Anamnesis: A Novel (7 page)

“Anything else?”

“Ethan, based on your blog it looks like
you haven’t done much digging into your own past.” She was careful, her voice
neutral. “You talked a lot about losing time, what memories you have, and your
conspiracies about the government and pharma companies, but from what I can
tell you made no effort to find out who you were. Are, rather.”

“There isn’t much I
can
do. I don’t
know where I went or where I lived for four years. Any memories I have are
jumbled.”

“But you have options. Have you searched
your name on the internet?”

“Yes. Nothing.”

“Done a credit check on yourself? You
could find out your living history.”

“I don’t have my social security number,”
I snapped.

Olivia didn’t concede. “What about missing
persons? Did you call the police to see if anyone of your age and appearance
disappeared in the area?”

I hadn’t thought of that. But even if I
had, I’m not sure I would’ve done it. I quickly fell into the grasps of the
drug world after waking up. Calling the police for any reason didn’t seem like
a good idea when your life revolved around illegal activities. I wouldn’t do it
now for those very reasons.

Last night I was confident in my plan to
get answers. I still was. Mostly. But this was too personal, too fast. An ugly
part of me reared up. It felt criticized, attacked. Before I could stop myself,
I lashed back. “No, I didn’t think to do that, but even if I wanted to I
couldn’t. The kind of world I’m in, you don’t go to the cops willingly for
anything
.
Where do you come up with this stuff?”

“I watch a lot of crime shows on TV. Do
some digging, Ethan. If there’s any way we can find someone from your past,
they might know if you were part of a drug trial or who was behind it. We might
be able to find your family.”

It all sounded ideal. Reuniting with my
family, their arms outstretched. I had memories of my mother and father. Fuzzy
pictures of their faces. Birthday parties, Christmas. My first bike. Whatever
happened to me ate away at my memories, leaving me with only fragments. The ones
I still had were never enough to go on.

I’d spaced out. Olivia was looking at me
as though she asked something. When she realized I hadn’t been listening, she
sighed.

“We’ll talk to this guy tomorrow. We’ll
see what there is to see. Maybe if we find out what company performed the tests
on him, we can backtrack from there. If this is a drug, I doubt it’s legal. We
could blow the whistle on it.”

The hour Olivia said she’d be gone hadn’t
come to a close, but there wasn’t much else to say. Outside Starbucks, she
reminded me again to never come to her work. We exchanged an awkward handshake
and went separate ways.

I lit the cigarette my body desperately
needed and sucked it, and two more, down before I got back to my apartment.
Tomorrow I’d meet another person in my life who’d experienced what I had.

It comforted me, it scared me.

Most of all, it made me feel alive.

Olivia drove an
electric car that I imagined cost more than every item I’d ever owned in my
life. The interior was a sandy colored leather with matching carpet, impeccably
clean as though she’d just driven it off the lot. Maybe she had. I dubbed the
vehicle the Immaculate Car.

I sat in the passenger seat like a black scuff
mark on a perfectly waxed floor. Stiffly, and very aware how out of place I
was.

She had a stainless steel Thermos of what
smelled like floral tea that she sipped from as we drove. The car was the
quietest vehicle I’d ever been in. I don’t remember ever going to church, but
this is what it must’ve felt like. Ridged and unfamiliar.

When she picked me up in a parking garage
near the science center, it was more of the secretive pomp. She had on big
sunglasses despite the almost dark sky and urged me to be quick as I got in.
Yet there was plenty of time to scold me about not putting on a seatbelt.

“How long do you think it will take to
figure this whole thing out? I asked.

She glanced at me, her mouth pursed. “I
have no idea. Why?”

“Trying to keep me and what we’re doing a
secret might backfire eventually. Plus it bugs the hell out of me. What makes
you think you can treat me like dirt?”

Yeah, I treated myself like dirt. That
didn’t mean other people could do it.

“Oh.”

I waited for something more, but got
nothing. I wasn’t done yet. “You asked me why I hadn’t dug into my past. I have
a question for
you
; why are you keeping this so under wraps? Why not go
to the police about what’s happening to you?”

“Don’t you remember what you thought the
first second you met me? That I’d brought this on myself. That I’d been date
raped.”

“Okay, yes. I own up to that. And I’m
sorry. But I’m a terrible guy,” I said with a dose of sarcasm. “The police
would take you seriously.”

“Listen, Ethan, I’m going to tell you this
once and I never want you to bring it up again.” Olivia’s voice was more harsh
and aggressive than I’d ever heard. She was dead fucking serious. “Even if I
told the police and they started an investigation, it would ruin my career. My
life. All of this points to a certain group of people—rich, important
people—who hold a lot of power. Who I work for. The second police start
investigating them, word would get around. Olivia Holloway is trying to get a
nice settlement. Olivia Holloway asked for it. It doesn’t matter what is true
or not. My life would be over.”

Her jaw was tight. I noted her death grip
on the steering wheel. A hazy memory of my mother came up, one I hadn’t thought
of in a while. She was crying while she drove the family minivan, hands
clutching the steering wheel like Olivia was now. I’d done something wrong,
something terrible to upset her. I could never remember what it was or how old
I was when the incident occurred. The memory was nothing more than a flash of
emotions and the image of my mother.

I rubbed my temples and pushed the thought
aside so I could focus on the now. Olivia was almost at the edge, but I wasn’t
letting it go. If I was in this with her, I wanted to know exactly what her
story was.

“What do you plan on doing with what we
find out?” I asked. “Let’s say you find out who did it. What will you do? You can’t
turn them in based on what you told me. Are you going to blackmail them? Ask
them nicely to please stop slipping you drugs? Kill them?”

Her pause at my last suggestion was too
long. I laughed in disbelief. “Really? You’re going to kill them?”

“God, I don’t know yet, okay? I won’t kill
them. The first thing I want is to know who is doing this and
how.
That
would be a good start. Does that satisfy you?”

I finally leaned back in my seat, staring
out the window. Olivia was as lost as I was. Stuck between what she wanted and
what she was limited to. “One last thing. Think about committing to your other
cover story for me, the outreach one, so we can at least be seen together. I’m
tired of this cloak and dagger shit. Speaking of which, what’s our back story for
Brian Stromberg?”

She seemed relieved to change the topic.
“I made an appointment saying we wanted to get a good life insurance plan. The
appointment is just before they close so no one will be around.”

“How are we going to shift the
conversation from life insurance to his blackouts and my blog?”

“We’ll just do it, I guess. It might be
clunky and awkward. Be ready for that.”

“Fine.”

Silence once again. There was something
between us that put us at each other’s throats from the moment we met. I
suppose we, like all the other people in my life, were a bad combination. She
wanted to keep me a secret and I was sick of secrets. Maybe we were both
permanently pissed because someone had played God with our memories and bodies
and could only let it out on each other.

Whatever the reason, the rest of our trip
was spent wordless.

We crossed the bridge and entered the
remnants of rush hour traffic. It took ten minutes longer than it should’ve to
get to the square, industrial looking building the insurance company was in.
The parking lot was sparsely populated. Olivia’s high heels clacked loudly as
we walked to the building and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. When we
entered the empty reception area, a man quickly came from a room to the left.

“Are you the Smiths?”

Shit. Smiths? Could she be any more
unoriginal?

Olivia put on a gracious demeanor and
shook his hand. “Yes. I’m so sorry we’re late. I didn’t realize how bad traffic
would still be. I don’t leave Seattle much.”

Brian ran a hand through thick, wavy black
hair. He looked at me, sizing me up. “No problem. Come on back to my desk and
we’ll get started, okay?”

From there Olivia handled the rest of the
conversation. They could’ve been speaking Latin for all I cared. Legal jargon
and finances were two things I knew nothing about. Never bothered hitting up
that section of the library. We navigated through a sea of cubicles until we
reached his.

I stared out the window behind his desk.
The trees were inky black silhouettes against the dying blue sky. I couldn't
imagine what a miserable feeling it was to be in that place day in and day out,
watching life fly by outside while you were stuck pushing papers. The smell of
toner and cheap coffee was so thick it bled into your clothes. My life, as
tragic and frustrating as it was, was thrilling compared to this.

Brian’s desk had few personal knickknacks.
Photo of an average, blond haired blond woman with two children. Wife and kids.
Pinned to the corkboard to the right of the desk were work fliers and a popular
newspaper comic. Sometimes I wondered what I was missing out on with the 9-5
job. Turns out it was nothing.

"So we have a lot of really great
plans. But I’m thinking you might want the best one." He was hopeful.
Eager.

I regretted the preface we came there on.
I fidgeted in my seat and waited for Olivia to handle it. She cleared her
throat and folded her hands in her lap.

"Actually, we wanted to talk about
the blackouts you had some years ago."

Brian's face went slack. "What? Are
you police?"

“Police?” I choked. “Fuck no.”

Olivia stepped in. "No, nothing like
that. We believe the same thing happened to us. We believe you."

He peered around the office. There was one
remaining worker on the other side of the floor, her desk light a beacon in the
darkness. She was on her phone, unaware.

Brian’s voice turned into a whisper.
"No one pressed charges against me. Do you have any idea how hard it was
to get this job? I could lose it if someone found out I was even involved in
that."

"We have absolutely nothing to do
with the police," Olivia started, "We want your help. That’s
all."

The guy didn’t trust us. Olivia wasn’t
giving him the right incentive. I decided to step in. “You went by techna1 and
posted comments on my Memory Loss Experimentation blog, right? I’m Ethan.”

Brian’s mouth hung open as he looked at me
as though I’d just appeared. “You’re Ethan Knight?”

“The one and only.”

“You never responded to any of my
comments.”

Fuck. Digital karma was biting me in the
ass. I decided to go for the truth. “I’m sorry, man. I am. You gotta realize, I
was coming off a four year blackout. All I wanted to do was spew about what
happened to me and then I got involved in some pretty bad shit. The rest is
history. I’m here now.”

“So you are.” Brian rubbed his face and
sighed. “What do you want to know?”

“Tell us about your blackouts. You seemed
to know more than you let on in your comments on Ethan’s blog. Just start from
the beginning,” Olivia asked.

"I signed up for a human clinical
trial. I needed money. I remember taking the bus there and walking in, getting
settled in a room like a dorm. Three weeks later, I wake up in my bed. I have
no idea where the time went. My friend came to pick me up. Asked me what was
wrong. I told him I didn't remember any of the trial." His eyes bulged as
he told the story. He leaned forward. "You know what he said? 'I talked to
you.' He claimed we talked on the phone twice and I told him about the trials
and stuff they had me do. I don't remember any of it."

"What did he say you told him?"
I asked.

"The food was the same thing every
day; oatmeal for breakfast and lunch, turkey sandwich for dinner. The beds were
too hard, the other subjects regular people. They had us read kid books and do
puzzles. Watch movies and stuff." Brian sighed. "It kind of made
sense. After I woke up that day, they took me to a room. There was an exam,
like something I'd do in third grade. It asked for the plot of books and
movies. I didn't know the answers to any of it because I’d never seen any of
them. They thanked me, gave me a check, and my friend picked me up. If that
doesn’t seem weird enough, there’s more.

“After the exam, they brought me a bowl of
oatmeal and said I had to eat it. I thought, no problem. The second I smelled
it I puked everywhere. I still can't eat oatmeal or anything that smells like
oats."

“Do you remember any kind of aftertaste?”
I asked. “Something metallic maybe, after you woke up?”

Brian ran his tongue around his cheeks as
he nodded. “Tinny, like I licked a rusty barrel. Lasted for a few days.”

Olivia and I exchanged glances. This guy
was the real deal. No doubt about it.

She pulled a notebook from her purse. “Do
you remember the name of the company?”

“Of course. The only thing I don’t
remember is what happened while I was there,” Brian said. “It’s D.P. Pharmaceutical
Industries. Don’t remember what the D.P. stands for.”

The name meant nothing to me. I’d never
heard of D.P. Pharmaceutical Industries before. Brian’s blackout, so far,
didn’t seem too bad. Based on his answers, I didn’t doubt he was truthful. Yes,
he lost the time. But he wasn’t hurt. He was still a functioning adult. Same
with Olivia; they were both still normal. Was it the length of time they’d been
blacked out? Was the drug a different formula? I was still missing something.
Then I realized Brian had omitted something, too.

“Why did you think we were police?”

Brian tapped his fingers against his desk
nervously. I noticed his nails were chewed almost to the quick. “After I woke
up and talked to Tony and everything, I had a breakdown. Losing three weeks is
traumatic. When we go to sleep, we know we’re asleep. We chose it. This was
different. I was myself, but not myself. It’s hard to explain. I decided I
needed to get retribution.”

He didn’t need to explain. And he had no
fucking idea what a real breakdown was.

“I went back to D.P. and caused a scene.
Just pushed desks around, roughed up property. The executive assistant came
down and tried to calm me. Asked what I wanted. I didn’t know what I wanted. To
know what they’d done to me, I suppose.” Brian rubbed his face again. “They
showed me the contract I signed. Long story short, I’d agreed not to press any
charges against them for what occurred to me during the trial. He reminded me I
had no right to the information they’d gathered and that at no point during the
trial was I held against my will. I got the impression he was being clever, but
he was just presenting me with the facts. Turned the whole thing around and
pointed out they could press charges against me for trespassing and destruction
of private property. They sent me away and that was it. To be honest, I haven’t
thought about it in years.”

“It must be nice to have settled down.” I
couldn’t hide the animosity in my voice. Even I heard it.

Olivia looked down at her notebook and
appeared to write, but I saw from the corner of my eye she was just tracing the
lines of D.P. Pharmaceutical Industries again. “Do you remember what the drug
was called you were testing? Do you have a copy of the contract or
documentation?”

Thankful for the subject change, Brian
said, “There was some long official name for it. They called it Whiteout, like
slang for it. I remember because I always had a vision of a bottle of Wite-out
and them painting my brain with it. Weird, I know. As for documents, no. I
didn’t think to get a copy of anything. I should’ve. I wanted to put it behind
me. That’s all I have for you. I’d appreciate it if you left now. I want to go
home.”