The Hollow of Night

The doctors, nurses, and orderlies smiled all the time. I almost felt welcome, almost felt safe. But not quite: They had a way of looking at one another, and I'd sometimes hear them whispering in the halls, whispering just outside my door about Patient 420, and that did make me feel a little worried because I could glimpse the numbers on my door from time to time, and that's what they read: 420.

I was Patient 420.

I suppose I should be grateful they bothered to give me a name at all. They could simply have called me "The patient in room 420." That small concession to my humanity -- that I could have a name, that I wasn't simply something to be tended to and warehoused -- made up for the way they never quite connected with me, always holding me at a professional distance. As if they expected me not to be there very long. As if they'd seen too many cases like mine before.

That in itself was strange because even I know that cases like mine are exceedingly rare. I'm a complete and total amnesiac... well, in a sense; I can walk, talk, read, do multiplication and long division. I can even recite dates and events from world history. It's only my own history that's a blank to me, but it's an absolute and impenetrable blank.

Room 420 was comfortable. Less so than where I am now, but I rather liked it. I had two chairs -- one big plush chair that occupied a corner of its own, and one wooden straight-backed chair that sat at the desk. Yes, I had a desk, and a few pens, and blank book where I was supposed to keep a journal: Jottings and ruminations and anything that might contain a trace of memory. But those pages stayed blank because I couldn't summon up a single recollection.

Such total amnesia is usually the result of some sort of psychological condition, though there have been instances of an organic cause -- disease, dysfunction, injury. But the memories must still be there, mustn't they? In my subconscious? Sometimes I used to wake up in the middle of the night, jolt out of a dream that I felt must have been a memory, but of course I'd forget the dream right away. I'd lie there and wonder: What sort of trauma or hysteria does a man have to endure such that he has to block out his entire life?

Then, as minutes passed and sleep eluded me, I'd find myself mulling over a curious thing I knew, or thought I knew. Before the invention of electric lights... before the invention of anything we'd think of as modern, slates and televisions and PCDs... people would go to bed early in the evening but then, after about four hours, they'd wake up and remain awake for a couple, three hours. Then they'd go to sleep again and in the morning they'd be fresh as you please. They would have gotten a full eight hours, but in two allotments. They had words for this, they had language: They called these stretches of somnolence by the names First Sleep and Second Sleep.

Words and language. That's how we know what's real, what really exists in the world. That's having a name is so important. With no past and no name, how do I exist? I'm just happy they didn't call me John Doe. Patient 420 is probably not much better, but it has a ring to it.

Dr. Wyler used to come into my room, Room 420, on Mondays and Thursdays to ask me the very same things every time.

"How are you this morning?"

It would be afternoon, usually around two, but I never bothered to correct him. He wasn't interested in a general response anyway, because he'd follow up instantly with:

"Can you tell me your name?"

No, I never was able to. Except for Patient 420, but he didn't seem the joking type, and I never shared that little witticism with him.

"Do you know where you are?"

In a hospital, of course. Or was a sanitarium? Or some kind of testing lab? I'd try a city at random, or even a state, and keep tabs on the responses I had previously made, hoping that eventually I'd hit on a locale that he'd respond to. Maybe if I said, "Alberta," or "Winnebago," his eyes would light up, or he'd say something like, "Very good!" But no matter what I said -- "New Orleans," "The Antipodes," "Hackensack," "Des Moines" -- he'd simply jot a note on his slate and then go back to examining my eyes, or my ears, or my throat, his penlight at the ready.

"Do you know what year it is?"

Same thing: I tried different years, hoping for a telltale response. 2015. 2030. 2108. 2322. 1841. If I guessed right, he never let on. Even when I was being totally sarcastic -- 1287 B.C. -- he remained impassive, even detached.

"Who's the president?" he'd ask me.

The president of where? Was this Canada? Oregonia? Mexico? The Republic of Texas? Well, Texas has warlords, so that couldn't be right.

Then... and I think this was just to get my goat, I think he could smell the contempt for religion on me... his last question would always be to announce a chapter and a verse of scripture and ask me what it said. And, goddamn it, I always knew.

"Judges 3:16," he challenged me.

"Ehud had forged a short sword, a cubit in length," I recited, "which he concealed under his cloak using a strap."

"Deuteronomy 17:12," he said, on another occasion.

"If a man presumes to know better than the counsel of God's priest, and will hear nothing from a holy man so appointed, then he calls execution upon himself," I said. "Thus shall Israel be cleansed of such wickedness."

Once I jumped in before he could call the verse. "Psalm 139: 13," I said. "You, O Lord, created my essence. You summoned me forth in the womb of my mother."

Dr. Wyler did react that time, just a little. He said, "Tomorrow, let's discuss Leviticus." But the following day was Friday, and when Monday came around he didn't say a word about Leviticus. He tossed out, "Daniel, 2:19."

"The secret was revealed as Daniel slept dreaming," I said. "When he awoke, Daniel gave praise to God."

Dr. Wyler turned to the nurse. "Talk to Dr. Richter about starting a course of vasopressin therapy," he instructed.

***

And I, like Daniel, dreamed -- every night, only the dreams escaped me the moment I woke up. Until one morning, that is. Perhaps the vasopressin had helped, or maybe it was the aromatherapy that Jared had been experimenting with, but one bright early morning a nurse entering my room jarred me awake, and I kept hold of an image: I'd been dreaming about a man. He had red hair, and the kindest smile. In the dream we'd been talking... not about anything important, but all the same I felt that the moment was something special. Just being with him was important. His presence felt like a blessing. When I started waking up and realized this was a dream, sadness came over me and tears welled in my eyes.

He smiled, and I felt my heart breaking.

"Don't be sad, he told me. "I'm never far away."

Then my eyes were opening and the dream was gone except for his words, still in my ears, and the image of him. I did my best to hold on to his face, to his voice, committing his every feature to memory as best I could before the dream slipped away.

The nurse saw I was concentrating.

"Did you dream?" she asked.

"I think so," I told her.

"What?" she asked.

I didn't want to share this dream with her. Actually, it was the man I didn't want to share. "I don't remember," I said.

But Dr. Wyler must have heard about it from her because he asked next time he stopped in. I told him I recalled nothing.

But after that I started remembering other dreams. The red haired man was always part of those dreams: We'd be driving along in a car on some trip or errand. We'd be in a house -- I set a plate of food before him at the table, and he looked up at me with pleasure, sending a shock of delight through my entire body. Many times the dreams were simply about lying next to him, under a heap of blankets, his body fit perfectly to my own. Those dreams included his scent, which I would lap up, snuggling to him even closer to breathe him in.

Dr. Wyler's schedule was Mondays and Thursdays, but Jared's schedule was Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Dr. Wyler would spend all of four minutes with me; Jared spent an hour. Dr. Wyler quizzed me, but Jared asked questions... the difference being that Jared seemed genuinely curious to hear my answers, and he wasn't looking for any specific response.

Jared had started with what I called aromatherapy. He had some other, more complicated name for it, but it involved small vials of essential oils, chemical compounds, and whatnot, all of them smelling like typical household odors and other commonplace aromas: Baking bread. Lilacs. Talcum powder.

"Scent and memory are intertwined in the brain," he explained to me. "If you get any images or feelings or any kind of associations, please tell me right away what they are."

I could identify the scents, mostly, but they did nothing for me... except for one, a scent of soap. Suddenly, I had a clear, immediate vision of greenish water splashing into a vintage claw-footed bathtub. Steaming, hot water... and there were several little soaps in the shapes of roses...

"Something?" Jared asked me.

"Soap. A bathtub... it's gone now," I told him.

"Any sense of where? Or when?"

I tried to conjure something up. "I think I was very young."

Jared tried other sensory avenues, as well. He'd play me music and ask me if it triggered any memories, or even any feelings. Sometimes the music would dredge up feelings; I felt happy and wistful when he'd play any version of "Smile," and I'd feel terribly sad and bereft upon hearing "My Lagan Love." The deepest tenderness would rise within me to the strains of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." And I'd grown almost giddy to "The Star Spangled Banner," which I took as evidence that, wherever I might be, I was an American by birth.

Jared usually asked me general questions. What did I think of the idea of having a family? Did I suppose I might have had a family? Was there a wife wondering about my whereabouts, or children missing their father?

Or: What notions came to mind at the idea of a summer house? A boat on a lake? A playground? Chocolate-chip cookies? The talk therapy was fruitless. Zero "notions" came to mind. Nothing. Not ever, not a thing.

But that Friday, I had something to tell him.

"Did you ask me about a lake and a boat?" I said, as Jared, smiling his usual friendly smile, seated himself in the comfortable chair. I had taken a perch on the less comfortable chair, wishing for Jared -- the closest thing to someone who seemed to be genuinely interested -- to have the nice one. Room 420 had become my home, and I wished to be a gracious host.

"Yes, two weeks ago," Jared said. "Why? Do you recall something?"

"I'm not sure... Maybe. But it's only a dream," I said. "Something about being in a small boat with someone else. He's yelling and we're both laughing."

"You've started to remember your dreams?" Jared asked.

I flashed on the nurse, asking about my dreams. I flashed on Dr. Wyler. Surely they all talked to each other, and any morsel one of them secured would be shared around.

But Jared seemed such a nice young man, so sincere and even trustworthy.

"I've been having dreams for the last month and a half that I remember," I told him. "They always have the same man in them. The man in the boat with me."

"Man?" Jared's smile seemed to falter a little.

"This morning, I woke up from a dream about he and I being in a boat. A little boat, on a lake, like you mentioned." I wanted to continue and tell Jared about how, in the dream, the red haired man leaned forward, laughing, and rubbed noses with me. Then I slipped my hand onto the back of his neck and...

"Can you describe him for me?"

"He has red hair," I said. "He..." I didn't know how to continue. What did he look like, exactly? I tried to paint a picture in my mind. What I recalled, though, wasn't so much what he looked like as how I felt when looking at him. I remembered how he made me feel. "I think he's my husband."

Jared laughed. "You know men marry women," he told me. "You can't have a husband. I'm sure you haven't forgotten something that obvious?"

But it was something I'd been certain of for days. "He's my husband. I know I married him."

Jared stared, looking a little pale, then a little paler still.

I knew that men used to marry men. People of all sorts used to marry all sorts of other people, and everyone was happy. Then something happened. That change... whatever it was... must have had something to do with my own life, because I don't remember what it was. But of all the moments I had shared with the red haired man -- sitting next to him on our bed one afternoon and comforting him after bad news; him chasing me around the garden with water spouting from a hose; making small repairs on the house we shared -- the one moment that I saw in my dreams more than once was the moment we slipped rings onto each other's fingers and then clasped our hands and looked at each other, overcome by the moment, people all around us cheering us on. If that wasn't our wedding, what was it? I dreamed that same moment three times that I could remember. Maybe I dreamed it every night, my damaged memory trying to recover the whole ceremony or the entire day or even the sum total of our history together.

"Jared," I pressed on, "I know I love men. I think that might be why I'm here."

He drew back, looked at me with fear and sadness, and then rose to his feet and left the room.

***

Dr. Wyler didn't come back on Monday. Neither did Jared. The nurses and orderlies did their jobs, looking in on me, bringing me meals, even letting me walk in the hospital garden -- a nondescript place that could have been anywhere, but I was starting to think that it was in Michigan. Or maybe I lived in Michigan. It was summer, at any rate. It had been summer the whole time. I'd woken up here, what... four months earlier? And it was still summer? Could this really be Michigan?

Tuesday night, after my first sleep, lying awake as I did every night and letting my mind wander, waiting for second sleep, I heard mutterings in the hall just outside the door.

"He doesn't care, just not here."

"Does Wyler think we can just throw people out on the street?"

"I think we can find him a place at the Kellner Institute."

"Why would they want him? It's government funded through the Charities Act. That means churches pay the bills over there."

"At Kellner they don't care about that sort of thing."

"They had better not let the taxpayers find out."

"I'll get paperwork started -- "

"For him? Are you kidding? You won't need paperwork. His kind aren't even citizens any more. They don't even allow people like him to have names."

"He really is a charity case, then..."

"Only if we get moving. Wait more than a couple of days and he won't be anything. He'll be at the bottom of a dumpster, that's what he'll be."

The voices faded.

Second sleep was long in coming.

***

It was Jared who took me out of the hospital and to The Kellner Institute. It turns out I've been in Florida all this time.

"Listen," Jared said, as we drew up to the gate. "I think this is all terrible. God will never forgive us for any of what we're doing."

"I wouldn't worry too much about God," I assured him. "I'm sure he's seen worse."

"You haven't see what I have," Jared said grimly. "What they did to you was bad enough, but at least it almost had a kind of logic to it. 'Erase the trauma, erase the choice.' That's Wyler's slogan. 'Erase the memory, erase the habit, ease the sin.' But what if it's not a sin? What if it's not a choice? What if the only trauma is the trauma we're inflicting? How did this madness become the way of the world? How can it seem normal?"

"I don't know, Jared."

"How anyone can take that quack seriously when we know... when science tells us..." Jared didn't tell me what science had to say. His voice trailed off. Then he came out with, "Wyler's theories are like something from the Soviet Union. Wyler gets away with this because he has Kirsch's ear. And he only has Kirsch's ear because they were classmates at Yale."

"Kirsch?"

Jared laughed bitterly. "Our F�hrer. The President of the United States, Winfield Kirsch. Smooth hair, perfect smile, silver spoon, empty heart. Empty. The man is a monster."

He thumbed the ignition and the car's quiet thrum faded away. He leaned his head against the steering wheel. I thought he might be crying, but after a moment he sat up and I saw his eyes were dry. Praying, then? Why did people pray so much, when obviously no one was listening?

But someone was kind, once in a while. Someone like Jared. He reached into the back seat and retrieved a courier bag. Pawing through it, it found a pindrive. Then he produced a slate, and clicked the drive into the pinhole. The slate pinged.

"Here." Jared handed me the slate. The image on the screen was of the man in my dreams -- the man with red hair. "You're right," Jared said. "He's your husband."

"Where is he?" I asked.

"I'm not sure. Maybe one of the camps."

"The camps?"

"Or one of the research compounds. I think they sent him to Idaho, in any case."

"What? Idaho?"

"Kamiah. There's both a camp and a compound there." Jared sighed. "He's gone. That's all I can tell you. He's gone and I don't think you'll see him again."

I wondered what they called him in Kamiah, at the camp. Or at the compound. We don't have names any more, I guess. We're not people any more, I guess. They wouldn't call him even by a name like John Doe. Did they call him by a number? Patient so-and-so? Intern such-and-such? Did he have his number tattooed on his arm?

I looked at my own arm, alarmed at the thought. I saw nothing there but blemish-free skin. Then I saw Jared's freckled forearm as he reached over to grasp my wrist. I met his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Do you want to know his name? What his name used to be?"

I found myself unable to answer him.

"You should at least know your own legal name. When it was legal for you to have a name, at least," Jared started, but I shook my head.

"No?" he asked.

I handed him back the slate. "Please," I said to him. "Please don't tell me who I was."

He frowned, not understanding, but he didn't argue. A few moments later we both got out of the car and he walked me through the gates and into the building.

My room doesn't have a number on it here. No one refers to me as Patient 420. I don't know how the nuns and volunteers who staff the place refer to me. As the poor sinner whose mind was wiped by Kirsch's mad-dog doctor? As the sodomite?

Whoever I am, whatever they call me, let it all stay out there along Jared's pindrive and my case file and my husband's name. Right now, my dreams are enough -- such lovely stuff, dreams... why burden them with names and dates and places and facts? Maybe I am better off not remembering any of it. Maybe I am better off letting the past remain in the past, and joining my red haired husband in my dreams, where shards of memory dance in kaleidoscopic forms, ever shifting, ever mysterious and radiant.

Everything is possible here, in this tiny dot of a place, in this fleeting moment. Let it remain that way. Let me remain nameless and indeterminate, adrift among so many startling and delightful possibilities. Let this moment last, let me remain suspended in the moment until the moment expands without limit. Give me safety as the world slips again into troubled slumber.