At the hospital they gave me every test imaginable: MRI, CT scan, blood tests to check for infection, an electroencephalogram for possible seizure activity, even a gynecological examination. A psychiatrist asked me lots of questions, some of which I could answer but most of which I couldn’t. I felt so afraid and lost as I was wheeled from one test room to another, put inside clanging machines in dark spaces. It was terrifying. And then the diagnosis, which I could have told them myself: retrograde amnesia, the inability to recall any events that occurred before the development of the amnesia. Memory wiped clean.
I went home with them as soon as I was released and stayed in the guest room the first few months. Gigi is so wise. I think she realized that I couldn’t be alone at the beginning, but as I gained confidence, it would be good to have autonomy and a little space.
“I was thinking that you might like to have a place of your own,” she said one morning at breakfast.
My body got cold suddenly, and it felt like my stomach was dropping through my feet. Were they kicking me out?
I suspect Gigi saw the look of panic on my face. “What I mean,” she hurried on, “is that we have a nice one-bedroom apartment above the garage. You could stay there if you like and have a little privacy and room to move around as you please. It even has a kitchen, if you want to cook.” She paused here and gave me a look. “I guess you might not remember if you like to cook or not. But anyway, you’re still welcome to have every single meal with us. What do you think? Would you like to take a look at it?”
“Sure,” I said a little tentatively. The thought of leaving the safe comfort of their house was a little daunting.
Together we walked up the stairs to the small apartment, which was sparsely furnished but adequate for my needs. There was a small galley kitchen and a wooden table with two straight-backed chairs that took up half of the living space. The other half had a two-seat sofa of dark green velour, next to a round end table with a mock kerosene lamp. There was one picture on the wall—a marshland scene, featuring a black-and-white-spotted dog with a bird in its mouth. I turned to Gigi. “It’s a really nice place.”
“Oh, poppycock.” She laughed. “This furniture? Can you tell Ed picked everything out? It was going to be his man den, but even he thought it was awful.” She laughed again. “Come see the bedroom.”
It was a large room, and totally empty. “What happened to the bedroom furniture?”
“Ed never got around to that. Why would he sleep here when he had our nice warm bed in the house?” She laughed again. “He made this space into a one-bedroom in case we might want to rent it out someday.”
“I see,” I said, wondering how I was going to get money to buy a bed. I desperately needed to get a real job, but that was impossible. Up until now, I’d done odd jobs around the neighborhood—dog-sitting, and that sort of thing.
“I can see your wheels turning,” Gigi said. “Now listen, you and I are going to go shopping and do this place up. We’ll make it pretty and comfy, and it will be your own little refuge. Like I said, you can spend all the time you like at the house. You know we love having you there. But I think you need to take this step if you’re going to move forward.” She gave me the Gigi smile that I loved, the one that made me feel like I was being wrapped in loving arms.
“I can’t let you spend all that money, Gigi. It’s not right. I need to get a job somehow.”
“One thing at a time. And don’t tell me how I can or cannot spend my money. Ed and I both earn pretty darn good money, and we have no other family to leave it to. So I say we should spend it now. And it will give me great pleasure, not to mention a lot of fun, to go on a nice little shopping spree.”
My eyes filled. How had I been so lucky to wind up with these incredible people?
We spent the next week shopping and setting up the apartment. I even hung a few of my photographs, the ones I took the day Ed and Gigi took me to Marsh Creek Lake for the day. The night before I was going to move in all my things, we sat together at dinner. Ed had just gotten back from a long-haul assignment, so we felt a little celebratory. Gigi poured a glass of wine for each of us and made a toast to me and my new digs.
“You guys have been amazing to me. I’ll never be able to thank you enough for all you’ve done.” I put my glass down and pressed my lips together. “But I can’t keep taking from you. I have to figure out a way to earn some real money.”
The problem was that I was a nonperson. With no social security number, no driver’s license or birth certificate, no kind of ID whatsoever, I couldn’t get any kind of job besides odd ones. And when I went to state agencies to ask what I could do, they just looked at me with blank expressions and said, “Nothing. There’s nothing you can do.” What kind of crap was that? How was I supposed to support myself, or drive a car, or open a bank account, or get a credit card? At first it was frustrating, but I’d passed frustrating a long time before. Now it just seemed like a plot against me.