Judging Books

“The stuff that’s more economical and the stuff that’s healthier. I can’t figure out what’s on sale and what’s made from whole grains or not.”

I hadn’t even thought about it. It occurred to me that trying to get along in the world without being able to read was probably a lot more difficult than most people realized. I looked over at Ethan and saw a smile that didn’t reach any of the rest of his face. He looked…resigned …or maybe just sad. I wasn’t sure.

“Why is it hard for you to read now?” I asked. “It has something to do with the accident in high school, right?”

“You ready for another long story?” Ethan asked.

“Sure,” I said, dipping another forkful of French toast into a glob of syrup. Ethan shoved the last huge bite into his mouth, wiped syrup off his chin, and took a large gulp of orange juice before he started his story.

“After hitting my head, it took a long time for my brain to start working again. Like I said—I was in a coma for a couple of days. After I woke up, I couldn’t speak or walk or anything. I don’t remember any of this, just so you know. My parents told me what happened later. I don’t remember anything from the first week I was awake. Once the brain swelling came down, I could speak, but I had to have a lot of physical therapy to learn to walk all over again. About three weeks after the accident, I had the first grand mal seizure. I started having them about three times a week, and medication wasn’t working at all. Then they started coming more often—three or four times a day—and they were getting worse. My head was just too messed up, so they decided the only thing they could do was some pretty major surgery to stop the seizures.”

He paused for a moment and laced his fingers together, staring at the empty plate in front of him.

“There’s this part of your brain—it’s called the corpus callosum—that carries information from one side of your brain to the other. Sometimes seizures are caused by the information getting kinda…messed up, I guess. Messages between the two halves of your brain get lost and start bouncing around, which is what was causing the seizures. That’s what was happening to me. The seizures were so bad, they decided it would be better to…um…well, cut through it, so the two halves of my brain couldn’t talk to each other anymore. We talked about it for a long time before agreeing to the surgery. My dad was a general practitioner, and my mom was an ER surgeon, but they knew several good neurologists. After getting about six second opinions, we all decided it was the only way I was going to get any better, so they did it.”

He took a deep breath before continuing.

“So, when they do the surgery, they sever all the connections between the right and left hemispheres of your brain, which stops the seizure from being able to go from one side to the other. That’s what makes them really bad. When they cut through it, I stopped having seizures. It’s called an interhemispheric electrical storm, so you’ll be set if you ever get on Jeopardy.”

My own brain spun in a little circle. Did I just hear him right? Sever all the connections? Did he just say his brain was cut in two? I felt my heart rate increase as my chest muscles were clenching around it at the same time. My stomach tightened up as well, just for good measure. I had to have misunderstood what he said. Ethan looked over to me and smirked a little before continuing.

“Yeah, so there are some kinda funky side effects when your brain’s been cut in half. Like if I close my right eye, and you show me a picture of something, I can’t tell you what it is verbally. That’s ‘cause the speech center of your brain is in the left side, and the right side controls your left eye. I can write down what it is with my left hand, but then I can’t read it back to you, so it doesn’t help much. Other split-brain people could read it, and then they’d know what they were looking at. Originally, I thought it was kind of cool, but that wore off pretty quick.”

Ethan looked up from his hands for the first time since he started talking. I blinked rapidly, trying to hide the panic I felt. He blushed and then looked back down at his hands before continuing.

“The neurologist says my brain can’t comprehend symbols anymore,” Ethan explained. “I’m actually not even allowed to drive since I can’t understand the signs. The reading thing’s not common in spilt-brain people—that’s what they call you when you’ve had that surgery. Not being able to name stuff when you close your right eye, that’s pretty common. Since everything kinda happened at once, it’s possible my problems with symbols were part of the original damage from the accident. I’m just glad I’m not color blind, too. At least I know red means stop and green means go.”

“I don’t really give a shit about the driving.” Ethan continued, speaking quickly. “I can get wherever I need to be with my bike and the subway. I still take my dad’s car out a couple times a year—not during rush hour or anything—just so I know it still works. Dad really liked cars, so I kept his favorite. It sucks not being able to read, though. I used to read all the time. I tried listening to books on CDs, but they just don’t capture my attention the same way holding a book used to. I dunno why. I tried holding the CD case while I was listening, but that really didn’t do much for me, either. Mom read to me when I was in the hospital.”

I watched his tongue dart out over his bottom lip and fiddle with the rings there. Ethan looked nervously to his right, then his left, then finally back up to me.

“So, there you go,” he said softly. “I guess the shorter version would have been to say I’m brain damaged. Some of the friends I had back then said it affected my personality as well, but my parents died just a couple weeks after the last surgery, so it could have been that, too. I’m not really sure. I don’t have seizures anymore, at least.”

Ethan looked up from his hands and met my eyes. His look was intense, and I knew he was waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know how to respond.

“Thanks for explaining it to me,” I finally said. “I have heard of people having seizures, obviously, but I never heard of anything like this.”

“It’s not common,” Ethan said. “It’s a pretty extreme way of resolving the problem, but in my case there really weren’t any other alternatives.”

“So, it’s not just reading?” I asked for clarification. “It’s all kinds of symbols?”

“Yeah,” Ethan nodded. “I can see fine, but when I look at a traffic sign or something, it just doesn’t make any sense to me. You can tell me twenty times what it means, but I just don’t get it. I know I should get it, and I know it should be easy, but the part of my brain that sees the picture and the part that can interpret it don’t talk to each other. Letters are the same way, I guess.”

Ethan laughed.

“Sometimes it’s funny, really,” he said with a smile. “CeeCee and I used to ride past this cafe every day. When we went by, I always got a craving for donuts but didn’t understand why. This happened about two weeks in a row before I mentioned it to him. He told me there was a big sign with the words ‘Fresh Donuts’ painted on the window. My eyes couldn’t read the word, but my stomach could!”

I smiled and shook my head but didn’t really find it funny. Ethan reached out and grabbed my hand.

“Don’t feel bad,” Ethan said quietly. “I don’t usually tell anybody about this. I mean, I know I shouldn’t be ashamed of it or anything—it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it. Most people don’t realize there’s anything wrong with me, and there are a lot of people who can’t read, so people who figure it out just assume I never learned how. I just didn’t want you to think I was, um, stupid or anything, I guess.”

“I never thought you were,” I told him. “I mean, you have some screwed up ideas about what makes a good movie, but I can forgive you for that.”

He met my gaze again, and I saw the light come back into his emerald green irises. A big, full smile lit up his face, and he just about jumped over the table to take my head in his hands and press his lips to mine.

“Thank you,” he said between kisses. “I was scared of what you would think. You’re so smart…”

I was going to argue with him regarding my intelligence level, but frankly his kisses were far too distracting, and within a couple of minutes both breakfast and his disclosure were completely forgotten as we found ourselves back in the pink bean bag chair. We spent about an hour kissing and talking before I realized I really needed to get out of there for a while.