All Is Not Forgotten(86)

There was another story I had told Glenn. It was about a patient at New York–Presbyterian. It was not my patient. I was doing my residency, which involved more observation than actual treatment. One of the patients I had been observing killed herself. I recall being concerned about her but saying nothing to her primary doctor. I did not want to be wrong and look foolish. She tore her gown into long pieces, tied them together, and hanged herself from the hinge of the bathroom door. I told Glenn that I had never forgotten this woman, even though she was not my patient. I told him that she would weigh on my conscience until the day I died.

Glenn Shelby was a dangerous man. A monster. My monster. I know that I helped to create him with my indulgence. With my carelessness. And then, I suppose, I killed him.

I could not cure Glenn Shelby. Maybe God can.

I am guilty. Hate me if you must. I have tried to show you the mitigating facts. Charlotte, Tom, Sean. I gave them back their lives, and none of that would have been possible if we had not had the collision. If I had not told my story to an unstable patient. If Jenny had not been in those woods with him. If I had confessed the moment I learned the truth. Hate me. Despise me. But know that I have weighed everything on the scales. And know that every night I fall asleep. And every morning I wake up and look in the mirror without any problem whatsoever.

I do not see the Kramers for therapy anymore. After a productive summer with Jenny, she was able to go back to school. Like Sean, the memories she found hiding within her helped to put the ghosts to bed, and she began to respond to more traditional trauma treatment. By that fall, she was ready to move on with her life.

I always find joy and pain when a patient is cured. I miss them.

I see the Kramers in town. We are all very friendly. Tom and Charlotte seem happy. Jenny seems happy, normal. I see her laughing with her friends.

Sometimes when I am with my wife, when she wraps her arms around my waist, she will touch the scar on my back. Sometimes when she does this, I picture Jenny and I know I’m not alone anymore. The pain is gone. I have healed myself.

My practice has picked up now. I have become a memory-recovery expert of sorts, and I sometimes get patients from across the country. I am thinking of opening a clinic. The trauma treatment continues to be used. I have written papers, spoken at conferences. I have become somewhat of a crusader against its use, and I have done my best to curtail its administration. I see its appeal. It seems so easy, doesn’t it? To just erase the past. But now you know better.

I always say the same thing to these patients when they first come to me, convinced they are doomed to a life with their ghosts, with their lost car keys never to be found. It gives them comfort when I tell them. It gives them comfort to know that all is not forgotten.





Author’s Note

While the drug treatment in this novel does not currently exist in its entirety, the altering of both the factual and emotional memories of trauma is at the forefront of emerging research and technology in memory science. Researchers have successfully altered factual memories and mitigated the emotional impact of memories with the drugs and therapies described in this book, and they continue to search for a drug to target and erase those memories completely. While the original intention of drug therapies to alter memories was to treat soldiers in the field and mitigate the onset of PTSD, its use in the civilian world has already begun—and will likely be extremely controversial.