Mr. Marcus. Just call me William,” I request, as I start rolling up my sleeve.
I seem to have amused her. “Certainly. Not Will?” she offers, as she arranges the blood taking kit with clearly practiced hands.
“I don't rightly know,” I reply.
“Really? You don't know if you prefer Will?”
I shrug. “No idea. I remember nothing about myself. Not even my name preference. Mr. Marcus just sounds wrong to me.”
She laughs. “Sounds like an interesting situation to be in.”
“Beats a sucking chest wound as a reason to be here,” I say before she deftly puts the needle into my arm to take the blood. She is pretty good at it. I really do hardly feel a thing.
“There we go,” she says, as she places the gauze on the puncture mark.
She leads me up to the CAT scan room. We don't talk much on the way up. She seems like a chatty sort of person, but I imagine that she feels a bit awkward not being able to use any of her usual icebreaker questions. What do you do for work? I don't know.
When I get to the CAT scan, I am pleased to find that I do not have to get into one of those sexy hospital smocks. You know, the kind that exposes your hind quarters to review by all passers by. The CAT scan itself is nothing to difficult. There are some space age machines and loud whirs and buzzes, and $20,000 billed to my insurance later, they are done, and I am sent back to the Emergency Room. This time, I do not get the escort. I guess they figure that by this time I should know the place well enough to be able to find my way around. This probably means that they did not find any errant gushing blood vessels.
I return to my examining room and wait for Dr. Zimmer to return. After a few minutes, there is another polite knock at the door and Dr. Zimmer enters looking at something in a folder.
“Good news and bad news, Mr. Marcus.” Somehow it seems right for a doctor to refer to me by my last name, so I do not correct him. “The good news is that nothing shows up on the CAT scan. Your brain appears to be in perfect working order physically. There are a couple of blood tests that have come back right away, and they show nothing unusual either. Your electrolytes are a bit off, but that makes sense given that you probably walked to Staples for whatever reason.”
He looks up at me. “There are a few other tests that will take a few days to come back, but I do not expect they will show anything either.”
“OK, what's the bad news?” I ask.
With a straight face, he replies, “you still don't remember who you are, and we have no idea why.”
I laugh. I like this guy. Good sense of humor. That's important in a doctor. If I had to have someone tell me that I have six months left to live, I would want it to be this guy.
“Well, at least I'm not about to drop dead or start drooling like an idiot. That's really what I came here to be sure of. I didn't actually expect too much in the way of answers to the memory thing,” I reply.
Dr. Zimmer holds up the file. “Well, I never make guarantees, but from what I see here, no you are unlikely to drop dead or start drooling like an idiot in the near future. As for the memory, wait here. Someone from psych is on the way down to talk to you, and see if they can figure anything out.”
At hearing that, my pulse quickens a bit. “Right. Sounds great.”
The doctor smiles reassuringly. “Don't worry, they're nice here. They hardly bite at all.” He heads out of the room and closes the door behind him.
I sit again in the empty room, going over my exam questions in my head. I really do not know what he will be looking for. Perhaps he will just as a few questions and send me on my way. Or maybe he already intends to try to hold me here, and I will need to fight my way out like some kind of cheap action movie. I guess I will find out soon.
There is a knock at the door, and a middle aged man in a tan polo shirt comes in. “Good morning William. My name is Doctor Cohen. Doctor Zimmer tells me you are having a little trouble with your memory, is that right?” he asks as he pulls up the rolling chair, and sits down to face me.
He sits in a very non-confrontational posture. His gaze is kindly and unassuming. At the same time, I can feel a professional edge to it, like he is taking in every movement, every facial twitch without seeming to look at anything at all. He is the kind of man who is used to assessing just from looking at someone if they are likely to leap at him with a rolled up copy of Newsweek or start washing themselves like a stray cat.
“That is correct. I woke up around 4:30 in front of Staples in Hadley with no memory of who I was or how I got there,” I explained matter of factly.
He writes something down on a note pad and makes a hmmm sound. He looks back up at me. “Do you have these kinds of episodes frequently?”
Ah, we are dealing with this kind of doctor. Right by the script. “I do not believe so,” I reply evenly.
“You are not sure?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
“I still don't have any memory, so I really cannot be sure, but it does not seem like something common.”
“Does not seem common? How so?” he asks.
“Well,” I begin to explain, “If this happened often, I suspect that I would carry a note to myself. 'Dear William, if you have lost your memory, let me explain a few things you need to know.' That kind of thing.”
“Hmmm,” he says as he makes another note. He looks up again. “William, have you had any thoughts of hurting yourself or others?”
“No, sir, I have not.”
“Not at all?”
“No, sir, not at all.”
Another note. “Have you had any trouble remembering anything since this morning?”
“Not since I woke up, no.”
Another note. He asks a few more questions before pausing and writing for a while. They are those same sort of question. Very probing, and unclear as to their intention. I answer truthfully, since I do not know any better answers. Finally, he leans forward and look me in the eye and says, “William, I think that you should stay here with us for a few days so we can get an idea of where you come from.”
“362 Amherst Road, Sunderland, Massachusetts,” I reply formulaicly.
“Excuse me?” he asks.
“That is where I come from. That's my address.”
He seems a bit surprised by that one. “I thought you didn't remember who you were.”
“Correct, but I still have use of my senses, and I can read my license. How do you think I filled out the form when I got here?”
“Ah,” he replies slowly. This seems to be off script. He does not seem to like off script. “But the fact remains that I think it would be good for you to stay here with us, just in case.”
My heart is beating a bit quicker now. Here seems like exactly where I do not want to stay. “When you say that you think it would be good, do you mean that you would like me to choose to sign myself in or that there are large orderlies in the hallway to escort me to my new home?”
He gets a look in his eye that makes me think he wishes that he had large orderlies in the room. Dr. Cohen is clearly a man who feels that the moment he loses control of a patient is the moment that he is about to be torn limb from limb by wild animals.
“I mean that I believe it would be wise for you to sign yourself in for your own safety. Without your memory, there is a great danger that you could be taken advantage of or get into difficulty.” He presents a document and a pen. “Why not stay here a couple days until you can get a handle on things.”
I stand up and collect my coat. “Thank you Dr. Cohen for your generous offer, but I do not think that will be necessary.”
He stands up as well. “I really wish you would reconsider,” he says more strongly.
This situation seems to be going well, except that he is not backing off. This makes me think that perhaps this situation can go from in control to out of control very quickly. Let us keep it in control.
I thrust out my hand and shake his. “Thank you Dr. Cohen. This has been very valuable,” I say as I give him a strong handshake. Before he can answer, I disengage and stride briskly out of the room.
I continue boldly down the hallway towards the exit door. I get a vague flash of walking this way in a crowded hallway. Bold steps, chest out, eyes forward, boring a hole with sheer force of will. High school. Striding to class. Is this a memory of some kind.
A voice calls out to me as I am almost to the door. The words sound nothing like 'freeze or I'll shoot' so I keep walking. It is the nurse. She wants me to sign something.
“I'll come back later for it,” I call over my shoulder as I burst through the door to the waiting room.
Allison is surprised to see me come out so quickly, and she gets to her feet. “Time to go,” I say, without breaking stride to the door. I have no reason to think that Dr. Cohen is behind me, but I have no intention of sticking around to find out.
Allison rushes out with me. We move swiftly across the parking lot. Allison unlocks the car, and we both get in. She is backing out of the parking space before she asks with a mix of trepidation and excitement, “Did you just flee from custody or something?”
“Not exactly. I am pretty sure I was free to go, but the shrink was starting to make me think he might try some of that psychological legal mumbo jumbo, and I wanted to get out of there before he had the chance,” I explained, realizing that I was slightly out of breath, more from the anxiety of the encounter than from exertion.
“Probably wise,” she replies. “How'd it go otherwise?”
I take a deep breath to calm my nerves. “No obvious mortal danger. It's all in my head as I thought.”
She lets out a slight sigh of relief as well. She is getting caught up in this story, or she might care about me. Who knows? “So, now what?”