Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac(2)

Of course, I didn’t remember any of this. Not the coin toss. Not the camera. Certainly not my best friend, the veracious William Blake Landsman.

The first thing I remembered was “that cat” James Larkin, though I didn’t even know his name at the time. And I didn’t remember all of James, James proper. Just his voice, because my eyes were still closed and I guess you’d call me asleep. Or half-asleep, like when your alarm clock sounds and you manage to ignore it for a while. You hear the radio and the shower; you smell coffee and toast. You know you will wake; it’s only a question of when, and of what or who will finally push you into day.

His voice was low and steady. I’ve always associated those types of voices with honesty, but I’m sure there are loads of low-pitched liars just waiting to take advantage of easy prey like me. Even semi-conscious, I lapsed into my prejudices and decided to trust every word James said: “Sir, my name is James Larkin. Unfortunately her family is not here, but I am her boyfriend, and I am riding in this ambulance.” I didn’t hear anyone argue with him. His tone did not allow for discussion.

Someone took my hand, and I opened my eyes. It was him, though I didn’t know his face.

“Hey there,” he said softly, “welcome back.”

I did not stop to consider where I had been that required welcoming. I did not even ask myself why I was in an ambulance with a boy who said he was my boyfriend but whom I did not readily recognize.

As ridiculous as this might seem, I tried to smile, but I doubt if he even saw. My attempt didn’t last that long.

The pain came. The kind of pain for which there is no analogy; the kind of pain that allows for no other thought. The epicenter was concentrated in the area above my left eye, but it barely mattered; the waves through the rest of my head were almost worse. My brain felt too large for my skull. I felt like I needed to throw up, but I didn’t.

Without my having to tell him, James asked, “Could someone please give her some drugs?”

An EMT shone a light in my eyes. “Not until she’s seen a doctor, maybe even had a CT scan. But it’s terrific news that she’s already up. Just five more minutes, okay, Naomi?”

“Just five more minutes until what?” I asked, trying to sound patient. Until Christmas? Until my head exploded?

“Sorry. Until we’re at the hospital,” said the EMT.

At this point, the pain in my head was so strong that I wanted to weep. I probably would have, too, but it occurred to me that crying might actually make me feel worse.

“Are you positive she can’t have any drugs?” James yelled.

“Distract her. Tell her a joke or something. We’re almost there,” was the EMT’s annoying, unhelpful reply.

“I don’t think that’s gonna do it,” James retorted.

“Laughter’s the best medicine,” said the EMT. I believe this may have been his idea of a joke, but it did nothing for my headache.

“Complete and utter…” James leaned in closer to me. He smelled like smoke and laundered sheets left to dry in the sun. “…bullshit, but would you like a joke anyway?” he asked.

I nodded. I really would have preferred drugs.

“Well, I can only think of one, and it’s not that good. Certainly not analgesic good. So…okay, this man goes to a psychiatrist and says, ‘My wife’s insane. She thinks she’s a chicken.’ And the doctor goes, ‘Well, why don’t you just commit her?’ And the man says—”

Just as he was about to reveal the punch line, a particularly impressive wave of pain pulsed through my head. My nails dug into James’s palm, piercing his skin, making him bleed. I couldn’t speak, so I tried to telegraph my apology with a look.

“No worries,” James said, “I can take it.” He winked at me.

In the emergency room, a doctor with eyes so bloodshot they made me tired just looking at them asked James how long I had been passed out, and he replied twenty-one minutes, he knew exactly. He’d seen it happen. “At Tom Purdue, there’re these steps out front. One second, she’s walking down them and the next, she’s flying headfirst toward me, like a meteor.”

“Is it strange that I don’t remember that?” I asked.

“Nope,” said the doctor. “Perfectly ordinary to forget incident-associated narrative for a time.” She shined a light in my eyes, and I flinched.

At some point, another doctor and a nurse had joined the party, though I couldn’t have told you when with any confidence. Nor can I recall much about them as individuals. They were an indistinct blur of pastel and white uniforms, like chalk doodles on a sidewalk in the rain.

The second doctor said that she had to ask me a couple of questions, general ones, not about the accident.

“Your full name?”

“Naomi Paige Porter.”

“Where do you live?”

“Tarrytown, New York.”

“Good, Naomi, good. What year is it?”

“Two thousand and…2000, maybe?”

Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t right. Because if it was 2000, I would have been twelve, and I knew for sure I wasn’t twelve. I didn’t feel twelve. I felt…I couldn’t say the exact number, but I just knew I felt older. Seventeen. Eighteen. My body didn’t feel twelve. My mind didn’t feel twelve either. And there was James, James proper—James looked at least seventeen, maybe older—and I felt the same age as him, the same as him. I looked from doctor to doctor to nurse: poker faces, every one.