Page 71 of Stay Awake
“Very good.” He turns his swivel chair to face his desk and types something, then turns back to me. “Are you still taking caffeine tablets and anti-narcolepsy drugs to stop yourself from falling asleep?”
I squirm under his steady gaze as I remember the piles of NoDoz tablets I saw in the trash at the basement apartment where I’ve apparently been living.
“Not anymore.”
“Excellent. I’m pleased you followed my advice.” He nods encouragingly.
I press my hands to my side so he won’t notice the messages on my skin telling me not to sleep. Although I suspect he already saw them.
“Do you remember the reason why you came to see me?”
“Yes,” I answer confidently, even though I don’t have the slightest idea. He is silent as he waits for me to elaborate. The faint tug of a headache gives me an idea. “I came to see you because of my migraines.” My voice rises hopefully.
“Just your migraines?”
“Sure.” I try to inject conviction into my voice. It comes out as a falsetto.
Both of us know I’m lying.
“What about memory issues?” he prompts.
“My memory is fine, as you just saw. I answered all your questions perfectly,” I respond.
His eyes widen through the lenses of his glasses. He clicks his pen and leans forward in his black swivel chair.
“Liv, you came to see me not because of migraines but because of problems with your memory.”
“What kind of problems?” I’m terrified to hear the answer.
I remember the phone call at the basement apartment earlier. The caller said I forget things when I fall asleep. Is it possible that he was telling the truth? And if he was right about that, then maybe he was right about all the other things he said.
“You appear to be in what I’d call a repetitive dissociative fugue. It’s a rare form of amnesia,” the doctor tells me. The word “amnesia” hangs in the air. It fits in with all the strange occurrences that have happened today.
“How long have I had it for?”
“I’m not sure. This is only your second appointment with me. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it.”
“How could I possibly have amnesia? I remember so much about my life going back to my childhood.”
“What things do you remember?”
“Well, for instance, I was cast in the role of Ophelia in a high school play. That was more than a decade ago, and I can still recite the lines, almost word for word.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he says. “Our brains are highly complex. It’s a different mechanism in your brain that appears to be blocked. You might remember dialogue fromHamlet, but unless you keep a writtenrecord of this conversation, you won’t remember what we’ve discussed when you next wake up. You won’t remember me. You won’t remember being here. You won’t remember anything that happened to you today. None of it.”
“What happened to cause this?”
“I don’t know exactly. Ted was going to make some inquiries in London to figure it out. What I do know is that it appears to be connected to your sleep patterns. Whenever you fall asleep, you wake up without any memory of events in your recent past.”
I look out into the bright sunlight coming through his office window and lose myself in my thoughts. I’ve lost such a big chunk of my memory. It makes me feel bereft, like I’ve lost a limb, or an eye.
“Liv? Liv?” Dr. Brenner must have been talking to me. I didn’t hear any of it. “Do you have any questions?”
“Is that why I drink so much caffeine and take NoDoz tablets?” I ask, thinking of the energy drinks filling the fridge at that horrible apartment. “Am I forcing myself to stay awake so I won’t forget?”
“I believe so,” he says. “Deep down you must know that you’re going to forget everything when you sleep, so you try to fight it for as long as possible. Narcolepsy drugs, caffeine pills. Triple-strength coffee. You take whatever will keep you awake. It’s a sort of self-induced insomnia. Sometimes you stay up for a full twenty-four hours. Or longer,” he says. “I suspect it’s affecting the levels of serotonin in your brain. The lower levels of serotonin, which controls moods, might be one of the causes of the fugues you’re experiencing.”
“It sounds like a vicious cycle. The longer I stay awake, the more it takes a toll on my memory.”
