Page 96 of Brain Damage

“No pair of glasses would do that.”

I’m not sure what to say to Valerie, because obviously the glasses did do it. Unless she thinks I was faking my entire brain injury. Maybe I chopped off my own skull just for fun.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I just know that they work.”

Valerie nods. “Thank God,” she says.

68

I wake up to a ringing sound coming from my left side.

I blink my eyes, taking a moment to adjust to the darkness in the room. The clock on the wall says that it’s a quarter to eight in the evening, but the sun is down and it’s pitch-black outside. Under the best circumstances, it would be hard to locate an object on my left, but it’s much harder in the dark, when I’m waking up from a nap.

Then I spy my glasses on the end table to my right side.

I grab the glasses with my right hand. Taking care not to poke myself in the eye with the earpieces, I slide the glasses onto my nose. I close my eyes for a second, then reach out to pick up the ringing phone with my left hand.

“Dr. McKenna?” a breathless voice says on the other line.

I freeze. Nobody has called me “Dr. McKenna” in such a long time. It hardly even feels like me anymore. “Yes…”

“Dr. McKenna,” the voice says, “this is Regina Barry.”

My skull throbs slightly. I grip the phone tighter, uncertain what to say except, “Oh. Hi.”

“I’m so sorry to call you like this.” Regina Barry’s voice is just as I remember—a mix of shyness and uncertainty. She seemed like such a sweet woman, with a face whose beauty shone through even though she was plagued by a horrible skin condition. I was so glad to have been able to help her.

Well, at least until her husband shot me.

“How did you get this number?” I ask weakly.

“It wasn’t easy,” she admits, “but I have my sources.”

That sounded ominous.

“Why are you calling?” I ask, now gripping the phone so tightly that my knuckles are white.

“I just…” Regina Barry hesitates. “There’s something I had to tell you. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.”

I shake my head. “Okay…”

She takes a deep breath. “Anyway, the thing is, Dr. McKenna, you were so kind to me, and you helped me so much. More than anyone else in my entire life. So that’s why I had to talk to you.”

I’m having trouble following what she’s talking about. Maybe it’s the brain injury. “I don’t understand.”

“I read this article about you online the other day, about how you were shot in your home,” Regina says. “And until I read that article, I never realized that Clark Douglas was your husband.”

“Oh.” This conversation is making me tired. I wish I could go back to sleep. “Yes. He is.”

“The thing is, Dr. McKenna,” she says, “Clark was my husband.”

69

What is Regina talking about? Clark was her husband? She can’t be serious. This must be my damaged brain causing me to hallucinate. Or maybe I’ve just misunderstood.

“What do you mean?” I ask. My head is starting to throb. Maybe my nurse could bring me some Tylenol.

“Dr. McKenna,” Regina says, “Clark and I were married for five years. When I was talking to you in the office about my husband… that was Clark. He was… awful. Verbally abusive, constantly cheating, doing whatever he could to lower my self-esteem. That’s why I left him after I recovered from the psoriasis.”