The Ghost in My Brain Read Online Free Page B

representation, or visual understanding of
circle, target, middle, inside. . . .
Without these concepts I couldn’t get my hand to move toward the lock, or put the key in the slot.
    This situation may be a little difficult for nonconcussives— “normals”—to comprehend. There was nothing wrong with my eyes themselves, and I knew what I had to do:
put the key in the lock, open the door.
The problem was that I could not spatially or cognitively conceive of the
shape
of the problem. I stared at the door, the lock, my hand, the keys in my hand, wanting to get the door open but unable to form a physical plan to achieve my goal. I even knew the concept of
center
was still somewhere in my brain—I could feel it—but I just couldn’t access it. I thought,
If I can’t unlock the door, I’m going to have to walk back to my office and try again later.
I shuffled around to thefront of the car and slipped down onto the frozen slush in the street, with my back against the car’s front bumper. I knew I couldn’t make it back to my office. I had no plan at all. No voice spoke. No thought came to me for a long time.
    Then, from within the kaleidoscope, the magic rose up one last time. I pulled my stiff and cramping body to my feet. With a final extreme effort, my eyes saucer-wide and three inches from the door lock, my right hand waving around in random circles as though with no direction at all, I finally found the lock, pushed my key in, and opened the door.
    I had passed through the second stage of the gauntlet.
    Now came the third: maneuvering my body through the doorway in the side of the car. But once again, I couldn’t
see
it. I couldn’t make sense of the opening through which I was to pass. I pleaded with myself:
Get in the car, you idiot. Don’t think about it—just get in and sit down.
But I couldn’t do it. Instead I stood there staring off into the void, as I felt myself falling into the tunnel that reached out before me. My eyes grew wide with the effort.
    Yet over time I’d developed strategies to compensate for doorways. When I couldn’t propel myself in the usual way, I’d learned to spin, and dance myself through them. But now, in addition to not being able to
see
the opening, I could no longer
turn right
either
.
The right side of my world just tapered off into oblivion. So instead, I turned left, away from the door and away from the seat—all the way around in a full circle. I turned once, then again, and then again after that, using a strange-looking, index-fingers-out, head-turned-sideways, half-swinging motion. At last I was able to weave and bob myself into the car.
    Thankfully, getting the key in the ignition was easier, andwithin five minutes I had the engine running. I glanced at the clock on the dashboard.
Twelve-thirty
. It had taken me an hour and a half to make the five-block trip from my office.
    I rested with the car idling until 2:00 A.M ., staring at a tree in the park, completely still, completely exhausted, unaccountably hungry, but warm. A tricky moment came and went, as a suspicious cop came by, opened his window, and demanded to know why I was sitting there idling the engine. But in the end it was too cold to get out of his car, so after “rousting” me in this way, he drove away.
    Soon after, sufficiently recovered, I headed for home. I never drove my car when I was under cognitive duress. But as long as my brain was sufficiently rested when I started out, then I would be okay to drive. In fact, if I was not too debilitated when I set out, the act of driving was itself restorative. Something about the staring straight ahead, and the regular motion along the sides of the road from the vanishing point past the periphery of my eyes, helped ease my impairment. Understanding directions could be tricky, as could making driving decisions, but on this night I was mindlessly following a well-worn path home, and