April - The Flood 15 страница

He kept repeating to me, "Don't worry. I'm sure it's nothing. We will find out to be sure, but really. Alzheimer's? No, I'm not that old. I'm just clumsy. I should write more things down."

I nodded, swallowing every single doubt I had. I trusted him with all I had, because there was no other option. By the time I pulled into our driveway, I felt like nothing and exhaustion filled my bones. I called Mikey as soon as I could, letting him know that I would need the day off tomorrow; I would just start full time again on Wednesday like I was supposed to, without the training jargon that I didn't need anyway. He seemed worried when I said I needed to take Gerard to the doctors, but he didn't push. I had a feeling that he also knew what was going on, that Vivian and he had just been talking. I hung up the phone and tried to forget about it, since I needed to for my own survival. I got into bed with Gerard and I set an early alarm for us. We didn't speak as we went to sleep, we just held one another. I traced my hands up and down his body that I knew so well, had remembered so intimately, and he did the same for me. We took off our clothing, and lay together naked, but we did not have sex. I touched him, and he touched me, like a mirror. We had the same body, we felt the same sensations, and I wondered if I pressed my forehead against his, if we could share the same thoughts. Could I extend myself, could I give myself over to him enough that he would remember again and nothing would be lost? Could I feel his pain, if it was there? Could I take what he needed to forget in order to survive?

With a sigh, I merely hugged him, and he hugged me back. I wanted to forget about everything that had just happened, and I vaguely wondered as I drifted off if he would be able to afford that luxury and how much it would cost us in the end.

He was awake before me when I got up. He was looking out the window, sitting on his stool, fully dressed. For a moment, I forgot where I was and it was like bliss. I thought we were back in Paris, and he was going to tell me that his behaviors have conformed to his old age and he has started to rise at dawn. Instead, when he saw that I was awake, he came to kiss me. Again and again, we pressed our lips together and then I got dressed to leave.

The silence between us acted as a distance from the actual event. Anytime we didn't talk, it meant we were ignoring what had happened the night before. It made it all feel unreal, and I liked the dreamy quality that the early morning had. It was rainy and gray and I was glad that I didn't have to go to work and drive past the morning traffic. The clinic we were going to was on the other side of town, against the morning rush-hour traffic, and we watched the backwards line of cars as we drove past. Our silence on the ride over there was a nice break, since I knew, from going to the clinic myself, that when we arrived we were going to listen to baby screams and people groaning for the next few hours. As I drove, I realized how simply and easily our roles had switched. I was the one driving and taking him places, not the other way around. I didn't even really remember how the driving switch had happened; it seemed like only yesterday I was learning in his huge white van, and then we were blowing one another in the back. Gerard never owned a car in Paris, had given Vivian instructions to sell the white van while he was gone, and so from lack of necessity his license expired. He had not done it for so long, he claimed to not remember how. When we came back to Jersey, he never started again. It had gone from him teaching me to drive, to me watching his ability for it slip through his fingers.

No, I told myself, no. It was just a slip of paper that had expired that fell through his fingers, not his own capability; words from other people had crafted the rest. It had been Vivian saying he couldn't drive that put it in our minds that he couldn't. It became its own issue because people made it one. You are now at the place of forgetting, I told myself as I parked. You are now at the place of remembering, too, I also added and felt much better. I needed to remember Lydia's words and the atmosphere at the alternative birthing center as we walked into this office. I needed to remember our own story and how I wanted to tell it; we were already made, and already named because of that. Nothing else could change that about us.

"Are you okay?" he asked me when we parked. We had been sitting there for some time, calming down. His question, and the breaking of silence, hit me hard. He asked that only in extreme situations - like sex for the first time. 'Are you okay?' coming from Gerard's mouth meant a crossing of barriers, a sliding over into a place that was unfamiliar, and permission to do that. I considered his question as I looked at the clinic, realizing we weren't far off from one of those thresholds.

I squeezed his hand. I couldn't even imagine why he was asking me this; he was the one in peril, about to undergo this and possibly realize that his thoughts were right about himself. I turned the question back on him. "Are you okay?"

He nodded. "They are either right or wrong, and so am I. I've been thinking about it too long to be surprised anymore. Besides," he began to unbuckle his belt and get out of the car. "If I don't like the answer, and it really is true that I am... the way they say I am, then it won't matter for me for long. I'll forget it. It won't really matter to me. It's you I'm worried about. You and Jasmine. And everyone else."

I considered this, but then shut down my thoughts. There was no point in even thinking about the worst case scenario, for upsetting myself for no reason. He was trying to be light-hearted with his own concern, saying it didn't matter if he forgot it himself. But we were both in pain. We needed to get it over with. "Well," I said, unbuckling my own seatbelt. "Let's go find out."

The clinic was crowded, but there were less screaming babies than the last time. I was more immune and less critical to the sound of it now that I knew I was having my own. That we were having our own, I corrected myself. Once we had settled down in a corner spot, I looked at Gerard and noticed that he was watching the children at their parents' feet like I was. He smiled at a baby that went by, and she smiled back at him, waving her arms in the air and revealing two budding teeth. Several kids hid behind their parents' legs whenever we attempted to greet them after they stared at us for an extended period of time. We seemed to fascinate most kids, probably because Gerard had picked up some scrap paper and an old magazine and began to draw as he waited. A few tried to peek at what he was doing, some mimicked him, but mostly kids stared with wide eyes. We got a lot of stares from the parents, too, especially when we did bridge the gap and tried to talk. We were surprised that the nurses didn't tell us to stop it or leave, but they didn't. They were too busy dealing with a nose bleed out of control and then safely cleaning up the blood in the side hallway.

After being in the library instead of a waiting room at the alternative birthing center, the doctor's office depressed me. I was glad that Gerard was drawing to at least give the place a little more artistic life to it, but I was at a loss for what to do myself. The posters here were far less riveting than before, so I tried to give the out-of-date magazines a shot. I wanted something to focus on, but it had been so long since I had been exposed to popular culture and advertising that I was more disturbed than I had been before entering the building. I had read Jasmine's magazine and figured that was how things went in terms of production. They had thought provoking articles and artistic spreads of photos. They too had advertising, but it was a different variety. Half of the ads here I didn't know what they were trying to sell me and the other half made me feel inferior. The articles were the same way. I had no idea that people actually read and took seriously stuff like this. Maybe they were just there to fill waiting rooms, more of a stage prop than anything else. But as I moved my attention away from the children in the room, and focused on the adults around us, I realized that they were reading this, and seemed to be enjoying it. One woman took out a pencil and began to copy down a recipe, and then some beauty tips. Her daughter coughed and then rubbed her nose with her hand and her mother didn't do anything. I felt my chest tighten, looked back at Gerard, and noticed he was merely drawing shells of people, outlines with nothing inside of them. As much as I needed the silence between the two of us then so I could deny I was here, my thoughts were driving me wild.

"Wyatt," the nurse finally called and I nearly jumped out of my seat. The nurse looked between the two of us as we both stood, and I asked Gerard if he wanted me to come inside with him. He nodded yes, and the nurse then showed us our room, told him to change, and shut the door.

This was a new type of intimacy for us. I had only recently had to take care of him when he was sick, and he had resented me seeing him in that much of a dependent state. Now, as I watched him take his clothing off without sexual connotation and slip on the backless hospital gown, my chest tightened. The bones of his back were visible again, every notch and every rib. He often didn't wear underwear and was actually completely naked, save for his black and fading socks. He struggled to tie the gown at the back and after a few failed attempts, I came over to help him. I kissed the first bump of his spine to hopefully ease his worry and placed my hands on his hips. He grabbed my hand and squeezed it, and then sat on the stiff hospital paper. It crinkled and he moved, making it crinkle some more. No matter what position he sat in, the paper emitted noise.

"I have no idea why I need to take my clothing off already," he stated. "I'm cold."

I teased him that maybe the nurses wanted to check him out, since he was that famous artist from before, but he merely shrugged. We couldn't really joke now, but it was the only thing I felt I could do without breaking down and sobbing. I could make a face using the tongue depressors I saw at the side and pretend to walk up and down stairs. I could mimic people in the waiting room. I could do anything at all, so long as it was funny or made people laugh and did not let us think about this. I wanted to laugh so badly, from the deepest part of my stomach, from the pit of despair I felt. The worst knock-knock joke could have me howling for days, I realized. Instead, I had to settle for rubbing Gerard's back where the gown was open to keep his skin warm.

"I'm glad you're here," Gerard stated.

"That's only because you like me touching you. I'm good at keeping people warm."

"Yes, there is that..." he trailed off. "But also because you're keeping me here. Not that I would forget to go, but because I just wouldn't go unless someone came with me. Do you know what I mean? I don't like these places. It's not that I would forget to go. It's just... I don't want to go, ever. I don't like these places. I just want you to know that there is a difference between those two things."

I bit my lip and kept rubbing his back. I really wanted to tell a knock-knock joke, to have some reason for the incessant repetition on his end. "I know," I said instead. "I know you wouldn't forget."

When the doctor came in, we gave him our diagnosis right away. I knew that doctors hated when people tried to diagnosis themselves and would usually play a tug of war battle of sheer will to try and disprove the person. This was one of the reasons that Lydia said that we were the best authorities over our bodies, because most doctors just liked their ego. They wanted to play the guessing game most of all, and in playing that game, always be the one who was right. Giving them a correct diagnosis right away would defeat the purpose for them, so they would spend the rest of the time trying to disprove the patient in order to repair themselves. I figured that we could get this dynamic to work in our favour. If we didn't think he had Alzheimer's, then tell the doctor he did. He would be forced to look for all the other alternative options then in order to prove himself right and us wrong. I smiled to myself, feeling as if I had control over the situation for the first time.

My idea had worked so far. As soon as I said it, the doctor put his hands up and said, "Whoa now, that's a serious diagnosis to come from someone who isn't the patient. Let's not jump to conclusions right away. Let's get your friend here to describe his symptoms, okay?"

I nodded and pretended to be hurt and chastised, and gave Gerard a cunning smile and wink when the doctor turned his back. From here, Gerard did most of the talking to get the doctor up to speed on his current medical condition, issues aside, before the doctor prompted him with questions and then wrote down some of the answers. He was selective with his writing, not writing down the responses word for word, and my chest would always tighten when he heard a point that was worth nothing. Was it good? Bad? Was Gerard saying the right or wrong things? A lot of the questions seemed very general and somewhat foolish. He asked Gerard about his general state of health, prior injuries, smoking and drinking habits, etc. He commended him for not smoking anymore and asked how he had found the cravings after the fact.

"Didn't really notice them," Gerard answered. "There were bigger things to think about."

The doctor wrote this down and then began to ask about sexual habits. Jasmine was now brought into the room with us, and it came out that we were having a baby, and that we were all in a relationship together.

"Before or after?"

"Before or after what?" Gerard asked.

The doctor grimaced and then explained, "You're speaking about the three of you without a sense of past time. This could be a symptom, so I'm asking you if you could tell me the timeline of the relationship. Who dated who first, who is pregnant now, and who are you currently sleeping with? In order."

Gerard opened his mouth and then looked at me, unsure of how to explain this. It made his mental status seem unstable and precarious, but I rushed to his rescue, feeling somewhat vindicated.

"No, he's talking properly here. We're all in the relationship at the same time. We live in the same house," I explained, and Gerard nodded. The doctor seemed displeased; whether it was because of our relationship, or because I had proven him wrong, I was not sure.

"Well, in that case, this could be an advanced case of syphilis that has started to attack his cognitive functions. In the later stages, it has been known to cause brain lesions which could affect memory, but it may not manifest as any physical symptoms. You should all be tested for it and be far more careful in the future." The doctor began to make some markings on his clipboard and was about to call it his diagnosis and send us down to the lab to get our blood drawn when I stopped him.

"It can't be that. I was just tested and Jasmine has been, too. She's pregnant and has been going to the doctor's non-stop. She knows if she's sick or not, and she's not. So he can't have syphilis. Please keep going."

This doctor really did not like me, but I did not care. He couldn't just walk out. I knew that he didn't have syphilis and if that was the diagnosis, then I was going to have to believe in Alzheimer's instead. I kept disproving him, and I relied heavily on his pride to make him come back. He sighed, and though he warned us that we should all be tested again anyway and that it could very well be syphilis, he would begin the assessment again.

"Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot," he apologized. I nodded and stayed at the back, leaning on the counter. He seemed more willing than before to believe in the diagnosis that I had given him when he first walked into the room. It worried me, but at least someone was listening to us.

He explained to us that there was no definitive cause or diagnosis for Alzheimer's. Gerard described his forgetting and how it had progressed, and I added in details that I had noticed (but at the time, didn't want to admit to myself), too. The doctor agreed that it did sound like Alzheimer's, but again, there were a lot of reasons that people could forget something. Lack of sleeping, erratic schedules, dietary switches, sickness, and of course, old age. Gerard, I realized, could fall into every single one of those categories. He seemed to realize this as well and we exchanged a quick nod to one another from across the room. The doctor continued his diagnostic tests, and gave Gerard a math question to do, asked him the date and time, and what he had done yesterday. He asked him what his mother's maiden name was and what year he was born. He answered those questions faster than the previous ones (Thibodeaux and 1950), but he had gotten the time and the day wrong. He still thought it was morning, when it had been afternoon now for a while and he was sure today was a Monday. It wasn't anything huge, but there was still something there was definitely off. Now that I was looking for it, and now that the doctor was asking specific questions framed around specific type of memory loss and cognitive omissions, it was becoming a little clearer. Gerard knew things in the past, but it was the present that was becoming scrambled.

But the doctor stressed, again and again, that nothing was definitive. "Some doctors can really only say if someone has Alzheimer's after they have died, and an examination is done so we can see the deterioration on the brain tissue," he informed us, and emphasized again that something as simple as moving to a brand new house and the loss of a regular, predictable pattern coupled with age could have the same effects we were seeing now.

"So we need to wait until I die until we know anything for sure?" Gerard asked bitterly. He had just been poked and prodded and embarrassed and he wasn't even going to get a real answer. " Great. "

"The only way that the disease tends to get a proper diagnosis is through excluding all other options that I listed before," the doctor went onto explain. If we were going to know for sure, Gerard was going to have to get his blood drawn, cat scans done, and a whole bunch of other tests just to know whether or not his forgetting was idiosyncratic, or if it was a disease after all.

But we didn't have the money for that type of endeavor, and we both knew it. I stood in the corner with my hands across my chest, feeling my heart pound out of guilt. If it was going to take this much to even know if he was sick or not, it seemed pointless. I had medical insurance now, but I couldn't list him as a significant other. That didn't seem fair at all. None of this seemed fair at all.

"If he were to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's, what happens next?" I asked, probing for some sense of security and reassurance.

"There is no cure, if that's what you're asking. But people can live long lives. With the proper care, people can live to their life expectancy. Alzheimer's, like most diseases, is degenerative. Once it starts, and if left untreated, it gets worse."

"But don't we all?" Gerard retorted. "I mean, aging in is a degenerative disease. I'm closer to my death now that I was ten minutes ago. But I don't call myself terminal."

The doctor laughed, the first time I had seen him do that. He was a lot softer than he had been when he was first here, and even still, he managed to make me nervous. I kept thinking he was nice to us because this was all bad or at least problematically neutral, news. My urge to tell bad knock-knock jokes to ease the tension from before had diminished, because I no longer trusted my audience.

"That is true, Mr. Wyatt," the doctor conceded with a smile. "I could diagnose everyone in my waiting room as terminal right now, including myself, but I don't."

"So I don't really need to say I have Alzheimer's, because it's not like there would be anything I could do about it if it was actually there," Gerard replied.

"We can't say anything here today, for sure," the doctor insisted and then began to list out the number of more intensive diagnostic tests that would need to be done, and reiterated the fact that this was just a clinic. "You will need to see a specialist and get a proper diagnosis and subsequent treatment if they deem it necessary."

"But in your opinion, what do you think is going on?" I asked, knowing that we would not get that specialist, if ever, even if there was something wrong. "Should we be worried?"

The doctor looked back at me and took an extended pause. He looked at his chart, and sighed. "I am not capable of giving that diagnosis. But...from what you have described, this is a concern. People slow down at different rates. You're still young, Mr. Wyatt. You're only fifty-five and apparently have a baby on the way. That's very young indeed, and you say you're excited about it."

"Yes, I am."

"You're in good spirits. You'll be okay. Your memory loss and abnormal behaviors are a concern and should be looked into, but, even in the worst case scenario, you will still have a long life."

Gerard did not look satisfied. He looked downright despondent.

"How do people with Alzheimer's die?" I asked, going right to the worst of the worst case scenarios. I had this image that I couldn't help but form in my mind of a person dropping off farther and farther away into this abyss of nothingness, into a shell of a person, filled with nothing but blank spaces and blacked out thoughts. They were lost and gone, but their body remained intact. Did someone disappear so far that their organs just forgot to stop working? Was it just the personality that was gone, or would eventually, all of Gerard be gone too?

The doctor considered this. "Old age, really. Strokes, heart attacks, heart failures, sometimes cancer or other organ diseases and failures. People who get Alzheimer's usually have concurrent health issues that the condition aggravates. It's a range. It's a degenerative disease, but it's not a distinctly terminal one. It doesn't kill you."

We both remained quiet and the doctor began to get the forms and paperwork ready. He said he needed to be going soon and that we would be able to find more information that we needed from a specialist. He wrote us a referral that I knew we would never use, gave us a form to take to the lab for them to draw vials, and then came back with some pamphlets on Early On-set Alzheimer's and Dementia. I took them and thanked him, but I could barely hear my own voice in my ear. When we were alone in the room, I went over to Gerard. I left the paperwork on the counter and stood in front of him. He was still sitting on the scratchy paper, looking at the ground. I rubbed the cold skin of his back and undid the knot at the top of the gown.

"Are you okay?" I asked him. He slowly got up from the table and began to get dressed. He made eye contact, shrugged his shoulders, and nodded his head.

"It is a terminal disease," Gerard told me. He had an air of distance to his voice. He wasn't speaking about himself having the disease, he was abstracting it, like he would always abstract notions and concepts in order to speak more fluidly about them. "Alzheimer's or Dementia, whatever fancy name they want give it. Whether or not I have it, that man's an idiot. It is a terminal disease. It doesn't matter if you don't really die from it. It kills everything else it touches. The loss of memory may as well be the loss of life." He did his jacket up furiously, his fingers clenched and angry.

I walked over to him slowly, touching his face and bringing his forehead closer to my own. I ran my hands down over his arms and pressed my body into his, trying to absorb all the negative energy between us. Although he let his body be lead, he was still shaking with anger (and fear?) under my embrace. I did what I did when Jasmine became overwhelmed; I told him the date and the time all over again.

"It is May fifth, about three in the afternoon, and we live together. I am Frank and Jasmine is five months pregnant. Our daughter will be born in September and she may be named Paloma."

Gerard's anger seemed to dissipate with the details. He began to rub my back and pulled away only so he could kiss my forehead. His eyes met my own, and he smirked. "You know, Picasso painted a series of doves."

"Oh really?" I said. I began to gather our things and let Gerard keep talking. I held the door open for him and we began to go to our car. We were not getting the blood work done. I had the form if we wanted to later on, but what was the point? We knew it wasn't syphilis because that would have shown up for myself or Jasmine. None of us wore condoms anymore and we all had sex with one another. Since Hilda did workshops on safe sex, she had dental dams that she and Jasmine used. There was a barrier between them, but none of us. If Gerard was sick like that, then we all would be too. The blood work was pointless, the entire doctor's visit was pointless, because we weren't given any answers that we didn't already know or could figure out ourselves. Lydia had been right, and so had I: we were the best authorities on our own bodies. And I knew his body, I loved his body. I held his hand in mine as we walked through the big glass clinic doors and out to our car. I still held onto the other referrals that this doctor had given us in my other hand, even though I knew that it didn't mean a damn thing because we couldn't afford it anyway. I shoved it under the car seat as I got behind the wheel, and tried to focus my thoughts. We needed to leave this parking lot as soon as possible, and if we needed to forget anything for our survival it needed to be this. You are now at the place of forgetting, I told myself, looking around the clinic's lot. You are now at the place of remembering, I added, reversing the car and peeling out as fast as I could. As I drove, I focused on that second place I could construct and listened intently as Gerard told me about Picasso's daughter Paloma, and his series of paintings on doves, as if I had never heard it before.

When we got back, Jasmine was waiting at the table with a cup of tea. She sprang up from her seat when we came in, but I held a hand up to slow her. Gerard had complained of being really tired in the car and wanted to go to bed. Having Jasmine barrage him with questions would not be the best option for either of us right then. It had only been when Gerard complained of his exhaustion that I realized how excessive mine was as well. I didn't even want to speak to Jasmine myself because I had no clue what to say. We had been given all the answers we needed, and yet, we were told nothing at all.

"Nothing's changed," I said feebly before I apologized again. That was all I could tell her, other than we both needed to rest again. She was disappointed, but nodded. She left to go to work again, knowing that it was the only place where she could be that was going to make her feel better. Part of me was relieved that it was not Hilda she ran to first. She wanted us to make her feel better, but anytime we failed that, she knew one place that could not let her down: her job. Words and print and magazines kept her busy, while our history of doves and art kept Gerard and I safe.

I took Gerard to his room first to make sure he got there okay. As we walked up, he clutched my arm with one hand and grabbed his knees with the other. I asked him if he wanted to switch rooms with me so that he didn't have to worry about going up an extra flight of stairs if his knees hurt too much, but he seemed appalled by my offer.

"And give up my room with a view? Never. I will struggle to stay alive, even with pain, to get the small things in life that I still think are beautiful." He kissed the top of my forehead and held me close. I was glad for it; I felt my legs go weak when he mentioned pain, and I wondered if he felt it anywhere else. Did losing your memory hurt? Did a scar appear on your body where a part of your life used to be? Would you be able to touch certain areas of yourself or others and say, yes, yes that was where I left my keys and that was what my mother's first name was? I had no idea what all of this was like, and it was becoming apparent to me, more and more, that I couldn't trust what others said.

I got Gerard into bed, and he lay down with his clothing on. He exhaled a loud breath and closed his eyes. His breathing was normal, though. He was just resting, he told me. He wanted to collect his thoughts from the day, before he voiced his opinion.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14