The Reflection (7 page)

Over the next few days, the periods of consciousness became longer, my powers of reasoning sharper. A dull ache in my left temple was with me almost permanently. I’d had a head injury, that much was obvious. I assumed that they’d been keeping me in an induced coma, and were now letting me come out of it gradually, with the sedation increasingly lighter each day. In my bed, in this blank room, I felt almost fetal.

A week or so passed. By now, I was usually awake when the nurse came to wash and administer to me. She’d also started bringing some sort of broth, which she said I was to eat, although I rarely felt hungry. I was thin, far thinner than I’d been before my hospitalization. Sometimes I’d catch sight of my spindly legs or arms and feel a surprise and almost a disgust that they were mine. My powers of speech were returning; I could answer the nurse’s simple questions, formulate my own. But speaking had become something of an ordeal. Every time I started to say something, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was there beside me, throwing his voice, making it appear to come out of my own mouth, but in a way that was not quite synchronized. I’d hesitate after the first word or two, disorientated by this effect, and it was some time before I could rid myself of the illusion.

A doctor came with the nurse one morning. With his
pince-nez and gray, pointed beard, he was the caricature of the aging physician—just as the nurse, too, seemed to be a caricature, with her brisk manner, matronly bust, hair severely pinned back. She undid my bandages and the doctor inspected my head, without addressing a word to me. He murmured something to the nurse, and then abruptly disappeared. The nurse carried on washing me as usual. At first I’d thought the doctor had simply gone to the corridor to grab something, as the examination had been so extremely brief. But once the nurse had finished washing me, she too left, and I was alone once more.

How long had I been here? I guessed at least a couple of weeks, but it might just as well have been a couple of months. Whenever I’d asked the nurse anything beyond the immediately practical, she’d quickly shut me up with one or another of her trite phrases: “There’ll be plenty of time for that later” or “You must rest up and not tire yourself out with all these questions.” After a few days of this I’d decided to be persistent about one thing at least. I wanted to see my face. And now every time the nurse came, I asked for a mirror. At first she smiled and shook her head. Later, she became annoyed, and in the end she simply ignored the request. But then, just when I’d given up hope, she appeared one morning and produced a compact mirror.

A queasy dread invaded me as the nurse unwound the bandage from the left side of my face. And yet with that first glance in the small mirror, the initial reaction was relief. It didn’t seem as bad as I’d feared. My left temple had been shaved and there was a line of staples across the side of my head. It looked gruesome, but once the staples were removed and my hair had grown back, there probably wouldn’t be anything to see. Worse, though, was the scar that split my cheek. It hadn’t healed well—the damaged skin hadn’t
properly knitted together. Why had they stapled my head, but not stitched up my cheek? The scar was surrounded by big red blotches. Perhaps the wound had become too infected to stitch. In time, the blotches would fade, the scar too. In a few months, my face probably wouldn’t look too awful. It wouldn’t be the same, either. It didn’t have the same balance as before. When I tried out various expressions, they came out different. Staring into the mirror, all I could feel was puzzlement. Not because my face now looked like somebody else’s, but because I felt strangely myself.

Memories came back slowly, in haphazard fashion, as one might blindly pull balls from a bag. The feelings returned first. One morning I awoke overwhelmed with sadness. Only hours later did Abby’s death come back to me. Long after I’d been struck by a horrified bewilderment, the image of the comatose man in my apartment flashed into my mind. When I finally recalled the push onto the subway tracks, my terror was mixed with a sense of liberation that I was at a loss to explain to myself.

My world had shrunk to this bare room. Strange to think that outside the door, the life of the hospital went on. And that beyond that, there was a city with its millions of people, whose fates were utterly unconnected to mine. A small window that looked onto a courtyard was my sole evidence of this outside world. Sometimes, even it felt as if it were not an opening but a screen onto which images were being projected. Sitting up I could see French windows opposite, leading onto a tiny balcony with an equally tiny washing line. Every morning, a woman in a housecoat would fling the windows open. She had a trim figure and dark hair in a bob; I imagined her to be in her early thirties, but actually she was too far away for me to tell. There’d be days on which she’d hang out washing. Other days, she’d simply stand on the balcony only large
enough for one person, and stare out, smoking a cigarette. I fancied I could perceive a certain reflective melancholy in her as she smoked, staring out onto the courtyard below. From those ten minutes she spent on the balcony each morning, I tried to construct a life. Judging from the clothes on the washing line, I supposed that she had a husband and a small boy, although I never saw them either. I imagined her in the morning, busily preparing her husband’s breakfast, and getting her son ready for school. And then when she’d finally sent them both out the door, that’s when she’d come on the balcony. It would be her time. A moment of respite before the day properly got going, before washing the breakfast things, the housework, perhaps some menial job to go to. Her few minutes of withdrawal, of blanking out the drudgery of life.

The drip was removed. The periods during which I could sit up without inducing nausea or dizziness became longer. One day I decided to try getting up from my bed. On my feet, I felt fragile, lightheaded, but nothing more. I took a few experimental steps, and found myself by the door. Without thinking I tried the handle—locked. I returned to my bed, exhausted by my little expedition.

The doctor came again, unannounced. This time he stayed longer. He looked at my head, listened to my heart with his stethoscope, asked me to breathe in and out, tapped me here and there to test my reactions. It felt perfunctory, as if he were simply putting on a performance for me. Once he’d finished, he stood there in silence for a minute or so, leaving me perplexed. Finally, he said: “When you sit up, do you feel dizzy?”

“Less and less so.”

“Could you sit up now? Good. I’m going to ask you a few questions. First, what is your name?”

“Surely you have all my details already.”

“Just answer the question, please. Your name.”

“David Frederick Manne.”

“Where do you live?”

“353 East Fifty-Sixth Street.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-three.”

“What is your profession?”

“I’m a doctor of medicine, in private practice.”

“What year is it?”

“1949.”

“What month?”

“September I think. No, probably October. To be honest, I’m not sure how long I’ve been here.”

“All right. Thank you.”

Again he stood there in silence for a good moment, as if wondering what to do next. He rummaged about in his pocket. Eventually he drew out a small photograph and showed it to me. “Do you know who this is?”

A young woman, late twenties perhaps. Nothing remarkable about her face, and I certainly didn’t recognize her. Nonetheless there was something odd about the photograph. It was her hairstyle, old-fashioned for a girl her age. It occurred to me that the photograph itself must be fairly old. I shook my head.

“I don’t know who it is.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

The doctor started to leave. “Keep the photograph. Perhaps you’ll remember something about it later on.”

“Wait a minute. You haven’t told me anything. What’s the photograph got to do with me? I want to know how long I’m going to be in here. I want to know how serious my injuries are. I’m a doctor too, you know. You can tell me.”

He had his hand on the door handle; he turned briefly
toward me. “Don’t worry. There will be plenty of time for that later.”

Before I had time to protest any further, he was gone. I felt a quick of stab of anger at the peremptory way he’d treated me. What an absurd figure, with his pointed beard, his pocket watch, his superannuated accent, his ponderous manner! But the anger quickly died, leaving behind a residue of disquiet. I struggled to my feet, hobbled to the door. Locked again.

Back on my bed, I closed my eyes and waited for my heartbeat to slow to its normal rhythm. This whole charade with the doctor flagged up a possibility that hadn’t occurred to me. Perhaps the hospital
hadn’t
known who I was. Perhaps the doctor really had been fishing for answers. If so, I’d set him straight, at least. Now they knew my identity, wheels would surely be set in motion. I opened my eyes again, almost surprised to see the ceiling, the walls, the bedside table. There was something notional about this attenuated existence in a hospital room—a reality my brain didn’t necessarily want to believe in. When the nurse came back, I’d have it out with her. I’d ask about the locked door. I’d ask to see another doctor. I’d need to speak to the police as well, of course. It was quite outrageous. I hadn’t even been told which hospital I was in.

No one came. They seemed so random, the nurse’s visits, I could never tell when they would be, and they always felt like an unexpected interruption. Outside, the light was fading. It would be night soon, and I would sleep, a dreamless sleep as always. Then in the morning, I’d see the woman on the balcony. Unlike the nurse and doctor, she was entirely predictable, always there at the right moment. How did I know that? I had no clock in the room. It might just as well be the nurse’s appearances that were regular, and those of the woman on the balcony were random.

When I did wake up, sometime in what I presumed to be
morning, I found myself with a drip in my arm again. I pulled it out and pressed my hand to where the needle had been, to staunch any bleeding, but there didn’t seem to be any. I managed to sit myself up and stared through the tiny window for what felt like hours, but the woman didn’t appear on the balcony. I knew she wouldn’t; I’d missed her. I’d slept right through her.

The doctor visited several times over the following days. There were more medical examinations, which became increasingly cursory. Afterward, he’d take out a notebook and ask me questions. Where I was born, where I was educated, where my office was. At some seemingly arbitrary moment, he’d put the notebook away and leave. At first, I’d answered quite passively. The whole setup—the doctor-caricature, the emptiness of the room and its unremitting whiteness—pushed me toward apathy, acquiescence. But on the fourth or fifth visit, I lost my temper. “Enough of the questions,” I said, “I want answers. I want to know where I am, why my door is always locked. I want to know what my prognosis is. I need to see the police.” Suddenly I found myself in a rage, almost screaming. Out of nowhere, a couple of male orderlies appeared. I hadn’t laid a finger on the doctor, had done nothing beyond raising my voice, but they pinned me down on my bed. I felt a prick on my arm, then nothing.

The visits continued. We carried on as if the incident
hadn’t happened. In truth, I was embarrassed by it, which in turn made me more compliant. I remembered the infantile outbursts of patients—born of confinement and impotence—from my time as an intern. Almost every long-term patient had them at one point or another. And then afterward, they’d be embarrassed, docile, just as I had been. I remembered, too, the patients’ constant quest for more information, and the doctors’ constant reluctance to part with any, lest it be misconstrued, used against them. I’d spent so many hundreds of hours in hospitals, but never before as a patient. It was unsettling to be on the other side of the equation.

The interrogations, too, continued. Perplexed, at a loss as to how to respond, I figured I’d simply bide my time, until the shape of my circumstances became clearer. By now, we’d exhausted the simple facts of my life. We’d moved on to the minutiae. What subjects I’d enjoyed at school, who my friends were, where I went on vacation, what I did with my spare time. My professional life; my sexual life. The experience of being relentlessly questioned was mesmerizing. It was boring, and yet unsettling. The doctor was coming every day now, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon. Each time he stayed longer. We were down to novels I liked, cars I’d driven, the layout of my apartment. Occasionally the doctor would press me for more detail on a particular subject, for no apparent reason: I’d start to approximate, to fabricate. Then after he’d gone, the bits and pieces of our conversation would filter back through my mind, blend together, distort, like fragments of a dream that lingered well into the waking hours.

Could this banal accumulation of facts really be a life, my life? If so, it seemed a poor thing, lacking all imagination. The interrogations had left me feeling alienated from my past, as though it were in fact someone else’s. One of my patients’,
perhaps. Indeed, it had occurred to me that my interrogator was much more of a psychiatrist than a hospital doctor. And why ever not? I looked at myself in the compact mirror that the nurse had left me. I’d changed, certainly. From a reasonably attractive man to an odd-looking one. From an active professional, to an invalid, confined to bed. Each change had closed doors to myriad futures that would now never be. I picked up the photograph the doctor had left me, of the young woman. I’d worked it out now, of course. It had been in the wallet that I’d taken from the man in my apartment, and stuffed in my pocket. They’d found it on me.

Biographical detail was the glinting, hard surface, reflecting meaning away from the subject. It said nothing of a life, the inner life, the real life. I remembered sifting through the jumble of papers my parents had left behind after they’d died—my aunt and uncle had ceremoniously handed me the box on my eighteenth birthday. Birth certificates; old passports; train tickets; receipts for important purchases; worthless bonds; ancient photos of people I couldn’t identify; letters from relatives I didn’t know, replete with references to events of great significance at the time, now sunk into obscurity. I’d been too young to remember my parents when they were alive, and they’d rarely been alluded to as I was growing up. An outline of their lives might be surmised from this detritus, but I would never have a feeling for who they’d been.