A Five-Minute Life
He shuffled through his files until he found hers, opened it, and spoke in a low voice as he read.
“Althea Renée Hughes, age twenty-three. Two years ago, she was in a head-on collision while driving with her parents. Drunk-driver plowed his pickup truck right at ’em. Parents were pronounced dead at the scene. Miss Hughes was Life-Flighted to Richmond General where she spent two weeks in a coma. They treated her for a broken arm, broken clavicle, broken femur, and internal injuries. But it was her head that took the worst of it.”
I swallowed. “What happened?”
Alonzo read from her file. “Catastrophic brain injury sustained in a motor vehicle accident with intracranial hemorrhage and increased intracranial pressure resulting in trauma and damage to the hippocampus.” He looked up. “In English: her long- and short-term memory are shot to hell. She’s got no memory of her life before the accident and no memory of her life now.”
“What do you mean? No memory at all?”
“She has semantic memory, which means she remembers factual information such as words, concepts, numbers. She still knows how to wash her face, use a fork, put on her clothes. But she has no episodic memory. No personal experiences, events, or details about people or places. Meaning, she knows what a dog is but can’t tell you if she’s ever pet one in her life. Some Egyptian history has stuck with her and so has her artistic abilities, but she can’t tell you where she learned’em.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “But she knows what’s happening to her? She’s aware of…?” I gestured to indicate the room.
“Where she is? What happened to her? What she was doing five minutes ago? Nope. She has a few minutes of cons
ciousness and then she has to start over. She resets.”
“Resets?”
“Yeah, when her minutes are up, the slate gets wiped clean again, so to speak. We call it her reset.”
He’s messing with me. How can anyone survive with only a few minutes of memory?
“That’s crazy.”
“Sounds that way, but it’s her truth. You can hear it happen. She says the same thing, asks the same questions, every few minutes. All day long. Day in and day out. Going on two years now.”
How long has it been?
That was Thea’s reset. I’d heard it yesterday.
“She don’t stray from her script much unless she’s drawing. Or you get her in a conversation,” Alonzo said. “Then she’s good for a few minutes more. And just when you think ‘Hey, this gal’s all right. Why is she here?’ Bam. Reset.”
“What happens?”
“She’ll pause and get all blank and confused. Then start her script over again. When she first came to us and a reset hit, she’d throw a fit. Like a little seizure. Now she only has fits when something upsets her. That’s why we keep her on a strict routine, and you have to know how to talk to her so you don’t set her off.”
Too late.
“What does she think is happening when the reset hits?”
“She knows there was an accident. She knows she was hurt and something’s going on with her brain and the doctors are working on her case. That’s all she needs to know. Her older sister, Delia, is her guardian now. She directs Miss Hughes’ care, and she’s adamant we don’t spill the beans that their parents didn’t survive. No need to upset her. Even if she won’t remember it a few minutes later.”
I frowned, trying to wrap my mind around Thea’s condition. “But… if Thea’s—”
“Miss Hughes,” Alonzo said. “Always Miss Hughes.”
“If she’s taking a bite of food or in the shower and the reset hits, what does she think is going on?”
“She goes with the flow,” Alonzo said. “The brain is a complicated mechanism, but its basic function is survival. The way her docs tell it, Miss Hughes’ memory resets, but she continues on calmly because she’s in this facility, and the facility doesn’t change. Calm is our number one goal. And since you’re so chatty all of a sudden, lesson one: you go up to Miss Hughes and what do you say?”
I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry this happened to you.
“I’m n-not sure what you mean.”
“Most people would say, ‘Hello, Thea. How are you, today?’”
“Okay.”