SERENDIPITY’S STING
by
A.C. Ping
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
A.C. Ping on Smashwords
Serendipty’s Sting
Copyright © 2010 by A.C. Ping
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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Chapter 8 – The Paradox of Being
Chapter 10 – A Glimmer of Light
Chapter 11 – No Sense No Feeling
Chapter 14 – Getting in Deeper
Chapter 16 – Serendipity’s Sting
Chapter 1 - Awake
I can’t remember actually waking up. It was more like a bad radio signal fading in and fading back out just as quickly. Little snippets of people in white uniforms saying things like, ‘Counting your lucky stars are you?’ ‘Bet you’ll be rushing straight out to buy a lotto ticket eh? Someone up there is smiling on you’.
I was just trying to come to grips with what the hell was going on. For the first few days there was no sense to it at all. Was it a dream? Was it reality? Light then darkness, white walls, crisp thick bed sheets that had too much starch, a murmur of a television, soft shoes on a linoleum floor, machines that beeped. Then just as I’d start to get a grip they’d present me with some pills and a paper cup of water and off I’d go again, plunged into darkness and a world filled with bizarre and haunting dreams.
One morning, it must have been a couple of days after I first woke up, a doctor came to see me. He looked at me like I was a lab rat, flashed a torch in my eyes then stuck me with a needle and kept asking if I could feel it – in my fingers, legs, feet, and toes. He seemed happy that I was in pain. Not satisfied he moved onto a little rubber hammer and started hitting me with that instead. He grunted with approval every time my leg flinched. Then he left. I thought he’d at least say something to me, anything really, just to reassure me that I was there.
Then they missed the lunchtime drug run and soon after that not one doctor but three came to see me. They were very officious, two young men in white coats, one older one with swept back silver hair. The older man wore half glasses that he perched on the end of his nose, a beautiful grey suit, polished black shoes, a crisp white shirt and some sort of club tie. The two young doctors stood obediently at the end of the bed watching me whilst the older doctor sat on the edge of the bed and delicately clasped his finely manicured hands one in the other as if to protect them.
“I’m doctor Marshall”, he said, “Do you know where you are?”
Well finally, I thought, someone was going to tell me what was going on. But I wasn’t sure if I liked the answer. It seems that I had been in a car accident. I’d suffered a sub cranial trauma to the brain. Apparently the car rolled three times, one more time and I’d be dead they reckoned. A miracle that I was there, they said.
“So, how do you feel?” they asked.
“Confused, lethargic, weak, giddy, not sure really, how should I feel?” I muttered.
“Lucky” they said in unison.
“Oh”, was about all I could manage.
Then the real questions began. The older doctor, who I found out later was the Neuro surgeon that had operated on me left me in the care of Dr Swanson, the Neuro psychologist and Dr Corcoran, the silent one of needle and hammer fame.
Did I know my name? Yes
Did I know where I was? No
Did I know what year it was? Who was the Prime Minister of England? What was my mother’s name? Who won the world cup? Did I remember the accident? What was the last thing I remembered?
On and on it went with furious note scribbling and the occasional exchange of glances between the two doctors. It was hard to tell if they were pleased or not. When they finished I couldn’t resist.
“Did I pass?” I asked.
They just chuckled and said they’d be back tomorrow.
A bit unfair I thought, but soon after the nurse came in with some more tablets and I was plunged yet again into a deep abyss.
******************
Have you ever been sick with something nasty and delusional like Malaria or Tick Bite Fever? When you wake up, or at least you think you’re awake, and everything around you seems so implausible, so unreal that you decide you’re still dreaming and struggle hard to reject what you’re hearing and try to go back to sleep. But then you realise you really are awake and with reluctance you try instead to assimilate this new reality with what you thought was reality. That was how I felt.
The next day the doctors came around for another question and answer session and at the end of it they gave me the option of taking a pill and slipping away or not.
I couldn’t decide. I tried to understand what they had said but it didn’t make any sense. It must be a dream, it must be a dream, I repeated over and over to myself. I couldn’t believe what they had said. I’d been there for three months!!! In a coma.
“You have suffered some damage to your brain” they said, oh so casually, as if they were telling me that my car had blown a gasket and needed some work. Then they stood there looking at me, waiting for a reaction.
Well, how was I supposed to react to that?
“You will most likely experience some transitory memory loss,” they added, as if it was an afterthought.
“Uh huh, which bits?” I asked, curious to know whether I would still be able to tie my shoe laces and keen to brush aside the prospect of dribbling my way through life.
“That’s what we’re trying to work out,” they said. Before leaving me to ‘take it all in’.
So, there I was. Was I brain damaged? Was I an idiot? I wondered. It didn’t seem that way to me. But if I was brain damaged would I know? Wouldn’t I just sit there smiling nicely, blissful in the comfortable cradle of ignorance? How does one tell if one has lost the plot? Isn’t that one of the clues – that the really crazy people are the ones who truly think that they are sane. Was I in that category now? How would I know? Who could I ask that I trust? The doctors never let me know if I passed the question and answer test. Maybe the discreet nods to each other were really saying, “Oh boy have we got a nutcase here”.
I did an inventory. I knew my name, I knew where I lived, I knew what year it was – or at least I thought I did and the doctors never disagreed. I could move my arms and legs although they felt pretty weak but I knew this was from lying there for three months. I still had tubes coming out of my arms and there was another tube that lead out from under the covers into a bottle. I suddenly panicked and hoped the accident didn’t damage that part of my brain. I lifted the sheets to check and saw a tube coming out from where I couldn’t remember having a tube. I didn’t want to know so I put the sheets back down and took the pill.
***********
The next day my brain was starting to clear up a little. They told me they’d lowered my dose. Ease me back into things. Let me get used to things gradually they said.
Dr Corcoran and Dr Swanson came to see me again after lunch, as seemed to be their routine. I decided not to be passive because I really wanted some answers. If I was going to be brain damaged then I wanted them to let me know what the damage was so at least I could decide what to do next.
They started asking me their usual questions. How did I feel? Any tingling or numbness in hands or feet? Headaches? Aches and pains?
“Fine. No. No. No.” I replied and as I did a rage overtook me. I guess it was from the drugs, or at least I hoped it was because if not then I knew I’d developed a nasty temper in my convalescence.
“For Christ’s sake just tell me what is going on will you? I’ve been putting up with your bloody questions for days and now I want some answers! What’s the story? Am I okay? When can I get out of here? Just tell me straight!”
My temples pulsated, I can feel how the blood flowed into my face now. I remember clutching the side of the bed in frustration. Did they think of calling the nurse to sedate me? I remembered a scene from ‘One flew Over a Cuckoos Nest’ when someone goes crazy and two big black dudes dressed in white come and restrain the fellow whilst someone jabs a big fat needle into any bit of flesh they can find. Seconds later they’re out cold. Would that be my fate? ‘Behave or we will sedate you’.
But no. They casually put their folders down, then Dr Swanson glanced at Dr Corcoran who nodded slowly then looked back at me in anticipation. So began the diagnosis, delivered in a dry monotone that might have been used to describe a malfunctioning electrical appliance rather than a human being.
“There seems to be no impairment of physical function although a degree of muscle wastage has occurred during the dormant period”
The word ‘dormant’ played on my mind. What did that mean? Had I been like a bear in hibernation?
“Initial tests also indicate that mental function seems to be normal, although we will need to carry out further tests as you gain strength.”
‘Normal’? I started to panic again, ‘Normal’ for whom? Had I become an average idiot?
“Reflexes also seem to be working properly, although again further tests are needed and there will be an improvement as the sedatives go out of your system.”
On and on he droned, hiding behind a whole dictionary of technical terms that neatly shielded him from having to relate to me in a shared space. The more he droned on, the more angry I got, but being wary of having a fat needle stuck in my backside, I managed to control my anger long enough to wait until he took a breath.
“So what’s the problem then?” I blurted out, before he could start up again.
Dr Swanson paused and looked at Dr Corcoran again. Why did I feel like I’d been left out of the joke?
Do you remember being a kid, getting obsessed with something, and then pestering your parents to tell you only to find that it wasn’t something so great after all and all of the effort was for nought? That was how I felt.
Dr Swanson looked at me. Almost in the eye, or at least as close as he was ever going to get. For a second I even thought he cared.
“The problem is the impacts of transient memory loss” he replied finally.
“Uh huh” I nodded, wanting more.
“The accident has damaged parts of the left side of your brain and you are suffering from, what I can best describe to you as Amnesia.”
Oh relief, relief, relief, I thought. No dribbling, body functions still work. Let’s boogie! I smiled or more like grinned in response.
“Great, so what have I forgotten?”
Dr Swanson exchanged glances again with Dr Corcoran. A move which caused me to pause but I still felt elated.
“Well, that’s the problem with brain trauma. Memory loss usually occurs in a fragmented way. A bit here, a bit there and that’s what we’ve been trying to work out. But there’s also the impact of stimulus. Now that you are conscious a degree of rewiring, so to speak, is likely to take place. We won’t know definitively for some time. It’s…” he paused searching for the word, “unpredictable.”
It occurred to me at that point that it is amazing how some people can speak volumes but say nothing. Was I missing something? The little kid in me pressed on.
“So what have you worked out so far?”
More glances and furtive looks before Dr Corcoran, the needle man, took over.
“Brain trauma is a field which is still a mystery…” he began.
“For Christ sake just give me the bottom line will you!” I demanded. But then soon wished I hadn’t.
The needle man didn’t like being spoken to like that. I guess he was pretty used to playing God with all of his disciple patients hanging on his every word. My outburst seemed to sting him into action and prompt him to the truth. He grunted.
“Our initial tests seem to indicate that you are unable to retrieve memories for a considerable period.”
At that point I was about to interrupt him with another outburst but I think he saw it coming because his tongue sharpened its cut.
“Specifically, you seem to have no recollection of the past twenty years.”
Some degree of satisfaction seemed to sweep across his features as he saw that his words had finally stung me into silence. And as a silence it was deep. Every time I thought to say something another thought collided with it on its path to speech hence nullifying both. “But…” was about as good as I could get to.
Then before the screaming questions could get so loud and the thoughts that threatened to overwhelm me took hold, the nurse arrived with what I now called the ‘check out pills’ and bingo, off I went again into the abyss.
*************
I woke the next morning slowly, as one does after a drug induced sleep, with a nagging feeling that I had lost something. A set of car keys or something like that. As the pervasive smell of disinfectant brought me around I remembered where I was and almost as quickly the conversation that had pre-empted my slip back into the abyss.
Twenty years is a long time. But how could I feel a sense of loss if I didn’t even know what I’d lost? ‘Last thing I remember I was running for the door’ goes the song Hotel California ‘had to find the passage back to the place I was before.’
I felt like I was in a maze but no one had told me I was in the maze and I was looking for a way out but I couldn’t even see a door let alone a passage way.
I knew I wasn’t 18, I knew there was a bit missing in between but I didn’t know what it was. My mind rifled through the possibilities. If I didn’t know what it was then had it really existed? What are memories anyway? If two old friends don’t see each other for a couple of years then does the couple of years actually exist in the context of their relationship or not? They haven’t shared it together, they don’t have any shared memories from that period so surely that time doesn’t exist and they can just pick up where they left off? Had I changed much in twenty years? Could I trust that I was the same person or would I have to start all over again? Was there an essence of me that had stayed the same no matter what?
Should I feel a sense of loss for what I didn’t even know that I’d lost? Should I be sad, happy, indifferent? Who was I anyway? Maybe it was just a weird dream and at some point I’d wake up from it with a huge sigh of relief. Maybe it was some sort of trick? Maybe any moment some idiot was going to jump out from behind a door and say, “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera?”
But deep down I had the sense that time had shifted and I had missed out on something. There was a nagging feeling that they might just be telling me the truth. Panic and uncertainty gripped me hard and twisted my stomach into tight knots. Where were those pills when I needed them? I wondered.
After breakfast they pulled the tubes out of me. It was painful experience but I was relieved by the thought that they believed that I could still pee on my own. Then another shock! As I tried to stand, my legs collapsed from under me. The two nurses picked me up and gently explained that it would take some time before I would be able to walk again. It was unbelievable, my legs were like jelly! Even with a nurse on either side of me I could barely put one foot in front of the other.
Slowly they almost dragged me to the bathroom and gently put me down on the toilet seat. I needed to hold onto the bars on either side so that I didn’t fall off and it was lucky I didn’t have any pants to pull down, as that would have been impossible in my state! I sat there for what seemed an eternity and tried to remember how to pee. Nothing happened for a long time but just as I wondered if it ever would, a slow trickle began and with it a wave of relief washed over me.
I wonder now if they knew there was a mirror in there, if it was a deliberate plot to get me to see myself, one of their ways of ‘easing me back into things’. I didn’t notice it initially as the nurses helped me to the toilet. Then when I’d finished my business I looked to the right and noticed a strange face staring back at me. It freaked me out completely until I realised that the strange face was ME! And suddenly I had proof that it was real, that what they had told me was right. That even if I couldn’t remember the last twenty years, my body had certainly lived them. Wrinkles, grey hair, bags under the eyes, sunspots, old skin and a kick arse scar running straight down the left hand side of my head like something out of a horror movie.
I was living in a time warp. I realised it was time to get serious so I sat on the toilet and tried to do an inventory of what I knew. I knew that I was in a car accident in Spain somewhere near Barcelona. They airlifted me to London where I had been for three months. I knew that I’d lost twenty years of memories but would I get them back? The last thing I remembered I’d just finished my first year university exams and was heading down the south coast of Australia with a few mates. Now I was there but why was no one else there? Where was my Mum or some friends? If it had been twenty years did I have a wife and kids? What was going on? I could see from the reflection in the mirror that I wasn’t the person I used to be but who was I now? Who had I become over the last twenty years?
I was balanced on a precipice with a black hole on either side. Way, way off in the distance I could see a lower peak where I was before but there didn’t seem to be any way of getting from that peak to where I was now and there was certainly no way of getting back down there. Which way should I go? I needed some answers!
As the screams of panic grew louder in my head I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe and then the bitter taste of bile rose in the back of my throat and I threw up violently causing me to fall off the toilet and onto the floor. Before I knew it the two nurses were at picking me up and trying to clean the foul smelling vomit off me. Welcome back to reality, I thought.
By the completion of lunch I’d calmed down a bit and instead began to anticipate the arrival of my two doctor friends who I knew would be doing their rounds. I hoped that now that I’d had time to think, they might be able to answer some of my questions. When they arrived I had several prepared.
They came into my room with their charts under their arms and stethoscopes hung casually around their necks. They must have had a good lunch because for once it seemed that they were both in a good mood. They asked me how I was, checked my vital signs and scanned the chart at the end of my bed to see how I’d been going. Satisfied they got ready to leave but then asked almost as an afterthought if I had any questions.
“Will I remember?” I began.
“The field of brain injury is a relatively new science…” Dr Swanson began, immediately slipping into the droll monotone that he seemed to automatically adopt any time a medical issues was raised.
“Bottom line Doc? Give me the bottom line”, I cut in.
A sigh “Unlikely but not impossible.”
“Are there likely to be any other long term effects?”
They exchanged glances. I’d learnt by now that even though mister needle and hammer was the quieter of the two, he was the one who made the big calls and it was he who spoke.
“It is possible that you may experience some personality changes although it is very difficult to determine what these changes are or will be due to the fact that we have no baseline for you.”
“No what?”
“Baseline. We don’t know who you are or what type of person you are, or were, should I say, prior to the accident so we don’t know how you may have changed.”
It was a sobering thought. If they didn’t know who I was and I didn’t know who I was then who would know if I’d changed. I knew who I had been twenty years ago but I had no idea of who I’d become over those twenty years. The doctors didn’t even know who I had ever been! The voiceover at the start of ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’ started running through my mind ‘We can rebuild him’ it said. Dr Swanson was saying something but I was phasing out ‘stronger, faster, more powerful…’ was playing in my mind. I fantasised, could this be a good thing? The Six Million Dollar Man got a few extra bits and pieces to play with, what could they do for me?
Dr Corcoran cleared his throat which snapped me out of dream. I regained my composure and realised they were waiting for me to ask another question.
“If you have no baseline for me how do you know if I am getting better or if I have changed personality?” I asked finally.
“We don’t”, they said in unison with blank looks on their faces.
I felt the frustration and anger begin to arise again.
“So what are you going to do about it?” I demanded.
“Nothing we can do. It’s all up to you really. We’re releasing you this afternoon.”
It was said in such a blasé manner that he may well have said, ‘We just don’t care and we’re looking forward to getting rid of you because we’ve run out of ideas for how to fix you’.
“What?” I gasped.
Suddenly the thought of leaving what had become a ‘safe’ environment freaked me out. Panic gripped hard.
“Yes, your brother is coming to pick you up…”
“Brother! My brother is here! In London? Well why didn’t you say something before? Why couldn’t I see him before?”
A wave of relief swept aside the panic that had threatened to overwhelm me only moments before.
Dr Corcoran replied in his droll, monotone, company speak again, “Standard procedure. We assess you fully before releasing you to the care of your kin. Don’t want any broken machines running around out there causing trouble do we?”
He laughed but his laugh was for his own benefit not mine. He’d obviously decided his work was done. Mine was just beginning.
Chapter 2 - Mirror Mirror
Imagine seeing your brother for the first time in what you sincerely believe is twenty years then imagine that for him it’s only been a few months. Then add into the equation the fact that he’s been told that you definitely have suffered some brain damage and that you ‘may’ have experienced some form of personality change. A weirder scenario you’d maybe never find but that was what confronted me the day my little brother Jack came to pick me up.
The nurses had managed to find me some old clothes and had helped me to dress so I sat on the bed waiting expectantly. Finally, I was going to be free of the hospital and see the outside world for the first time in what felt like twenty years.
Jack was supposed to come at eleven AM but at eleven thirty he still hadn’t arrived and I began to fret. What if he’d forgotten? Would I even recognise him? How much could he have changed? The questions bounced about inside my head stirring my emotions as they did so.
Finally, at ten to twelve, in he strolled, dressed in a pinstripe suit, quirky smile fixed on his face just like I remembered it, except that his face was not how I remembered it. The thirteen year old podgy kid was now fully grown and a slick middle age executive stood in his place. I reached out of bed and gave him a big hug. I think that shocked him or maybe he was just worried about me crushing his suit because as soon as I let go he spent some time straightening himself out before considering my presence.
“Brain damage eh?” he enquired, a smirk causing the corners of his mouth to turn upwards slightly. He reached into his pocket and popped a peanut in his mouth. Always eating – I recalled, maybe some things hadn’t changed?
He stood there assessing me, waiting for a response.
“Uh huh” was all I could manage as I took in the figure before me. He might have been looking at me strangely but imagine how I felt! If a look in the mirror had caught my attention and given weight to the fact that this was NOT a dream, then meeting my little brother for the first time and realising that he wasn’t so little anymore more sealed the case.
“So you remember me right?” he asked. I nodded.
“But the doctors say you don’t remember any of the past twenty years?”
I nodded again.
He popped another peanut in his mouth and turned to look out the window.
“Nothing?” he asked as he turned to look at me.
I shook my head.
“Nothing at all?”
I shook my head again. He turned back and stared out the window contemplating my answer.
And in that moment it suddenly didn’t seem so bad. Here at last was someone I knew. It made me feel that everything was going to be alright, that somewhere down the track there would be an end to the bad dream, an escape from the maze, a solution, some certainty, some sense of knowing…
Then he laughed and swung round to look at me.
“Everything else working okay is it?” chuckling, his eyes narrowing as he tried to suppress the grin, “Not going to pee on my couch are you? Flip out at the cat? Spook the neighbours by running around the back yard naked?”
The little bastard, I thought, always taking the piss, definitely hasn’t changed a bit.
“Well come on then, let’s go”, he said, looking at me expectantly, obviously unaware of my state of incapacity.
“You’ll have to help me”, I said, gesturing towards the wheelchair the nurses had left in the corner of the room.
He seemed surprised.
“What? You mean you can’t walk?”
For some reason I felt embarrassed by my immobility. Maybe it was because I’d always been the big brother looking after him? I’m not sure but it was an awkward situation.
Jack found another solution.
“I’ll get a nurse”, he said and quickly left the room to find one.
The first sight of daylight was overwhelming but it couldn’t compare with the relief I felt to finally breathe some fresh air. It was only then that I realised what a prison the hospital had become for me with its antiseptic smells and dry recycled air. I wanted to jump up and run around but the best I could do was suck in some deep breaths as the nurse pushed me along in the wheelchair whilst jack walked beside me.
Eventually we arrived at his car. A Porsche! I knew it the moment I saw it! Twenty years might have passed by but the shape was unmistakable. I made the nurse wheel me slowly around it a few times so I could marvel at the detail. I was impressed. Jack must have been doing very well for himself, I thought.
Somehow, with the nurses help, I managed to get in and then the nurse folded the wheelchair up and jack squeezed it into the back of the car. The trip back to Jacks’ apartment was a blur. I wanted him to drive slowly so I could take it all in but he just mumbled something about a meeting and then drove like a madman weaving in and out of traffic all the way there.
When we arrived, he had the doorman help me out of the car and into the lift.
****************
For the next week all I did was read, watch TV and do my exercises. My brain hurt. You know what it’s like when you have an exam coming up but you leave it until the last possible minute and then cram like crazy? That’s how I felt, except that I felt like everyday was an exam and every experience raised another question.
If you lost twenty years of memory what would you like to know first? About the world? About your family? About your friends? Or about you? What would make the most sense to you and shed some sense of meaning. I was swimming in an ocean but I couldn’t see the shore, there was nothing to hang onto and I was running out of energy. If I stopped kicking would I drown or float?
I remembered life as an adventure. I’d been in first year uni, chasing girls, going partying, getting drunk, not a care in the world, sure that everything would work out just as I thought. Then snap! And I wasn’t there anymore.
Jack was a lawyer at an exclusive firm. Apparently, they were about to make him a partner. He worked a lot. That’s all he seemed to do. I didn’t get it. Nor apparently did his wife and two kids who’d gone to stay at grandmas for a while. We’d grown up dreaming of being free. No nine to five, no being trapped in an office. We’d always been outside, camping, hiking, bike riding, water skiing. That was my life – having fun then thinking up new ways of having more fun.
Jack told me that things had changed when he was fourteen.
“Dad’s business went bust” he said as he poured himself a scotch and took off his tie, “no more money, the dream is over, end of story, debt collectors knocking on the door every second day, took everything. The shame of it all was what killed him.”
I knew that Dad and Mum were dead, that my football team still hadn’t won a premiership, that the USSR didn’t exist anymore, that in twenty years we’d destroyed the planet without making the necessary plans to get off the planet. He’d told me, in a matter of fact manner, in that first week. I’d taken it all in like I was listening to what had happened in a movie that I’d arrived late to. But the one thing that really hit home was when he told me that, low and behold, I had become an ‘Actuarial researcher’ for an Insurance firm.
That sounded good at first, I thought, travelling the world meeting different people. Jack set me straight. I think he was taken aback by the fact that I wasn’t very impressed with his status as a lawyer so he took great delight in telling me how boring I had become. Still competitive, I noted.
“You’re a number cruncher” he said blankly, “you go from place to place collecting data and feeding it into your computer models so they can work out how long people in each country are likely to live. Then they take that info and work out how much they have to charge people so they can make billions of dollars in profits for their shareholders like me.”
Damn, I thought, what had happened to my life? What had happened to my dreams? How did I get to become what I’d become? It just didn’t fit! It wasn’t what I’d expected. I couldn’t reconcile what he was telling me with what I remembered. It reminded me of sitting through a post exam tutorial at uni. You know the ones where you go through the exam paper question by question and discuss what the right answer was? You know the feeling you get when the tutor starts going through the question and suddenly you realise that you misread the question and you’ve answered a completely different question? You know your answer is right but it means nothing when you know what the real question was.
So, there we were, sipping on scotch to anaesthetise the shock of yet another revelation of my new ‘reality’. I knew what I had supposedly become but I couldn’t see a path that might have led me from where I had been to where I was. The two didn’t match. I couldn’t even relate to the notion of the new me. Instead I started to form a picture of this stranger. A thirty eight year old man with no partner, no kids and a life dedicated to a multi-national insurance company. A person who didn’t even seem to be the slightest bit interesting. But this was supposed to be me!
They’d told me in the hospital that I may have suffered from some degree of ‘personality change’ but from where I was sitting I figured that it wasn’t me that had suffered a personality change but the other ‘me’. If the ‘other’ me had turned into a boring old fart then that was his problem wasn’t it. The only way to deal with it was to separate the two. I started calling the ‘old’ me ‘the other’ and I decided to learn as much as I could about ‘the other’. What else could I do? If I’d been told that I’d become something altogether more exciting like an adventurer, astronaut, race car driver or wayward artist, at least I could relate, but ‘actuarial researcher’? No! It didn’t fit, it wasn’t right.
“So we needed money,” Jack was saying as he reached forward and scooped up a handful of peanuts from the bowl on the table in front of him.
I’d been watching Jack intently. Noting how he still had the fat cheeks and the provocative smile. But how a new much harder edge haunted his features. He still laughed his old laugh when I asked him questions. Flipping peanuts into his mouth, tapping his foot, looking up at the ceiling to give him time to think. He seemed to think my loss of memory was a passing phase and that he’d humour me until I snapped back to normal. But when he talked about things from the past that he’d rather forget, between the flippant one liners and the cynical chuckles, a cold hard vibe would touch his features and reveal a level of pain that had replaced his devil may care attitude with the intense glare of a survivor.
“The fuckers took everything that wasn’t bolted down. The house, the cars, furniture, television, everything.” For once he’d stopped chewing, reliving the experience, staring blankly at the wall.
“Shit happens,” he said suddenly as he got up to get another drink. “So, Dad had a heart attack and died right there in front of us. You tried to save him, gave him mouth to mouth until the ambulance arrived, but it was too late. Don’t you even remember that?”
I shook my head.
He grunted.
“So anyway. Here we are. So, what are you going to do?”
The question hit me out of the blue. I wasn’t ready to move on.
“But what the hell happened to make me become an actuarial researcher? I mean, why did I end up there?”
“Well, how the hell should I know? You’re the philosophical one not me. You know my philosophy ‘never complain, never explain, the world’s a mystery who cares about history, just get on with it’.”
I laughed, well, what else could I do but laugh. My brother the cynic! I guess I’d expected more. I thought he’d be able to just fill in the gaps and give me all the answers but it wasn’t going to happen. I was fast realising that I’d have to work this out for myself so I changed tack.
“Okay, okay, I get that you’ve become a cynical bastard who only cares about money…” I’d meant it as a joke but it wasn’t received that way.
To say he hit the roof would be a major understatement.
“Fuck you! What the hell do you know anyway? You get hit over the bloody head, conveniently forget the last twenty years and then expect me to pick up the pieces for you. How should I know why you made the decisions you did? How should I know why you became what you did? And whilst you’re accusing me of being a cynical bastard how about stopping for a minute and looking in the mirror? You might remember yourself as an idealist but you’ll see another cynical bastard looking right back at you! One who travels around the world serving the calling of his corporate masters! Don’t think that you turned into some goody two shoes social worker baying about love in the world! You didn’t! So get a grip! Fucking snap out of it!”
I was shocked by his outburst and the rage that seemed to emanate from him. I didn’t have a clue how to respond but he saved me the trouble by muttering something about finishing off some work and retiring to his study.
Without even being able to remember who I was, I was disappointed with who I’d become. I knew deep down that there was something wrong with the description Jack had given me. I knew that somewhere in the other me was the real me, the one that I was now. But what is it that makes up ‘me’? Is there a core of us that survives right throughout life? If there is a core then when does it get formed? At what age? Six? Ten? Fifteen? When? Was I me or had I become an altered me? I remembered the nurture versus nature discussion we’d had in a University tutorial on genetics and human variation. Genetics pre-dispose us to certain things then nature has its turn. What had nature done to me in the last twenty years?
***********
The next day I apologised to Jack, I needed his help, cynic or not. We sat in the lounge room again.
“So, tell me what happened?”
Jack took a hefty swig of his drink and glared at me.
“You left.”
“What do you mean ‘I left’?”
“You took a job with an Insurance firm interstate. You sat some sort of aptitude test and they liked what they saw so they gave you a job – Interstate. You left. You thought that was best. Like I said, we needed the money.”
The room was still. The sounds of traffic could be heard in the distance. Jack sat still glaring at me. What did he want? What was he waiting for? Why did I get the feeling there was something he wasn’t telling me?
“So what happened?”
Jack gave a muted grunt, as if to condemn my ignorance.
“You really don’t know? You really can’t remember? But you wouldn’t, would you? You weren’t there to see her fall apart. You think you did the right thing by running away. You think you dealt with it by sending money. Oh, the great man, the great provider, saviour of us all!”
How bizarre it felt to be accused of something that I didn’t even remember! Jack’s wound was so raw it could have been still bleeding. I wondered if we’d ever spoken about this stuff before. Had I really just up and left? Why did I do that? How could I make amends?
“Sorry.”
How pathetic it sounded as I heard myself speak the word! Was I responsible for what ‘the other’ did? Should I have felt guilty about something which happened almost twenty years ago but which I couldn’t even remember?
Jack laughed when I said sorry, a big guffawing laugh that poked fun at me.
“Fuck it!” he said, getting up to pour another drink, “like I said, Shit happens! Get over it.”
Is this what I’d missed out on? I wondered, Life passing along? Bad times swept under the carpet, feelings unspoken, guilt drowned in a bottle of scotch?
“So, what happened then? How did I end up an actuarial researcher?”
“Like I said, shit happens. You paid for us to live whilst Mum was sick. You got the company to sponsor you to study. You did what you had to do.”
“What do you mean ‘what I had to do’?”
“Jesus! I feel like I’m talking to an idiot!” Jack sighed and slumped back into the couch.
He sat there shaking his head thinking of what to say, popping more peanuts in, swilling the ice around his glass.
“Let me put it to you this way. We grew up easy, we had everything. We could afford to be idealists. Then the world came crashing through our front door. Dad died, the money left, the toys went but we still had to survive. We’re not living in a nice little ‘happily ever after’ fantasy. The world can be a hard place. To survive we all make compromises. You made a compromise, you sold your dreams down the river so that we could go on.”
“But why did I keep doing that? How boring! Why didn’t I get back to what I wanted to do? I wanted to be an anthropologist and work with tribal people for God’s sake! What happened?”
It was here that I remember that Jack seemed to stare off into space as if weighing up the pros and cons of telling me what he was about to say. All I wanted was a straight answer so I could begin to piece together what the ‘other’ had done with my life.
“Jesus man, why do you want to put me through this? Who cares what happened in the past? You’re alive and you should be dead. Why are you so intent on digging up the past?”
“Because I don’t even know what the past is! In case you haven’t noticed I’m struggling a bit with the fact that a bump on the head has wiped out twenty years of my life…”
“Maybe you’re better not to remember!”
“Fine! Easy for you to say but I don’t know. Last thing I remember I had high hopes for my life and now I find out that I ended up being a nobody and I want to know why!”
“Okay, okay, fuck you then, I’ll tell you since you only seem to care about yourself!” He was leaning forward now, animated.
“You stayed at the insurance company because you wanted me to go to uni, to have the opportunity that you didn’t. You wanted my life to stay untouched. You sacrificed yourself so I could study. You got me to where I am now. Satisfied?”
The sarcasm taunted me like a slap in the face.
“So what’s so wrong with that? Sounds like you should be grateful!”
A red button pressed.
Jack jumped out of his chair, “Fuck you! You always said that! Nothing’s changed. You might not be able to remember but you still want to tell me that I ‘owe’ you. That you sacrificed your life for mine. That I am somehow indebted to you for what you did. Somebody should hit you on the fucking head again and tell you to forget it! You never could let it go could you? YOUR lost opportunity. Always trying to remind me aren’t you? How bizarre that someone who perpetually lived their life in the past, moaning about what could have been, should lose their memory! Serves you right! Maybe this time round you will realise that it is in the PAST stupid! You can’t go back! You can’t change anything, you can’t do it all over again. You can talk about it until you’re blue in the face but when you finally wake up you’re still going to be here and not fucking there! I’m not going to let you put some guilt trip on me! You did it, you made the decision, you encouraged me to go to uni, you sacrificed what you did because you wanted to, now don’t blame me if you don’t like who you turned out to be. It’s YOUR life YOU work it out!”
As he yelled at me the sound of his voice started to distort and my visions blurred. A sharp pain sliced into the side of my head. Then something flashed momentarily into my mind. Had it been an image from the past?
Before I could think, I lurched forwards, grasped onto the edge of the coffee table and vomited into the bowl of peanuts.
“Oh for Christ’s sake!” yelled Jack, “That’s the last lot of peanuts! If you can’t hold your liquor, don’t bloody well drink!”
And with that, he left. Out the front door not to be seen again until the next day.
So, I was back at square one. A new realisation that maybe I didn’t turn out to be such a rosy person after all. That maybe, actually, I turned out to be someone that I wouldn’t even like. But what was the image that had flashed into my mind? Was I getting my memory back? Was it a déjà vu?
I was forming a picture in my mind of the ‘other’, duty bound, making lots of compromises, a fixed smile on his face but a raging sea of bitterness underneath. I could see him in a soundproof glass box waving and smiling at me trying to communicate. I had the bizarre sense that he was laughing at me.
Chapter 3 - The Unseen
The next day I left the house for the first time. I guess it was the despair of realising that no amount of rational, join the dots type thinking was going to lead me to the answers I need. I had woken up with the feeling of confusion that had haunted me since I got out of hospital. There was a puzzle to solve, I knew it, but I didn’t have all the pieces and the ones I did have didn’t seem to fit together at all. Where to find the missing bits was the key?
So, I resolved to let go, forget about the riddle for a while and go for a walk to just take it all in. After a week of exercises I could just stagger along resting on a cane and stopping at regular intervals to rest. I remembered London from a family holiday in my youth but how things had changed! There were so many people! Of so many different races and colours! It astounded me! The London I remembered was so proper, so English, so white! But not only were there people everywhere they all seemed to be in a rush and so many of them were holding, what I thought were little transistor radios, to their ears. Later I put two and two together and realised they were phones. And the cars! My head was whipping back and forth as each new one passed by. I’d seen some of them on television but it didn’t compare with seeing them in the flesh. Then there were the kids on wheels! At first I thought they must have been floating on something like in the cartoon ‘The Jetsons’ but later I found out they were called Roller blades.
It’s amazing how much more you take in when you have to stop all the time to rest! I walked all around London, dreamily making my way through Hyde Park towards Park Lane and into the city before I found myself at Piccadilly Circus. The neon lights blinked at me encouraging me to buy things whilst people rushed by me, paying me no attention as they went about their business. How many of these people knew who they were, I wondered? How many of us end up living a life that we never intended to live? I’d watched a television program after Jack had left and I’d cleaned up the mess. It was some sort of trashy talk show where people come in and pour out their life stories then ask for advice. At the end of the show some bald guy came on who was a psychologist and proceeded to tell people what they must do. Confront your fears, he said, they are only holding you back from what you must do to find your true path in life. What fears would they be? I wondered.
Do people make compromises because of their fears? How many people settle for the relationships they have and make significant compromises because they are too afraid to be alone? Maybe just as many refuse to enter into a relationship for fear of getting hurt. How many people stay in unrewarding jobs because they are afraid of not getting another job? Or maybe they just like the routine of what they know.
My brain worked overtime on it. I couldn’t remember being afraid of anything. I couldn’t remember living my life based on fear. Surely the people on the talk show couldn’t represent the majority of the population? I knew I’d had it easy growing up, Jack reminded me of that, but I knew heaps of other people who had the same sort of fun filled devil may care attitude to life. Had the responsibility of having to take care of my mother and brother beaten it out of me? Had I compromised my dreams as a young man because of some sort of fear? I didn’t believe that I could have. I just couldn’t see it happening. I understood that we needed the money. I could understand why I took the job at the insurance company but, and this was a big but that formed a huge stumbling block in my mind, why did I keep doing it? And why did I seem to have laid such a heavy guilt trip on Jack?
As all of these thoughts coursed through my brain I wandered into the park near Piccadilly Circus and was confronted by an old lady sitting at a card table with a cardboard sign saying ‘Know the future now’. I chuckled as I saw it, remembering that Dad always laughed at these sorts of people. ‘If you can’t see it right in front of you it doesn’t exist’ he used to say. But I couldn’t see the last twenty years right in front of me and surely they existed? What did I have to lose? I sat down with the old lady.
She was dressed in an old floral dress and had a thick dark green cardigan pulled over the top and done up tight against the cold. Covering her grey hair was a red and white scarf which seemed to emphasise her steely blue eyes.
“Spanish or English?” she asked, looking at me curiously.
I thought she was asking if I was Spanish or English but then I saw the sign saying that she could tell my fortune in either language. At about the same time it occurred to me that if she really was psychic then she shouldn’t need to ask me anyway. But what the hell, I was there so why not listen?
“English please” I replied.
She murmured her approval then asked me to hold three ratty old playing cards in my hands and shuffle them. A bit ridiculous I thought, how do you shuffle three cards? Pass them from hand to hand? So setting aside my growing scepticism I passed her back the three cards and waited.
She held them in her hand and closed her eyes. Was it for show or for real? Any second I expected her to say ‘Abracadabra’ and a cloud of smoke would clear to reveal my fortune. But what transpired was even funnier… she started speaking Spanish.
Was she just teasing? I thought. Did she not hear my request for anglais s'il vous plait? Nevertheless she seemed to be pretty animated about what she was saying. Hands waving here and there, eyes bulging as she tried to make a point.
“In English?” I pleaded
“Yes, yes English” she repeated before snapping back into Spanish.
“Please, I don’t understand Spanish, can you tell me in English?” I asked again.
This time she tried harder.
Spanish, more Spanish with hand movements, “You sleep a lot” she was saying.
At that I almost laughed in her face. Sleep! Yes too bloody right I’ve been sleeping a lot, three months worth to be precise, but now I’m awake any chance of telling me about that? I wanted to say.
“Ahhh!!!” she was saying as she looked up with her hands outstretched to me, “you are trying to find yourself”
Ten points! Thankyou very much! I like your style, can I book you for a gala concert? I screamed silently to myself. But I think she picked up on the fact that I was making fun of her because she grasped the front of my jacket and drew me towards her as if to share some crucial secret.
“You are hidden from yourself” she whispered “there is no truth in the past, only in the present” more Spanish spoken slowly over and over just like the way English speaking people assume that if you speak slowly and clearly enough then surely everyone out there must be able to understand English, “you have a long road ahead, you must travel away from here. Let go of yourself and you will find yourself.”
She released my jacket and sat back down.
“Ten pounds thankyou” she asked extending her open hand towards me.
I chuckled quietly to myself. I paid for the Spanish riddle but at least it wasn’t any worse than the riddle I already had, ‘There is no truth in the past’. I could agree with that but what about the future!?
I turned to leave but at the last second she grabbed my arm with such force it startled me. I whirled around to be confronted by a grizzled old finger only centimetres from my face.