25.

Not There Yet

Bond wasn’t the only one having difficulty accepting the decidedly

kooky person I was during those first days back. The day after I recovered
consciousness—Monday—Phyllis called Eben IV on his computer using
Skype.
“Eben, here’s your dad,” she said, turning the video camera toward
me.
“Hi, Dad! How’s it going?” he said cheerfully.
For a minute I just grinned and stared at the computer screen. When I
finally spoke, Eben was crushed. I was painfully slow in my speech, and
the words themselves made little sense. Eben later told me, “You sounded
like a zombie—like someone on a bad acid trip.” Unfortunately, he had
not been forewarned about the possibility of an ICU psychosis.
Gradually my paranoia abated, and my thinking and conversation
became more lucid. Two days after my awakening, I was transferred to
the Neuroscience Step-down Unit. The nurses there gave Phyllis and
Betsy cots so that they could sleep next to me. I trusted no one but the
two of them—they made me feel safe, tethered to my new reality.
The only problem was that I didn’t sleep. I kept them up all night,
going on about the Internet, space stations, Russian double agents, and all
manner of related nonsense. Phyllis tried to convince the nurses that I had
a cough, hoping a little cough syrup would bring on an hour or so of
uninterrupted sleep. I was like a newborn who did not adhere to a sleep
schedule.
In my quieter moments, Phyllis and Betsy helped pull me slowly back
to earth. They recalled all kinds of stories from our childhood, and though
by and large I listened as if I were hearing them for the first time, I was
fascinated all the same. The more they talked, the more something
important began to glimmer inside me—the realization that I had, in fact,