Robert Sawyer - Quantum Night

“Well, there were more than a few assigned books I never got around to reading during my undergraduate days.”

“Yeah, but I did an essay on this book. I found the WordPerfect file for it still on my hard drive.”

“Could you, y’know, have bought the essay? From one of those services?”

I raised my hand palm out to forestall any more of this. “Sure, sure, you can explain away any one of these examples. But all of them? Six months with no new memories laid down and yet me apparently functioning normally? There’s no way to explain that.”

“All right,” said Menno. “But, you know, Jim, if the barrier to your remembering that period is psychological rather than physical—well…”

“What?”

“If your subconscious is repressing something, maybe you’ll want to just accept that. You’re fine now, after all, aren’t you?”

“I think so.”

“The missing memories aren’t affecting your work or your personal life?”

“Not until that D.A. tore me to shreds.”

“So, just keep in mind that the cure might be worse than the disease.” Pax was still at Menno’s feet, but her eyes were now closed. “Sometimes it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

Pax did look at peace. But I shook my head as I rose. “No,” I said. “I can’t do that.”

As I looked out my living-room window at the Red River, I thought perhaps I’d been unfair back at the Atlanta airport. If Fox News was a thorn in the side of every Democrat unlucky enough to hold public office in the United States, it was perhaps fair to say that the CBC was equally vexatious to any hapless Conservative trying to do his or her job in this country. The irony was that the CBC was a public broadcaster owned and operated, albeit at arm’s length, by the federal government. There is little if anything Barack Obama could have done to deflect attacks from Fox News, but year after year of Conservative government in Ottawa had whittled the CBC down to a fraction of what it had once been, and even after Harper was finally given the heave-ho, tough economic times kept the CBC’s funding from getting fully reinstated.

I had CBC Radio One on. The female announcer intoned: “Although their attempt to blow up the Statue of Liberty was thwarted over the weekend, it’s been revealed that the two would-be bombers, both Libyan nationals, entered the United States from Canada, crossing over from Ontario into Minnesota near Lake of the Woods eleven days ago. This is the second time this year that terrorists from Libya have entered the US via Canada. President Carroway was clearly frustrated at his press briefing this morning.”

The announcer’s voice was replaced by a clip of the president: “I’ve expressed my deep concern over this issue to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Perhaps if the killers were flowing in the other direction, he’d take it more seriously.”

As the newsreader was moving on to the next story, my iPhone played the Jeopardy! theme music, meaning a call was being forwarded from my office line, the one published on the university’s website. The screen showed “KD Huron” and a number with a 639 area code, one I didn’t recognize. I turned off the radio and swiped the answer bar. “Hello?”

An odd silence for a moment, then a hesitant female voice: “Hi, Jim. I was in town, so I thought I’d look you up.”

“Who is this?”

“Kayla.” A beat. “Kayla Huron.”

The name didn’t mean anything. “Yes?”

Her tone was suddenly frosty. “Sorry. I thought you might be happy to hear from me.”

It’s hard to talk and google on your phone at the same time, but fortunately my laptop was up and running on my living-room desk. I cradled the phone between my cheek and shoulder and typed her name into the computer. “Yes,” I said, “of course I’m glad to hear from you… Kayla. How have you been?”

The first link was to her Wikipedia entry. I clicked it, and the article came up with a photo that was surprisingly good by Wikipedia standards, showing a pretty white woman in her mid thirties.

“Well,” said Kayla, “it’s been a lot of years, Jim. Where to start? I mean, I’m fine, but…”

“Yeah,” I said, still stalling. “A lot of years.” The first line of the entry said she “explores consciousness at the Canadian Light Source”—which sounded like some flaky new-age institution.

“Anyway,” she said, “I’m here for a symposium at UW.” The University of Winnipeg was the other university in town. “And, well, I saw your name in the paper today, and figured, what the heck, I’d see if you might like to have coffee, you know, to catch up…”

I scrolled down the Wikipedia entry: “…earned her MS (2005) and PhD (2010) from the University of Arizona following undergraduate work at the University of Manitoba (1999–2003)…”

“Yes!” I said, much too loudly. We’d been contemporaries here at U of M—including during my lost six months. “Absolutely!”

“Okay. When would be good for you?”

I wanted to say, “Right now!” But instead I simply offered, “My afternoon is open.”

“About one? Suggest a place; I’ve got a rental car.”

I did, we said goodbye, and I put the phone down on my wooden desk, my hand shaking.

I took a deep breath. I had several hours to kill before I needed to head out to meet Kayla, and, well, if my memory loss was indeed associated with the stabbing, then starting by researching that event seemed the logical first step.

There were normally numerous hoops to jump through to access patient medical records—even your own—but fortunately I knew one of the staff psychologists at the hospital I’d been treated at in Calgary; she and I had served together on the board of the Canadian Psychological Association. It was noon in Winnipeg, but that was only 11:00 A.M. in Calgary, so it seemed like a good time to try my call. I tapped my way through the menu tree to get the person I wanted. “Cassandra Cheung,” said the lush voice in my ear.

“Sandy, it’s Jim Marchuk.”

Genuine warmth: “Jim! What can I do for you?”

“I’m hoping you can cut through some red tape. I need a copy of my own medical records.”

“Your own? Yeah, sure, I guess that’s no problem. You were treated here?”

“Yeah. I came in on New Year’s Eve 2000—well, after midnight, so it was actually January first, 2001.”

“That’s a long time ago,” she said, and I could hear her typing away.

“Nineteen years.”

“Hmmm. You sure about that date?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Were you maybe an outpatient? Not all records from that far back are in our central system.”

“No, no. It was emergency surgery.”

“My God, really?”

“Yeah.”

“Were you brought in via ambulance?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not finding anything. Do you remember the name of the surgeon?”

“Butcher,” I said.

“Ha,” replied Sandy. “That’s funny.”

“That’s what I thought!”

“But there’s no Dr. Butcher in the system. Are you sure it was this hospital? Could it have been Foothills instead?”

I wasn’t sure of much at this point. “I… I guess. Um, can you try my last name with a typo? People sometimes put a C in before the K: M-A-R-C-H-U-C-K.”

“Ah! Okay—yup, here it is, but… huh.”

“What?”

“Well, the date wasn’t January first—no one gets to have elective surgery on New Year’s Day: there’s too much likelihood that the operating rooms will be needed for emergencies, and all the surgeons who can be are off skiing.”

“Elective surgery?”

“That’s right. On Monday, February nineteenth, 2001, you had an infiltrating ductal carcinoma removed.”