Brain Damage

Jerry entered the doctor’s office, disoriented as ever. He had not felt well lately. In fact, he had not felt well in a long time. He could not be certain as to how long exactly, but he knew it had been a while. Lately, his memory hasn’t been what it used to be. He had not been what he used to be. His body seemed to quit working at times. He would wet himself and not even be aware that he was pissing until a warm sensation ran down his leg. Recently, he had begun lactating. 
         “Hi,” Jerry said with a shy smile to the receptionist. “Uh, I was sent over by another doctor. I don’t really know what is wrong with me, but he wants me to get my head checked out.” That wasn’t what he meant to say, but that was the best he could muster. The truth was, Jerry’s memory and weird body functions wasn’t the only thing wrong with him lately, he found talking hard. Yes, the simple art of talking had become quite a task. He found himself wanting to say something grandeur or intelligent, but often found himself gaping with no words. And, when the words did come, they were dumb things like I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Of course he didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he did know who sent him here and why he was sent here. “I need to see a doctor,” he said shaking his head in agreement with his words.  No shit, I’m at a doctor’s office!  This was really frustrating to Jerry.
         “So, you have an appointment?” the receptionist asked more politely than was completely necessary. She was obviously used to deal with people in his mental state.
         “Um, let me check with my mom,” Jerry said, knowing it was wrong immediately after the look she gave him. What? What the hell am I talking about, I’m 37 years old! “I mean, yes, I do,” he said abruptly. “At least, I think I do. I’m Jerry.” He thought he should have given his last name, but had no clue what it was.
         “Thomas?” The receptionist asked gingerly.
         “No, it’s Jerry,” he echoed.
         The receptionist gave him a blank stare. “Jerry Thomas?”
         Of course, I’m an idiot! “Yes, that is me.”
         “Jerry, if you will have a seat, we’ll have a doctor call you back shortly,” she said perkily.
         Jerry took his seat beside an elderly man who was there with his wife. On second glance, his wife was there with him. He had never noticed how plain it was on a man’s face until then; the old man had no clue where he was. He wondered if others thought the same thing of him when they looked at him.
         He hadn’t always been like this. He was an intelligent man, a successful business man. In fact, his ability to recall the tiniest little details was what made him so successful. Only recently had he began to forget things. And, oddly, he remembered things, strange things, which he didn’t really have a clue where the memories came from. One particular was very vivid. A blonde woman, very attractive. Her long bangs framed the edges of her face. She never had a shirt on, but he never could see anything but her face. And she was always holding a finger to her mouth, shushing him, her finger and mouth covered in blood.  He didn’t know what it meant or where it came from, but it was so surreal, constantly popping up in his head. He started having this vision around the time his memory began to fade.
         A nurse stepped out with a clip board. “Mr. Thomas?” She looked around the room, her eyes passing over Jerry. No response. “Jerry Thomas?” She looked up again, scanning the room.
         “Oh, that’s me!” Jerry said, eagerly springing to his feet. He felt like an idiot again. He wanted to pawn it off by saying something funny, but nothing was coming. He thought of something polite as quickly as he could. “I bet your mom is fucking hot,” Jerry said innocently as he reached the nurse.
         “Excuse me?” She gave him confused look.
         He was sure he said something wrong, but couldn’t quite place what it was. “What I meant was, you’re hot. So your mom must be as well.” Jerry’s face flushed. He knew he had messed it up again, but he still could not pin point what was wrong with what he said.
         “This way, Mr. Thomas,” the nurse said as she walked away. Jerry looked over his shoulder, then realized she was talking to him.
         After changing into a gown, the nurse led him in for a CAT-scan. Jerry felt out of place here. He was a smart man with an amazing memory, why was he here? He answered a few simple questions while getting the CAT-scan. He answered most relatively easy, but he knew a few had wrong answers.
         After the scan, the nurse led him back to a room where he was told to wait. “The doctor will be in shortly,” the attractive nurse from earlier told him. He felt it best to hold his tongue this time around.
         The doctor showed up a few minutes later, faster than Jerry expected. But, then again, Jerry was not entirely sure how long he had been in the room. “Hey Jerry, I’m Dr. Osmond,” a youngish doctor said, extending his hand. Jerry paused momentarily. His first instinct was to kick the doctor’s hand. Not in malice, but as a form of greeting. He wasn’t sure if he honestly thought he was supposed to kick his hand or if he was supposed to do something else, like offer his hand in the same gesture the doctor did.
         “Look doc, can I be honest with you?” Jerry said, looking up from his hand.
         “Absolutely, that’s why you’re here isn’t it?” The doctor came off as genuine.
         “Something is wrong with me. Severely wrong with me. Even as I sit here now, I feel the need to kick your hand, I don’t know why. I’ve lost control of most of my involuntary body functions, I can’t remember most things I feel I should, and I remember weird things I have no idea why I know them.”
         The doctor contemplated what Jerry had said. “What kind of things do you remember that you feel you shouldn’t?”
         “Things pop into my head that I have no idea where they come from. They aren’t my thoughts, I know they aren’t. I’ve never in my life sat to piss, but I can remember sitting to take a piss. I remember having tits and making love, as a woman. I have memories of giving birth and walking the Great Wall, but I’ve never been to China. I had to ask about that last part since I can’t really remember whether or not I’ve been to China.”
         The doctor looked at him, perplexed a bit, shaking his head as it all soaked in. “Your file sent over by Dr. Hammonds says you’ve been lactating recently?”
         “Yeah,” Jerry said incredulously. “Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is for me to have milk shooting out of my tits at work? I don’t even have tits!” He said shaking his head in disbelief.
         “How long ago did all of this start?”
         “I…I don’t know.” Jerry wanted to give a better answer, but that was the best he had.
         “Any idea what set it off?” the doctor asked.
         “No. I don’t have a clue.”
         “What is your family history with cancer, Jerry?”  The doctor was still skimming over his file.
         “Um, well, I’m not entirely sure.” Jerry thought the strain was evident on his face. “I know my grandfather died of lung cancer. I don’t really remember much other than that.”
         “How about your sex life. Are you promiscuous?”
         Jerry felt this was getting a bit too personal, but answered anyway. “Ah, well, yeah, it’s good. My sex life. One to two different partners a month, with an occasional repeat. I’m fairly safe usually, but like any other man, I don’t want to wear a wet suit every time I swim.”
         The door opened and a different nurse walked in and handed a folder to the doctor. “Thanks, Janine,” Dr Osmond said, taking the fold labeled Jerry Thomas: CAT-scan results from her.
         Jerry looked up at the nurse. She was vaguely familiar, her blonde hair framing her face.  “Shh,” she said, pursing her lips and raising a finger to her mouth, “you gotta be quite while he reads the results,” she said with a wink.
         His face went blank as an image crept back into his head. A shirtless blonde with long bangs, pursing her lips with a finger to shush him, blooding dripping down her chin. The nurse looked back over her shoulder one last time on her way out. He was sure that was her. “That’s her!” he exclaimed when the door shut. “That’s her, she’s one of the images that keeps popping into my head!” The doctor looked up from the report with a raised eyebrow. “I swear to God, that’s her. She keeps popping into my head. She’s naked, but all I can see is the blood on her hands and face, but I’m sure that’s her. No one else has that picturesque face framed by those bangs!” He felt like he was trying to convince the doctor he wasn’t crazy.
         The doctor stared at Jerry momentarily as if he was contemplating something before flipping through the CAT-scan results very quickly. “Excuse me for a second,” the doctor said as he headed for the door, mildly slamming the door behind him as if closing it would keep Jerry from hearing him while he was yelling on the other side. “JANINE!” Dr. Osmond sounded pretty mad. “Have you ever seen that man before,” the doctor asked.
         “No!” Janine’s reply muffled by the door.
         “He said he has the images of you popping in his head. You are naked and covered in blood. He also said he imagines strange things, things that could never had happened to him, and all of these memories started popping into his head around the time he started having memory problems and physical complications, all seemingly related to the CNS. His left and right brain are two different sizes and its smashing against his hypothalamus. Part of his medulla oblongata is missing and the hippocampus has substantial damage! Now call me crazy, but someone has been fucking with his brain! It doesn’t take a brain surgeon like me to realize that part of his brain has been taken out and replaced by someone else’s!”  The doctor was furious, Jerry could tell, but he couldn’t comprehend all of what the doctor was yelling about.
         “Dammit Alex, what did you want me to do? We’re on the verge of making an amazing break through!  Just because you are too big of a pussy to do the work you know needs to be done doesn’t give you the right to lash out at me!” She sounded equally pissed.
         “We had an agreement! Under my supervision!” He seemed pretty emphatic on his point. “You can’t run around doing this stupid shit! You’re gonna get us both in trouble.”
         “For fuck’s sake Alex, I replaced half of his brain and he lived! He has someone else’s memories! I even ate some of his brains to see if I could absorb his memories. I tested his pain sensory mechanisms, on his brain and the new brain. I’ve advanced our cause a lot with him, and you have the audacity to get mad at me?”She still sounded muffled.
         “You can’t sacrifice all of our hard work for stupid, simple progress!” Dr. Osmond sounded as if he was about to explode. “What if he turns you in? Then what? He recognized you, you know?”
         Jerry barely heard her as she softened up. “Alex,” she began but was interrupted curtly.
         “No, don’t give me that teary eyed Alex shit, Janine!”
         “Alex!” She screamed, her voice coming through the door clearly. “He raped me.”
         “What?”
“We went back to my place after meeting at a bar. He drugged me somewhere along the way. I don’t remember much, I just remember coming out of it at the end. He was on top of me and we were both naked. I cried out, begging him to get off of me, but he wouldn’t. As he was getting dressed, he was sweet talking me telling me I wouldn’t remember. None of them ever do, he said. When his back was turned, I grabbed the gun from the night stand and pistol whipped him in the back of the head. I woke up an hour later lying in the floor, him beside me with his head split open, still unconscious. I sedated him and dragged him to my car. I brought him up here thinking he might be dead. I checked his vitals. When I was convinced he was stable, I cut his head open and started messing around with his brain. I figured what better way to get justice than to use him for research?” There was a long pause, her sniffling and sobbing barely audible to Jerry.
         “What are you going to do if he recognizes you?” Dr Osmond finally asked.
         “I don’t think he will,” she started. “I was worried about it at first. But, I bumped into him at the grocery store the other day and he looked me right in the eye and smiled.”
         “But, he just did!” the doctor exclaimed.
         “Yeah, but the damage his hippocampus received probably won’t allow him to convert long term memories. Watch.”          
         Jerry looked up as the door knob turned and a pretty blonde nurse walked in with a doctor. “Hey, there you are,” Jerry said, excited to see them. “I thought ya’ll might leave me in here all day. Are ya’ll gonna be able to get me in for a CAT-scan today? It sure would be nice to know what the hell is wrong with me.” Jerry looked from the nurse to the doctor, who where both exchanging looks with raised eyebrows. Jerry felt as if he said something wrong, but again, couldn’t place what it was. He wanted to pawn it off by saying something funny, but nothing was coming. He thought of something polite as quickly as he could. “I bet your mom is fucking hot,” Jerry said innocently.

         WC:2432