“Wrong. Three huge mistakes in that sentence. One: using her first name implies you know her, but she don’t know you, so that upsets her. You gotta call all residents by their last names. It’s polite and respectful, too.”
I nodded.
“Two: never ask how she’s doing. She don’t know. She has no idea how she should be feeling in the few minutes since she ‘came awake’ again, so don’t ask.”
Came awake again. I still couldn’t grasp having only a few minutes’ worth of consciousness.
“Three,” Alonzo said, “never use words like today or this afternoon or good evening or Merry Christmas. She don’t know one day from the next, one minute from another. No sense of time. When she asks, ‘How long has it been?’ she means since her accident.”
“Two years,” I murmured.
“Yep,” Alonzo said. “And reassure her that the doctors are working on her case. No more than that. If she talks to you, listen. If you get in trouble, redirect her to whatever she’s doing. Like her art. She can hold a conversation for longer than a few minutes if she’s occupied. When her attention is pulled—bam. Reset. You got all that?”
I nodded, but my expression must’ve given me away.
Alonzo leaned back in his chair. “Spit it out.”
“How can she live like this?”
“Quite happily. Calmly. And it could be worse. A fellow in England’s only got forty-five seconds’ worth of memory. Miss Hughes can go as long as seven minutes before reset, but that’s not usual.”
“How does that happen?”
He tapped a finger to his skull behind his ear. “A truck plowing straight into your gray matter will do the trick.” He held up his hands at my sharp glance. “I don’t mean to sound cold, but that’s just what happened. Our job isn’t to ponder it or feel sorry for Miss Hughes. We don’t waste time talking ourselves into thinking she’s fine just because she looks high functioning. She’s got permanent brain damage, but she’s not suffering. She don’t know what she don’t know. Our job is to take care of her and keep her calm. Okay?”
A thousand questions crowded in my mouth and I couldn’t get out a single one. I recalled our conversation yesterday. The best I’d had in years and then… gone. Erased. And Thea—Miss Hughes—living only a few minutes at a time. For two years now.
Alonzo stared me down. “I know it’s hard to take, son, but that’s the reality.” He tapped the file folder. “Come on. We got twenty-five more residents to talk about.”
We went back to work, going through case files, but I could hardly concentrate with Thea sitting behind me. The desire to talk to her was like a hunger in my gut. I didn’t talk to anyone and now I wanted to sit down across from her and demand to know if she was suffering. Was she happy?
Don’t be stupid. It’s none of your business. Do your job.
After the case files, Alonzo went out for a smoke. Mr. Webb and his nurse left, so I cleaned up his jigsaw puzzle. My eyes kept stealing glances at Thea.
She smiled as she worked. Maybe Alonzo was right. Maybe Thea’s amnesia kept her from the horrifying reality of her situation. She didn’t know what she didn’t know.
But what if she did?
Thea looked up and gave me a friendly, polite smile. Then her entire face froze. I froze too, watched her reset. Her clear blue eyes clouded with confusion and she leaned toward me from her seat.
“How long has it been?”
I glanced around for Rita but the only other person in the rec room was the duty nurse watching a soap opera on a small TV propped on her desk.
I took a step toward her.
“How long—?”
“Two years, M-M-Miss Hughes.”
Fuck, there it is.
Thea didn’t seem to notice the stutter. She nodded, her hunched shoulders easing back down. “I had an accident,” she said. “You’re the first person I’ve seen since I came back.”
I took another step toward her. Inhale, exhale. “Came back?”
“I’ve been away for two years. But I’m back now and the doctors are working on my case.” She looked at my nametag. “Jim.”