The Diagnosis Read online

  Chalmers was now obsessed with finding his briefcase. It struck him that perhaps he had left it on a neighboring car. At a previous stop he might have gotten off briefly to study the station and could have reboarded a different car. Next stop, as his train pulled into the station, a pulsating beat blasted him like a cannonball. A group of wiry-haired musicians was installing itself and its amplifiers on the platform between the outgoing and incoming tracks. Chalmers leaped off the car and hurried onto the one behind it. “Coming through,” he heard himself shout. A mass of people huddled in the aisle of the new car. He was sweating pretty heavily now and wiped the perspiration from his face. Over the door, a sign in red letters read: “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY PLEASE FOLLOW DIRECTIONS OF THE TRAIN CREW.” “I’ll report my missing briefcase to the train crew,” he said out loud. He glanced out the window and noticed a sign pointing to the direction of transfer to the Green Line. Green Line, Green Line, he repeated to himself, without recognition.

  As the train left the station, he miraculously sighted his neighbor, standing at the end of the new car. “Tim,” he shouted. Cotter took off one earphone and waved. Chalmers gasped with relief and began pushing his way down the aisle. He felt like throwing his arms around Cotter, but of course he could never do such a thing. “I’ve lost my briefcase,” he blurted out. “Gosh. I’m sorry,” Cotter said and turned off his headset completely. “On the train?” “Yes,” said Chalmers, “I’m almost certain that I had it when I got on at …” “I’m so sorry,” repeated the neighbor. “You look terrible. Need anything?” Tears came to Chalmers’s eyes, and he quickly looked away, into a woman’s sunburned back. He began rehearsing to himself how he could describe his predicament. Then, unexpectedly, he had a vision of being laughed at. After that, he couldn’t get any words out. With a sudden stab of shame and anger at himself, he wished he had said nothing to Cotter. He had never confided anything to his neighbor before, he didn’t at all care for the man, and here he was making an idiot of himself. God knows who Cotter would tell about the lost briefcase. The train rolled into the next station, and Chalmers looked out the window. Downtown Crossing. “Well, this is my stop,” said Cotter, checking the time on his watch. “Got to go. You should report your briefcase to somebody. Bummer.” He patted Chalmers on the shoulder, turned his headphones back on, and bolted off the train. Chalmers stared at Cotter as he raced down one of the hallways and disappeared around a corner.

  At the next station, which reeked strongly of urine, more people got off than got on. As the train flew away, Chalmers looked at his watch. 8:48. Almost certainly now he would be late for his 9:15 appointment. He remembered that he was to meet a man and a woman at 9:15. He’d met them before. The woman had blond hair and wore scarves and took notes on a laptop during meetings. He began imagining various scenarios. In scenario one, the visitors would show up and be asked to wait until he arrived. When he didn’t, the appointment would be rescheduled, possibly after lunch. What was on his agenda today after lunch? He would worry about that later. In scenario two, the president would ask that cocky Harvard fellow to fill in for him. There would be an unpleasant scene and some posturing the following day. In scenario three, the visitors would express their annoyance by taking their business elsewhere, bringing down on Chalmers the wrath of the entire company. And who could blame them? Their time was valuable. Time was money. Chalmers struggled to remember the nature of the meeting. The phrase “the maximum information in the minimum time” suddenly came to him. It was the motto of his company. His company. He strained to remember its name, pulling at his mustache. What was happening? What was happening to his mind? Was he having a nervous breakdown? Frantically, he glanced at the people around him, complacently going about their business of the day. He was feeling more and more ill and needed to sit down, but no seats were available. With a groan he took out his handkerchief and held it to his mouth. Then, he saw with astonishment that he had been carrying his cellular phone all of this time. “Oh, thank you, thank you, cellular phone,” he said out loud, to the stares of other commuters around him. Forgetting that his phone was inoperative in the tunnels, he pushed the power button. A red light reading “No Serv” flashed on the digital display. He wiped his sweating hands with his handkerchief and began to push other buttons, but the red “No Serv” light continued to flash and the receiver whined like a miniature police siren.

  “Doesn’t work underground,” said a man wearing chino pants and a Red Sox cap. Chalmers remembered who the Red Sox were—he had even attended some games—and he clung to this small bit of recognition as he slammed his No Serv phone shut. The man in the Red Sox cap proceeded to swallow a hot dog in two gulps. “They’re coming out with one that works anywhere,” he said, wiping his mouth. “I think it’s fiber optics, or ultrasound.” He paused, looking at Chalmers. “Here, take my seat, bud, you look wiped.” Chalmers smiled weakly and sat down, his hands shaking. He began going over what he knew of the morning. He remembered arriving at Alewife at 8:20. He remembered billboards with fish and cottontail rabbits. He remembered making a telephone call to Jenkins, who spoke in a high-voltage, caffeine voice. In fact, he could even see Jenkins, a nervous young man, prematurely bald, with a carefully tended two-day beard. What was Jenkins’s first name? He began running down possible names and matching them with Jenkins. Abandoning this line, he attempted to focus on his appointments. One was at 9:15—he was certain of that—one at 10:30, and one at noon. A man and a woman were to meet him at 9:15. He stared outside the window at the darkness flying past. Every few seconds, a smattering of light from a fluorescent tube. What was happening to him? He gazed at the man in the Red Sox hat, who was mindlessly turning the pages of a magazine. The train coasted to a stop, and Chalmers had the prickly sensation that he might be starting to remember things. He squinted at the walls of the station. A “Wanted” poster showed a man in two profiles. Another said: “Socrates? Plato? Why not? At Metropolitan College Online.” It was 8:50. With a whoosh, the train left the station.

  After the next stop, which Chalmers didn’t recall ever having seen in his life, the crowd on the train diminished substantially. Now there were only a dozen people in his car. He examined each seat and its occupant, as if somehow hoping to uncover a clue to his identity. In one sat a man with braided dreadlocks, listening to music on a portable CD player and counting subway tokens. In another, a skinny young mother with a phosphorescent blue-green halter top sipped on a Diet Coke and fed some of it with a straw to her baby. An older woman, wearing a black leather coat despite the heat, gazed absently out the black window and rocked back and forth in her seat. The train vibrated and twisted down the tracks. Chalmers searched for the man in the Red Sox cap, but he was not on the car. Two pimply teenage girls with beach towels, dark glasses, a radio. An elderly man and woman, both with long white hair and canes, were arguing about something while eating Egg McMuffins. Their voices were thin and breathy and faint, wind moving through dry reeds.

  Suddenly, the train lit up with sunlight and was again above ground. Trees flew by like flailing arms. Beyond the vegetation, a mixture of residential and commercial buildings, parked cars, telephone poles, a brown building, a Burger King. The train stopped and several young people darted off, carrying books. They must have been students. Chalmers peered at the sign on the wall. JFK/UMass. The train was now far from the downtown area, heading farther from Boston. Chalmers remembered his cellular phone. He extended its antenna and pushed buttons: 617-567- … He couldn’t remember what came next. Continents of memory had been lost. He began dialing random numbers, hoping to connect with someone. In the process, he accidentally entered the security code that prevented the phone from sending or receiving further calls. A “Phone Lock” sign began flashing. He stared at the useless instrument. “Good God, I can’t remember any telephone numbers,” he said out loud. “I can’t remember my name.” One of the passengers glanced quickly at him, then returned to her magazine. Sweat streaming down his face, Chalmers closed up h
is phone. Railroad tracks fluttered by like matchsticks. Trees, white and gray clapboard houses with paint peeling off, junkyards with stacks of flaccid tires and crumbling cars, four-story apartment buildings with children playing in the narrow alleys between, laundry hanging from windows. An expressway looped in from somewhere, flying alongside the train, cars shot by in both directions. After the next stop, they passed water, a bay, a huge cylinder with red and yellow stripes. Suddenly the train entered some small town and stopped under a green awning. Along the concrete sidewalks, pedestrians floated, cars stood at red lights, everything seemed frozen. A few passengers embarked and the train was in motion. Leafy green trees, then the light dimmed two octaves and the train had again flown below ground, blackness outside. At the next station, which said Shawmut, a strange silence. No one got on or off. Then a woman’s voice singing, You’re gonna want me … A voice on a speaker said, “Next stop, Ashmont. End of the line. Ashmont. Thank you for riding the T. Don’t forget your belongings.” Shortly thereafter, the train pulled into Ashmont Station and stopped.

  Chalmers sat dazed in his seat, holding his handkerchief to his mouth. The train was empty and silent. In the distance, an automobile groaned, sliding its sound into the muffled hum of the station. After a few moments, an attendant walked over, stood glaring down, and said, “No passengers beyond this point. You’ll have to get off.” It was 9:09 by a giant white clock in the station.

  Wobbly on his legs, Chalmers walked out of the train and sat on a bench. It felt hard after the padded seat. Ashmont Station, bottom end of the Red Line. The station, at street level, opened to real air. Pigeons flew in, just under the arched roof, swooped down to the brick floor, and pecked for food. Peanuts, scraps of sandwich meat, pieces of bread. He gazed at the birds as they jerked their heads right and left. On the other side of the station, a bus whined and exhaled a tuft of acrid gray smoke. A woman in a blue beach hat got on. Chalmers looked at his watch. There was no doubt now that he would lose a good part of the morning. Unconsciously, he began panting in rapid, shallow breaths. Closing his eyes, he tried to visualize the place where he was going, he pictured office buildings, shops, department stores, corporate campuses, any place he might possibly be employed. Various people that he had met flickered in his mind. His hands trembled and he couldn’t keep from rocking like the woman on the train. Still shaking, he spotted the stairway to the train in the opposite direction, back through Boston. Immediately, he flung himself from the bench and hurried up the stairs. “I’m going to put an end to this craziness,” he said out loud, taking a deep breath of bus exhaust. “People are waiting. I won’t allow myself to get further behind. Go. Go.” He slammed his hand against the rough concrete wall. On the second time around, he would recognize his stop, he would remember, he would have to remember where he was going, he would remember.

  At the beginning of the return trip through Boston, Chalmers regarded each stop even more intently than before. At two stations, he leaped from the train and paced the platform, hoping to feel some glimmer of memory in the concrete and brick. The train was now about half full with people, who appeared to be shoppers and tourists and college students going to midmorning summer classes. Someone giggled at the far end of the train, where a man in unlaced hiking boots was embracing a woman. At Charles Street, Chalmers threw up. “Are you all right?” asked a spectacled college girl sitting across from him. He looked at her blankly. She moved a few seats away. Grimacing, he lay down across three seats, then sat up when the train went over the river. Now sailboats dotted the water, their white sails fluttering and curved in the wind. In the distance, a line of cars, bumper to bumper, oozed across a bridge. Kendall Square/MIT. Central. Harvard. Porter Square. Davis Square. Chalmers no longer got out of the train at each stop. He would simply sit up and peer out for a few seconds, then lie down again. “What’s happened to me?” he mumbled, over and over. He held up his hands and examined the veins near the surface, fragile and faint like the strings of a puppet. “What’s happened to me?”

  Then he was at Alewife, the end of the line, where he vaguely remembered starting that morning. Mercifully, no attendant told him he had to get out of the train. He could just remain lying down in his three seats, wait until he started moving in the opposite direction, back toward the station with the swooping pigeons. With a half-dozen people in his car, the train began once more flying south. It was just after eleven o’clock on the morning of June 25.

  Unaccountably, he felt like walking. He had a noon appointment. He had a noon appointment. With a grunt, he sat up and wandered down the car, holding on to the overhead rail and gazing idly at the signs on the wall. Outside, the darkness flew past in black streams. By now, his demeanor was attracting attention. His hair was matted with sweat, his tie dangled loosely around his neck, his shirt was soggy and stained. He didn’t know where his suit jacket was. “What’s happening to me?” he said to anyone who would look at him for longer than a second. He had now grown accustomed to stares. Yet he could not bring himself to ask any of those faces where he was going, where he was supposed to be. A man with a baseball cap on backwards began mimicking him: “What is happening to me? Like, what’s happening, man? To me. What’s up, Doc?” The man followed Chalmers to the end of the car and began inspecting his cellular phone. Chalmers tightened his grip on the phone and hastened toward the other end of the car. A young man and woman were holding hands and laughing. When they saw him, they turned and began whispering. Newspapers and food wrappers covered the floor. The fluorescent light hammered. Two men in identical headphones and identical gray silk shirts looked at him curiously. “What’s happening to me?” he asked them. They shrugged. From behind, someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned. A woman, middle-aged, green light in her eyes. She handed him a green dollar bill and walked away. He let his tie fall to the floor. “My briefcase,” he said. At the next stop, he changed to a neighboring car. “DO NOT LEAN AGAINST DOORS.” He looked down and saw that his shoes had become untied. They were becoming a nuisance. With a flick of his ankles, he kicked off his shoes and left them behind. The train braked sharply around a turn and he was thrown to the floor, his cheek landing hard against a fresh wad of gum. “You should sit down, please sit down,” came a voice. He got up and continued walking, cooler now without his shoes and socks. He took off his shirt and tossed it onto a seat. A woman’s face dissolved. There was shouting. He hurried up the aisle of the car.

  When the police boarded the train at South Station, they found him curled up on the floor in a fetal position, clasping his phone to his bare chest.

  IN THE HOSPITAL

  “Pretty foxy-looking cell phone—eh, Matt?” said the younger patrolman as he and his partner rolled Chalmers over on the floor of the train and covered him up with a dirty blanket. “What do we charge him with? Doing it with a c-phone in public?”

  The older officer just frowned. He turned to the cluster of former passengers who stood on the platform, twittering and gaping into the train. “What are you people gawking at?” he shouted and waved his cap. “Give the man some dignity. Step back.” The crowd didn’t budge. “Pervert!” someone yelled. “Arrest the son-of-a-bitch!”

  “What time is it?” asked Chalmers from the floor. “Something happened to my watch.” He sat up and blinked at the empty seats and at the two police officers leaning over him. The older of the two had a big rubbery face, with more skin than necessary, and a sympathetic smile. The younger held a pair of handcuffs, twirling them impatiently. His eyes darted about like a small animal’s. Both men wore short-sleeved blue shirts soaked with sweat.

  “You don’t need a watch, mister,” said the officer with the darting eyes. “What’s your name and address?”

  Chalmers became aware of the stink of the blanket. He leaned his head back on the seat. Slowly, he remembered that he was late for the office. “What time is it?” he repeated. “I’ve got a twelve-o’clock appointment.”

  The younger officer snickered. “Hear t
hat, Matt, he’s got a twelve-o’clock appointment.”

  “Cut it, Ernie,” said the policeman named Matt. He turned to Chalmers and asked in a gentle voice, “What’s your name?”

  Chalmers closed his eyes, trying to find some light in his head. He could feel the train vibrating. He could feel his veins pulsing. With appalling clarity, he suddenly remembered stripping off his clothes in the train. What had he done? He began sweating and feeling nauseous all over again. He pinched his arm fiercely, grimaced with the pain, then glanced at the faces on the platform. Who had witnessed him making a fool of himself? Did he know anyone there? With a shudder, he turned away from the gawkers and pulled the filthy blanket more tightly around himself.