“Medusa,” he says. “Crone. Witch. Crooked, rotten teeth.”
She stiffens a bit. “You think I’m ugly?”
“Uuuugly!” he says, savoring the word. “No, not you! Ugly green paisley ugly.”
Roberta laughs, relieved, and glances down at her blouse. “Well, I guess there’s no accounting for taste, is there?”
Accounting! Accountant! My father was an accountant! No—a policeman. No—a factory worker. No—lawyer, construction worker, pharmacist, dentist, unemployed, dead. His thoughts are all true, and all false. His own mind is a riddle that he can’t hope to solve. He feels the fear that Roberta told him he must feel. It wells up again, and he begins to struggle once more against his bonds. They’re not just bonds, though; some of them are bandages.
“Who?” he asks again.
“I already told you,” Roberta says. “Don’t you remember?”
“No! Who?” he asks. “Who?”
Roberta raises her eyebrows in understanding. “Oh. Who are you?”
He waits anxiously for an answer.
“Well, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Who are you?” She taps her fingertips on her chin, considering it. “The committee could not agree on a name. Of course, everyone has an opinion, the pompous buffoons. So, while they’re dickering about it, perhaps you can choose one for yourself.”
“Choose?” But why must he choose a name? Shouldn’t he already have one? He runs a series of names through his mind: Matthew, Johnny, Eric, José, Chris, Alex, Spencer—and although some of them seem more likely than others, none of them hold the sense of identity that a true name should have. He shakes his head, trying to push something—anything—about himself into its proper place, but shaking his head only makes it hurt.
“Aspirin,” he says. “Tylenol-aspirin, then count the sheep.”
“Yes, I imagine you must still be tired. We’ll up your pain medication, and I’ll leave you to get some rest. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
She pats his hand, then strides out of the room, turning off the light and leaving him alone with thought fragments that won’t as much as shake hands with one another in the dark.
- - -
The next day—or at least he thinks it’s the next day—he’s not quite so tired, and his head doesn’t hurt as much, but he’s still just as confused. He now suspects that the white room that he took for a hospital room is not. There were enough hints in the architecture to suggest he was in some private residence that had been retrofitted for the convalescence of a single patient. There is a sound beyond the window that he can hear even when the window is closed. A constant rhythmic roar and hiss. Only after a day of hearing it does he realize what it is. Crashing waves. Wherever he is, it’s on a seashore, and he longs to see the view. He asks and Roberta obliges. Today is the day he gets out of bed.
Two strong uniformed guards come in with Roberta. They undo his bonds and help him to his feet, holding him beneath his armpits.
“Don’t be afraid,” Roberta says. “I know you can do this.”
The first moment of standing gives him vertigo. He looks to his bare feet, seeing only toes sticking out from beneath the pale blue hospital gown he wears. Those toes seem miles beneath him. He begins to walk, one labored step at a time.
“Good,” says Roberta, walking along with him. “How does it feel?”
“Skydiving,” he says.
“Hmm,” says Roberta, considering this. “Do you mean dangerous or exhilarating?”
“Yes,” he answers. In his mind he repeats both words, remembering them, pulling them from a massive box of unsorted adjectives and filing them in their proper place. There are so many unsorted words in the box, but bit by bit, it’s all beginning to slide into coherent formation.
“It’s all in there,” Roberta has told him more than once. “It’s just a matter of finding it.”
The two guards continue to hold him beneath his armpits as he shuffles along. A knee buckles, and their grip grows tighter.
“Careful, sir.”
The guards always call him “sir.” It must mean that he commands respect, although he can’t imagine why. He envies their ability to simply “be” without having to work at it.
Roberta leads them down a hallway that, like the distance to his feet, seems like miles, but is only a dozen yards or so. Up above, in the corner of the ceiling, there’s a machine with a lens that zeroes in on him. There’s a machine like that in his room, too, constantly watching him in silence. Electric eye. Cyclops lens. He knows the name for the device. It’s on the tip of his tongue. “Say cheese!” he says. “It puts on ten pounds. Rolling . . . and . . . action! A Kodak moment.”
“The word you’re looking for starts with a c, and that’s all the help I’ll give you,” Roberta says.
“Cuh—cuh—Cadaver. Cabana. Cavalry. Canada.”
Roberta purses her lips. “You can do better.”
He sighs and gives up before frustration can overwhelm him. Right now, it’s hard to master walking, much less walking and thinking at the same time.
Now they come through a door to a place that is both inside and out.
“Balcony!” he says.
“Yes,” Roberta tells him. “That one came easy.”
Beyond the balcony is an endless sea, shimmering in the warm sun, and before him are two chairs and a small table. On the table are cookies and a white beverage in a crystal pitcher. He should know the name of that beverage.
“Comfort food,” Roberta tells him. “Your reward for making the journey.”
They sit facing each other with the food between them and the guards at the ready, should he need their help, or should he try to hurl himself off the balcony to the jagged rocks below. There are soldiers with dark, heavy weapons positioned strategically on those rocks—there for his protection, Roberta tells him. He imagines that should he hurl himself down to them, the guards on the rocks would also call him “sir.”
Roberta pours the white liquid from its crystalline pitcher into crystalline glasses that catch the light, refracting it and splintering it in random projections on the stonework of the balcony.
He takes a bite of cookie. Chocolate chip. Suddenly the intensity of the flavor drags more memories out of hibernation. He thinks of his mother. Then another mother. School lunch. Burning his lip on a freshly baked Toll House. I like them best chewy and hot. I like them best hard and almost burnt. I’m allergic to chocolate. Chocolate is my favorite.
He knows all these things are true. How could they all be true? If he’s allergic, how could he have so many wonderful chocolate memories?
“The marathon riddle continuing,” he says.
Roberta smiles. “That was almost a complete sentence. Here, have something to drink.”
She holds the glass of cold white liquid to him, and he takes it.
“Have you given any thought to your name?” Roberta asks, just as he takes a sip—and all at once, as the flavorful fluid dislodges a piece of soft cookie from the roof of his mouth, more thoughts fly in. The combination of tastes forces a hundred thoughts through a sieve, leaving behind diamonds.
The electric eye machine. He knows what it’s called! And the white stuff, it’s from a cow, isn’t it? Cow juice. Starts with an M. Electric eye. “Cam!” Cow juice. “Moo!”
Roberta looks at him strangely.
“Cam . . . Moo . . . ,” he says again.
Her eyes sparkle, and she says, “Camus?”
“Cam. Moo.”
“Camus! What a splendid name. You’ve outdone yourself.”
“Camera!” he finally says. “Milk!” But Roberta isn’t listening anymore. He has sent her to a more exotic place.
“Camus, the existential philosopher! ‘Live to the point of tears.’ Kudos to you, my friend! Kudos!”
He has no idea what she’s talking about, but if it makes her happy, then it makes him happy. It feels good to know that he’s impressed her.
“Your name shall be Camus Composite-Prime,” she says with a grin on her face as wide as the shimmering sea. “Won’t the committee just die!”
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From then on, each of his days begins and ends with therapy. Painful stretching followed by guided exercises and weight lifting that seem specifically designed to cause him the greatest amount of pain.
“The healing agents can only do so much,” says his physical therapist—a deep-voiced bodybuilder with the unlikely name of Kenny. “The rest has to come from you.”
He is convinced this therapist enjoys watching him suffer.
Thanks to Roberta, those who don’t just call him “sir” now call him Camus, but when he thinks of the name, all that comes to mind is a big black-and-white whale.
“That’s Shamu,” Roberta tells him over lunch. “You’re Camus; it rhymes, but has a silent S.”
“Cam,” he tells her, not wanting to sound like a sea mammal. “Make it Cam.”
Roberta raises an eyebrow, considering it. “We can do that. We can most certainly do that. I’ll let everyone know. So how are your thoughts today, Cam? Feeling a bit more cohesive?”
Cam shrugs. “I have clouds in my head.”
Roberta sighs. “Maybe so, but I can see your progress, even if you can’t. Your thoughts are becoming a little clearer each day. You can string together longer strands of meaning, and you understand almost everything I say to you, don’t you?”
Cam nods.
“Comprehension is the first step toward clear communication, Cam.” Roberta hesitates for a second, then says, “Comprends-tu maintenant?”
“Oui, parfaitement,” says Cam, not knowing that something was different about it until the words came out of his mouth. He realizes that yet another door of mystery has opened inside his head.
“Well,” says Roberta, a mischievous smirk on her face, “for the time being, let’s go one language at a time, shall we?”
New activities are added into his day. His afternoon naps are pushed back to make room for hour-long sessions sitting at a table-size computer desktop filled with digital images: a red vehicle, a building, a black-and-white portrait—dozens of pictures.
“Drag to you the images you recognize,” says Roberta on the first day of this ritual, “and say the first word that each image brings to mind.”
Cam feels overwhelmed. “Scantron?”
“No,” Roberta tells him, “it’s not a test, it’s just a mental exercise to find out what you remember and what you still need to learn.”