Page 78 of After We Fall

In an attempt to get my people, places, and things back in order, I find myself sitting in Dr. Ridding’s office, waiting to discuss my brain map. I didn’t make it two weeks until our next appointment. I made it six days.

Barely.

Long enough to get my stitches out of both wounds so I can handle the red electrode cap. Well, fight tears as I handle it. The metal electrodes push against the raw, healing spots.

Who can blame me for being unable to wait any longer to start treatment? I need my nouns and verbs returned to the correct places.

Cocooned twenty-four hours a day in my dark bedroom without “distractions” (read: any meaningful activity), I’m about to careen over the cliff of boredom, straight toward insanity. I’m considering painting a wall just so I can watch it dry. Anything is better than scrutinizing the dust collecting on my work files.

No one is allowed to ask me for help, Meredith said. With anything. It’s by far the cruelest thing she has ever done to me.

Yes, I nap. I’m able to admit that maybe my body needs the extra sleep. I certainly can’t ignore my lack of stamina. Completing the simplest task requires me to sit down so the world will stop spinning.

But no one gets to ask me questions?

Whatever Dr. Ridding has planned to speed up my healing, I’m officially on board.

Until he walked me through my first QEEG test. Now I’m wondering what kind of unorthodox treatment plan awaits me.

“Remind me again how this works,” I say to Dr. Ridding while I pull a thread at the hem of my oversized tunic, one of the few items in my wardrobe that can handle the bulk of my ever-present sling.

“First, I conduct a brain map. It will tell us how well your brain frequencies are working at different speeds. Sometimes we find blocks in the pathways where the injury occurs, sometimes we find that the brain tried to compensate and work around the injury. Based on the results of said brain map, I create a protocol for your neurofeedback sessions that will retrain the injured areas.” Dr. Ridding’s voice is patient but not condescending. When he finishes, he scratches at the Denver Broncos logo on his chest. He must have one for each day of the month. Their only variance is the color scheme.

“Brain map? Do you mean when I stared at the wall for ten minutes? Then closed my eyes for an additional ten minutes?” I raise my eyebrows. “That brain map?”

“No. I mean when you were hooked up to electrodes and we ran a QEEG—quantitative electroencephalogram—that measured your brain frequencies. First while you focused on a specific point, then while you focused on nothing at all.”

I shoot him a glare. The technical name of the test sounds sophisticated, but during the evaluation process, it seemed useless. What can he possibly decipher about my brain function while I stare at a Post-it note? With a handwritten smiley face on it, no less?

“I’m about to display your QEEG on the monitor in front of you. It’s going to look like a colored map of your brain,” he says. “We’ll go over the exact details, but what you’re about to see is how well certain regions of your brain are functioning, in contrast with other areas that are struggling as a result of the injury.”

The office setup includes one large computer screen facing the doctor and, on the opposite side of the desk, a separate large computer screen facing the patient. When the monitor in front of me illuminates, I jump, my nerves protesting the jarring change in light. My initial jolt dissipates, but a shock of another kind hits me in the chest.

This one is heavy, weighted with pain.

My personal pain unabashedly displayed in front of me.

“The color-coded explanation is located in the top left corner of your screen,” Dr. Ridding says. “As you can see, the red areas are the injury, with the strong orange colors spreading outward.”

A little over a week ago, the hospital CT scans of my brain bleed were filled with dark, ominous shadows. Various shades of gray and black outlined my injury. When the doctor showed them to me, I felt nothing but task oriented. The scan stated the facts of my injury, and I immediately wanted to discuss recovery. Bottom line I wanted to ask while I looked at the CT scan: How do we erase the black?

But the vivid screen in front of me now tells a different story. Instead of the grays and blacks of the CT that distanced me from the injury, the colors splayed across the QEEG won’t let me escape my reality.

Each page of the report holds images of my brain four rows across and five rows down. Twenty versions of my most important organ on display in high Technicolor. The view is from the top of my head. Inside each image are colors spilling across the brain, reporting the location, depth, and severity of injury.

A bright red glob covers the front left portion of my brain, starting at my temple and reaching tentacles toward the center of my forehead. A second red flare fires from the back of my brain on the right side. The deep colors glare back at me, daring me to ignore their presence.

My hands start to tremble, and I clasp them together firmly in my lap.

Dr. Ridding rounds his desk, pulls a chair next to me, and sits. He uses a pen to point at the screen. “Here is the color-coded explanation. As I mentioned earlier, what we’re looking at is how well your brain functions at different speeds on different frequencies. Each piece of the map gives us distinct information.”

He points to specific locations of the brain, citing what each area controls. Speech, reasoning, emotions, depression, learning, the ability to do math and use fine motor skills, the sense of smell . . . The list goes on and on as he spouts separate categories and possible symptoms that can be associated when those areas aren’t functioning at full capacity.

“This top one here”—he points to my left temple—“is the new injury layered on an old injury. Correct?”

“Yes. I was fourteen. A baseball bat,” I whisper, unable to take my eyes off the wounds that wail at me from the screen. New wounds opening old wounds.

Dr. Ridding runs through explanations about each piece of my injury. He shifts into something about where my brain bleed was located. I know he’s speaking, but the red blotches screaming at me from the monitor overpower his words. I, the facts-oriented, information-driven woman, can hear nothing but the color in front of me.