Horses, Not Zebras
August 17, 2007
Despite the fact that I feel fine, the doctors insist I have to stay in the hospital for more tests and other assorted medical bullshit. But, since I barely have a GED, I’m not exactly in any position to argue with them. So, I let myself be poked, prodded and led around the hospital like a child. It’s demeaning, in a way, but a part of me doesn’t mind. A part of me is just resigned to suffering in one way or another.
And okay, maybe I don’t feel fine.
Everything aches, not the least of which is my heart. My ankles are weak, which has made walking especially fun. The doctor tells me that I sprained both of them badly, but somehow didn’t break any bones, despite being pinned into the car. And I’ve never had worse headaches in my life, which isn’t exactly surprising, considering I’ve also never had a traumatic brain injury before. Still, the therapists I’ve seen every day assure me that my speech and memory are way ahead of what they would expect. g
I don’t bother telling them about the other memories I have, the ones that I suppose didn’t actually happen.
After a week of all this physical therapy and testing, they send me to a psychologist, to see how I’m progressing emotionally. Evidently, most people don’t cope very well with coming out of a coma. I can only imagine.
The psychologist, Dr. Ramos, goes through the same litany of stupid questions that every other nurse, doctor and therapist has asked me in the past week. I can answer all of them with ease – my name, birth date, what day it is, the names of all my brothers and sisters, and so on. I don’t know why they insist on asking the same questions over and over. Don’t these people share notes?
“So, Zachary, how do you feel about everything you’ve been through in the past week?”
I’d rather he stick to the stupid questions that aren’t open-ended. “Well, I’m sick of the hospital food, for one. And I’d really like to not sound like I smoke two packs a day. Other than that, things are just peachy.”
Yeah, I’m a sarcastic bastard. It’s part of my charm, although I don’t think Dr. Ramos finds it very charming. “I meant mentally, emotionally. How are you coping?”
I have to try really hard not to roll my eyes at that. “I’m doing fine, I suppose. I’m not in shock that this happened or anything. Not that I planned it, but… I do remember the accident, so I’m not having trouble processing that.”
“That’s good to hear,” he says with a nod, jotting down something on the chart in front of him. “I see you’ve had little to nor permanent brain damage, but it’s quite common for coma patients to experience changes in personality. Do you feel like you?”
“That’s a strange question. Even if my personality had changed, wouldn’t I probably still feel like me? Wouldn’t it be the other people around me who would notice the difference?”
“Fair enough. Do you think your family has noticed any changes in you?”
“No, I don’t think so. I haven’t had much chance to spend time with them between all the tests and therapy and stuff, though.”
That’s not totally true. Kate has been by to see me almost every day, and so have Mom and Dad. Ike and the others have been here less frequently. And Taylor? Hardly at all since the day I woke up. It goes without saying that he’s the one I miss the most.
“How is the physical therapy going?”
I shrug. “They tell me it’s going great, and I suppose it is. I haven’t had any trouble with any of the stuff they want me to do. Motor skills in tact, it seems.”
“You don’t seem happy about it, though. Why is that?”
“I’ve just got this… this fog in my brain that won’t seem to go away. I think that I remember everything, or enough to function, but things just seem… wrong.”
He nods thoughtfully. “You did damage the part of your brain responsible for storing memories and processing things such as faces, scenes and other stimuli. It’s not uncommon to have some confusion, even amnesia, after that type of brain injury.”
“I know all of that, but it still doesn’t really explain everything I’m thinking and feeling,” I admit. I’m not sure how much I’m willing to tell this guy, but he seems open enough to listening to me. He doesn’t have the kind of judgmental face I assumed a shrink would have.
“Tell me about that. That’s what I’m here for. To help you with everything you’re thinking and feeling.”
I chew on my bottom lip for a while, trying to figure out the best way to approach this. I decide to go with a not unrelated question. “Do coma patients dream?”
“We don’t really know for sure,” he says. “There have been lots of studies. We think that they do, but it’s difficult to say for sure. Most of the evidence is anecdotal, and differs from one patient to the next. Do you remember dreaming?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Maybe. I remember the song my brother played for me. I heard it right before I really woke up. But anything else? I’m not sure. I’ve got all these… scenes in my head, all these memories that I guess are dreams.”
But I don’t think I really believe that. I just want to see what Dr. Ramos will do with . He might be the first person who can offer some scientific, not science fiction, explanation for everything I think I’ve gone through. He studies me for a moment, before finally replying.
“I suppose it’s possible you were dreaming, then. As I said, it varies from one patient to the next. It’s not my job to tell you that what you believe yourself to have experienced while in a coma state didn’t happen. In your mind, it did. That doesn’t make it less real, but it doesn’t mean that any of those ‘memories’ should affect how you act now that you’re awake.”
He’s got a better grasp on the situation than I expected.
Still, I can’t quite believe everything he says. I don’t think I was only dreaming. Everything I heard and felt and saw was so real to me, so tangible. It was so real that I couldn’t even remember all the memories of the past year that have been flooding back to me in the last few days. It was as if none of this existed at all and the only reality was one in which Taylor had died in that car crash.
That’s not to say that that world didn’t seem strange and wrong. It did. I had no explanation for why a year was missing from my mind or a driver missing from Taylor’s car. Everything seemed to be missing pieces that kept it from entirely making sense, and it was all leading me back here.
So maybe it was a dream, or at least some elaborate trick of my mind. After all, it was a brain injury that put me in that hospital bed. Maybe my fractured mind had to solve some sort of puzzle to put itself back together and wake me up. It seems ridiculous, but so did that time travel theory I had. What’s that saying? If you see hoof prints, assume horses, not zebras? The simplest solution is usually the correct one.
And in this case, the simplest solution is that it was all just a dream. Just some crazy coma dream.
Dr. Ramos asks me a few more questions, most of which are pretty easy to answer, then spends a while lecturing me on the sorts of challenges I might expect once I get out of the hospital. It shouldn’t be much longer he says, if I keep up this progress, but it’s mostly up to my actual physician, not him. And of course, they expect me to keep seeing him even after I’m released just to make sure I’m okay mentally. As if I’m ever okay mentally.
I know I should be happy with the world I’ve ended up in. I know this is the real world, and the other one was… well, not the real world. And in this world, I’ve got just about everything I could ask for. Somehow, despite the injuries, I’ve more or less got my health. I’ve got my wife. And I’ve got my brother, the one I thought I had lost forever.
But in a way, I still have lost him.
And everyone else keeps walking on eggshells around me, like they’re waiting for me to snap or something, or like they’re not totally convinced that this guy in the scrubs and bandages is really Zac. I don’t know who else he could be, though. I feel as much me as I have for the first time in a year, maybe even longer than that. But there are still pieces of me missing, and I think they can see that. I think they can see that the past five years have taken a toll on me and that I’m at some kind of turning point now.
I think Kate more than anyone else – except possibly Taylor – is nervous to be around me. Somehow, I think there’s a part of her that knows what has happened between me and Taylor. If she doesn’t know, she at least suspects. I guess she’s always wondered why I stayed with her when at times, it was so painfully obvious that I wasn’t invested in the relationship. And frankly, I’m amazed she’s stayed with me through all that, too. Especially now.
After my meeting with Dr. Ramos, I’m sent back to my room for lunch. They’ve got me on this super strict diet to make sure I don’t get sick, since I’ve spent two months getting all my nutrition through a tube. To say the hospital food sucks is an understatement. If I weren’t stuck in these hospital scrubs with no money on hand, I would seriously consider breaking out and heading to the Taco Bueno I know is right down the street.
But I don’t. I just shuffle back to my room and plop down on the bed, where my lovely little hospital lunch is already being set out by one of the nurses.
“What are we having today, Betsy?” I ask, flashing her what I hope is a charming smile.
“You’re having chicken noodle and jello,” she replies. “And I’ve got a hot steak sub waiting at my desk.”
“Oh, was that your sub?” I ask, patting my stomach as though I’m full. “It sure was good…”
She laughs as she finishes setting out my disappointing lunch, then turns to leave. “By the way, your wife left a message that she would be in to visit later. I told her to come on up.”
“Great,” I reply, looking forward to that only slightly more than I’m looking forward to the meal in front of me.
It’s not that I don’t want to see Kate. It really isn’t. But like I said, she has this way of looking at me lately that sets me on edge. At any moment, I’m afraid she’s going to admit that she does know the truth about me and Taylor. I can’t say where that fear comes from, really. Maybe it was that dream, if that’s what it really was, where she knew and she left me. It’s irrational to think any of that was or could be real, but I can’t shake the feelings that seem to have followed me from the dream to reality.
I can’t shake the feeling that this whole house of cards I’ve built is going to come crashing down soon. I’ve already lost Taylor, in a way, so I can only assume Kate will be the next to go. I know it’s a pessimistic outlook to take, and I’m usually not a pessimist like that, but I can’t help it. Maybe it’s a knee jerk reaction to all the people telling me how much of a miracle I am. I just can’t believe anything that good is possible. Something has to go wrong to balance it out.
I’ve just started on my jello – which is either cherry or puke flavored, it’s tough to say – when there’s a knock at the open door. It seems like a bit overkill, since I can clearly see her standing there, but like I said – Kate’s been walking on eggshells around me lately.
I push the tray of food aside. “Come on in. I was just eating what passes for lunch around here.”
“No good?”
“Nope. Smuggle me in some tacos next time you visit?”
She laughs. “I don’t think your doctors would appreciate that.”
“Fuck ’em,” I say, taking one last sip of the nutritional shake thingy they include with each meal. It’s a bit chalky, but it’s the best part of it all. Underneath the chalky flavor, I think it’s actually chocolate, so I can’t complain too much.
Kate flinches at my cursing, but doesn’t remark on it. She takes a seat from the wall opposite my bed and pulls it up close, but not too close, and we sit together in silence for a while. That’s pretty much how it goes between us these days.
Finally, she clears her throat and speaks. “So, the nurse said you probably wouldn’t be in here much longer? I mean, she didn’t say it in so many words, but that’s how she made it sound.”
I nod. “Yeah, I guess so. They can’t find any permanent damage from the accident, so they’re really just keeping me here to make sure the coma didn’t have any lasting effects either. It’s just routine bullshit.”
I seem to have developed a serious habit of cursing. Not that I was ever particularly clean mouthed, but I guess my patience is wearing thin these days. I don’t like, have never liked, having to cover up my true thoughts and feelings. Saying the opposite of what I really think always bothers me, even when I see the wisdom in doing it. I guess letting myself curse a bit more is one tiny way to rebel against that. Or maybe it’s one of those personality changes the doctor mentioned. What-fucking-ever.
“So you’ll be back home soon. That’s good,” she says. “It’ll be weird getting used to you being there again, I think.”
“I imagine it’s a lot quieter without me there,” I say with a grin.
“Yeah. But not always in a good way.”
Sensing that it’s the right thing to do, I reach out and grab Kate’s hand. It takes her a second to relax, probably not expecting me to do that. “You know I love you, right?”
She nods. “I know. I love you, too.”
It’s as true now as it’s ever been, if not more. I do love her. I just hope that’s enough to get us through everything I’m afraid is going to happen once I’m out of this hospital.