I'm Not Sam

“I will, Milt. I will call. You take care, now. Best to Elsie. You have a good day.”

He’s looking at Sam strangely. A puzzled look.

So I glance at her too.

Good grief. She’s picking her nose.

I can’t fucking believe it.

“Have a good day…” he mutters as we pass him and walk away.

A doctor’s office should have music, I think, to lighten things up a bit. Doc’s doesn’t. Walking into Doc’s is like walking into a sepulchre. The second we close the door behind us I can feel Sam stiffen. I can tell she doesn’t like it. There are two old stringy ladies seated whispering in a corner, clutching their handbags as though fearful of a city-style mugging. There’s a bald man in suspenders reading a newspaper. When he turns the page it’s the loudest thing in the room.

Thankfully, we know none of them.

We walk past them to the counter. Millie, Doc’s receptionist is typing at her desk. She gets up smiling as we cross the floor.

“Hi, Patrick. Hi, Sam.”

“Not…”

I cut her off. “How’ve you been, Millie?”

“Not half bad, Patrick, for a little old lady. You two have a seat. The doctor will be with you in a minute.”

I’d outlined what the hell was happening on the phone as best I could and Doc assured me he’d see us right away. I hope he keeps his word. The ladies are eyeing us as we sit. And Sam starts fidgeting immediately.

There are magazines on a low table beside us. I’m tempted but I don’t want my own page-turning to add to the din.

Sam’s staring straight ahead at the counter. I wonder what’s so interesting so I follow her gaze. There’s a big three-quart glass jar on the counter and it’s filled to the brim with wrapped hard candy — what appear to be cinnamon and grape and peppermints, lemon drops and lifesavers and root-beer barrels.

“Patrick?”

And that little-girl voice coming from this big-girl person gets everyone’s attention.

“When we leave, okay?”

She sighs. “Oh, okay.”

Millie opens the door. “Mrs. Burke?”

I get up but Sam doesn’t recognize her name of course so I lift her gently by the arm and walk her to the door and I see she’s confused so I whisper to her that it’s all right, she shouldn’t worry, and we follow Millie’s ample figure to the Doc’s office. We enter and she closes the door.

Doc rises, all six feet five inches of him. I clear my throat.

“Doc, this is Lily.”

He extends a meaty hand. “Lily,” he says, smiling.

Doc’s about the warmest, friendliest person I know and if he weren’t a giant and had a little more of that snow-white hair on his head and a matching beard he could pass for Santa with the best of them. She takes his hand and shakes it.

“Sit down, Lily. Make yourself at home. Patrick? Can I talk with Lily alone for a little while? Would you mind? Get to know one another a bit?”

There’s a small dish of the same hard candy as on the counter in the waiting room sitting on his desk. He pushes it toward her, selects a root-beer barrel for himself and proceeds to unwrap it.

“Help yourself, Lily,” he says. He pops it into his mouth.

“Call you in a bit, Patrick,” he says around it.

I’m dismissed.

Back in the waiting room the ladies are eyeing me with suspicion. I’ve jumped ahead of them in line, after all. With this strange woman. A story across the clotheslines.

I pick up a copy of Time magazine. Astronomers have found a new planet that orbits three stars. There are articles on last year’s continental freeze in Europe, on what it means to be a Conservative in America. Britain is banning photoshopped ads in which the models look too perfect.

I can’t concentrate.

People magazine? Scientific American? Cosmo’s out of the question with those ladies present.

I solve the problem by doing nothing at all.

And I’m only a bit surprised when I wake up to a hand on my shoulder. Millie’s.

Sam’s standing beside her. She doesn’t look disturbed at all or the least bit unhappy, which is good.

“Ben would like to see you now,” she says. “Lily? Here’s a magazine.”

Sesame Street.

“We won’t be long,” she says.

Sam settles in with the magazine and I follow Millie inside.

Doc’s sitting behind his desk making notes in a folder I can only presume to be Sam’s. I sit across from him and he puts down his pen. He shakes his head.

“Patrick, it’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. Physically she’s just fine, same old Sam as always. The only physical changes I can see are those she’s apparently made by choice, for lack of a better word. The vocal change is all tongue-placement. The jerky movements to the limbs and shoulders, you and I could imitate them pretty easily if we concentrated on it hard enough. So the question is not what she’s doing but why she’s doing it.”

“You mean you think she’s faking?”

“Not at all. Quite the opposite. Talking to her just now, there’s this strange kind of disconnect. It’s as though she remembers selectively. She knows who Lady Gaga is but not her mother’s or her father’s name. “She knew Zoey. Our cat.”

“Did she now. That’s interesting. The only time she got the least bit nervous or upset was when I asked her who you were, who Patrick was. That seemed to confuse her. I didn’t push it. But she can identify everything around her perfectly well. I’d point to a chair or a window or a bookshelf and she’d rattle the word for it right off. I knew when she got bored with it too. You could tell. Her vocabulary, by the way, is at about a five-year-old level. She could identify flowers but not the vase, for instance. Called it a jar. She can add and subtract but not multiply or divide.

“This… transformation. What strikes me most is that it’s uncannily consistent. Sure, you and I could imitate each of these child-aspects of hers if we tried. But I doubt very much if we could imitate them all at once, choreograph them all together — and do it for hours at a time, as you say she’s been doing. That would take one hell of an actor.”

He pulls out a prescription pad, picks up the pen and writes.

“Here’s what we need to do. First, eliminate anything physical.”

“You mean, like a tumor?”

“I’ve never heard of a tumor causing these kinds of symptoms but yes, a brain-scan’s definitely in order. I want you to phone this number at Baptist Regional and arrange for it right away. I’ll call ahead and grease the skids for you as soon as you’re out of here, tell them to slip you in ASAP, tomorrow if possible.”

He tears off the paper and hands it to me.

“Go home and make the call. Then try to get some sleep. You look like hell, Patrick.”

I get up and head for the door. He’s right. I’m suddenly exhausted. But one other thing’s bothering me bigtime.

“Doc, what if this isn’t physical?”

“Yeah, I know. Multiple personality disorder. You see any other ‘personalities?’”

“No.”