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I asked Piper to accompany me to my appointment with Dr. Kurasawa in case her perspective would be helpful. Once the nurse had taken my vital signs and confirmed my medications, Ayane came in and greeted us both pleasantly.
“It is good to see you again, Avery,” she said to me before turning to shake hands with Piper. “And I’m glad to meet you in person this time. Ayane Kurasawa. You’ve been so kind to assist with Avery’s case.”
“Wonderful to meet you, too, doctor,” Piper replied. “I appreciate you caring for him.”
“It’s been my pleasure,” Ayane said. “Avery, I know we originally planned on a longer appointment today, but the clinic is quite busy today and one of the other physicians is out. I want to do the routine exam with you. However, I was hoping we could handle, what I will call the more subjective aspects, separately? I was going to suggest I make a house call, in fact. A more relaxed environment perhaps, for the three of us to discuss the materials you emailed to me, uninterrupted. Would that be okay with you?”
“Sure,” I agreed. “Wow, I’ve never had a doctor do a house call before.”
“It’s very unusual,” Ayane acknowledged. “But you have given me some unusual things to look at. I’d like to devote the time to work on those things where it won’t be so hectic.”
Once she was satisfied with my responses to cranial nerve stimulation, we arranged a day and time for Ayane to come to my house to review my unusual, subjective items.
When Ayane came up to Santa Fe, the only equipment she brought was a pad of paper and a pen, along with a printout of the fifty or so pages of notes I’d sent her since spring. Piper made tea for us and we sat around the dining room table to discuss my situation.
“I must tell you, Avery,” Ayane began, “your descriptions made a most interesting impact on me. As I’ve shared with you before, I also experience things with rather profound sensory phenomena. Many of the descriptions you sent me here provoked my synesthesia as well.”
“I’m sorry,” Piper asked, “what is synesthesia?”
“Of course,” Ayane explained, “it is a neurological phenomenon where something stimulating one sense causes someone to perceive something with another of their senses and that secondary sensory perception isn’t actually present.”
“Oh, so is it like I’ve heard about people reading something that reminds them of their childhood and they can smell the cookies their mom used to bake?”
“Yes, Piper, exactly. That is one form of it, at least. I have a more complex situation combining sight, sound, smell, taste, and on rare occasions, even touch. Avery, some of your descriptions caused tactile sensations.”
I was dubious about this. “Are you saying I touched you with my words?”
Piper glanced over at me. “Um…ick?”
“I would not describe it as being touched,” Ayane clarified. “Once I had the sensation of a gust blowing through my hair though I was indoors. Another passage made my hands feel very warm as though I was holding them in front of a fireplace. The sensations didn’t relate directly to what you were describing, it’s only that I felt things that were not truly present.”
I wanted to shake some sense into my own brain. “What do you think it means, Ayane?”
“I am hoping we can find out by exploring more of what you wrote here.” She had placed tags in various places in my document. “Why don’t we start with these green tabs. They seemed to have a pattern to them. I marked them with green because I’d see a green color from them. Not any green, like grass or lime Jello, but a distinct yellow-green I perceived over and over. Then it struck me here, Avery. When you described the avocado tree. The color was that of the pulp of avocado. You wrote about the guacamole and, while I couldn’t say I tasted it, I picked up its subtle smell. I also checked back at my notes on our last visit in my office, and I remembered I had seen the same color when you asked me the question, ‘What am I looking for?’ I realize your question was about you letting me know any unusual changes in thoughts, behaviors, or emotions. I found it quite interesting that what you were looking for was, indeed, the avocado tree.”
Piper and I sat there amazed.
“Ayane,” I said, “maybe you’re psychic.”
“No, I’m sure I am not,” she insisted. “I believe you somehow communicated it to me in some other fashion and my mind made the association. I don’t know what it was, but any ‘mind reading’ would be nothing more than me synthesizing perceptions of what you may have previously told me.”
Ayane went over several other instances I had documented, including our Fourth of July dinner, and standing together under the tree in the Plaza when the rest of the world seemed to fade away.
She thumbed through the document again. “This one between you was very intriguing to me. You were talking about a visit you had after Piper moved, but you were still quite young. Avery, you were eighteen and Piper was sixteen?”
“Yes,” Piper said. “I came back from Georgia to see my father and I got together with Avery for a few hours.”
“We got angry with each other,” I added. “But we have no idea why anymore.”
“Does it concern you?” Ayane asked. “Why you both became upset?”
Piper and I answered near simultaneously.
“Not really, no.”
“Yes!”
Ayane looked at Piper. “Why does it concern you, Piper?”
“I don’t know why.” Piper shook her head. “I feel like I should know why?”
“Avery?”
“If I forgot it for this long, it’s not important anymore.”
“Perhaps it is of more interest than you realized,” Ayane suggested. “Your description of your shared experience brought me an interesting synesthesia effect. You didn’t write down what you ate when you had dinner together, but did it happen to be fish and French fries?”
“That’s exactly what we had!” Piper exclaimed. “Both of us had fish and chips.”
Ayane made a check mark in the margin with her pen. “Well, I don’t often have my fish deep fried and I’d normally pair my fish with rice rather than potatoes. But that’s what I tasted when I read it, and I had something of a memory that wasn’t from my own past.”
“You’re ‘remembering’ something from what happened that day?” I asked her.
“Possibly. Would you like me to tell you what I perceived? I would not tell you unless you both agree you want to know.”
Piper turned her head to me and nodded her yes.
“Alright,” I said. “What did you get from this, Ayane?”
“Your disagreement seemed to be around the relationship each of you had with others at the time. Both of you expressed some type of disapproval in the other’s partner. Does this sound anything like you talked about?”
Both Piper and I sat thinking it over. We looked alternately at each other, then out into nowhere in particular.
It came back to Piper first. “Yeah. I remember now, that you were worried Skip was a lot more immature than I was. Even though he was almost eighteen, but still a junior. I was graduating a year early, barely sixteen.”
“You observed that Brooke, from the way I had described her, sounded pretty single-minded on getting her Ph.D. and would be under a lot of pressure going to Stanford.”
“So, then,” Ayane summarized, “you both became angry from the criticism leveled at your respective romantic interests? Does that sound accurate?”
“That was the issue,” I answered. “You’re right, Ayane.”
“I agree,” Piper said. “That’s what pissed me off. But why would we forget that? It seems like a pretty serious conflict.”
I took only a second longer to come up with it. “We forgot it because we were both right.”
“Oh, my God,” Piper said. “We were right. We weren’t ready to hear it. What we both intended as honest, thoughtful advice, we took too personally. That was the warning you gave me about Skip. It was the alarm going off in my head I wanted to ignore.”
“Piper, I painted a clear picture of Brooke for you and you were only pointing out the details I wasn’t focusing on. I knew the signs were there all along. You were drawing my attention to them.”
Ayane then asked me another question. “Avery, do you also recall from that same conversation, a suggestion you made to Piper?”
Piper stared at me wide-eyed, no doubt remembering the earlier discussion of the day in question and the prospect of an inappropriate suggestion.
“I gave Piper a suggestion?” I asked. “Did you…perceive…what I may have suggested, Ayane?”
“I perceived an idea about where Piper might attend college.”
“Avery, that’s it. You asked me if I considered going to school where Erin is going now. Then I would still be near where you lived.”
“I did do that,” I admitted. “I…think I really wanted you back with me, Piper. My statements about your boyfriend might not have been entirely unselfish. You were justified in getting mad at me.”
“We were both so young, Avery. We both were forthright in offering helpful advice neither of us asked for. But, look. We both needed to hear it. It ended up being helpful. If we’d listened, it might have saved us a lot of heartache. If I took your suggestion, we might have had a lot more years together. But who knows? Is it worth regretting all that? We can’t change any of it. We only have what we have now.”
I smiled at Piper, feeling like a weight I had not known I was bearing lifted from me.
“The mystery is solved,” I said.
“I believe we have accomplished what we needed to here,” Ayane stated as she restacked and neatened the document containing my narrative.
“Do you think we’ve found out anything about my…strange condition?” I inquired.
“Not all the answers, Avery,” Ayane replied. “Only that I have much less concern regarding any memory loss. I don’t think you are going to suffer any noticeable problem from the brain injury. As for your SMEs, I still have no medical explanation. I will say, however, that you have a gift for…immersive description, Avery.” She tapped the document with her finger. “Especially in writing. Few great books have given me such visual and other sensations the stories in here evoked.”
“Y’all really know how to tell a story, sweetheart,” Piper added.
“Now, I will have to think of a way to write up all of this – deidentified, I assure you – in a way that will advance the study of exceptional neurological phenomena.”
We thanked Ayane for the time and effort she put into this and for coming all the way up to Santa Fe.
“You are most welcome,” she responded. “But you have done a great deal for me also. Thank you, Piper, for your very helpful contributions. Avery, it is a privilege to work with you as always. Why don’t I see you again in another year?”