I showed up for my appointment at four o’clock. They kept me in the waiting room a little longer than usual. My favorite nurse looked apprehensive when she came to escort me back to an examining room.
“Mr. Raymond, I’ll need you to strip down to your underwear and put on this gown,” she said. She made no eye contact.
“What’s with the ‘Mister Raymond,’ Jennifer? I thought we were on a first-name basis.”
“I’m sorry, Mister— I’m sorry, Jack,” she said. “I have a lot on my mind today.”
Before I could reply, she was out the door and pulling it shut behind her. I stripped to my boxers and socks. I had been through this routine enough times that I knew I needed protection against the icy tile floor. I was willing to give up my privacy and most of my dignity, but there was no reason to put up with cold feet.
The chipper intern, Dr. Kaladjian, entered the exam room a few moments later. Was I imagining it, or did he look as if he’d just received some bad news?
“Doctor K., what is it? Jennifer’s on edge, and you look like you’re getting ready to tell me I’m dying of cancer. But I know that can’t be right, because we’ve already taken care of that one. So what is it? I’m not new to this stuff. What is it that you don’t want to tell me?”
“It’s…. I….” He let out a slow breath. “Jack, I’m not sure I can in good conscience let you go through with the next treatment.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve had the briefing. I’m looking forward to this.”
He took off his glasses, folded them, and tucked them in the breast pocket of his lab coat. “There’s more to this treatment than they’ve told you in the briefing.”
I had read the treatment plan four times, and I recited what I could remember: “Rejuvenation therapy, phase VIIIa, entails introducing additional nanodiagnostic and nanosurgical probes that will examine the patient’s brain for damage due to a variety of organic causes, then make the appropriate repairs.”
“That’s what it says, Jack, and that’s what it does,” said Dr. Kaladjian. “But I don’t know if you’ve thought of everything that it could mean. We’re going to turn loose a fresh batch of nanobots that will scour your brain looking for anything that might be impeding performance. They’ll repair faulty neurons, build new connections where old ones can’t be fixed, and carry out a dozen other tasks that would take me all day to explain to you.
“But the net result is that memories start coming back. The literature says that the effect can be disorienting for some people, but the literature wasn’t written by a subject who’s undergone the treatment. Patients tell us that the memories come fast and furious. One man called it a windfall of memories, a blessing of more recollections than you’ll know what to do with.
“But you can’t stop them coming, Jack. See, they don’t just flow in, they come flooding in, they pour in over the floodgates, they leak in under the barriers and around the walls we put up a long time ago to contain them, because nanobots don’t know the difference, really, between memories that we’ve lost by accident and the ones that we’ve chosen to bury deep in recesses of the mind somewhere. And so they unleash them all, and suddenly, the patient has to deal not only with everything that he never wanted to forget, but also with everything he never wanted to remember.
“Don’t you see? It’s an enormous risk, Jack, because you can’t know what it is that you’re digging up until it’s too late. Are you sure you want this? Are you sure you won’t just quit while you’re ahead?”
I thought for a second, and I said, “Thanks for the warning, Doctor K. Let’s get this thing started.”
Note: The assignment was to write about a windfall. This piece is another take on the character whose point of view we heard in 50/50 Spring 2008 Exercise #3: An Eternal Flame.
© 2008 Edward F. Gumnick
oooooohhhh – that’s the first time a Millenial story has been spooky. Trying to explain a flood of memories, good and awful, without cease. First question I asked was – when does the flood stop? Very interesting twist to medical procedure risk – a flash flood of your life flashing before your eyes. Who gets overloaded? Who’s brain freaks out? Who changes personalities because of it? Do amnesiacs suddenly remember who they are? Which patients break under the strain, or can they really break at all since there are nanobots running around in there? Wouldn’t that prevent any checking out coping mechanism? So, you must relive it and you can’t use the regular coping skills to deal with it? What happens if your brain keeps trying to crack under the strain and the nanobots keep fixing it? Spooky.