WHEN THE WEEK of Valentine’s Day came, I didn’t understand its emotional significance, so Taylor briefed me—at her mother’s suggestion—and told me to get Joan a card. But she didn’t give me a hint about buying flowers or a romantic gift for the woman I loved. It wasn’t until I saw the dozen yellow roses arrive in a vase for Taylor that I felt like an unfit husband.
How could I not have gotten something for Joan, the woman who has done everything for me, shown me so much love, and has stood by me, taking care of me every step of the way since the accident?
My ignorance, once again, was hard to accept. After I’d told Joan several times how sorry I was, she finally said, “Please stop apologizing to me. We don’t need to give each other gifts to know that we love each other.”
These comments only reconfirmed how giving Joan was and that although she appreciated that we were still together after my injury, she was more interested in whether I’d fall in love with her again.
“I love you, and I love the fact that you love and care for me the way that you do,” I said, embracing her and giving her a tender kiss. “Next time I’ll know what to do.”
As Joan’s birthday on February 23 approached, she was becoming more tense, a stark contrast with how Taylor had acted near her special day. I could understand that celebrating birthdays was no longer as much fun for someone our age as it was a reminder that we were getting older, but I wondered if something else was going on.
“Have you noticed Mom is acting different, more stressed, lately?” I asked Taylor.
“She never really gets excited about her birthday because four days later is Taryn’s birthday,” Taylor explained.
“What do I usually do for Mom’s birthday?”
“You’ve always tried to make it a special time for her,” she said. “You’ve surprised her with a trip to San Francisco. Last year you took her to Chicago and surprised her with Bon Jovi concert tickets. You’re always romantic, and you do your best even though she doesn’t want to celebrate it.”
I believed all that, but I knew this year had to be even tougher with the stress and depression she’d been experiencing since my accident.
“Maybe I need to discuss this with Mom before making any plans,” I said.
But when I tried to talk to Joan, she wasn’t very responsive. “I don’t want anything for my birthday—maybe just go out for a nice dinner with the kids,” she said.
She was clearly in no mood for festivities, especially knowing that she was going to have to endure the anniversary of the worst day of her life with a husband who couldn’t genuinely share her grief. Sensing all this, I wanted to please her even more, so I agreed not to get her anything and that we would go to one of our favorite Japanese restaurants where they prepared the food tableside.
We all met up at Way Sushi & Teppanyaki around 5:30 and had a long table all to ourselves. Joan ordered her usual fillet and scallops, Taylor got the chicken and shrimp, and Grant and I ordered the scallops, which Joan said was my favorite.
The cook put on a show with fancy knife work, forming a volcano-shaped mound of onions that billowed white smoke after he poured oil into the center of it, then made a “choo-choo” sound as if it were a train’s smokestack. That seemed to break the ice a bit. Our elevated stress level was compounded by having Grant there, in another one of his moods. But at least he wasn’t acting out like he had on Taylor’s birthday.
I tried to keep the general conversation light and upbeat, hoping to make Joan laugh.
“Don’t worry, I’m still older than you,” I said.
“Yeah, six months.”
“Well, you still look better than women half your age.”
I knew deep down that Joan was putting on a front just to get through the night. Taylor told the owners it was Joan’s birthday, so they brought over a dessert plate of sliced pineapple wedges with a single lit candle and sang “Happy Birthday” in Japanese. I found this amusing, and Joan seemed to appreciate the gesture.
After dinner Joan’s parents joined us back at the house for chocolate cake and coffee. By this time I felt comfortable enough to actually sing the birthday song. Taylor said we should put only one candle on the cake even if we had forty-six in the house.
When Joan had obviously had enough, her parents left, Grant went home, and Taylor went to Anthony’s, leaving Joan and me alone. I told her I felt conflicted about not getting her a gift, but I’d honored her wishes just the same.
“I just don’t feel very happy about myself these days, and I don’t want to focus on me,” she replied.
“I understand the way you feel, but I’m still trying to figure all of this out, and I want to make sure that I’m doing everything correctly.”
“You don’t need to feel disappointed,” she said. “It’s more about being with you and the family. That’s a gift enough. Just get your memory back for my birthday.”
“I’m trying.”
“I can hit you in the back of your head again if you like,” she joked. I immediately thought of the Three Stooges and figured she was going to be okay.
Among the voicemail messages that Joan had saved was one from a guy who said he hadn’t heard from me in a while and wanted to have lunch.
“Did I know a guy named Mark Hyman?” I asked.
Joan reminded me that we’d been friends since we had offices next door to each other in 1993. She called him to explain what happened, and he and I had a short, awkward conversation. He said he’d wondered what happened to me because we’d planned to have a holiday lunch the day after my accident but I’d never called to confirm. He invited me to lunch again, but I wasn’t ready yet to try having a conversation in public with someone outside my immediate family.
Joan had been encouraging me to rebuild my friendship with Mark and my old friend Jerry Pinto, saying it would be good for me to have someone other than her to vent to, someone who could give me a different perspective on the old Scott and could fill me in on private man things we used to talk about. “You don’t tell your wives everything,” she said.
Besides that, she said, who better to teach me how to be a man than another man?
These seemed like good reasons, and, frankly, I was intrigued to see whether my friends were anything like me. I knew that Jerry and Mark were both a decade older than me, and even on the phone they sounded far more boisterous and self-assured than I felt inside, which was meek and reserved, even though I didn’t know what those words meant at the time. I didn’t really know how to be myself with either one of them because I didn’t know who that was, so all I could do was react to whatever they said or did.
Back in February Jerry had flown in for a brief trip to help Joan and me resolve our health insurance problems, but we didn’t have more than an hour’s conversation over dinner before he flew home with my signature. I’d been hoping to rebuild our friendship, but in spite of his promises to be available anytime to talk to me—“If you’re upset, call me. If you can’t sleep, call me”—I’d left multiple messages on both his cell and business numbers and he’d only called once since his trip.
“Sorry I haven’t called back. I’ve just been busy. I’ll give you a call tomorrow,” Jerry said. But the call never came.
Initially I thought maybe he was just busy, as he said, but when the trend continued, I wondered what I’d said or done wrong, so I kept leaving messages. We finally did connect a few times later in the year, but they were brief conversations, with dozens of messages from me in between.
Mark, on the other hand, had been checking in with me every couple of weeks, and when I was ready, we made plans to meet for lunch at Chompie’s, a Jewish deli in Scottsdale.
When Joan dropped me off, I saw a man fitting her description standing outside the restaurant and pointing at me. He was balding on top with brown, graying hair. Wearing nylon workout shorts and a T-shirt, he was about five feet ten inches tall and two hundred and forty pounds. If they made a movie about my story, I’d want a younger version of actor Abe Vigoda to play Mark.
Without Joan there, I had to order for myself for the first time. I knew I didn’t like bread, so I told Mark I was going to have the chopped liver on crackers because it looked good in the menu photo. Mark, who is Jewish, was surprised and even more surprised when I ended up liking my meal.
Joan had told me that I could trust Mark, but I also sensed that on my own. I felt it in my chest—what Joan called my “gut instinct”—that my feelings were safe with him and that he wouldn’t judge me. So I told him I didn’t remember playing football or who Joan was in the hospital, and I confided in him about my constant fears and anxieties.
“It must have been really traumatic for you to lose not only your memory but everything that you’ve worked for and everything that you planned for,” Mark said. “To lose your goals in life, who you are as a person, must be very disturbing.”
“It’s been very hard,” I said, pleased to hear someone other than Joan be so warm and understanding. “I’m having to re-create myself.”
Mark had three kids, even younger than mine. He and I were able to talk seriously about issues such as our families, my wife, and his ex-wife, and yet still joke around, including who was going to pay for the check. He offered to pay, and I let him because I didn’t know what else to do. Joan later told me that friends often alternate paying for lunch and that I could get the bill next time.
From that point on, Mark and I met for lunch at least once a month. Sometimes he joked that I had done myself some good with this accident because I’d never been one to talk about my feelings before. But when he told me I used to be confident and enterprising in business, he might as well have been talking about a total stranger.
Around this same time Joan was recruited by someone she’d met at a charity function and was hired as the director of a hospice foundation in Phoenix, where she was to be in charge of fund-raising and operations, starting in mid-March. She said this was something she’d always wanted to do, but more important, she needed to start earning an income and reduce our health insurance costs.
I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of her going out in the real world while I stayed home alone. With Taylor at school and Grant in his own apartment, the prospect of being alone for eight to ten hours a day was frightening.
What will I do all day? How will I get by? Who will teach me what I need to know?
Joan had rarely left my side for nearly three months. She’d provided me with the knowledge to exist, shown me how to live and how to love. For her sake I tried to laugh it off.
“You’re going to have fun not having to deal with me five days a week,” I told her.
She laughed. “I would still rather be here with you than go back to work,” she said. “You’re easy.”
Joan was concerned about the career change ahead of her, given that her past work experience was as a registered nurse and as a marketing director for our jet company. Working for me was the easiest job she’d ever had, she said. She didn’t have to show up for work every day, and she got to sleep with the boss, who always took her on vacations. But I figured that Joan was going to do just fine. After all, she had a master’s degree in leadership. I didn’t know what that meant, but it sure sounded good.
When Joan was getting ready for work on her first day, March 15, she looked happy and relieved. I figured she was pleased to be returning to work with her own age group, not having to spend every minute with her three-month-old husband. I had to admit I couldn’t blame her. This was her time to get away from me and to share her experiences and knowledge with others.
Still, it was tough to watch her walk out the door in her brown suit and pumps, her Louis Vuitton computer bag, and a small box of family photos and knickknacks for her office. I told myself it was time to share her with the rest of the world; this was also my opportunity to discover new ways to fend for myself. I wanted her there with me every second of the day, even if we got on each other’s nerves sometimes, but I had to admit that I really needed her to leave.
I walked her to the garage door and held her longingly, as if I wouldn’t see her for ten years. “Have a good day at work, and don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’ll be fine here by myself.”
She sighed. “I know you’ll be fine,” she said. “I’m just concerned about leaving you alone.”
I watched her back out of the driveway and head down the street before I walked into the house and closed the garage door. After Taylor left for school, the house was all mine, and it was oh so quiet.
I walked around the house, looking for some magical sign telling me what to do next. The house had never seemed so big. No one was there to stop me from getting into trouble or to tell me how to do things. I knew Joan was only a phone call away, but I was determined not to bug her. She had enough going on in her world, getting used to a new job and dealing with new people.
When she called around 11:00 A.M. to check on me, I was happy to hear from her.
“I’m okay, but I miss you,” I said.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be working yet,” she said, sounding worried. “Maybe I should be home, taking care of you.”
“I’ll be fine,” I told her again. “I need to learn on my own, and you need to be with other people so you don’t go crazy.”
That seemed to calm her down. “What are you up to?” she asked.
I told her I’d been reading news articles on the computer and going through my desk, scanning through documents and brochures to learn more about what I used to do for a living. I also felt it was important to learn as much as I could about the changing economy, the automakers’ bailout, and the ongoing controversy over CEOs’ use of private planes. I was trying to determine whether I would ever be able to make money again by managing private jets amid all this negative media coverage.
We ended the conversation with the usual “I love you,” and she said she’d be home around 6:00 because of the traffic.
As a way to show her that I had everything under control in her absence, I decided to make a nice dinner of chicken parmesan with steamed vegetables and garlic bread.
After a trip to the grocery story, my headache was getting bad, so I took some pain medicine and relaxed in my chair until Taylor got home. I must have dozed off because the next thing I remembered was Taylor opening the door around 3:00 P.M.
“I’m home. How was your day, Dad?” she asked in her usual teasing tone. “What did you do all day by yourself?”
“It was fine,” I said. “I didn’t hurt myself or get lost.”
“Well, that’s a good day then,” she said, laughing.
I asked if she would be home for dinner, and she said no, she had to work. After I told her what I was making, she replied, “You better save me some leftovers.”
I cleaned up around the house, opened the mail, and read the paper until 5:00 P.M., then started on dinner. I’d already made this meal once since my accident after Joan ordered it for dinner in Oceanside, and I felt comfortable trying it without the recipe. Cutting the chicken in thin slices, I pounded it with a meat hammer, soaked it in eggs, coated it with Italian bread crumbs, then sautéed it with olive oil, garlic, and pepper.
While that was cooking, I boiled water for the rotini noodles and cut fresh zucchini and carrots, which I steamed and sautéed. While the bread was in the oven, Joan popped in around 6:00, just as she’d planned.
I ran over to welcome her with a hug and kiss. “Wow, what smells so good in here?” she asked.
“I’m making one of your favorite dishes, chicken parm.”
“Yum.”
“How was your first day?”
“It was fun. I think I’m going to like this job,” she said, barely missing a beat before asking about me. “So tell me what you did all day.”
I told her I worked, went to the grocery store, got rid of a headache, and watched a lot of TV. “We’re going to switch to Geico insurance because we can save up to 15 percent,” I said, proudly quoting the little green lizard.
“Scott,” she said, laughing, “we already have good insurance, and we don’t need to switch.”
I was a little upset, not understanding the humor in what I was saying. I was seriously trying to cut our costs. “Look, if we can save money, why not do it?”
“Why don’t you concentrate on learning the important things, such as current events, past history, things like that?” she replied.
Now I really felt insulted. She was telling me what was important? Everything seemed important to me. “So, I guess the ShamWow! is out of the question then,” I snapped sarcastically, hoping to convey my hurt feelings.
Joan looked at me as if she couldn’t tell if I was kidding, but, well aware of my limitations, she softened her tone. “Not everything on television is a good choice,” she said.
As we sat down to eat the meal, which turned out quite well, I might add, she told me about her job, her co-workers, and how much she still had to learn. Then it was my turn. I had a new job as well.
“It’s difficult not having you here to keep me on track and show me what I need to know,” I told her, explaining that it was lonely not having her to talk to whenever I wanted. “I found it very distracting.”
I wasn’t trying to upset her; I could see that she felt torn. I knew she wanted to take care of me, but she also felt it was important to go to work. I wanted to reinforce that I was all right with that and that I would benefit from struggling on my own.
In the coming days I developed a routine: I read the paper over breakfast, played with Mocha to exercise her, straightened up the house, took out the garbage, or did laundry. I tried to learn more about my previous life and current events by going through files and boxes, Googling issues of interest I’d seen in the newspaper, and watching the History Channel and Fox News. Mocha soon switched her allegiance from Joan to me, nudging me to be petted and napping at my feet in my office. I enjoyed the company.
It could have been because of my headaches, my healing brain, or the pain medication I was still taking, but my attention span didn’t seem to be expanding. I found myself needing to shift tasks every fifteen minutes or so, frustrated when I didn’t understand something or when I’d reached a saturation point in learning the issue at hand.
When I tried to read a brochure from my business, for example, I could understand what it said, but I had no context or experience to comprehend its purpose or to know when I would present the pamphlet during a sales pitch. Was it a compilation of marketing approaches that had worked in the past, I wondered, or had an attorney drawn it up for me? Such unanswerable questions could drive me so crazy I’d have to switch gears.
As increasingly self-sufficient as I was becoming, I didn’t want Joan to feel that I didn’t need her, because I did. The more she was away, the more I wanted to be around her. I so hated being without her that I would wait by my computer as dusk descended, watching the cars approaching on our closed-circuit security system. As soon as her car pulled onto our street, I opened the garage and greeted her with open arms.
Every day I felt the bond between us growing even stronger.
The nights, however, were still a battle for me, and that was starting to affect my days. As time progressed, my insomnia, which, I’d learned from reading, was a common side effect of brain injuries, grew more erratic. In the first few months after my accident, I’d consistently been getting no more than three hours of sleep—an hour or two after I went to bed around 11:00 and the rest in five- to twenty-minute catnaps during the day.
A few weeks after Joan went to work, I was miraculously able to lie down one night and sleep for eight hours straight. But the excitement diminished a couple of days later when my previous insomnia returned. Although it varied, it was typically three to seven nights before I could knock down eight hours again. There was no cause or pattern that I could discern to this new sleep syndrome, and it became a vicious cycle.
Oddly enough, I found it easier on my body and mind when the insomnia was consistent than when I had to adjust to these extreme variations. I became increasingly fatigued, and my body ached all the time. My primary care doctor, Teresa Lanier, told me this could either be a side effect of the pain medication or simply a result of my brain injury, but she cautioned me not to nap during the day because I’d never kick the insomnia that way.
But as hard as I tried to heed her advice, some days I just couldn’t make it through the day without a thirty-minute nap. Dr. Lanier prescribed the sleep aid trazodone, but it made me groggy in the morning. Next I tried Flexeril, a muscle relaxant, which Joan told me I used to take for backaches and always made me feel sleepy. Although this medication made me feel more rested, it didn’t work either. Even after taking two or three of the little yellow pills, I was still wide awake, leaving me tired and lethargic, which was no improvement over just plain tired.
When I used to run the jet charter business, Joan said, I often got calls in the middle of the night from brokers or organ transplant teams that needed to fly doctors across the country. When this happened, I’d just start my workday because I couldn’t get back to sleep, taking advantage of the quiet time at the office. But now that I didn’t have a job to go to, I was left with nothing but my own ruminations over whether my memory would return or my insomnia would ever resolve.
Although I found it easier to deal with the headaches than this ridiculous sleep schedule, the pain had not let up either, and the two were interrelated. These days I usually had only a four-hour window when I was pain free, and the nearly constant pain was easier to handle in the evenings and on weekends, when I had my family to distract me. We’d go watch Taylor cheer at high school football and basketball games, and we’d visit her at Nando’s restaurant, where I made her bring me special items such as chips with barbecue sauce. But when the pain woke me up—and kept me up—in the middle of the night, I felt miserable and alone.
During those long wee hours of the morning, I got sucked back down into the vortex of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty, which was even deeper now that the window had long passed for when the doctors predicted I would return to normal. I longed to sleep and for the pain to stop, wondering if this torture was going to last forever. Still haunted by the black hole where my knowledge used to be and the nagging lack of a diagnosis, I felt lost. I still didn’t know what my values were or what I stood for; my sense of identity felt very soft, like a baby’s skull, and my self-confidence was next to nil. When my anxiety led to panic, I climbed back into bed after Joan left for work, where I hid and cried for hours, feeling like a wounded bear.
Dr. Lanier finally prescribed the antidepressant Cymbalta for me, which helped to ease the panic and depression, but I still had those days where I couldn’t drag myself out from under the covers even to watch television. It was difficult to find anything positive in my life, and sometimes reality was simply too much to face.