Coming Back from a Blank Page

Tabula Rasa

By Dr. Gregory Player

No where man

“All he said is Eddie Garland?” ask the man working ski patrol.

 “Yeah, that’s it. He has no idea where he is and has no ID on him.” The two ski patrol workers discuss what to do with the wandering man.

He had been lying bewildered on his back in the hard packed snow less than thirty minutes ago. After being transported down the base of the mountain on a portable stretcher he is now the responsibility of the Aspen Ski Patrol. A burly man with a black and white goatee enters the infirmary. “Do you think we need to call an ambulance?” one of the workers asks the bearded man. The man strokes his goatee in thought.

“What did you get out of him?”

“All he said was Eddie Garland. I guess that could be his name,” he answers.

“Wait, I know Eddie Garland. He’s one of the snow board instructors.”

“So do you think we should get an ambulance?” the patrol worker asks again.

“I think we should get Eddie Garland down here.”

Twenty minutes go by waiting for Eddie Garland and the ski patrol learns no more information. They are all relieved to see the smiling freckled face and long auburn hair of Eddie enter the room.  “You know this man? Because all he seems to know is your name?”

Eddie answers, “Yeah. Hey man, you ok?” Silence.

“We haven’t been able to get anything out of him.”

Eddie laughs but stops quickly when he realizes it’s not a prank. His face sobers and he says, “I’ll take him to the ER.”

At the hospital

In Aspen Valley Hospital I lay listening to the hum of a CT scanner. The date is March 14, 1995. The CT searches for any abnormality from my head being catapulted from six feet onto the ice and snow. Snowboarders call it “catching an edge”, an unfortunate event whereby a side of the board digs into the snow and thrust the rider towards that side with alarming speed. A haggard but friendly neurologist reviews the images and comes out to discuss them.

He has curly hair and a crooked smile. “It looks as if there is no real damage done. A contusion. Shaken not stirred,” he jokes. “You should get your memory back slowly,” he tells me. He looks at my friend Eddie, “Eddie is it?” He nods his head and the doctor motions to watch him. “You see how his pupils constrict to this light. That’s called a pupillary reflex. If there is swelling in the brain this reflex is absent. You need to do this every four hours for the next two days. Any visual changes, nausea, trouble walking, worsening confusion, you let me know.”

With that paucity of information I am discharged to the care of my old college roommate and best friend, Eddie Garland. My memory is completely wiped clean. Not only is my memory gone, I have what is also known as anterograde amnesia: the inability to form new memories, at least for a time.

Who am I?

Eddie, his girlfriend Francis and their roommate, Chrissie, patiently answer my questions. But when the same questions keep coming only minutes apart, their patience begins to wane. An information sheet is produced in an attempt to end the badgering. A purple sheet of lined paper with sentences in blue ink: the only link to my past. Written down in succinct phrases are the basics of my present existence. My name is Greg Player. I live in Athens. I am here on break visiting my best friend Eddie. I am studying to get into medical school but first have to get my grades up and take some extra courses. I drive a Toyota Camry. I quit my job selling life insurance. The last bit leads to a repeated exclamation, “Whoa, what’s this, I sell life insurance? Is that lame?” They would all laugh, at least the first couple of times they hear the question. Then the follow-up question, “What does Eddie do?”

“Eddie is a snow-board instructor,” is the repeated answer.

Then, “Cool, that sounds cool,” I say. This went on for hours, days- the peppering of questions and the canned responses. “What I’m a doing here? Do I have a girlfriend? and finally does Chrissie have a boyfriend?”

In unison they yell, “Greg, look at your information sheet!”

“How I’m I supposed to be a doctor now?” I ask. But I’m not really concerned. Despite my head trauma I am surprisingly at peace. I’m surrounded by unadulterated beauty. I can appreciate the beauty in a way like never before. Like a newborn I see everything for the first time, and it is untainted. I view in wonder the awesome snow covered mountain peaks, the Aspen trees, the pure rivers and the open sky.  

My mind is precariously perched on a known reality and the unknown. I hover on the edge of conscious thought. But the unknown is not frightening, more like a fatherly embrace. Ironically, though my mind is disrupted it allows me to view the perfect pattern of God’s work. Like never before I have an awareness and appreciation of nature’s stable harmony. And as the perfectly formed snow flakes fall on the mountainous landscape around me, so do the pieces of my brain settle perfectly into place.

Perhaps the oddest experience of losing my memory is viewing an unknown face in the mirror. It is if I have been reading a book for days and have a clear idea on what the main character should look like. Only the movie comes out and he is cast completely different. I step full of curiosity to the mirror above the bathroom sink. For the first time, or maybe the first I remember, I see the face of the man staring back at me. He is darker than I would have anticipated, even ethnic in appearance. And more rugged, I would have suspected a softer face.

I enjoy the world in awe for days. Everything is new and I accept it all: the taste of a cheeseburger, the rush of a Jacuzzi in the frigid cold, even the shock of tobacco smoke filling my lungs.

As my days in Aspen march on, more and more of my memory returns. I am filled with abounding energy, so much that Eddie finally relents and decides he can not keep up with me hourly. He lets me go out, but only after posting a sign on my back that reads ‘If found return to Eddie Garland’.

With the return of my memory come the familiar problems that have been temporarily forgotten. They come back slowly like a black cloud entrenching on a clear day. Those familiar ruts worked deep in my brain that I curse gradually return. I am no longer free from self-doubt, self-consciousness or cynicism.

I try to cling to the untouched and unqualified beauty around me. So much so that I quickly write down my thoughts before they change back completely. The phrases are simple but powerful. I must enjoy the small and simple things in life. Fight against all that is cynical and evil. Keep things pure.

But I can not match the familiar habits and I slowly lose the ability to accept anything without analysis. I become once again a judge: of others and worst of all myself. I yearn for the time when I appreciate all the simple beauty the world has to offer. A time when my mind is blank and I see the world without critique. The time of tabula rasa.