Dying to Remember Read online

  “Well, that’s one bet I wouldn’t want to win. For now let’s keep your testicles intact.”

  “Yeah, well, anyways, there’s a problem.”

  “According to my count, there are three—no prints, no weapon, no witnesses.”

  “Now there’s four.”

  “Oh?”

  “No memory. Seems he got some type of amnesia. You believe that?”

  “No.” Amnesia was something you saw in movies, not real life.

  “Yeah. Me neither. But that’s what the doctors say. I think someone smart could fake it pretty good.”

  “We’ll see.” Wright leaned back in his chair. “Let’s pick him up as soon as he steps off the plane. Find out when that is.”

  “Yeah. I figure if his memory thing is real, it could give us an up on him—you know, him not remembering everything to hide from us.”

  Wright thought about that. Maybe Gould was right. With a little luck, they’d wrap things up in a matter of days.

  Chapter 9

  Dr. Vincent spent more than an hour with Barnes during their first meeting, but when the psychiatrist returned for another visit later that day, Barnes didn’t recognize him.

  “You’re sure it was just three hours ago?” Barnes asked. Possibly the psychiatrist had mistaken him for another patient.

  “I’m certain. Try to remember.”

  Dr. Vincent might as well have said, “Try to levitate.” Barnes didn’t know where to begin. He couldn’t remember anything from three hours ago, or even one hour ago. He tried to think back just a few minutes. What had he been doing, other than lying in bed? Watching TV? Reading a magazine? Talking on the phone? Or had a nurse been sticking or prodding him? None of those things came to mind. He wasn’t sure he even recalled the moment when this doctor had walked into the room, and that couldn’t have been more than a minute or two ago. The exact time when memories vanished was impossible to pinpoint, but it happened quickly. And once they were gone . . .

  “Dr. Barnes?” The man in the white coat seemed to be studying his expression.

  “What?”

  “Do you remember?”

  Barnes tried not to show irritation. “Remember what?”

  Dr. Vincent came to Barnes’s room again the following day. “Good morning, Dr. Barnes.”

  Barnes was sitting in bed doing a crossword puzzle in the New York Times. He’d been avoiding thinking about his predicament, and the puzzle served as a needed distraction. “You know a four-letter word for an Arabian lateen-rigged boat?” he replied.

  “I don’t even know what lateen means.” Dr. Vincent pulled up a chair. “Do you remember who I am?”

  Barnes focused on the newspaper. “I know who you’re not. You’re not the editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle.”

  “No. That I’m not.” Dr. Vincent leaned forward. “Do I look familiar to you?”

  Barnes took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Dhow.”

  “What?”

  “Dhow. D-H-O-W. A lateen-rigged boat.” He wrote the letters in the boxes, then put the puzzle down beside him on the bed.

  “Do I look familiar to you?” Dr. Vincent persisted.

  Barnes tried to recall. He studied Dr. Vincent’s features, his pointy nose, his comb-over. Maybe the nose looked familiar. No, something else. The clothes. “I think I have seen you before. You were wearing that same polyester tie.”

  Dr. Vincent frowned. “It isn’t polyester. It’s a blend.” Then he added, “It isn’t identical to yesterday’s, although it is similar.” He became more animated as he spoke. Barnes could tell that on a professional level the psychiatrist was pleased. “Most likely you’ve retained part of your ability to remember images. The ability to recognize images or faces is much different than the ability to remember spoken words.”

  “Different from,” Barnes corrected.

  “What?”

  “‘Different from,’ not ‘different than,’ although my wife always says ‘different to.’”

  “Different to?”

  “She’s British. They’re odd that way. ‘Different to.’ When is she coming here?” He tried to remember the last time he had seen her. Instead he envisioned something completely different—the unsettling image of a plastic cup of urine beside a sink, one of two sinks in the bathroom connected to their master bedroom. It appeared before him like a picture in a slide show, suddenly there. But he didn’t know what it meant, only that it made his heart rate increase and his hands sweat.

  Dr. Vincent interrupted his thoughts. “Do you remember anything from yesterday?”

  “No.” The image couldn’t have been from yesterday because yesterday he’d been in the hospital.

  “Not even bits or pieces?”

  “No.”

  “Well, try to remember. Maybe you can recall a meal you ate or a nurse who visited.”

  They don’t visit, he thought. They come in to complete orders, armed with needles and thermometers and blood pressure cuffs. Yet he couldn’t remember any of them, or anything they’d done to him. Perhaps that was a blessing.

  “Do you remember anything from a year ago yesterday?” Barnes asked. “That’s what it’s like. Like it practically never happened. It’s basically . . . gone.”

  “Yes. Well, I understand your frustration . . .”

  “No, I don’t think you do.” Barnes now had some idea of how family members of patients must have felt toward him when he would profess to have insight into their anguish. “I’m arguably the best cardiothoracic surgeon in the country, but I can’t even remember what I ate for breakfast. Hell, I can’t even remember what I did thirty minutes ago. That means I’m incapable of learning. Even pigeons, even insects, can learn. But I can’t. What does that make me?”

  “Brilliant but challenged,” said Dr. Vincent, “and we have to meet that challenge head-on. Yes, you have problems remembering things, but by the time I’m done working with you, few people will recognize you have a handicap.”

  Barnes suppressed the urge to roll his eyes.

  “First, I’d like you to help me figure out what parts of your memory are still functional,” Dr. Vincent said. “I’m going to show you some pictures and ask you to try to remember them, and I’m going to ask you to try to remember some other things visually, by forming a mental image that connects them. For example, if I ask you to remember the words frog, apple, and umbrella, I want you to form a picture in your mind of a frog eating an apple and holding up an umbrella. Repeat those three words for me.”

  Barnes shook his head, but he repeated, “Frog, apple, umbrella.”

  “Close your eyes and form the image. I want it to be crystal clear, as if someone just showed you a photograph.”

  Barnes felt ridiculous closing his eyes, but he did it.

  “Do you see it?”

  He formed the image. “Yeah, I see it.”

  “All right. Open your eyes. Now I want you to begin with one hundred and subtract seven for me, and keep counting down.”

  “One hundred, ninety-three, eighty-six . . .”

  Dr. Vincent let him go down to twenty-three. “That’s enough. Now say every other letter of the alphabet as quickly as you can.”

  “A, C, E, G, I, K, M, O, Q, S—”

  “That’s enough. Now tell me. What were the three words I asked you to recall? I asked you to remember three words for me.”

  Three words. “Just a minute ago?”

  “Yes. I asked you to form a picture in your mind. Do you remember a picture of anything?”

  “No.”

  Dr. Vincent pressed on. “How about a frog? Do you remember a picture of a frog?”

  “Not really.” Not at all, he thought. He wondered how long they’d been playing memory games.

  “Close your eyes,” Dr. Vincent instructed.

  “Maybe you should choose words that are more memorable.”

  “Close your eyes,” he repeated. “Think of a frog and tell me what else you see in the picture.
”

  “What else? How am I supposed to create a picture?”

  “Close your eyes and concentrate. Think back, and try to recall a specific image.”

  Barnes closed his eyes and tried to think back a minute at a time. The last thing he remembered was doing some simple arithmetic.

  But then an image did take shape. He opened his eyes. “It’s holding a cane and a red ball. Maybe a red rubber ball.”

  Dr. Vincent beamed. “Very good! The items I asked you to remember were frog, apple, and umbrella. You retained significant remnants of those items, and that means your visual memory is better than your auditory. With practice, we should be able to enhance that and improve your recall using visual techniques.”

  “And I’m supposed to apply that to abstract conversations?” Barnes said.

  “Let’s just take one step at a time.”

  Barnes knew Dr. Vincent was right. The important thing was that part of his visual memory, however small, remained intact. Somehow he needed to figure out a way to expand that. He wondered whether Elizabeth might be able to help. “Where’s my wife? Don’t you think it makes sense for her to be a part of these exercises?”

  “Ordinarily it would.” Dr. Vincent hesitated. “I’ll tell you about Elizabeth . . .” He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “. . . provided you try to remain calm.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Barnes felt his mouth go dry. Something had happened to Elizabeth. The same thing that had happened to him?

  “Your wife is no longer with us.”

  “With us in the hospital?”

  “No. She’s no longer alive.”

  Barnes felt himself trembling—not just his hands but also his chest and head, as though an intense chill had seized him. “Elizabeth is dead? I’ve forgotten that my wife died?” Even his voice trembled. “Is that why I can’t remember the last two weeks?”

  “No.” Dr. Vincent shook his head. “She was alive then. She died November twenty-sixth, four days after you ate the mussels.”

  “How did it . . . did she . . .” He took a breath and forced himself to remain coherent. “Was she with me?”

  “No.” Dr. Vincent put his hand on Barnes’s arm.

  Barnes drew away. “What the hell happened?”

  Dr. Vincent sat back, and Barnes could tell the man was going to unload more bad news. “She was the victim of a homicide. It happened at your home.”

  “But . . . h-how could . . .” The words ended there.

  “I don’t know the details,” Dr. Vincent said. “It was a shooting.”

  Barnes forced himself to be calm, even detached, like during a surgery gone bad. While performing routine procedures, he might raise his voice to residents and nurses—and occasionally even an anesthesiologist—but a real crisis always transported him into the eye of the storm. Around him chaos swirled, but it left him unfazed. Now he tried to summon that emotional stillness. “When did it happen?”

  “November twenty-sixth,” Dr. Vincent said.

  “November twenty-sixth. That was Thanksgiving.”

  “I suppose that’s right, in the States. Here we celebrate it the second Monday in October. In any case, she had just returned from visiting you.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sure the police will tell you when you return home.”

  Why couldn’t they tell him now? “Isn’t there a number I can call to find out?”

  “I’ll check into it. In the meantime, we need to focus on you, on getting you better.”

  “What’s the point? What am I supposed to do? How am I going to live from one day to the next? I don’t know that I’ll even be capable of taking care of the dog!”

  “The dog was with Elizabeth.”

  Dr. Vincent’s reply caught Barnes off guard. “Rex is dead, too?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? My wife is dead, my dog is dead, my life is ruined, and what? You’re sorry?”

  “You’ll be able to take care of yourself, Dr. Barnes. That’s why I’m here, to teach you how to do that.”

  “Do you think I really give a damn about that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Elizabeth is dead.” The realization sucked all the hope out of him. But not his resolve. “Now I have only one thing to live for.”

  He clenched a fist. “I’m going to find the bastard who killed her.”

  Chapter 10

  After Dr. Vincent left, Barnes lay in bed contemplating his future—a life without Elizabeth and without a normal mind. Maybe, gradually, part of his ability to remember new information would return, but to expect a complete recovery was unrealistic. In fact, he might not improve at all.

  He recalled his third year of medical school when he rotated through psychiatry and interviewed patients suffering from major depression. One had tried to kill himself by firing a shotgun into his mouth. That was about as close to a sure thing as you can get, but Mr. Henry proved to be an exception. He had needed to stretch to reach the trigger, and in doing that, he’d tilted back his head, sending the buckshot upward, instead of straight back, and blowing off everything from the roof of his mouth to his forehead. The force of the blast also destroyed his jaw, leaving him almost entirely without a face. All that remained were his ears, most of his skull, and his brain. In an instant he had blinded himself and disfigured himself beyond recognition.

  Medical and surgery residents throughout the hospital came to the intensive care unit at all hours just to get a glimpse of Mr. Henry, until the attending physician put a stop to it. Barnes had interviewed the patient several months later, and he couldn’t help but feel that Mr. Henry really would have been better off dead. The man had lost his job and his wife, and then he’d lost his face and his eyesight. As a medical student, Barnes had been unable to say anything positive but had instead focused on the treatment plan—the antidepressant medications, the group therapy sessions, and other activities designed to ease Mr. Henry back into the mainstream of society, if that was possible. At the end of the month, Barnes had rotated onto another service, and he never saw Mr. Henry again. He figured the man had eventually killed himself.

  There comes a point when life isn’t worth living, Barnes thought, and no doubt Mr. Henry had gone beyond that after losing his face. Now Barnes wondered whether he had also passed that point. Tending to patients with Alzheimer’s disease during his third year of medical school, he’d assured himself that if the same thing ever happened to him, he would commit suicide. Was this much different? Is life worth living if you can’t remember anything you do? Maybe his memory would improve, but probably not by much. When infants and young children suffer major brain damage, they can recover most or all of their lost function, but with adults that’s uncommon. And it never happens quickly.

  Barnes looked at the window across the room. The blinds were drawn, and he had no idea how high up he was. If he jumped through the window, he might trip over a hedge or he could just as likely plummet a hundred feet.

  Thinking about this, about ending his life, made him wonder whether he might be experiencing major depression. Thoughts of suicide are one of the five symptoms. Did he have others? A change in mood—yes. A loss of interest in his usual activities—no. Given the chance, he would still do surgery. A change in appetite? A change in sleep patterns? He couldn’t remember enough to answer either of those. A diagnosis of major depression requires three of the five symptoms, and he could have anywhere from two to four. The bottom line was he couldn’t even make a simple diagnosis of depression. But one thing was certain—he had already hit bottom.

  Or so he thought.

  Chapter 11

  The next morning Barnes awoke with no memory of the previous day. He thought he recognized Dr. Vincent when the psychiatrist entered the room and came to his bed, but he couldn’t recall any details of their meeting, or even whether a conversation had taken place.

  After first showing and reshowing Barnes simple drawings and pict
ures of everyday items to test his visual memory, Dr. Vincent broke the news to him again about Elizabeth. For the remainder of the previous day, Barnes had remembered her murder, even after he’d forgotten Dr. Vincent, because the shock of it had never left his immediate thoughts. But after he fell asleep that night, the memory vanished. Today news of Elizabeth’s death caught him off guard. He lay there, too stunned to reply.

  “I’m afraid it’s something you’ll have to relearn every day,” Dr. Vincent said, after a prolonged silence. “It won’t get any easier, unless you have enough insight to accept it as yesterday’s news and force yourself not to dwell on it.”

  Barnes said nothing. What Dr. Vincent was suggesting seemed impossible, and even callous. Yet the alternative was worse—daily torment.

  Somehow he needed to focus on other things. A disciplined mind should be able to do that, and the mind of Christopher Barnes was nothing if not disciplined. The key would be to treat the death of Elizabeth like a major surgery. Focus on the procedure, not the patient. Or, in her case, focus on the crime.

  “When exactly did this happen?” he asked.

  He followed that with other questions: Where in the house was Elizabeth killed? Had the alarm system been disarmed? Had anyone in the neighborhood reported seeing anything unusual?

  Dr. Vincent offered few answers, saying only that the Boston police would have to give him details. Still, Barnes wrote notes to himself. When he finished, the psychiatrist shifted the conversation to discuss Barnes’s memory.

  “Is there anything you can recall from yesterday?” Dr. Vincent asked.

  “I don’t even remember this morning. How do you expect me to remember yesterday!”

  “Don’t become angry. Concentrate. Try to remember. Anything. Do you remember this room?”

  Barnes looked around. “I don’t know . . . It’s as though I’ve been dreaming and then I wake up. My memories fade that fast.”

  Dr. Vincent nodded. “Well, there are ways to help you remember. We just have to figure out what works best for you. Let’s start with some cognitive tests.”