351
On my way to work the next morning, I head into Starbucks, stalked by a lingering sense of unease. I have checked the Remember app on my iPhone three times, but I’m all up to date, so I can’t account for this feeling of having forgotten something important. Then, in the queue, I find tears suddenly spilling from my eyes. I can’t identify a cause. Did I remember to take my Amzipan? I swallow down a lozenge, risking a double dose. I tell myself that I must be feeling nervous about my job. Claire just emailed me to say that the rumours are true – there’s been a first round of redundancies.
The waiter brings over my latte. I am enchanted by his youth more than his obvious pulchritude. The blue of his eyes reminds me of Alek’s. A kid at a nearby table points at him and calls, ‘Robot! Robot!’ Half the cafe turns to give him horrified glances over their coffees and iPads.
‘I’m actually a Homo sapiens,’ he says in a defensive voice.
‘I’m so sorry,’ the mother says. ‘Do you receive tips directly?’
The waiter nods, though he doesn’t look appeased.
‘Kit, don’t be racist,’ she chides her son, who looks fascinated by the attention he’s attracting. I give the woman a sympathetic glance, that of a mother who knows the story, but she ignores me.
When the waiter comes over, I give him a flirty smile. It’s automatic, a smile that has not yet adjusted to the changes that 352age have wrought on me. I see his eyes widen, faintly appalled. The funhouse reflection of me in my coffee spoon slaps me back into reality. I watch him surreptitiously as he flirts with a younger, pretty girl, her ponytail swishing as she laughs. I pity her as much as I envy her. It has been a liberation to not be defined by my appearance, for people to listen to what I say rather than translating my body into their own instinctive language. With men, however, exchanges have become more complex. Sometimes they make me feel invisible, a painting which has been removed from a gallery and thrust into a basement to gather dust. Even the intonation of my voice has changed, become more forceful.
I decide not to leave a tip. Then, fearing I will seem petty, I leave $100.
I’m sitting in my office, looking at my pillbox. I have a feeling it was a present from Jaime. My memory of receiving it is a little like a Monet painting: when I come up close and attempt to hone in on the detail, all I can see are dots of colour. I’m not even entirely sure why I’m taking the Amzipan beyond the fact that Jaime reminds me to take it, and I’ve heard Finn pick up his echo and say, ‘Take your brain sweeties, Mummy!’
My iPad tells me that I have a 9.45 a.m.: Jessica Chelmsford. My least favourite client. She’s not even part of the Cybersenx debacle, just a patient I’ve been forced to treat as she’s a close family friend of Truman’s. I ought to go over her notes in the five minutes before she arrives. Instead, I type ‘Amzipan’ into Google. A sedative, it says. Manufactured by Cybersenx Pharmaceuticals.
I rattle through email searches, and eventually find a prescription. The Walton Clinic named in the header. I go to type 353their number into my phone, only to find it is already saved under ‘Samskaras’. A receptionist answers and says she’ll put me through to Dr Lerner, and at that precise moment, there’s a knock at the door.
‘I’ll call you back,’ I mutter in haste.
Jessica Chelmsford shakes out her hair; it’s been raining outside. I feel wistful for Alek, but I’m not due to see him for another few days. When she speaks, I note that her consonants have acquired a metallic edge. The story she relays is about a dinner party that took place at the weekend.
‘The hostess kept on at me with every course. Even at the end, she was trying to get me to take coffee and mints. She said that if I didn’t eat, I’d faint. Why play such a cruel game with me, in front of everyone – it was bullying, really. In the end, I ate the stupid mints just to shut her up – and the next thing I knew, I was on the floor, feeling sick.’
‘Patient fainted,’ I type. I glance at my pillbox again, trying to recall a start date. The box looks tarnished, as though I’ve been using it for several months.
‘And you woke up in a hospital, right? How did that feel?’
‘I knew they’d rewired me while I was sleeping, so I felt better. But I still felt like I had fused in places, as though parts of me were burnt out …’
Jessica Chelmsford’s syndrome had been diagnosed as mentis morbum metallum before she started seeing me. Her husband was the chief executive of Chelmsford-Parker Industries. After he confessed to an affair with his secretary, Jessica locked herself in her bedroom for several days and refused to eat. When she finally emerged, she was unnervingly calm. She said next to nothing to him, and quietly moved out. However, within a few days, she was visiting her doctor and asking to be 354rewired. She was convinced that her husband was her creator, and she wouldn’t agree to a divorce until he acknowledged this in writing. Her refusal to eat, for fear of causing her system to malfunction, has caused her to lose two stone in the last three weeks. Her hands are so skeletal that the bones appear like wiring beneath her skin. Truman has warned me that if I can’t help her, she will soon end up in hospital.
As she watches me tapping notes on to my iPad, a sly look comes over her face.
‘Has yours left you too?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Your husband.’ She nods at my hand, where my wedding ring has left a watermark on the skin. ‘You’re a robot. You’re designed to satisfy him. Why do they do it? I don’t understand.’
‘If I was such a thing, I can assure you that I wouldn’t be allowed to practise,’ I state, but she gives me a wry smile, as though we’re complicit in a secret pact.
The moment she has gone, before I can talk myself out of it, I call up the Walton Clinic again. I have a fifteen-minute conversation with Dr Lerner, in which I learn the truth.
Six months ago, Jaime and I made an appointment at his clinic and requested that I join the Samskaras programme. We had reached a point in our marriage where divorce seemed inevitable. I had told Dr Lerner that I felt as though my heart was stuck in a conceptual loop, forever unable to forgive Jaime for the wrongs he had done me. We could not bear to split up, however, because of the effect on Finn. An Imber report on the impact of our divorce indicated that Finn would have a 35% higher chance of ending up an adult divorcee himself, and would be 27% more likely to suffer from a mental illness. 355Redemption, my doctor explains, is a journey from experience back to innocence. I needed to regress to an earlier, happier state, and wipe myself free of negative samskaras.
The twice-daily dosage of Amzipan, Dr Lerner explains, has blocked specific memories from the past eight months. To remember something, he goes on, the brain synthesises new proteins – specifically, a protein called PKMzeta – to stabilise circuits of neural connections. The Amzipan is able to block the PKMzeta associated with the experiences I wished to forget, thus freeing me from them.
‘But why?’ I ask. ‘What the hell happened with me and my husband that I’d need to take this kind of dose?’
He clears his throat and I realise how stupid my question is.
‘If I tell you, it will defeat the entire point of taking the medication.’ He advises that I should book a follow-up appointment, but the meeting won’t take place for another eleven days, because he’s about to head to the Alps for a skiing holiday.
I put the iPhone down and stare at it. Then I pick it up again and I call Jaime.
‘Hey,’ he says, his voice soft. My reception is poor, his face flickering on my screen, but I think he looks pleased to see me.
‘Hi – how’s it going?’
He yawns. ‘Knackered – Hurdy Gurdy went down a storm though. I should be back for eight on Thursday.’ Pause. ‘Are you OK?’
I take a breath, bracing myself for what we’re about to discuss – but instead I find myself telling him about my filling falling out and how it might mean a root canal.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Well – not really. I mean, it’s just an absence. It feels a little strange.’ 356
‘There was that footie player who lost a tooth and it really affected his playing – he lost his sense of balance, it totally fucked him up.’ There is an awkward silence and we both laugh. ‘I realised halfway through telling you that anecdote that it probably wasn’t going to help.’
We briefly discuss his return tomorrow – he tells me that there’s no need for me to wait up if his flight gets delayed – and then there is a silence. ‘Dr Lerner …’ is forming on my tongue, when Jaime says that the band are throwing a tantrum and swiftly ends the call.
I take my pillbox and toss my evening dosage into the bin. Then I open my desk drawers, take out the Amzipan box, and throw that away too.