Helsinki White by James Thompson

brain surgery deleted most of the coming days’ memories.
    The gunshot scar on my face was removed with laser resurfacing. There were tests, X-rays. Surgeries. Nights in the hospital, waking and not understanding where I was. I have a blurry image of Kate’s face as they put me on a gurney and wheeled me off to an operating theater.
    The thought of surgery made me think of all the autopsies I’d witnessed. The whine and smell of an electric bone saw at work. The hushed murmur of a scalpel carving flesh. I was dizzy, woozy, confused.
    Eventually, I came back to myself. A surgeon came in and informed me that the knee surgery was a success. After several weeks of physical therapy, I would have full range of motion to the limits of the prosthesis, meaning only a slight limp. I should have full weight bearing with a cane within six weeks.
    Another surgeon came in and told me they got the whole tumor.No complications. I remember seeing Kate, Anu, Jari. I remember asking Kate to let me look at myself in her makeup mirror. With the scar gone, and a small bald spot with a stitched-up incision on the front of my head, I barely recognized myself. Mostly, I slept.
    When I awoke the next morning, the symptoms of the previous day had mostly passed. My headache was gone. It had tortured me for a year, and now it was as if it had never existed at all. And great changes had occurred within me. I felt like a different person. Despite the medication I had been given—painkillers and tranquilizers—it was as if my thoughts had been muddled for my whole life, and now, suddenly and miraculously, I was clear in the mind, sharp as a razor.
    Jari warned me that some of my perceptions and attitudes might be altered, that it was typical for brain surgery post-op patients, sometimes for a considerable length of time. I wondered if this feeling that my thinking was no longer diminished was false, the result of surgery, or if I truly was more intelligent now. Along with this new sense of clarity, I felt a sense of certainty, as if when they removed my tumor they cut away my angst and remorse along with it.
    I felt a complete and utter lack of emotion. No love. No hate. Nada. Kate and Anu visited. I felt nothing, I smiled and pretended that I was glad to see them. Pretending was hard. I was glad to see them leave. Over the coming weeks, I practiced smiling to hide my lack of emotion. I knew that I must love them, because I remembered loving them. I could feel the yearning affection and desire for them that I did only a couple of days ago, but only as a memory.
    This lack of feeling changed my attitudes. I lay in bed alone andpsychoanalyzed myself. My overriding emotion in life had thus far been remorse. My life had been a constant struggle to make up for what I perceived as my failures. Every day, for more than thirty years, I mourned the loss of my sister Suvi and blamed myself for her death, because she was under my care when we were skating and the ice broke under her on the lake, even though I was only a year older than her. No longer.
    I bore no responsibility for her death. Our father was the responsible adult. He, however, was busy sucking down a bottle of whiskey and ice fishing rather than tending to his children. In fact, I remember now that I didn’t even like Suvi. I resented her because, even though our age difference was slight, I was often given the responsibility of looking after her, when I wanted to be out playing with my friends. After her death, my father began beating me for the slightest infractions, an unspoken punishment for failing to safeguard her. He beat my three brothers as well, and my mother on occasion, but not with the same severity as he did me.
    I remember taking a slice of a pie left cooling on a windowsill. As punishment, he made me eat the whole thing and I vomited. He made me eat that, too. And he laughed.
    I thought I had forgiven my father for beating me as a child. Why should I forgive him? My father has never