Excerpted from Part II, Chapter 3: Keyless Gates |
I woke up Wednesday. At least that’s what I remember doing. Apparently, between Monday afternoon and Wednesday morning my mental palm pilot experienced an electrical outage. As far as I could tell, I had slept the better part of nearly 40 hours. Walking into work early that morning my head felt like it was stuffed with a mountain of cotton batting. Gosh, did I even feed my dogs? Oh, I must have. How odd it is that it is Wednesday. Did I eat? This is so weird; I can’t believe it’s Wednesday. Jeez, I feel like a Martian’s taken over my brain. The thoughts bobbled around like anchorless buoys in high seas. Oh, well, I shrugged. This will clear up once I’ve been awake a little longer. Sitting at my desk with a child’s testing protocol in front of me, I attempted to complete the mindless task of scoring it. It was a simple task: add up a small column of one and two digit numbers and put the sum in the little square box at the bottom. It’s a menial, tedious task that I had been routinely doing for the better part of the last twenty years. I added. I added again. I couldn’t seem to make my mind work. I tried again. I used my fingers. I still could not get past a couple of numbers. I could not add the column. My friend Sandra, a teacher in the next room and a lead paramedic for the county, came in to check on me. She took one look at my face and with concern written all over hers, asked: “What’s wrong? You’re really pale. Are you all right?” I stared at her, an uncomprehending look in my eye and a tight knot in my stomach. “Sandra…something is very, very wrong. I can’t add. I can’t think. Something in my head is very, very wrong.” Immediately plopping me into her ever-present paramedic car, Sandra drove me the twenty-five miles back to the hospital. I have no idea what she did about her students that morning; I only know that she kept me from panicking during a time when fear was beginning to suffocate the very breath from my lungs. How could I not add simple numbers? What was wrong with my head? |
 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |