Gwendy’s Final Task

27

WHILE SERVING IN THE U.S. House of Representatives, Gwendy had had good connections. As a member of the Senate, she had even better ones, and she never needed one more than after her latest Brain Freeze. The specialty of the house is crankshafts, for Christ’s sake. She thought of calling Charlotte Morgan, then rejected the idea out of hand. Charlotte was a spook, after all. She might decide that letting Gwendy hold onto the button box was too great a risk. Gwendy knew that letting anyone else hold onto it would be an even greater one.

After some thought she called one of her new friends: Mike DeWine at the NSA. She told him she needed to make an appointment with a psychiatrist who was completely trustworthy. She asked if Mike knew such a person, knowing he would; the NSA kept a close watch on any developing mental problems in its staff. Secrets must be kept.

“Losing your grip, Senator?” Mike asked amiably.

Gwendy laughed cheerily, as if that wasn’t exactly what she was afraid of. “Nope, my marbles are all present and accounted for. I’m involved in a review of the NDS—that’s for your ears only, Mike—and I have some very delicate questions.”

NDS stood for National Defense System, and that was enough for Mike. No one likes the idea of mentally unstable people in charge of the nuclear arsenal.

“Is there a problem I should know about?”

“Not at present. I’m being proactive.”

“Good to know. There’s a guy … hold on a sec, the name escapes me …”

Join the club, Gwendy thought, and couldn’t help smiling. Losing one’s shit really did have its funny side, she supposed. Or would, if a box that could destroy the world wasn’t involved.

“Okay, here it is. Norman Ambrose is our top go-to shrink. He’s on Michigan Avenue.” Gwendy wrote down the address, plus Ambrose’s office number and personal cell. Thank God for NSA info, Gwendy thought. “He’s probably booked into the twenty-third century, but I think you’ll be able to jump the line. Being a United States Senator and all.”

Gwendy was able to jump it, and was sitting in Dr. Ambrose’s office the following afternoon. After listening to him reiterate his promise of absolute confidentiality, she took a deep breath and told him she was afraid she was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s or dementia. She told him that if it was true, no one could know until she completed a certain high-priority task.

“How high?” Ambrose asked.

“The highest, but that’s all I can say. It may be a year before I can do the job I need to do. More likely two. It might even be three, but God, I hope not.”

“May I assume that if certain people discovered your condition—if it indeed exists—this job would be taken from you?”

Gwendy gave him a bleak smile. “That can’t happen. If anyone tried, it would be a disaster.”

“Senator—”

“Gwendy. Please. In here I’m Gwendy.”

“All right, Gwendy. Is there a history of Alzheimer’s or dementia in your family?”

“Not really. My Aunt Felicia went gaga, but she was in her late 90s.”

“Uh-huh, good. And you lost your husband fairly recently?”

“Yes.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss. Added to that you have all the responsibilities of a new Senator to deal with. You may be suffering from simple stress.”

“There’s no blood test for Alzheimer’s, is there?”

“Unfortunately, no. The only way we can confirm the diagnosis—other than by observing the constant deterioration of the patient’s medical faculties—is by autopsy after death. There’s a written test which is a good marker, however.”

“I should take it.”

“I think that’s a good idea. In the meantime, can I suggest a practical way of dealing with these Brain Freezes, as you call them?”

“God, yes! I’d do enemas three times a day if I thought it would help!”

Dr. Ambrose smiled. “No enemas, just a process of association, and you may have almost come to it on your own.” He had a yellow legal pad on his lap. Now he turned back a page and studied the notes he’d made during her story. “When writing about this little restaurant, Simone’s, you found you were unable to remember a certain word. Do you remember it now?”

“Sure. Hotdogs.”

“But you wrote—?”

“Crankshafts,” Gwendy said, and felt herself blush.

“You knew it was wrong, so you tried again. Do you recall your second stab at it?”

Gwendy was having a clear day, not even a trace of mental fog, and she remembered at once. “Burgomeister.” Her blush deepened. “I wrote ‘You’ll never have a better burgomeister.’ Stupid, right?”

“I don’t think so.” Ambrose leaned forward. “What usually goes with hotdogs at a picnic or a barbecue, Gwendy?”

She understood at once. “Hamburgers!”

“I think your mind was trying to form a chain of connections that would lead you back to the word you were looking for. Crankshafts are straight cylinders. So are hotdogs. Burgomeisters are a step closer. I believe if you’d taken your eyes from the screen with your essay on it, and relaxed your mind, you would have found the word.”

“Can I train myself to do that?”

“Yes.” He said it without hesitation. “This is a trainable skill. Tell me, do you have a pet?”

“No. My father does. A troublesome old dachshund.”

“What is the troublesome dachshund’s name?”

Gwendy opens her mouth, comes up blank, and closes it again.

“Fucked if I can remember. Sorry, that just slipped out. This thing … it’s infuriating.”

Ambrose smiled. “Quite all right. Can you associate your way to it? Look up at the ceiling. Let your mind run in neutral. This is a process we teach patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, but also to recovering stroke victims. Don’t push. Don’t hunt. Your mind knows what you want, but it needs to take a detour, and detours take time.”

Gwendy looked up at the ceiling. She thought about her father’s smile, so warm and welcoming … she thought about the maroon sweater he always wore when the weather turned cold … watching musicals with him and Mom on TV because they loved them and would sing along … Gwendy watching and singing along with them … West Side Story was her favorite, but her father’s was that one with Ben Vereen. That one was—

“His dachshund is Pippa. My dad named her after his favorite musical. Pippin.”

Ambrose nodded. “You see how it works?”

Gwendy began to cry, which didn’t discommode Ambrose in the slightest. He just handed her a box of Kleenex. She supposed tears in this office were pretty common.

“Will it always work?”

Ambrose grinned, making him look boyish. “Does anything?”

Gwendy laughed shakily. “I suppose not.”

“Depending on how your test comes out, Gwendy—we’ll do that today, as your situation is clearly difficult—I may prescribe drugs which might slow the progression of your illness. Which, I want to emphasize, is not yet proven. At this point simple stress seems more likely to me.”

You may be a great headshrinker, but I don’t think you’re much of a liar, Gwendy thought. You’ve seen all these symptoms before. It’s not, as they say, your first rodeo.

“What drugs?”

“Aricept is my go-to. Exelon sometimes works well in the early stages. But all that is putting the cart before the horse. We need to see how you do on the mini-cog. Come back at five this afternoon, if your schedule permits.”

“It does.” Gwendy had cleared the day for Ambrose.

“In the meantime, get something to eat and help yourself to a caffeine drink. Coffee, soda, even a Monster Energy.”

“Thank you, Dr. Ambrose.”

“You’re very welcome, Senator.”

“Gwendy, remember?”

“Yes. Gwendy. And I don’t suppose you can tell me anything about this job that’s so important?”

She gave him a level look—her Senator Peterson look. “You wouldn’t want to know, Dr. Ambrose. Believe me.”

She donned a headscarf and dark glasses and slipped into a nearby Burger King, where she ordered a Whopper with Cheese, a large order of fries, and slurped a large Coke until the straw crackled in the bottom of the cup. Her first bite of the Whopper made her realize that she was ravenous. She supposed relief spurred appetite. And sharing the burden, of course. Now she had a strategy to cope with the Brain Freezes, and she could hope that Ambrose was right, and it was only stress. The test—what Ambrose had called a mini-cog—might confirm that.

She laughed when Ambrose began asking the questions, because they reminded her of the test Donald Trump had boasted about passing. Easy-peasy, she thought … but by the time she completed it she was no longer laughing. Neither was Ambrose.

She did okay on the season (spring) and the date, but could not immediately remember what month this was. She was sure she could have used Ambrose’s associative method and come up with it if he’d given her time, but he didn’t. She was even worse at counting back from a hundred by sevens. She got 93, then said 85, which was really just a guess. She was able to repeat back apple-table-penny five minutes later but found herself completely incapable of spelling WORLD backwards. There was plenty of stuff she got right—copying a cartoon drawing, folding a sheet of paper in thirds—but there were distressing and inexplicable (to her, at least) failures. When Ambrose asked her to draw a clock face, for instance, she drew an oblong with a curve like a smile beneath it. She showed it to him and said, “I think this might be wrong.”

So much was wrong.

And the wait for her trip into space stretched out ahead of her, with no firm date set and so many days to struggle through.

But I have to try!