“Shit,” I said, deflating.
I moved to start picking up the shards, but Sue stopped me. “Go sit down. I’ll get this. Take some breaths.”
I did as I was told.
Sue found a broom and a pan. “What about Chuck Close?” she suggested. “He was a portrait artist with face blindness. How did he do it?”
I’d been reading up on him. He was a face-blind artist who painted enormous photorealistic faces. But I shook my head. “He superimposed a grid over a photograph. But for this competition, it has to be a live model. No photos allowed. It’s in the rules.”
“What do other face-blind portrait artists do?”
“Shockingly, a search of ‘techniques of face-blind portrait artists’ does not turn up a huge number of results.”
“You’ve tried it?”
“Many times.”
“Well, then,” Sue said, frowning again at the painting. “We’ll just have to get creative.”
* * *
I ASKED DR. Nicole about it when we had our first meeting outside the hospital.
I’d been supposed to start twice-a-week sessions with her the day after I came home. But in my Pajanket stupor, I’d missed that first appointment. And then the next two. And I was seriously considering just never going at all when she started calling me—stalking me, really—until I finally gave in.
I Ubered to her office.
Which wasn’t an office at all. It was a 1920s bungalow in the Museum District.
It’s not a stretch to say that I fan-girled Dr. Nicole with the same intensity that I was now madly in love with Peanut’s new veterinarian. This whole brain surgery thing seemed to have really turned up the volume on my emotions.
In the hospital, she had seemed to glow with comfort and compassion. Now, here in the real world, as she opened the door in a belted maxi dress, dangly gold earrings, and open-toed flats … she was even better. Her short, naturally graying hair seemed to ring her head like a halo.
“Hello, Sadie,” she said, taking my hand and giving it her signature squeeze. “Come in.”
What was it about her? She was so damned together. Her voice. Her calm. So balanced and solid and like she had it all under control.
The opposite of me, basically.
Especially now.
“I’m sorry I missed all those appointments,” I said, now that I was finally here. “I didn’t want to leave my apartment.”
“I understand,” Dr. Nicole said.
I’m not going to lie. My life lately had me questioning everything. And Dr. Nicole Thomas-Ramparsad, Ph.D., just felt like a person who had all the answers.
“Nobody has all the answers,” she said when I told her that. “I’m just here to help you ask the right questions.”
Exactly what someone who had all the answers would say.
Her office was bright and breezy. It had a little bit of an Old Hollywood vibe to it, with plaster walls and a wrought-iron staircase rail. Big windows. A lazily spinning ceiling fan with basket-weave blades. Potted palms and rubber trees all around—and, outside the window, positively basking in the sunlight, a cheery forest of birds-of-paradise everywhere.
Dr. Nicole made us tea and brought me a slice of coconut bread—warm with melting butter. Did neuropsychologists bake bread for their patients? Was this a thing?
No matter. Dr. Nicole clearly made her own rules.
Plus, I was so starved for comfort, I didn’t care. My eyes filled with tears at my first bite.
“How is the facial perception?” she asked. “Any changes?”
I shook my head. No change at all.
“It may take some time,” she said. Then, “How are you coping?”
“I don’t think I’m going to win any coping trophies anytime soon,” I said.
I told her about feeling like I was on an alien planet. I told her about not feeling like myself. I told her about being so terrified of not recognizing people—and then running into Parker. I told her that I wanted to be the kind of person who could think of prosopagnosia as a superpower—but I just didn’t know how to get there.
“Well,” she said, “getting there is the fun part.”
From anyone else, that would’ve been insulting.
I told her about trying to paint Sue’s portrait, and what a total disaster it had been, and how the thought that I’d worked so hard for so long only to finally get my big break and then totally blow it was keeping me up at night.
“Why do you want to win the competition so badly?” Dr. Nicole asked.