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don’t think he knows you.”
    â€œOh, he knows me,” the man said, shrugging off Joan’s remark.
    I didn’t like the way he ignored Joan’s attempt to smooth things over, which put me off even more. I didn’t like his attitude, and I felt my fear turning to anger.
    The couple stayed for about fifteen minutes, during which Joan explained what had happened to me.
    JD had a big personality and wasn’t the type of guy you’d forget. Still, I had no recollection of him. Nonetheless, as he was talking, I tried to act as if nothing was wrong, and when he asked me to pray with him, I didn’t refuse. But as he closed his eyes, bowed his head, and started to pray to the “Heavenly Father,” I left my eyes open and kept a close watch over him.
    After he and his wife left, I felt relieved.
    â€œWho was that?” I asked Joan.
    How many more people am I going to see that I don’t know? This could be endless.
    Joan explained that he was a recent business acquaintance who had been a wide receiver in the NFL and was now a minister; this woman was his wife. We hadn’t thought to ask how he’d heard about my accident, but we assumed that he must have called my office. We’d had a recent business disagreement, she said, and she was as surprised to see him as I was. It was curious that I seemed to have retained my emotional memory of him and nothing else. Other than my medical issues, this was the most anxiety-provoking episode I’d had in the hospital so far.
    Finally at 2:30 A.M. , on our third day in the hospital, the attendants came to take me downstairs for my MRI. Because this was a trauma center, the machine was in constant use, and this was the first available slot. It was reassuring that Joan had held to her promise to remain by my side, especially when I had to have tests in the middle of the night.
    I was fine in the elevator, but when they tried to put me into that small narrow tunnel, I became irritated, fearful, and combative.
    â€œThere is no way you are putting me in that tube,” I said.
    Concerned that the outburst could further damage my brain, one of the staff went to fetch Joan to see if she could get me to agree to the test. But I was having so many problems expressing myself that my fear had morphed into anger by the time she arrived. I was so furious that my hands were turning white as I gripped the sides of the metal cart. I sat upright, thinking that if Joan tried to make me go inside that machine she wasn’t my friend after all.
    â€œThere has got to be a different machine that they can use because I am not going in this one!” I yelled.
    After some back-and-forth—heated and adamant on my side, cajoling on theirs—it was decided to reschedule the MRI so an anesthesiologist could administer a sedative. Joan acknowledged that I’d never liked confinement, and in years past I’d been tested in an “open” MRI because my shoulders were too wide for a regular testing cylinder like this one. She seemed surprised by my extreme resistance to this important test, but she proved she was, in fact, my friend by standing by me and persuading them to listen to my concerns. About 7:00 A.M. they took me back down for the second attempt, and this time an anesthesiologist gave me a Fentanyl-Versed cocktail, which produced a sense of euphoria and relaxation for a few seconds before I fell asleep. Apparently, my shoulders did fit into that narrow tube, where they kept me for about twenty minutes, out cold.
    When I came to, I was being wheeled back into my room, where Joan was waiting for me.
    Within a couple of hours Dr. Walker came by to tell us that the MRI results were normal, so they were sending me home and I should follow up with Dr. Goodell. Joan and I asked a lot of the same questions about why my pain and memory weren’t improving, but the answers and the prognosis were still the same: I should get my memory back