Brain Damage

by Freida McFadden

If someone had asked me before this happened if it would hurt to be shot in the head, I almost certainly would’ve answered yes. Of course, yes.

And none of that hurt. The truth is, I didn’t feel it at all. What hurt is everything that came after.

I love my mother. I really do. Probably more than anyone else in the world. But somehow it’s become impossible to have a conversation with her without my ending up shouting, then feeling guilty about it later. Why does talking to your parents always make you regress to your teenage years?

The truth is, I haven’t met a guy yet whose company I enjoyed better than the peace of my own home. Why wreck something that’s already perfect?

“Injuries to the right side of the brain can sometimes cause a neglect of the left side,” Amy explains. “Basically, she has trouble paying attention and noticing stimuli on her left side.”

When you’re a single woman in her mid-thirties, the goal during the first date is to pretend like you’ve never heard of the word marriage.

Most people don’t know it, but psoriasis causes more depression than most other medical conditions, including cancer. Having scales on your skin, especially for a young woman like Regina Barry, results in a tremendous loss of self-esteem.

I keep trying to remember things that happened before. The memories are still there, but are covered by a hazy cloak. It’s like waking up from a dream and trying to remember what happened during the dream. I remember things like having dinner in a restaurant with Clark, or putting these long dangling earrings in my ears, or trying to hail a taxi in the rain. But if I try to grab any piece of it, it’s not quite there.

“A dream that you are dying is a sign of inner changes or transformation,” Dr. Vincent says thoughtfully. “Of course, the Freudian interpretation goes out the window if you were recently shot in the head.”

I never told Clark about this, but when I was in medical school, one of my classmates lost his mind and pointed a gun at me. I later found out he’d already shot and killed someone with the gun.