Ed will remember waking up for the first time nearly a month after the aneurysm felled him. Doctors will tell him he’s been lucid several times before, but Ed will remember only the one time. Pete is in the room, his old pal Pete.
“Gave us a scare, you son of a bitch.”
Ed laughs, the left side of his face heavy and numb. “Would you believe me if I told you I have no idea why I’m here?”
Pete grimaces. There is no other word for it. “Didn’t catch that, Ed. Maybe try talking a little slower?”
Ed hasn’t yet recovered words. His mouth and tongue are waiting to be taught their functions, impatient children. He knows the words. He says them in his head. He just can’t transfer them to his body.
He tries to sit up taller in his hospital bed and finds his whole left side as heavy and numb as his face. He looks at Pete, and Pete looks away.
“What’s wrong, pal?”
“Maybe you should rest,” Pete replies.
Ed’s head hurts, and he doesn’t know why Pete won’t answer him. He doesn’t know why Pete looks so damn sad, and as he thinks it, the word sad balloons in his mind into a great white swatch of fabric, a gauzy blanket coating the room. It quiets the beeping monitor and the heaviness in his legs, the pain in his head, the face of his friend. Quiet, rippling white.
His next memory will come nearly a month later.
— —
“When is your family visiting next, Edmund?”
“Tue. Sss. Day. Come.”
He hears the therapists tell him about his progress. He hears language rehabilitation. He sees words in his brain, though they don’t look like the words on the pages of books. His therapists tell him these are words—these jumbled nonsensical characters—but he knows the therapists are lying. Words are objects, like the objects in the bag he carries: pencil, paper, toilet paper, spoon (for hunger), cup (for thirst), a photo of Benjamin, a photo of Laura. Words are textured and colored, bright and vivid. They walk across his thoughts. Sometimes they speak. The word Laura pausing in her stroll to say, Hello there, handsome. Where have you been? The word Edmund (self) saying, Right here, my love. He remembers his wife and son. He remembers his friends Pete and Bonnie. The word-object Penelope comes often, and he tries to move it to his mouth, out into the room where he can make it real, but his therapists just hand him pens of varying colors, more and more pens.
The left side of his body is heavy, always, and he can’t walk, though he forgets every morning, swinging himself out of his bed onto legs that don’t stand. He sees and feels anger at his physical therapists. He needs no object for the word no.
Benjamin comes sometimes, and Laura, and a new word, Tim, who doesn’t stay.
“Tim is my husband,” Laura says. “You and I aren’t married anymore, Edmund. I am married to Tim.”
“No.”
With his good hand, he reaches for her, and when he feels her soft fingers in his, the word Tim disappears again.