Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

“I don’t seem like his sister to him? What does he see when he looks at me?”

“He sees what he always sees. He just doesn’t…feel you sufficiently to believe you.”

A lesion that damaged only the sense of loved ones. “He’s blind to me emotionally? And so he decides…?” Dr. Hayes gave a chilling nod. “But his brain, his… thinking isn’t damaged, is it? Is this the worst thing we’ll have to face? Because if it is, I’m sure I can…”

The doctor lifted a palm. “The only thing certain in head injury is uncertainty.”

“What’s the treatment?”

“For now, we need to watch, see how he develops. There may be other issues. Secondary deficits. Memory, cognition, perception. Capgras sometimes shows spontaneous improvement. The best thing now is time and tests.”

He used the phrase again, two weeks later.

She didn’t believe Mark had any syndrome. His mind was just sorting out the chaos of injury. Every day left him more like his old self. A little patience, and the cloud would lift. He’d already come back from the dead; he would come back from this smaller loss. She was who she was; he’d have to see that, as he got clearer. She took the setback the way the therapists told her to, one baby step in front of the other. She worked on Mark, not pushing anything. She walked him down to the cafeteria. She answered his strange questions. She brought him copies of his two favorite truck-modding magazines. She encouraged and reinforced his memories, vaguely alluding to family history. But she had to pretend not to know too much about him. She tried once or twice; any claim of intimacy led immediately to trouble.

One day he asked, “Can you at least find out how my dog is doing?” She promised to. “And for God’s sake, would you please get my sister here, already? She probably hasn’t even heard.” She had learned enough by then to say nothing.

She held herself together in front of Mark. But at night, alone with Daniel, she nursed her worst fears. “I quit my job. I’m back in a town I can’t escape, in my brother’s house, living off savings. I’ve been sitting for weeks, helpless, reading children’s stories. And now he says I’m not me. It’s like he’s punishing me for something.”

Daniel only nodded and warmed her hands. She did like that about him: if there was nothing to say, he said nothing.

“I’ve been doing so well, for so long. He’s so much better than he was. He couldn’t even open his eyes. Why should this be so scary? Why can’t I just sit still with this, wait it out?”

His fingers soothed the knobs of her spine, drawing all the static charge out of her. “Pace yourself,” he said. “He’s going to need you for a long time.”

“I wish he did need me. He looks at me like I’m worse than a stranger. Cuts right through me. If I could just…if he would just say what he needs.”

“Hiding is natural,” Daniel said. “A bird will do anything, not to reveal that it’s hurt.”

Her brother drove his body like the worst student driver. Sometimes he lurched ahead, blasting past all speed limits. Other times, a crack in the linoleum would rattle him. Some days he solved every puzzle the therapists invented. Other days, he couldn’t chew without biting his tongue.

He remembered nothing of the accident. But he could make new memories again. For that, Karin was ready to thank any power. He still asked twice a day how he’d gotten here, but now mostly to challenge her smallest change in phrasing. “That’s not what you said last time.” He asked often about his truck, whether it was as banged up as he was. She gave him the vaguest answers.

His outward progress was breathtaking. Even his friends were shocked by the great leaps of evolution, from one visit to the next. He talked more than he had before the accident. He swung from bouts of rage into a sweetness he’d lost at the age of eight. She told him the doctors wanted to move him out of the hospital. Mark glowed. He thought he was going home. “Can you tell my sister I’ve got the green light? Tell her Mark Schluter is out of here. Whatever’s been holding her up, she’ll know where to find me.”

She bit her lip and refused even to nod. She’d read in one of Daniel’s neurology books never to humor delusions.

“She’ll be worried about me. Man, you have to promise me. Wherever she’s gone, she needs to know what’s happening. She was like always looking after me? That’s her big thing. Personal claim to fame. Saved my life once. My father came this close to snapping my neck like a pencil. I’ll tell you about it someday. Personal stuff. But trust me: I’d be dead without my sister.”

It tore her up, to look on and say nothing. And yet, she felt a sick fascination at the chance to learn what Mark really said about her when talking to someone else. She could survive this, for however long it took him to come back to reason. And his reason was solidifying daily.

“Maybe they’re keeping her away from me. Why won’t they let me talk to her? Am I somebody’s science project? They want to see if I’ll mistake you for her?” He saw her distress, but mistook it for indignation. “Hey, okay. You’ve helped me, too, in your own way. You’re here every day. Walking, reading, whatever. I don’t know what you want. But I’m the grateful recipe.”

“Recipient,” she said. He stared at her, baffled. “You said ‘recipe.’ You mean ‘recipient.’”

He scowled. “I was using the singular. You look a lot like her, you know? Maybe not quite as pretty. But damn close.”

A wave of vertigo rolled over her. Steadying herself, she reached into her shoulder pouch and pulled out the note. “Look at this, Mark! I’m not the only one who has been looking out for you.” Unplanned therapy. She knew he needed to recover more, before plunging back into the accident. But she thought it might shake him loose, bring him back to himself. Prove her authority, somehow.

He fisted the paper and stared at it. He squinted from different distances, then handed it back to her. “Tell me what it says.”

“Mark! You can read. You just read two pages for the therapist this morning.”

“Holy jump up and sit down. Anybody ever tell you you sound exactly like my mother?”

The woman she’d spent her life trying not to become. “Here. Have another look.”

“Hey! It’s not my problem, all right? I mean, look at that creeping thing. That’s not writing. Some kind of spiderweb. Tree bark or something. You tell me what it says.”

The writing was spectral. It snaked like their Swedish grandmother’s illegible longhand. Karin put the writer at eighty years old, an ancient immigrant afraid of making any contact that would require surrendering information to a database. She read the words off the scrap, although she’d long ago memorized them. I am No One but Tonight on North Line Road GOD led me to you so You could Live and bring back someone else.

Mark pressed the scar that flowed up his forehead. He took the note back from her. “What’s that supposed to mean? God led somebody? Well, if God’s so big on me, how come He took my perfect truck and flipped it in the first place? Whoosh. Like shooting craps with me.”

She took his arm. “You remember that?”

He shook off her hand. “So you’ve been telling me. Like twenty times a day. How could you forget?” He fingered the note. “No, man. That’s too many steps. Just to get my attention? Not even God takes that many steps.”

What their mother had said the year before, about her wasting death: You’d think the Lord would be a little more efficient.

“Whoever wrote this note found you, Mark. They came to see you in Intensive Care. They left you this. They wanted you to know.”