With some effort he could read news headlines. He knew the days of the week and the schedule for his favorite TV shows. He recognized the people and faces in the photos in his room without labels. He’d sometimes talk to the guys in the Korea snapshots by name, often snapping them a salute.
Louis’s Korean memories were important to him. As his daughter once said, in spite of the time spent in a POW camp—something he never talked about—the army had been the best time of Louis’s life. He was young, feeling immortal, bonding with other guys, and engaged in an effort he deeply believed in. Ironically, Korea was part of why he had been committed to Broadview two years earlier. Louis had thrown a violent fit when he thought that his wife had hidden his Purple Heart. When he calmed down, she showed him that the medal was stored in the special war memorabilia chest in the bedroom where it had always been. An hour later he accused her of taking it once more. When she again showed him the medal, he claimed she was trying to trick him. She denied it, and he pushed over the chest and smashed a mirror. A few days later he pushed Mrs. Martinetti to the floor. It was then he had been admitted to Broadview. Luckily, he remembered nothing of the incident.
The definitive evidence of Louis’s progress were the Mini-Mental State Exams, which consisted of different memory tests—lists of grocery or household items that the subject was asked to repeat in any order, word associations, et cetera. For healthy individuals from eighteen to twenty-four years of age with at least nine years of schooling, the median score is twenty-nine out of thirty. For healthy individuals seventy to seventy-nine years of age and older—Louis’s range—the median is twenty-eight. When first tested last year, Louis scored sixteen, indicating moderate cognitive impairment. That morning of the president’s visit he scored twenty-four. Also impressive was that Louis had developed learning strategies, clustering items according to semantic categories—food, tools, clothes, et cetera—a practice more sophisticated than simply remembering serial order. He also enjoyed taking the tests because he could measure how daily dosages of Memorine were bringing him back.
“You’re doing a great job, Louis, and we’re all proud of you.”
He smiled with pleasure. “Coming along.”
“I never told you this, but my father was in Korea.”
Louis’s eyes widened with interest. “What branch? I was in the 187th Airborne.”
“Yes. I saw the photograph from Korea in your room. My father was in the navy, and spent most of his time on a ship called the USS
“USS
Rene was astounded. It was one of the few things she knew about the
“I remember lots of stuff about the war.” He looked away for a moment as he began to gather some recollections. “The guy in that picture. He was my best friend, Fuzzy Swenson. You look like his sister.”
Rene began to feel uncomfortable and thought it best to change the subject. “Maybe you can tell me about where you grew up.”
But he disregarded her. “He was our platoon sergeant. His real name was Sam but all the guys called him Fuzzy. Blond hair, cut real short,” and he held up his forefinger and thumb, making a small gap. “Like peach fuzz. Why we called him Fuzzy. He was our gunner, real good kid from … Racine, Wisconsin. We used to josh him about being from the land of milk and beer.”
“It’s great that you can still remember him.”
“Yeah, I remember him.” Louis nodded then looked out the window.
He looked back at her for a puzzled moment and Rene felt herself brace against whatever was coming next. His eyes rounded as his glare intensified—and she could swear something passed through them. “Louis?”
His head snapped at the window again. “They said it would be a surgical drop.”
“What’s that?”
He looked back at her, and his eyes seemed slightly askew.
“Louis, are you okay?”
“Captain Vigna. He said we were going to fly a special mission one night when conditions were just right.”
“Louis, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He smiled furtively and cocked his head. “I don’t know when it’s gonna be, but it’s going to be a drop behind enemy lines. Gonna take out those bastards for what they did.”
“Louis, maybe we should change the subject.”
But he did not respond—just stared off someplace and began to get jiggly.
She took his hand. “Come on, let’s go to the dayroom.” She started to pull, but he snapped his hand away.
Suddenly Louis’s face began to spasm with emotions. He grimaced out the open window at the trees, looking as if he had spotted something terrible. He ducked down then shot up, and for a second he looked as if he were going to attack Rene. Instinctively she pushed back her chair and looked around for help. But in the next instant Louis gasped and pressed the heels of his hands against his brow, as if trying to force back some awful visions.
“They killed him, the bastards. They killed him in pieces.”
“Louis, let’s talk about something else. You’re getting upset.” She thought about calling an aide.
He glared at her through wild eyes. “They took care of him good. Oh, yeah. In the Red Tent, the dirty bastards. The Red Tent is where they did it all. Colonel Chop Chop and Blackhawk, the Russkie.” Louis began to lick his lips and swallow hard against whatever was afflicting his recall. Suddenly his face contorted. “He was sitting right across from me.” Then his voice changed. “Between my goddamn knees,” he cried in dismay. “They put it between my knees. In my goddamn helmet. God!” His voice thinned out into a plea.
Louis’s eyes dilated as he seemed to stare beyond Rene as he addressed her. “I couldn’t make them stop, you got me? No matter what, I couldn’t make them. And those two bastards stood in the corner telling him to keep going, keep cutting, no matter what I told them. I begged them.” Louis’s face crumbled, and he looked down at his lap and the sleeve of his shirt. “I got his blood on me.”
Rene took his arm. “Louis, snap out of it. Everything’s okay.”
From the corridor a nurse and two male aides walking by saw the commotion and shot over to their table. Rene was on her feet trying to calm Louis, who was trying to get away, his face contorted with anguish. When Louis laid eyes on Malcolm, he started yelling and swinging his arms.
“Hey, Louis, what’s the problem?” He tried to catch Louis’s arms and keep him from breaking away.
“Louis, calm down. Everything’s okay,” the nurse said.
But it was clear Louis was beyond reasoning with, lost someplace far away. Malcolm managed to pin Louis’s arms from behind and settle him in a chair.
Louis kept looking behind him. “Over there,” he said to the aide.
“What’s over there?” the aide said, looking at the trees outside.
Louis shook his head. His face was taut, his eyes squinting as if trying to get a clear focus.
“Come on, Louis,” the nurse said. “You’re upsetting all these people.”
But Louis kept looking across the area, his eyes fixed on something else. “Louis, open up.” Rene could see the nurse hold a pill to his mouth.
“They cut one side, then the other,” he said to the aide. Then he looked down at his lap, seeing imaginary horror.
“Come on, open up.”
Louis looked at the pill and water bottle in the nurse’s hand and pushed her hand away. But she persisted. “You have to take this, Louis. It’ll make you feel better.”
He shot a look at Rene. “They’re trying to brainwash me,” he whispered. “It’s what they do, they brainwash you.”
“Don’t be silly, Louis,” the aide said. “Nobody’s brainwashing you. Open up.”
Rene could see the small yellow pill. Haldol. One of the antipsychotics the staff had been giving patients suffering flashbacks. But to Louis the pill represented something else. “Who, Louis?” Rene asked, disregarding the others. “Who’s trying to brainwash you?”