Lost Past (2 page)

“I’m a resident?”

“Yes.”

“Meanwhile, should I be studying for my boards or something?” John asked.

“No,” Eric replied. “You’ll never pass your boards.”

John was shocked. He could swear Eric was not only friendly, but thought well of him. There was nothing in Eric’s face or manner that suggested an insult. “I think you’d better explain,” John said.

“You’re not studying for your boards, because you are curing patients. Patients come to you and in a week, a month, or sometimes as long as six months, they walk out well. Drug addicts stop using drugs. Schizophrenics go and function in the world. People with depression improve dramatically. I don’t understand what you are doing, and you refuse to explain it. But you let us watch you and we figure it out. Psychiatry will be rewritten because of you. I’ve published three papers on your work, but you refuse to let me put your name on them.”

“Why?” John asked, completely baffled. “Why wouldn’t I just tell you what I was doing? Wouldn’t you learn faster if I helped you?”

“I don’t have a clue,” said Eric. “Yes, we’ve wasted years. This is your fifth year of residency and you have a list of people wanting to be your patients that would last you another five years. The list is sprinkled with friends and relatives of psychiatrists from all over the country. We’ve been able to replicate most of what you do, but we’re not as
good at
it
as you are. You ignore our questions, but let us observe. I must admit I am glad to see you baffled for once, because you’ve been baffling me for years.” Eric shook his head slightly, almost as if he still was baffled, as he pulled out his cell phone. “I promised Arthur I would give you this message. He’s presenting at a physics conference in Australia and not readily reachable. He felt it was important for you to get this. I don’t know what it says.”

“Who’s Arthur?” John asked. Then he remembered Arthur was Mary Chen’s husband.

“You lived in his house for several years while you were in medical school. He’s really your best friend. Perhaps he’s your only friend.”

“I have only one friend?”

“You have lots of people who are sort of friends. They confide in you, but you tell them nothing about yourself. Almost everyone likes you.”

“That seems unlikely.”

“There are a few older doctors who don’t like the change you are bringing. It’s too late for that. Even if you had died in that explosion, the change is coming. Psychiatry will never be the same. If anyone knows and understands you, it’s Arthur.” Eric laughed slightly. “I am actually happy that you apparently don’t understand yourself. I certainly never understood you, and I am the chief of psychiatry in a major hospital.”
Eric handed John his phone after punching a few buttons.

The message came in a language John couldn’t name. At least he didn’t know the name in English. He could visualize words in an alphabet that he couldn’t identify. The speaker had a strong accent, but was understandable.

“Zhexp,” it started. John knew that Zhexp was a name. “They said you have amnesia. You will find you have acted in a way that is not natural to you. You will wonder why.  Just remember that you made the decision to act the way you did based on more complete
information than you have now.”

The message shocked him, partly because some of the content was not a surprise, affirming its veracity. He wasn’t acting naturally. He listened to it a second time, handed Eric back his phone, and lay in bed wondering what Arthur knew about him that no one else did, including himself.

CHAPTER 2

             
He was given instructions, signed various papers, and wondered how he would get home. They gave him the contents of his pockets, which consisted of a wallet, a Swiss army knife, keys, and a comb. His driver’s license gave him the same address Mary Chen gave him. Just as he got in the mandatory wheelchair, an attractive woman of about thirty came in.

             
“Hi. I’m Cara. Eric sent me.”

             
“Cara?” John asked.

             
“Caroline Rivers. I’m a fellow resident. I’m here to take you home.”

             
“Your place or mine?” He couldn’t resist asking. The more he looked at her, the more attractive she seemed. She had short, curly black hair and deep brown eyes. Her full lips hinted at a touch of African ancestry, but it was hard to tell. She moved with a feline grace that he found seductive. He didn’t want to be sitting in a wheelchair; he wanted her in his arms.

             
She pulled back in surprise. Her surprise turned to pleasure. “Whichever you want.”

             
“We haven’t…” He was not certain how to complete the sentence.

             
“Sadly, no. I would like to pretend we had, but you would figure out I was lying. You never looked at me like you did just now.”

             
He wondered what was going on. Did
he
avoid relationships because he had AIDS? He thought about it and realized the hospital would have tested him, because the gash in his shoulder probably bled on the child he was holding. They would have told him. “Do I have a girlfriend? Boyfriend?”

             
“No.”

             
“You’re sure?”

             
“If you did, you kept it well hidden. Besides, you’re always at the hospital. When you don’t see patients, you’re running addiction workshops or helping in the children’s ward.”

             
That’s too good to be true, he thought. I’m no saint. I don’t know anything about myself, but I know that.

             
Cara drove him to his apartment and showed him his car and his parking space. Someone must have returned it from the scene of the explosion. The car was an old Honda. His apartment had two rooms and was less than a mile from the hospital. There was a Pullman kitchen off a room with a small dinette table, a desk, a couch and three chairs: one comforta
ble, one at a small
desk, and one at the dinette table. The furniture was forgettable, obviously bought by someone who was indifferent to decor. The bedroom had a single bed. There was a stacked washer and dryer in a closet.

             
He pretended he was tired to get rid of Cara. After she left, he justified it by taking a nap.
Upon awakening, he
decided to look over his life.

             
The only books in a narrow bookshelf were medical textbooks. He had few possessions. His clothes easily fit into the small closet and dresser, with room for one extra set of sheets and towels. A small filing cabinet held financial information and school transcripts. He apparently took a number of courses online, and wondered why. He knew he would want to get to know the teacher and fellow students.

             
His cabinets contained a minimum number of dishes and food. There
were
three pill bottles, none prescription: vitamins, an over-the-counter allergy pill, and pain medication
which was almost expired and almost full.

             
His computer was obviously an important lead. Fortunately, it wasn’t password protected. His bookmarks gave him a number of other clues. He apparently listened to several news and talk radio stations in Spanish and French. It didn’t take him long to realize that his Spanish was Mexican and his French was Canadian. But he did not have any idea of what he did with his free time.
According to Cara, I don’t have any
, he thought.

             
The computer remembered his email password. He had two accounts, one for work and one for home. He meticulously went through all his new email. His work-related account had work-related emails. His private email had a few confirmations of online purchases and little else. His browsing history gave him no information. He occasionally used an online dictionary. He looked up things in Wikipedia. He didn’t visit porn sites or Facebook. He apparently clicked on news stories that appea
red on his homepage, but he didn’
t detect a pattern to it, except he read a lot of news, local, international, and business.

             
He had a small television set positioned so he could watch it while eating. It was tuned to CNN. Realizing he was hungry, he went to his refrigerator. He pulled out a chicken Caesar salad that thoughtfully had a container of dressing beside it. There was a receipt from a local grocery store dated that morning. He suspected Cara put it there. He ate it while listening to the news.

             
He went through his financial papers and discovered he was pretty well off, for someone who was still a medical resident. He had no debts and owned his apartment free and clear. He had a nice stock portfolio and a comfortable amount in CD’s and in his checking account. He wondered where the money came from.

             
He called his broker using the telephone number on the statement. Fortunately, he didn’t have to explain his condition since his broker heard the news. His broker told him that he largely managed his own account. His statements over the past several years told him that he did a good job. He was richer than when he entered medical school, in spite of paying tuition.

             
I have no life, he thought. No sex with an attractive willing colleague, no recreation, no friends, if you don’t count Arthur.

             
What did Arthur’s warning mean? It was frustrating not to know.

             
He took out pencil and paper and started writing in the language Arthur spoke in.
Vigintees
, he thought. That’s the name of the language. He didn’t know how to spell it in English. The sounds were different.

             
He knew the alphabet. There were thirty-four letters and each having a different sound. There were also four distinct sounds from pairs of letters, and one sound from three letters. His writing was awkward at first, which pleased him. He didn’t want this mysterious language to be a major part of his life.

             
The more he wrote, the less happy he became. It was all too quickly evident that this language was very basic to him. Perhaps it was his native language. He was quickly thinking in the language. When he thought about numbers in the language, he realized they were base six. To his surprise, he had no difficulty doing arithmetic in the language.

             
He tried writing and thinking in Spanish. He was fluent, but it clearly was not the same. French was worse. He switched to English and started writing about psychiatry. He was distressed to learn that he understood it better in
Vigintees
than in English. There were words for concepts in
Vigintees
that he didn’t know in English. He found himself doubting the words existed in English.

             
As he shredded the papers, Arthur’s warning rang in his ears. He had to talk to Arthur, because, apparently, he was the only one who knew anything about him. Feeling energetic, he searched the apartment. This time, he looked through drawers for something between his neatly folded clothing. There was nothing, not even a condom.

             
He went back to the computer and opened AOL. His other mail was on Thunderbird, so he had assumed that Outlook wasn’t used. A third email account was there, containing personal mail. He started looking through emails from Arthur. Almost all the emails were arrangements to meet. If he believed the emails, they routinely worked out together at a local gym. Sometimes these meetings were cancelled by one of them, but it seemed pretty innocuous. In nice weather, they apparently jogged together about twice a week. They sometimes went swimming in the pool at the gym, an
d a few times attended exercise
classes, everything from Pilates to self-defense classes.

             
He got excited when he found emails from Tom and Linda, but his excitement died when he realized they were Arthur’s grown children. Tom was in medical school and Linda in graduate school in computer science. Tom often sent pictures, but
Joh
n didn’t recognize any of the pe
ople.

             
Tom and Linda clearly confided in him. His replies were often thoughtful advice which later emails confirmed both of them usually followed. His emails to Linda were that of a parent, or at least a loving uncle. Tom was more of a friend, but he saw that neither he nor Tom considered the relationship as one of equals.

             
He sent emails off to Arthur, Tom, and Linda, explaining the situation and apologizing for not remembering them. He doubted they were ignorant about it. It occurred to him that Tom and Linda were not Asian. Mary Chen was Asian, so she was not their biological mother.

CHAPTER 3

             
John woke up with less pain than the previous morning. After cautiously bathing, shaving, and eating cereal for breakfast, he gave in and took a half dose of the medicine the hospital gave him for pain. That eliminated the possibility of driving, but allowed him to spend several hours on the computer. It gave him few new clues. He frequently visited pages that discussed cars. That seemed odd, in view of his old Honda and his wealth. If he was so interested in cars, why didn’t he buy a fancy one? He wanted a trouble-free, safe car. Was he different before?