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within the next couple of weeks.
    Then the waiting began while my discharge papers were being prepared. As the hours went by, Joan grew increasingly agitated, which only made me more uneasy and anxious. “What is taking so long?” she kept saying. “I can’t believe the staff hasn’t taken care of this yet.”
    We waited so long that we finally ordered lunch, and around 3:30 P.M . it was time to go.
    â€œAre you ready to go home?” Joan asked.
    I was scared to find out what “home” was like, but I nodded and tried to prepare myself to find out.

Chapter 3
    M Y SHORT-TERM MEMORY seemed to be okay, so I knew it was Friday, December 19, 2008, and I was being released from the hospital with my wife, Joan, by my side. But I was racked with fear of the unknown as I tried to prepare to leave the shelter of my sixth-floor room, the only place that felt familiar. I was still having trouble finding the words to say what I wanted, and my speech was still coming out in slow, robotic monotones.
    Joan had brought me a comfortable T-shirt and jeans to wear home, but like Peter Sellers’s character in Being There, I had no idea what to expect the real world to be like because I’d only seen it on TV.
    As the tech pushed me down the hallway in a wheelchair, she used a different elevator than I was used to, and I started noticing things from a different perspective. Every other time I’d gone down that hallway, I’d been lying on a gurney. Now that I was sitting upright, a cacophony of new perceptions seemed to be hurtling toward me at warp speed as the adrenaline shot through my veins. I felt dazed and beleaguered by it all.
    Outside, I squinted as the tech wheeled me down the sidewalk that ran along the driveway of brick pavers shaped like miniature stop signs, which, for some reason, I still recognized. I was confused as my eyes tried to adjust to the bright Arizona sunlight. Since the accident, when almost every point of reference I’d acquired in a lifetime had been erased, I’d been completely ensconced in the hospital world, glimpsing “outside” by watching the news. Given that it was December, I had seen lots of people dealing with cold weather and snow in other parts of the country—nothing like the sunny sky above me now—but couldn’t grasp the geographical differences. So I didn’t know what to think when I saw people dressed in light clothing walking around on the street. I could only assume that I was supposed to get out of the wheelchair and join them for parts unknown. Alone.
    But before I could ask the young tech, “Where do I go now?” Joan said something reassuring.
    â€œI’m going to get the car. I’ll be right back.”
    I was still unsure of her role in my life. I hoped she really was going to come back and get me, that she wasn’t going to abandon me there. But I also believed that after she came back with the car, her “job” with me would end. The relief was tremendous when she pulled up in a black Chevy Tahoe, opened the passenger-side door, and invited me into the car.
    I proceeded to climb into the vehicle, which seemed to be very big for Joan, who was all of five feet one inch and about one hundred and twenty-five pounds.
    â€œIs this the car you drive?” I asked.
    â€œNo, this is Taylor’s car. I drive a smaller car, a Porsche Boxster that you bought me in Carlsbad,” she said.
    As she went through the litany of vehicles that we owned and who in our family drove which one, I felt my brain shutting down. I couldn’t process all that information. Not when I was trying to get used to being outside in the real world for the first time.
    The hospital was only a twenty-minute drive from our house, but time seemed to fly by as I stared at the buildings, cars, and people we were passing, hoping that something or someone would look familiar. It was no surprise by this point, however,