Читать книгу The Book of M - Peng Shepherd - Страница 24

THE NURSE LEANED DOWN AGAIN, HOLDING THE COFFEEPOT out to him.

“No, thank you,” the amnesiac said.

“I will have more, though,” Dr. Zadeh cut in, and raised his mug. He rubbed his face slowly, as if trying to stretch it into a different shape. “Jet lag.” He smiled, and she nodded sympathetically as she refilled his drink. Overhead, the central air conditioning clicked on, blasting the waiting room with icy wind. When they’d stepped off the plane, the air in Pune had been as warm and thickly humid as it was at home in New Orleans, but everywhere they’d gone since—the private government car sent to retrieve them, their five-star hotel, the car again to bring them to Maharashtra Regional Hospital, the now-quarantined psychiatric ward—was almost arctic cold. He just wanted to go outside and look. All the colors. The movement. Pune was so much more alive than the antiseptic, manicured courtyard of his assisted-living facility.

“Did I like coffee?” the amnesiac asked when the nurse had moved away.

“I don’t know. That wasn’t information I could find from your records or emails.”

The amnesiac took another testing sip of the steaming dark liquid.

“Maybe Charlotte will be able to tell you?” Dr. Zadeh tried tentatively.

The amnesiac shrugged. He would ask her when they were back, but he didn’t know if it mattered. For this new him, the taste made his tongue curl. “I don’t like it now,” he said. “Would that mean I didn’t like it before?”

“Sometimes.” Dr. Zadeh nodded. “It can.”

He most likely did not like coffee before. He would add this fact to his flash cards.

“Plenty of people don’t like it,” Dr. Zadeh continued, in case he was feeling excluded from some societal ritual. “They just drink it so as not to feel like a truck ran over them.” He took another sip. “Like right now.”

“I feel fine,” the amnesiac replied.

“Now that’s weird,” he said.

They laughed. The amnesiac couldn’t stay angry at him. He had no one else in the whole world.

“Why me?” he finally asked. Dr. Zadeh glanced up. “Why was I chosen to meet Hemu Joshi?”

“Well, it was mostly my doing.” Dr. Zadeh grinned sheepishly. “When I saw the first videos of Hemu after he began experiencing memory loss, I called the Indian Psychiatric Society. Explained who I was, emailed copies of my articles, my research on you. They eventually managed to put me all the way through to the team here. I told them about my idea.”

“I know that,” the amnesiac said. “I meant, there must be hundreds of retrograde amnesia cases in India from which they could have chosen. Why fly us out here?”

“Because you forgot so much,” he answered. “Everything, really. Most RA cases aren’t as complete as yours. And it happened at almost the same time as Hemu Joshi’s incident. You’re both still experiencing the effects of your diagnoses on your lives, learning how to cope with the loss. You were the closest match to him that we could find.”

“Do you really think I can help him?”

“I think you have a better shot at understanding him than any of us do,” he said. After a moment, he put his hand on the amnesiac’s shoulder. “Just speak with him. That’s all. Don’t worry about the results, okay?”

The amnesiac nodded.

“Excuse me—we’re ready for you now,” a voice called. They turned from their seats to see an older woman in purple scrubs, perhaps sixty or so, her long silver braid shining against the warm brown of her skin.

“David Zadeh,” Dr. Zadeh said, extending his hand as he went over to her. “This is …” He paused, grasping for a way to explain the amnesiac’s aversion to his legal name. “… my patient. He prefers to be addressed by description rather than by what he was named prior to the accident. ‘The visitor,’ in this situation, perhaps. Or any relevant equivalent.”

“A method of your rehabilitation?” she asked Dr. Zadeh.

“For him, I suppose yes,” he said thoughtfully.

The woman nodded. “Dr. Zadeh, Visitor, I’m Dr. Avanthikar,” she said. “Lead researcher for Mr. Joshi’s team.”

The amnesiac put out his hand to her as well. Her grip was firm—and excited, he thought.

“We’ve informed him you’re coming,” she continued as the two of them followed her down the hall. “He remembered twenty minutes ago when I checked.” An aide caught the tail end of her sentence as they entered a small control room and shook her head. “Oh.” Dr. Avanthikar sighed. “Never mind.”

“Thank you again for this invitation,” Dr. Zadeh said. “To be able to help with this, even in a small way, it’s an honor.”

“Well, let’s hope it does help,” Dr. Avanthikar replied. “I don’t have to tell you—I mean, I’m sure you’ve been following the news.”

“Nothing’s working,” the amnesiac finished for her.

“I’ve just—” She paused, words failing her. “I’ve just never seen anything like it.”

“Okay, we’re all set. Patient is inside,” another aide interrupted softly.

“Right.” Dr. Avanthikar straightened up. “Okay. Let’s take you in there and introduce you, and then once you’re both comfortable, we’ll hook up the sensors so we can get some data. See if you two can maybe inspire each other into … anything, really.”

The amnesiac didn’t know what to expect. He braced as Dr. Avanthikar went to the side door into the observation room and pulled it open.

“Oh.” He blinked, surprised. He walked in. It didn’t look like a hospital or a rehabilitation center or a patient observation room at all. It looked just like a living room, or what he imagined a living room in an Indian house might look like. There were couches and a few chairs in vibrant patterns, a rug, potted plants in full bloom. In the corner hung a wide wooden swing. The walls had been painted a warm color and adorned with framed photographs. In the center, sitting cross-legged on one of the couches, was a young man in a simple white tunic. Hemu Joshi.