Remember Jamie Baker (Jamie Baker #3)(2)
“What exactly am I looking at?”
When Dr. Rajeet smiled, his dark eyes lit up with excitement. “That is a printout of your brain activity. And this”—he slid a different set of squiggly lines in front of me—“is an example of a normal EEG result.”
The second set of scribbles still looked like gibberish, but my results were definitely the cracked out version of this test. I shifted uneasily and handed both papers back to the doctor. “So what does it mean?”
“I have no idea,” Dr. Rajeet admitted. “At first I thought the machine was faulty, but we ran the test twice and used two different machines. We got the same results. Your brain is functioning at a much higher rate than any other person’s I’ve ever seen. I’d love to run some more tests, if that’s all right with you.”
The little patience I had was wearing thin. “I don’t want to be a science experiment, doc. I just want my memories back. Do any of those lines tell you why I can’t remember who I am?”
The smile fell from the doctor’s face, and he let out a heavy breath. Whatever he was about to tell me was going to be bad news. Really bad news. I braced myself.
He pushed one of the colorful pictures in front of me. “Your suspicions were correct. Your amnesia is not psychological. Do you see those dark spots on your MRI?” He pointed to several black dots among the colorific picture of my brain. “You have an alarming amount of damaged tissue in your brain.”
“I have actual brain damage?”
Dr. Rajeet nodded. “Damage unlike any I’ve ever seen. It’s as if your brain was…cooked.”
I snorted. “The way my boyfriend tells it, that sounds about right. But why was it just my memory that was damaged?” All the dark spots seemed to be limited to the one section of my brain.
“To be honest, I have no idea how this could have happened to you. The damage is somehow mostly limited to your medial temporal lobe, but you must have other side effects than memory loss.”
“I don’t dream,” I offered. “You’d think I’d have nightmares about what happened, but I’ve never had a single dream since, that I can remember. My boyfriend says that’s not normal.”
Another look of awe washed over Dr. Rajeet’s face and he scribbled more notes.
I glanced back down at the picture of my brain. “Why was it just this one area of my brain? Why wasn’t the whole thing fried?”
Dr. Rajeet’s gaze slipped from my face down to the tests scattered on the desk between us. “Just another part of the mystery. It’s truly baffling.”
“Best guess,” I pushed.
Dr. Rajeet shook his head, bewildered. “The only thing I can think of is that the damage concentrated on the section of your brain that was most active at the time of your accident. It’s possible you were accessing memories at the exact moment the damage was done. Perhaps you feared you were about to die and were reflecting back on your life.”
“Are you telling me that my dying act was to remember my life, and now because of that, I can’t remember it at all?”
The doctor sighed. “It’s just a theory.”
Well, that was kind of ironic. In the suckiest way possible. I moved on to the next problem—there was no use dwelling on the why. “So I have brain damage. That means my condition is physical. That means you can fix it, right?”
His eyes came back to mine, boring into me with a frightening amount of pity and sympathy. “I’m sorry, Miss O’Neil. I can’t treat it. Your condition is permanent.”
“What?”
The lights in the room flickered in response to my out-of-control emotions.
One of those powers I mentioned having is the ability to manipulate electricity. (Totally awesome.) But I lose control when I get really emotional. (Not awesome.) Finding out that I was never going to get my memory back was pushing me toward massive-meltdown territory.
That’s another thing—temperamental is the second word on my personality traits list beneath sarcastic.
Permanent. The word echoed in my head, mocking me. I took a deep breath and tried to calm down before I caused something to explode. “There has to be something you can do. Some kind of treatment or surgery—radical, experimental, dangerous. I don’t care. I’ll do it.”
“I’m sorry. There is no such procedure.”
“But you’re the best neurosurgeon in the world. That’s why I came all the way to see you. I waited three months to get this appointment.”
The doctor looked pained, as if he genuinely felt sorry for me and hated that he could do nothing to help. “The damage in your brain isn’t going to heal. Those dark spots are dead tissue. I can’t bring dead brain cells back to life. I could operate and remove all of the dead tissue, but that would be a risky surgery and would in no way reverse your symptoms. You’re memory isn’t blocked or damaged; it’s destroyed. I’m sorry.”
He was serious. He couldn’t help me. My memory was never coming back. I would never know who I was.
My emotions finally burst through my control and I screamed at him. “Do you have any idea how awful it is to not know who you are?” The lights above our heads flickered again. “Or why I’m like this?” I fisted my long, green ponytail and yanked on it. “People don’t just grow hair the color of a neon-green glow stick. And my eyes! What kind of brain damage turns a person’s eyes yellow?”