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able to sit through them without feeling as if I’m on trial. No matter how many times I’ve taken them and how much older I am each time, these tests always terrify me. What are they really looking for? What can they see?

    PROVIDENCE COGNITIVE ASSESSMENT CLINIC

    Current meds (prescribed by outside physician):
    Seroquel 100 mg tabs (Quetiapine Fumarate)
    Lamictal 100 mg tabs (Lamotrigine)
    Rozerem 8 mg tabs (Ramelteon)
    Ativan tabs (Lorazepam)

    Neurobehaviorial observations:
    Behavior today at clinic: calm, cooperative
    Depression: endorses
    Anxiety: endorses
    Mania: denies
    Suicide ideation: denies
    Death ideation: denies
    If you don’t deny, they lock you away for two weeks. Then they let you back out.

 
    June 17, 2007
    Diagnosis
    I am flanked by my mother and father on the walk out of Dr. Volt’s waiting room. He stops us before we get to the exam room, a manila folder under his arm. We’re crowded in an awkward cluster in the hall. I have never before felt this precise hybrid of fear and boredom. “Mary,” he calls out to the receptionist, “I can’t get the MRI to show up on the screen in the exam room. I’ll take them to my office instead.” I hadn’t expected that we would be looking at the MRI images. Because no one called me afterward with the results, I assumed that there were none to speak of. But when you pay for big expensive tests, it does seem like proper medical etiquette to be shown the results.
    Dr. Volt takes a few minutes to print out his report and make sure that the computer in his office is running, then he calls us in from the hallway. He is behind his desk; the computer monitor is turned toward us. There are three chairs for us to sit in. I sit in front of the MRI image on the monitor, to the side of the other two chairs. My mom sits next to me, my dad next to her. I don’t understand the image in front of me. It’s a black-and-white splice of a brain, I assume mine, with an inky black spot on it in the shape of a lopsided heart. I tell myself that this is a spot on the film, which it’s way too large to actually be. It’s something not to worry about, something I don’t understand that the doctor will explain away. The image is too starkly obvious for me to process. The simplicity of it, a big black spot on my brain, renders me speechless.
    We are all staring dumbly at the image on the screen until Dr. Volt begins to speak. “So, this is your brain … and this”—he points with a pencil to the black spot—“is a hole.” The image comes into focus. It is not debatable. There is a large hole in the picture of the brain. The picture of the brain is a picture of my brain. That is my brain. He is telling me that that is my brain. We are silent; everyone is waiting for me to speak.
    â€œA hole.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThere is a hole in my brain.”
    Dr. Volt pauses for a moment. “Yes.”
    Behind Dr. Volt’s desk is a giant window, so clean that you feel as if you’re perched in the sky. There is a direct view of the hospital landing pad on the roof of a building below us. During our conversation a small helicopter has arrived, and tiny doctors and tiny nurses are attending to the figure swaddled in blankets on top of the tiny gurney. I watch them hovering over the mound of blankets, watch them slowly wheel it away. I feel vaguely sad for whoever is down there on that gurney. I have to watch the gurney, the helicopter, the ant doctors, because I have to keep my eyes off the image of my brain. Everyone in the room is so quiet.
    I want to grab my mother’s hand, but I grip the chair’s arm instead. It’s as if how I take this news decides if I’m an adult or still a child. If I grab my mother’s hand, I might feel scared. If I feel scared, I might cry; if I cry, I lose.
    I take a deep breath. As I exhale, a question piles out. “My first question is: Why