Page 54 of Stay Awake
“Liv woke up one morning in her flat in Clapham. According to her neighbor, she was very confused. She didn’t know where she was, or how she’d gotten there. Liv panicked and ran downstairs. When she attempted to cross the street, she was almost hit by a double-decker. She must have thought she was in New York because she apparently looked the wrong way when she tried to cross. Fortunately, someone pushed her out of the way just in time. She fell onto the pavement. An ambulance was called and she was brought to the hospital where I work. Saint Vincent’s.”
“Was she badly hurt?” Halliday asked.
“She had a few bruises. No head injuries or concussion. Usually she’d have been discharged straightaway but due to her obvious confusion, she was reviewed by a psychiatrist.”
“What did the psychiatrist find?”
“That she had no idea how she happened to be in London. No idea whatsoever. She had no memory of moving to the UK, or of her life in London. In fact, she had no memory of anything going back two years. He diagnosed her as suffering from some sort of repetitive memory blackout.”
“What do you mean by repetitive?” Halliday asked, pressing on the gas as the traffic light turned green.
“Liv was kept overnight at the hospital for observation. Her doctor discovered that every time Liv fell asleep, her memory reset back to two years earlier.”
“How did they know that?” Halliday asked.
“Because each time she woke up in her hospital bed, she didn’t have the faintest idea that she was in London. She consistently told her medical team that her last memory before waking up in hospital was working at her desk in her office in New York. She remembered answering her phone, but she couldn’t remember anything that happened after that until she woke up in a London hospital. And what’s more, whatever new memories she’d formed when she was awake disappeared once she went to sleep, and the whole process started all over again.”
“Why would somebody suddenly lose their memory like that, out of the blue?” Halliday asked.
“Dr. Stanhope, her psychiatrist, says her condition may have been induced by insomnia. Apparently, Liv hadn’t been sleeping properly for weeks before her sudden memory loss,” the social worker said. “In fact, when I took her back to her flat after she was discharged, I found piles of medications. All sorts of pills to help her stay awake. NoDoz.Alert. She drinks a dozen cups of coffee a day. Dr. Stanhope thinks it’s all connected. The insomnia and her blackouts.”
“She must be high as a kite on caffeine if she’s drinking so much of it,” said Halliday, turning onto a street near the liquor store.
“It’s a stimulant. It makes her very nervous and erratic.”
“Enough to be violent?”
“Oh, Liv’s not violent,” said the social worker. “She’s lovely. She’s had a very hard time of it. She has nobody to look out for her, which is very difficult for someone who wakes up each morning without any memory. Usually when these things happen there’s a family to support the patient. In Liv’s case, it’s just her.”
“She doesn’t have any family at all?” Halliday asked, backing into a parking spot.
“Her parents are both dead. There’s an aunt who lives in Southampton. She’s the one who told me that Liv moved to the UK after the attempt on her life. Her aunt also confirmed that Liv didn’t appear to have any memory troubles when she first moved to London. She knows that Liv had a man in her life for a while, but she never met him and she doesn’t know who he was. They’re not particularly close, Liv and her aunt. Apparently, Liv grew up estranged from her father’s family. Her parents’ divorce was acrimonious.”
“What is your role then? Are you a liaison between Liv and the hospital?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Marcia said. “I taught Liv strategies so she could manage her day-to-day life somewhat normally, despite the memory loss.”
“How does someone who can’t retain memories live a normal life?” Halliday asked. “I understand that she may have gone to France, and there’s a possibility that she’s back in the US now? How would she travel like that without being able to remember anything?”
“Well, it’s really about writing everything down. Keeping dynamic documents that become a surrogate for her missing memory.”
“What does that involve exactly?”
“Simple things. I taught Liv to stick Post-it notes with reminders on her front door. I encouraged her to write the key things she needs to remember each day on her hands so that it’s visible when she wakes up. Due to the insomnia, Liv sometimes nods off in the middle of the day in all sorts of places; trains, park benches. Each time she wakes with no memory, so the notes on her hands are often the first things she sees. They tell her what’s going on,” she said. “The most important tool is her journal.”
Halliday turned off the engine.
“When I settled Liv back home at her flat in Clapham after she was discharged from the hospital, we put up a message in big letters on the wall opposite her bed telling her to read her journal. The message was supposed to be the first thing that she saw when she woke up. I wanted her to start her day reading her journal so she’d know about her condition and she wouldn’t get anxious when she realized she didn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten there. Her journal fills in all the missing pieces of her memory so she can function somewhat normally.”
“What sorts of things does she write in her journal?”
“Everything. The journal is her surrogate memory,” the social worker said. “She writes what happens each day so that when she wakes, she can read her journal posts and resume her life where she left off. The journal contains a detailed explanation about her condition. It has her address and her doctors’ contact details, as well as other basic information that we all take for granted. Bank accounts. Her landlord’s contact details. All sorts of mundane things that are crucial for a person to live a normal life.”
“So it’s fair to say the journal is her lifeline?” Halliday asked.
“Very much so,” said the social worker. “I dread to think what would happen if Liv lost it.”
Chapter
