to use the bathroom.”
I know—I remember, from somewhere—that what has happened involves sensory integration and visual processing. Walking is strange. I know I am walking; I can feel my legs moving smoothly. But what I see is jerky, one abrupt position after another. What I hear is footsteps and echoes of footsteps and reechoes of footsteps.
Lou-before tells me this is not how it was, not since he was tiny. Lou-before helps me focus on the door to the men’s toilets and get through it, while Lou-now rummages madly through memories of conversations overheard and books read trying to find something that will help.
The men’s toilet is quieter; no one else is there. Gleams of light race at my eyes from the smooth curving white porcelain fixtures, the shiny metal knobs and pipes. There are two cubicles at the far end; I go into one and close the door.
Lou-before notices the floor tiles and the wall tiles and wants to calculate the volume of the room.
Lou-now wants to climb into a soft, dark place and not come out until morning.
It is morning. It is still morning and we—I—have not had lunch. Object permanence. What I need is object permanence. What Lou-before read about it in a book—a book he read, a book I do not quite remember but also do remember—comes back to me. Babies don’t have it; grownups do. People blind from birth, whose sight is restored, can’t learn it: they see a table morphing from one shape to another as they walk by.
I was not blind from birth. Lou-before had object permanence in his visual processing. I can have it, too.
I had it, until I tried to read the story…
I can feel the pounding of my heart slow down, sink below awareness. I lean over, looking at the tiles of the floor. I don’t really care what size they are or about calculating the area of the floor or the volume of the room. I might do it if I were trapped here and bored, but at the moment I’m not bored. I’m confused and worried.
I do not know what happened. Brain surgery? I have no scars, no uneven hair growth. Some medical emergency?
Emotion floods me: fear and then anger, and with it a peculiar sensation that I am swelling and then shrinking. When I am angry, I feel taller and other things look smaller. When I am scared, I feel small and other things look bigger. I play with these feelings, and it is very strange to feel that the tiny cubicle around me is changing size. It can’t really be changing size. But how would I know if it were?
Music floods my mind suddenly, piano music. Gentle, flowing, organized sound… I squeeze my eyes shut, relaxing again. The name comes to me: Chopin. An etude. An etude is a study… no, let the music flow; don’t think.
I run my hands up and down my arms, feeling the texture of my skin, the springiness of the hairs. It is soothing, but I do not need to keep doing it.
“Lou! Are you in here? Are you all right?” It is Jim, the orderly who has taken care of me most days.
The music fades, but I can feel it rippling under my skin, soothing.
“I’m fine,” I say. I can tell that my voice sounds relaxed. “I just needed a break, is all."
“Better come out, buddy,” he says. “They’re startin’ to freak out here.”
Sighing, I stand up and unlatch the door. Object permanence retains its shape as I walk out; the walls and floor stay as flat as they should; the gleam of light off shiny surfaces doesn’t bother me. Jim grins at me. “You’re okay then, buddy?”
“Fine,” I say again. Lou-before liked music. Lou-before used music to steady him… I wonder how much of Lou-before’s music I could still remember.
Janis and Dr. Hendricks are waiting in the hall. I smile at them. “I’m fine,” I say. “I really did just need to go to the bathroom.”
“But Janis says you fell,” Dr. Hendricks says.
“Just a glitch,” I say. “Something about the confusion while reading sort of… madea confusion in the senses, but it’s gone now.” I look down the hall both ways to be sure. Everything seems fine. “I want to talk to you about what actually happened,” I say to Dr. Hendricks. “They said brain surgery, but I don’t have any scars that I can see. And I need to understand what’s going on in my brain.”
She purses her lips,then