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Tales from the Other Side of Language 5 My thoughts are clear and bright. I think that they are words, but they roll like video pictures. It is an altered reality, badly done, corrupt. I cry helplessly. It is hopeless in this room. I wipe the tears and snot on my sleeve and follow the nurse out. Donna is in the reception area, filling out paper work, looks at me with a nod. Dread compels me to my address book somewhere in my bags near her. I find it and struggle to think of my doctor’s name. R pops up. I thumb to the R’s. Ha! There is his name! She calls, is given instructions for the hospital to take me to. It is late March. Rush hour, a monsoon rain and a subway strike. An ambulance isn’t more efficient than a taxi they tell us, so we opt for the cab, not thinking at all that I might need medical oversight. The rain on the Long Island Expressway is heavy and pounding; the brilliance of the highway lights is reflected in the wet roadway. The taxi’s familiar Naugahyde scent feels warm, cozy. The friendly driver, the sound of the rain is calming. I will be in a hospital soon. My doctor waiting. But I am not calm. The fiasco in the medical center, the useless information, have unhinged me. I can’t think what medical problem would just take away my speech, poof! while I remain walking around, schlepping my bags, and able get into this nighttime cab. Other thoughts begin to plague me. Will they think it’s psychological because I can’t tell them anything? What if they get it wrong like One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and I’m stuck in some terrible box forever? Fear infuses everything, even the warm cab, the rainy night, scorching, heavy, like a storm I can’t see beyond. In the Emergency Room, Donna straggling my bags behind me, I stammer my name, “Dddooocteer Ruuutttth….” She stops me, “We’re expecting you.” My body floods with relief. I follow limply where she tells me. The unknown is draped everywhere in front of me like a dense brocade curtain, confusing and obscuring.
6 Ruth Codier Resch Without Utterance: A blur of residents examines me for hours, first in the ER then after I’m admitted, ask questions I can’t answer. I know what they want, but can’t say. I’ve changed the time on my watch during the flight to New York time, but my body is on Portugal time. I can’t tell them it is five in the morning; I’m desperate to sleep. Two of them now talk among themselves urgently. I know they are working hard to give a report to my doctor in the morning. But I feel like a fish flopping on the concrete. I’m clearer the next day when my doctor visits. He asks, “Was there anything else medical that happened in Portugal?” Yes, yes, I must aid in his diagnostic puzzle ... For the whole day I struggle to find the words. I search... two words to answer ... find them ...lose them... search again, find ... only to lose again. Practice, practice, to remember. Finally when he comes, I speak the two words to him, point to my armpit. “in...fe…cti..on.... an..ti..bio…tic!” He orders a spinal tap for infection and finds it clear. I have a neurologist now. I see him bustle down the hall, his fitted white coat over modish suit, his residents running fast behind him. They all burst through the door, then stay clustered there like huddled jocks waiting for the signals for the rush to play. The neurologist, tall and quite handsome, is doing teaching rounds with them. I see them in a far distance as if I’m looking through a tube. They stay at the door, don’t come near me, speak to me, or examine me. Still, I feel a like a specimen. From the podium of the chart, he explains my case to them. He announces to the room, “She has expressive aphasia.” I know this already, not the word aphasia, but the loss of words. Then he says, “She has comprehension intact!” Yes, yes, this is true! I DO understand everything I hear from them:
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house as sentient. Tales from the O
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is now. Tales from the Other Side o
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lives around him in deep and import
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“Without Utterance is a testimoni
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