“Are you feeling better?” Dr. Kay asked. “It’s a bad bug going around.”
I had canceled my appointment the week before, begged off sick even though I wasn’t. I couldn’t face talking about Brooke or Daniel or Matt and my goddamn memory confidence, so tired of the drama and sorrow that surrounded all of it.
“I am. Thanks,” I replied.
“So, Lucy, tell me—how have the past two weeks been?” she asked, settling deeper into her chair. My intention today had been to tell her everything. I needed an opinion from someone who had no stakes in this game. It was all in my notebook—carefully documented day by day so I could know for sure what was real and what wasn’t, in case my memory went haywire again. But for whatever reason I couldn’t pull my notebook out, wanting to keep it tucked away so I didn’t have to deal with the fallout of recent events.
I knew at the very least I should mention the proposal—it was, after all, the game changer, wasn’t it?—but it stayed stuck in the back of my throat. I didn’t want to share it quite yet, to analyze how I was feeling about knowing Matt and I would have been married already if I hadn’t slipped. Of all the memories that could have flooded back, this one felt the cruelest, because it was both critically important and useless. If I wasn’t in love with Matt in the present, what difference did it make that I remembered saying yes to his proposal in the past?
I opted to focus on the work issue instead. “It was...interesting,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows behind her tortoiseshell eyeglasses, finely tuned into my tone. “Care to elaborate?”
“Well, work was going well, until it wasn’t,” I began, sighing deeply as I told her about Brooke and what had happened with the press release. How I was sure she was trying to undermine my position at the firm by using my memory against me. And finally I admitted, for the first time out loud, how I was most worried Brooke wasn’t completely off base.
“How so?” Dr. Kay asked.
“I thought my work life was secure. My recollection of it, I mean, because I remembered everything correctly. But it turns out I was planning to let Brooke go. The same week I had my accident. And I didn’t remember a single thing about it.” I rubbed my temples, pressed my fingertips in deeply.
“Would you like a glass of water, Lucy?”
I let my hands drop. “No, thanks. Just thinking things through.”
“I’m not at all surprised there are a few gaps with work,” Dr. Kay said. “We would expect that in a case like yours, where large chunks of your memory have been wiped out or altered.”
“But it all seems so random. What I remember and what I don’t,” I said. “Like, I know I don’t like wearing wool because it itches—I remember my grandmother knitting me a sweater when I was a kid and my mom making me wear it when we visited her despite the rash I would get. I remember all my passwords, and how to write a press release, and the names of every one of my colleagues. I also remembered why I don’t like slices of lime in my drinks, but forgot I never stopped eating meat.”
I was ramped up now, my words spilling out. “And apparently my body remembers I’m a runner, because I went for this unplanned jog on the weekend and it was like my feet knew exactly what to do, you know?” Dr. Kay nodded. “But I would swear on my life I had never run farther than half a block.” Now I held up three fingers. “Matt told me I’ve run three half-marathons. Three!”
“I’m impressed,” Dr. Kay said. “I once signed up for a Couch to 5k program and never made it off the couch.” She smiled.
“Well, I can’t remember a thing about any of the races, so did I do them?” I shook my head. “Am I a runner if I don’t remember running, even if my feet do? Am I good at my job if I can’t remember the very valid reasons I was going to fire my coworker? Am I a meat eater or a vegetarian, because my brain can’t seem to make up its mind? Oh, and apparently I like eggs again, after hating them for years because of a food poisoning incident I can’t remember. So, which is it? Do I like eggs, or don’t I?”
My questions came out quickly, my voice rising with each one. I tried to breathe into my belly but was too hopped-up to bother with the simple relaxation technique Dr. Ted had taught me in the hospital months ago. Dr. Kay watched me, stayed quiet as I took another ragged breath.
“Can I have a boyfriend if I don’t remember being his girlfriend? Can I feel married even if I’m not? Who am I now if I can’t remember who I was? The life I used to have doesn’t exist anymore, and I have no idea how to get past that.”
Dr. Kay allowed a few moments of silence to fill the room, giving me time to catch my breath, before she spoke again. “Those are tough questions, Lucy. Not because there aren’t answers to them,” she said. “But because it’s not for me to say.”
Tell me what to do! I wanted to shout at Dr. Kay. Your job is to help me figure out who to be. She shifted forward on her chair, leaning toward me. “Look, Lucy, you’ve made fantastic progress in the short time we’ve been seeing each other. And I do understand it feels like you have little control over your life at the moment,” she said. “You’ve mentioned before feeling like you’re a passenger in a car, versus the driver.”
I nodded. That was exactly how it felt many days.
“So what happens if you step back from everything? Stop holding yourself responsible for everyone else’s happiness so you can focus on your own? Put your memory confidence list away, and think about what you want. Not what preaccident-Lucy wants, but what you want, right now. Today.” She put her hand up, stopping my inevitable argument that I obviously had no idea. “Don’t think too hard about it. What’s the first thing that popped into your mind when I asked the question? What is the one thing you want, right now, more than anything else?”
The answer came to me fully and completely, no hesitation, and I quaked with the force of it. “I want to remember being in love with Matt.”
“Okay. Good. And now the harder question,” she said. “What if that memory is locked away forever? Then what will you do?”
I considered the question for a moment. “Then I figure out how to fall in love with him all over again.”
* * *
It had seemed so obvious, what I wanted to do about Matt, when Dr. Kay asked me during our session. But once I got outside her building and had a moment to think it through, I felt paralyzed. Matt and I had tried—really tried—hadn’t we? There were the photo albums, the reminiscence therapy, the play-by-play re-creation of our first date. So much effort for such little return. Shouldn’t I feel something more by now, even if my memory wasn’t back?
And then, in a flash, I realized the problem. Matt had really tried, that was true. But what about me? Could I say the same?
No, I couldn’t. While Matt did everything he could think of to jog my memory, all the while accepting it might never work but sticking by me nonetheless, I played along but kept one foot outside the circle. I had allowed myself to stay distracted—mostly by Daniel—and that had hurt all of us, but Matt especially.
Dr. Kay’s office was beside a parkette, and I had a sudden urge to take off my shoes and walk barefoot in the grass. Jenny was working on a documentary on something called “earthing”—walking barefoot on dirt, or sand, or grass, or some other natural surface—to eke out electrons from the earth. It sounded a bit (a lot) out-there, but its proponents swore to a host of benefits: everything from generating feelings of happiness to reducing anxiety to helping with insomnia, and Jenny had been pretty psyched about the whole thing. Told me she’d been doing it every day for fifteen minutes at the park near her work, and felt ridiculously joyful afterward; she suggested maybe it could help with my memory. “But if not, trust me, you’ll still feel fantastic.”
And for whatever reason, it seemed like exactly the right thing to do at this moment. So I sat on the bench, took off my shoes and rolled up my pant legs into wide cuffs. Then I started walking, the soles of my feet initially ticklish as they settled into the grass. Soon I was walking in a large circle around the grassy parkette, furiously typing a message to Matt on my phone as I did.
My ten minutes of earthing didn’t jog my memory or change my life, but as I slipped grass-stained feet back into my shoes I reread my message to Matt. Then with a grin, I hit Send.