Mindscan

6

I was suddenly somewhere else.

It was an instantaneous transfer, like changing cha

At first I was overwhelmed by strange physical sensations. My limbs felt numb, as though I'd slept on them fu

And then I was conscious of the things that I wasn't feeling: there was no pain in my left ankle. For the first time in two years, since I'd torn some ligaments falling down a staircase, I felt no pain at all.

But I remembered the pain, and—

I did remember!

I was still myself.

I remembered my childhood in Port Credit.

I remembered being beaten up every day on the way to school by Colin Hagey.

I remembered the first time I'd read Karen Bessarian's DinoWorld.

I remembered delivering The Toronto Star — back when papers were physically delivered.

I remembered the great blackout of 2015, and the darkest sky I'd ever seen.

And I remembered my dad collapsing in front of my eyes.

I remembered it all.

"Mr. Sullivan? Mr. Sullivan, it's me, Dr. Porter. You may have some trouble speaking at first. Do you want to try?"

"Ell-o." The word sounded strange, so I repeated it several times: "Ell-o. Ell-o. Ell-o." My voice didn't seem quite right. But, then again, I was hearing it much as Porter was, through my own external microphones — ears, ears, ears! — rather than resonating through the nasal cavities and bones of a biological head.

"Very good!" said Porter; he was a disembodied voice — somewhere out of my field of view, but I wasn't yet properly registering his location. "No respiratory asperity," he continued, "but you'll learn how to do that. Now, you may have a lot of unusual sensations, but you shouldn't be in any pain. Are you?"

"No." I was lying on my back, presumably on the gurney I'd seen earlier, staring up at the plain white ceiling. There was a general paucity of sensation, a sort of numbness — although there was some gentle pressure on my body from, 1 supposed, the terry-cloth robe that I was presumably now wearing.

"Good. If at any point pain begins, let me know. It can take a little while for your mind to learn how to interpret the signals it's receiving; we can fix any discomfort that mighl arise, all right?"

"Yes."

"Good. Now, before we start trying to move, let's make sure you can fully communicate. Can you count backwards from ten for me, please?"

'Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Tree. Two. One. Zero."

"Very good. Let's try that 'three' once more."

'Tree. Tree. Tuh-ree."

"Keep trying."

"Tree. Dree."

"It's an aspiration issue again, but you'll get it."

"Dree. Tree. Thuh-ree. Three! "

I heard Porter's hands clapping together. "Perfect!"

"Three! Three! Three!"

"By George, I think he's got it!"

"Three! Thought, thing, teeth, theater, bath, math. Three!"

"Excellent. Are you still feeling okay?"

"Still — oh."

"What?" asked Porter.

"My vision went off for a moment, but it's back."

"Really? That shouldn't—"

"Oh, and there it goes—"

"Mr. Sullivan? Mr. Sullivan?"

"I — it feels … oh…"

"Mr. Sullivan? Mr. Sulli — !"

Nothingness, for how long, I had no idea. Just total nothingness. When I came to, I spoke.

"Doc! Doc! Are you there?"

"Jake!" Porter's voice. He let air out noisily in a "that's a relief!" sort of way.

"Is something wrong, Doc? What was that?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all. Urn, ah, how do you feel now?"

"It's strange," I said. "I feel different — in a 'undred ways I can't describe."

Porter was quiet for a moment; perhaps he was distracted by something. But then he said, "Hundred."

"What?"

"You said 'undred, not hundred. Try to get the H sound."

" 'Undred. 'Undred. Huhn-dred. Hundred."

"Good," said Porter. "It's normal for there to be some differences in sensations, but as long as you're basically feeling okay…?"

"Yes," I said again. "I feel just fine."

And I knew, in that instant, that I was fine. I was relaxed. For the first time in ages, I felt calm, safe. I wasn't going to suddenly have a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

Rather, I was going to live a full normal life. I'd get my biblical three-score-and-ten; I'd get the Statistics Canada eighty-eight years for males born in 2001; I'd get all of that and more. I was going to live. Everything else was secondary. I was going to live a good, long time, without paralysis, without being a vegetable. Whatever settling-in difficulties I encountered would be worth it. I knew that at once.

"Very good," said Porter. "Now, let's try something simple. See if you can turn your head toward me."

I did so — and nothing happened. "It's not working, doc."

"Don't worry. It'll come. Try again."

I did, and this time my head did loll left, and—

And — and — and—

Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!

"That chair over there," I said. "What color is it?"

Porter turned, surprised. "Um, green."

"Green! So that's what green looks like! It's — cool, isn't it? Soothing. And your shirt, doc? What color is your shirt?"

"Yellow."

"Yellow! Wow!"

"Mr. Sullivan, are you — are you color-blind?"

"Not anymore!"

"Good God. Why didn't you tell us?"

Why hadn't I told them? "Because you hadn't asked" was one true answer, but I knew there were others. Mostly I was afraid if I had told them, they'd have insisted on duplicating that aspect of who I'd been.

"What kind of color blindness do — did — you have?"

"Doo-something."

"You're deutanopic?" said Porter. "You've got M-cone deficiency?"

"That's it, yes." Almost nobody has true color blindness; that is, almost no one sees only in black and white. We deuteranopes see the world in shades of blue, orange, and gray, so that many colors that contrast sharply for people with normal vision look the same to us. Specifically, we see red and greenish-yellow as beige; magenta and green as gray; both orange and yellow as what I'd been told was a brick color; both blue-green and purple as mauve; and both indigo and cyan as cornflower blue.

Only medium blue and medium orange look the same to us as they do to people with normal vision.

"But you're seeing color now?" asked Porter. "Astonishing."

"That it is," I said, delighted. "It's all so — so garish. I don't think I ever understood that word before. What an overwhelming variety of shades!" I rolled my head the other way, this time without thinking about it. I found myself facing a window. "The grass — my God, look at it! And the sky! How different they are from each other!"

"We'll show you something colorful on vid later today, and—"

"Finding Nemo," I said at once. "It was my favorite movie when I was a kid — and everybody said it was just full of color."

Porter laughed. "If you like."

"Great," I said. "Lucky fin!" I tried to move my right arm in imitation of Nemo's fishy high-five, but it didn't actually rise. Ah, well — it would take time; they'd warned me about that.

Still, it felt wonderful to be alive, to be free.

"Try again, Jake," said Porter. He astonished me by lifting his own arm in the "lucky fin!" gesture.

I made another attempt, and this time I was successful. "There, you see," said Porter, his eyebrows working as always. "You'll be fine. Now, let's get you out of this bed."

He took hold of my right arm — I could feel it as a matrix of a thousand points of pressure, instead of one smooth contact — and he helped me sit up. I used to suffer from occasional lightheadedness, and sometimes got dizzy when rising from the horizontal, but there was none of that.