book Alex had been reading, and she picked it up, studying the immensely enlarged brain cell on the cover for a moment. “Why are you reading this?”
“I thought maybe if I knew more about the brain, I might be able to figure out what’s happening to me,” Alex replied.
“And are you?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m going to have to do a lot more studying.”
Ellen put the book down and took Alex’s hands. Though he made no response, neither did he immediately draw away from her. “Honey, the only thing that matters is that you’re getting better. It doesn’t matter why or how. Don’t you see that?”
Alex shook his head. “The thing is, I’m not sure I am getting better, and I want to know. It just seems … well, I just think it’s important that I know what’s happening in my brain.”
Ellen squeezed his hands, then let them go and stood up. “Well, I’m not going to tell you not to study, and Lord knows your father won’t either. But don’t stay up all night, okay?” Alex nodded and picked up his-book. When Ellen leaned down to kiss him good night, he returned the gesture.
But as his mother left the room, Alex wondered why she always kissed him, and what she felt when she did. For his own part, he felt nothing.…
Marsh was still in his easy chair, staring morosely into the cold fireplace, when Alex came into the living room an hour later. “Dad?”
Marsh looked up, blinking tiredly. “I thought you’d gone to bed.”
“I’ve been studying, but I need to talk to you. I’ve been reading about the brain,” Alex began, “and there’s some things I don’t understand.”
“So you thought you’d ask the family doctor?” He gestured toward the sofa. “I’m not sure I can help you, but I’ll try. What’s the problem?”
“I need to know how bad the damage was to my brain,” Alex said. Then he shook his head. “No, that’s not really it. I guess what I need to know is how deep the damage went. I’m not too worried about the cortex itself. I think that’s all right.”
The tiredness suddenly drained out of Marsh as he stared at Alex. “You think that’s all right?” he echoed. “After reading for a couple of hours, you think the cortex is all right?”
Alex nodded, and if his father’s skeptical tone affected him at all, he gave no sign. “It seems as though there must have been damage a lot deeper, but there are some things that don’t seem to make any sense.”
“For instance?” Marsh asked.
“The amygdala,” Alex said, and Marsh stared at him. He searched his mind, and eventually associated the word with a small almond-shaped organ deep within the brain, nearly surrounded by the hippocampus. If he’d ever known its exact function, he’d long since forgotten.
“I know where it is,” he said. “But what about it?”
“It seems like mine must have been damaged, but I don’t see how that’s possible.”
Marsh leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “I’m not following you,” he said. “Why do you say the amygdala must have been injured?”
“Well, according to this book, what’s been happening to me seems like it must be associated with the amygdala. I don’t seem to have any emotions, and we know what happened to my memory. But now I’m starting to remember things, except that the way I remember them isn’t the way they are, but the way they used to be.”
Marsh nodded, though he wasn’t exactly sure where Alex was going. “All right. And what do you think that means?”
“Well, it seems that I’m having imaginary memories. I’m remembering things that I couldn’t remember.”
“Maybe,” Marsh cautioned him. “Or maybe your memories are just twisted a bit.”
“I’ve thought of that,” Alex said. “But I don’t think so. I keep remembering things as they were long before I was even born, so I must only be imagining that I’m remembering them.”
“And what does that have to do with the amygdala?”
“Well, it says in the book I read that the amygdala may be the part of the brain that mediates rearrangement of memory images, and that seems to be what’s happening to me. As though the images are getting rearranged, and then coming out as real memories when they’re not.”
Marsh’s brows arched skeptically. “And it seems to me as though you’re jumping to a pretty farfetched conclusion.”
“But there’s something else,” Alex went on. “According to this book, the amygdala also handles emotional memories. And I don’t have any