“I don’t really want to be here,” I say.

I don’t mean to offend her by saying that, and her smile indicates she understands.

“That’s as good a place to start as any, Doug,” Pamela says. “If you feel that way, then why are you here?”

“My girlfriend … my fiancée … Jessie Allen … suggested it. She thinks it might help.”

“But you don’t?”

I shake my head. “Not really.”

“Why do you feel that way?”

“How much do you know about me?” I ask, hoping that I don’t have to tell the story from scratch. I’m tired of telling my story, and thinking about my story, and worrying about my story, and living my story.

“Maybe a lot, maybe very little,” she says. “I’ve seen your story in the media, of course. It was rather impossible to avoid; you’re something of a celebrity. So based on that, I would say you’re a state police officer who is considered a hero for preventing a huge terrorist attack on many buildings in New York City. I know that you were shot, and that you’ve had some memory issues.”

“Memory issues,” I repeat. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“But all of that is from media reports. I usually find that I don’t really know anything about a person until I hear from them directly.”

“What you heard is all true, especially the part about me being ‘considered’ a hero,” I say, emphasizing “considered.”

“That’s not how you see it?” she asks.

“A lot of people did a lot of good things. I was one of them. I was doing my job.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it from your perspective?”

So that’s what I do; I tell her about it. I don’t talk much about the nuts and bolts of what happened on the police side of things, since the media reported it pretty accurately. I helped stop a terrorist attack, and I killed an organized crime figure named Nicholas Bennett in the process.

I got much more praise than I deserved, but I’ve stopped saying that publicly, since people just frown and say I’m being too modest.

But I do tell her about my being shot and falling off that balcony and sustaining the head injury that caused me to lose ten years of my memory. And I tell her that I’ve learned that losing ten years of my memory is the same as losing ten years of my life.

Of course, I remember nothing whatsoever about the shooting itself; that’s one of the periods I have been completely unable to recall. But I’ve been taken through how it happened, and even visited the scene.

“I had, or I should say I have, what they call ‘retrograde amnesia.’ Are you familiar with it?”

Pamela nods. “I am, Doug. Although it can take a number of forms. Are you still experiencing symptoms?”

I nod. “They’re getting better, but at the same time they’re getting worse.”

“What do you mean?”

“I got quite a bit of my memory back; it’s hard to say how much, since I don’t know what I don’t know … but probably a third of it. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. I remember some older things but not some that are more recent. Some important stuff and some meaningless events. And I’m very slowly remembering more all the time, so that’s good.”

“You said it’s also getting worse.”

“Yeah. I’m also experiencing more memory loss from that period. Some of the things I’ve remembered, I’m losing them again. It’s a weird feeling; I remember remembering something, but not when it actually happened. Am I making sense?”

“You are,” she says, but I’m not sure I believe her.

“Are you forgetting current things? Or just things that happened before you were shot?”

“Nothing current,” I say. “I remember everything that has happened since then. I’m able to form new memories.”

“Good. So what is your goal in coming to see me?” she asks.

“Jessie thinks that all of this is affecting me emotionally, that it’s a strain. She thinks you can help with that … getting me to deal with it better.”

Pamela smiles. “So now I know what Jessie thinks. What do you think?”

“I think it’s probably a waste of time,” I say. “Sorry about that.”

She smiles. “No problem; I appreciate the honesty. Have you ever been in therapy before?”

“I don’t think so.” Now it’s my turn to force a smile. “But I can’t be sure, you know?”

“Do you think you’re under an emotional strain?” she asks.

I shrug. “I guess so; it’s certainly on my mind all the time. But the problem will exist, no matter how long we talk about it. So if I know that’s the bottom line, I just have to deal with it and accept it. No one can do that for me but me. Not you, not Jessie, nobody.”

“So that’s what you think you’ll get out of coming here. Now tell me what you would hope to get out of it in a perfect world.”

“I know you can’t help me get my memories back. I just don’t want to be a basket case when I go back on the job.”

“You haven’t been working?”

“No. I took some time off. With all the publicity and stuff, and with all I went through, it seemed like a good idea. And believe it or not, I actually earned much more money. Groups and companies paid me to come talk to them, which is about as ridiculous as it gets.”

She smiles. “Nice work if you can get it.”

I return the smile. “And I got to throw out the first pitch at a Mets game, which was very cool.”

“What have you been doing to help yourself?” she asks.

“I’ve been going to an amnesia recovery group,” I say. “Another one of Jessie’s ideas; she’s pretty much desperate to help me. I’m going there later; a lot of talking going on today.”

“How is the group working out?”

I shrug. “It’s an okay way to waste time. Nobody seems to be recovering in the recovery group. We just talk about not recovering, and wanting to recover.”

She nods as if she knows what I mean; for all I know she runs a group just like it. Then, “So you’ve told me you don’t want to be a basket case when you get back to work. What other goals do you have? Personal ones.”

I think for a few moments, trying to decide if I should go where I’m about to go. “I guess I’d like to find out who I am” is what I finally say.

“What do you mean?”

“People, like Jessie and my partner, Nate, tell me that I’ve changed a lot. For example, I used to be much more of a risk taker, especially on the job. I was hard to control; I would sometimes act too quickly, before I thought things through. ‘Impulsive in the extreme’ is the way Jessie describes it, and Nate nods when she says it.”

“And now your actions and behavior have changed?”

I nod. “Yes, or so I’m told. But I don’t care so much about that. What I care about is that I don’t remember being like that. And I’m not talking about events; it’s like I have no internal connection to the person they are describing. Yet the person they are describing is me.”

“That must be disconcerting,” she says.

“You got that right. So I don’t know whether I’ve changed because I’ve changed, or because of my injury.”

“People can undergo change as the result of a number of factors, certainly including a catastrophic physical or emotional event,” she says. “It’s quite natural and normal for that to happen. And you and the people around you would notice some of the changes, and not others.”

“Right now I feel like I’m standing outside my body, watching my behavior. That is also pretty damn disconcerting. So, bottom line, there’s one thing I want to know when it comes to me.”

“And that is?”

“What’s real and what isn’t?”