Page 47 of The Do-Over
“Thanks, Laverne.”
A moment of silence, and then Dr. Fitzgerald’s voice came on the line. “Thea?”
“Hi, doctor.”
“Laverne told me you had a patient with some memory loss.”
“Profound memory loss, I think,” Thea said. “And he’s not really my patient. He’s just…” She hesitated. “I found him in his car. He’d gone off the road.”
“Did you dig him out yourself?”
“Yes.”
“That was heroic of you.”
Thea shifted uncomfortably. “It was just what needed to be done,” she said. “But now I’m worried about what happens next. There’s no way I can get him to Ames—at least, not until some of this snow melts. How am I going to take care of a patient with a head injury at home?”
“Well, tell me what’s going on with him. How did you assess his memory loss?”
“I asked him some things about current events, like who the president was. He wasn’t able to answer the questions.”
“And does he seem to have an idea about who the president is? Or is he just drawing blanks?”
“Well, that’s the oddest part,” Thea said.
“What do you mean?” Dr. Fitzgerald pressed.
“I’m not sure how to put this.”
“Thea, for me to help you, you need to tell me what’s going on in as much detail as you can,” Dr. Fitzgerald said. “Since I can’t examine your friend in person—”
“He isn’t my friend.” Immediately, Thea felt stupid. What was the point of emphasizing that? It didn’t matter from a medical perspective.
“What’s going on with him?” Dr. Fitzgerald asked.
“Well…all right. So we used to know one another,” Thea said. “We were…friends in high school.” There was no need to describe the exact nature of their relationship. That wasn’t relevant to Rob’s medical condition. “Anyway, he seems to have…slipped back to that time in his life somehow. It’s as if he thinks it’s twenty years ago, and he’s still in high school. He’s talking about a basketball game he played back then as if it was yesterday, and he thought I would still be living at my parents’ house…he didn’t even seem to notice the fact that I’m thirty-five years old now. He thought he was looking at me as a teenager.
“That is unusual,” Dr. Fitzgerald murmured.
“Have you ever seen anything like it before?”
“Not personally. I’m sure I've read case studies like this. I’ll see what I can dig up and call you back. Tell me, were you on your own when you dug him out of the snow?”
“Yes, it was just me. Why do you ask?”
“Well, if you were the first person he saw after a traumatic incident, his mind might have latched onto you as a touchstone, so. To speak. Are you two still in each other’s lives as adults?”
“No. We haven’t seen each other since before college.”
“That backs up my theory, then. He saw you, and his mind struggled to make sense of what he was seeing, and the easiest explanation was to revert to a younger version of himself.”
“You’re saying he has memory loss because he saw me?”
“No, no. Memory loss is caused by head injury, not by seeing someone’s face. I’m just saying that his particular memory loss might be manifesting in the way it is because you were the first person he saw after his accident.”
“But then that means it’s my fault.”
“You shouldn’t look at it that way. It’s possible he wouldn’t be able to remember anything at all if he hadn’t seen you when he did. He might be totally adrift. Seeing you when he did gave him a clear memory to latch onto, even though it was from another time in his life. He remembers what he does because you were there to remind him.”
