Left Neglected Part 9

"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 b.u.t.ter 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.

IT'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 b.a.l.l.s 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. G.o.d, 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 b.a.l.l.s. 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 b.u.mps 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 G.o.d, oh my G.o.d, 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 gla.s.ses now. And her face is sagging, like her frown finally became too hefty and is pulling her entire face down.

"Oh my G.o.d, Sarah, your head. Oh my G.o.d, oh my G.o.d-"

"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."

CHAPTER 10.

There are forty beds in the neuro unit at Baldwin Rehabilitation Center. I know this because only two of the forty beds are in private rooms, and insurance doesn't cover these. You have to pay out of pocket for privacy.

Bob made sure I got one of the "singles" with a window to the right of the bed. We both thought that a view of life outside the confines of my room would be good for my morale. We didn't realize that this simple request needed to be more specific.

On this sunny day, I'm staring out the window at a prison. My view is of nothing but brick and steel bars. The irony of this is not lost on me. Apparently, on the other side of the neuro unit, the patients have a view of the Leonard Zakim Bridge, a work of stunning architectural achievement by day and a breathtaking, illuminated masterpiece by night. Of course, all of those rooms are "doubles." Everything's a trade-off. Be careful what you ask for. I'm a brain-injured cliche.

Whatever I have to do here, I'm ready for it. Work hard, do my homework, get an A, get back home to Bob and the kids, and back to work. Back to normal. I'm determined to recover 100 percent. One hundred percent has always been my goal in everything, unless extra credit is involved, and then I shoot higher. Thank G.o.d I'm a compet.i.tive, type A perfectionist. I'm convinced I'm going to be the best traumatic brain injury patient Baldwin has ever seen. But they won't be seeing me for very long because I also plan to recover faster than anyone here would predict. I wonder what the record is.

But every time I try to get a concrete sense for how long it might take for someone with Left Neglect to fully recover, I get a vague and dissatisfying answer.

"It's highly variable," said Dr. Kwon.

"What's the average time?" I asked.

"We don't really know."

"Huh. Okay, well, what's the range?"

"Some recover spontaneously within a couple of weeks, some respond to strategies and retraining by six months, some longer."

"So what predicts who will get better in the two weeks versus longer?"

"Nothing we know of."

I continue to be astounded by how little the medical profession knows about my condition. I guess that's why they call it the practice of medicine.

It's now 9:15 a.m., and I'm watching Regis and some woman. It used to be Regis and some other woman. I can't remember her name. It's been a long time since I've watched morning television. Martha, my physical therapist, has just come in and introduced herself. She has streaky blond hair pulled into a tight ponytail and four diamond stud earrings crowded onto her earlobe. She's built like a rugby player. She looks no-nonsense, tough. Good. Bring it on.

"So when do you think I'll be able to go back to work?" I ask while she reads my chart.

"What do you do?"

"I'm the vice president of human resources at a strategy consulting firm."

She laughs with her mouth closed and shakes her head.

"Let's concentrate on getting you to walk and use the bathroom."

"Do you think two weeks?" I ask.

She laughs and shakes her head again. She looks long and hard at my bald head.

"I don't think you fully understand what's happened to you," she says.

I look long and hard at her ear.

"I do actually. I understand exactly what's already happened. What I don't understand is what is going to happen."

"Today, we're going to try sitting and walking."

For the love of G.o.d, can we please talk big picture? My goals are more expansive than watching Regis and going for a stroll to the bathroom.

"Okay, but when do you think I'll be back to normal?"

She grabs the remote, clicks off the TV, and fixes me with a stern look before she answers, like the kind I give Charlie when I really need him to hear me.

"Maybe never."

I do not like this woman.

MY MOTHER HAS FIGURED OUT my little Stand to My Left trick and has perched herself on the visitor's chair to my right like a nervous hen on a nest of precious eggs. Even though I don't have a medical excuse now, I'm still trying to pretend she's not here. But she's sitting smack in the middle of my field of vision, so she's unavoidable. And every time I look at her, she's got this anxious expression carved onto her face that makes me want to scream. I suppose it's the sort of worried expression that would naturally form on anyone forced to sit next to me or the motorcycle accident guy next door with the mangled face and no legs or the young woman down the hall who had a postpartum stroke and can't say her new baby's name. It's the kind of concerned, mixed-with-a-spoonful-of-horror-and-adollop-of-dread look that anyone might have if forced to sit next to any patient in the neuro unit. It can't be that she's actually worried about me. She hasn't worried about me in thirty years. So, although it bugs me, I get her expression. What I don't get is who's forcing her to sit here.

Martha comes in and places a stainless steel basin on my tray.