Brain Damage

In her hospital room, Charly has a bowel movement just before Clark and her therapist arrive for a care lesson. Her shame deepens when Clark makes a negative comment about her unshaven legs. When the odor becomes apparent, the therapist uses it as a teaching opportunity. Clark reluctantly helps clean and dress Charly but avoids eye contact with her. He gives her a quick, perfunctory kiss on the forehead before departing.

The novel returns to the “before” timeline. Two months before the shooting, Charly finds a suspicious text on Clark’s phone, reading, “Is she gone yet?” (278). After consulting Bridget, Charly hires a private investigator, Mark Spinelli, who soon confirms that Clark is having an affair with a model named Haley Matthews. In Spinelli’s office, Charly views his surveillance photos of Clark and Haley kissing. Devastated and enraged, she resolves to throw Clark out of their apartment.

Two weeks later, Charly waits for Clark at home, drinking wine. She discovers the gun he purchased in an unlocked drawer and holds it. When Clark arrives, she confronts him about Haley. Seeing her holding the gun, he becomes frightened, but she returns it to the drawer. Clark confesses, blaming loneliness, but insists that the affair is over, and proposes that they start trying for a baby to save their marriage. Though suspicious, Charly allows him to stay in the guest room while she considers forgiving him.

The novel returns to the “after” timeline. Five months after the shooting, Charly overhears Clark (on the phone in her rehab room) telling someone, “I love you.” When she confronts him, he admits that he’s in love with Haley. He proposes a mutually beneficial arrangement: He’ll be her caregiver in exchange for her disability payments, which he needs to resolve his financial problems, while he continues his relationship with Haley. He tells Charly she should be grateful, as her condition makes her undesirable. Feeling powerless, she agrees.

Clark informs Charly that she’ll sleep in the spare bedroom of her apartment, while he and Haley, posing as Charly’s live-in nurse, take the master bedroom. In the rehab facility’s gym, Charly confides in Angela. Outraged, Angela polls other male patients on whether they find Charly attractive. An elderly patient agrees that Charly is pretty, while Jamie blushes and quietly calls her “beautiful,” giving her a small flicker of hope.

During a group session, a patient named Helga, a former jeweler, examines Charly’s engagement ring and declares that it’s cubic zirconium rather than a diamond. Later, Charly’s professional knowledge resurfaces when she diagnoses a lesion on another patient’s scalp as probable skin cancer. Amy, her speech therapist, witnesses the diagnosis and marvels at how this skill is perfectly preserved despite Charly’s other deficits. That night, her nightmare, in which Kyle Barry shoots her, recurs.

Two weeks later, Charly notices that Jamie has been distant since Clark began visiting more frequently. During the Walking Group session, Clark arrives early and tries to pull Charly from the session, dismissing her practice as “pointless.” Overhearing this, Jamie shoves Clark to the floor and then claims he did so inadvertently after losing his balance. Enraged, Clark threatens Jamie, and the two argue until the therapist, Natalie, orders Clark to leave and scolds Jamie. Fearing Clark’s retribution, Charly is filled with dread, wondering if this will be the last time she ever gets to walk.

Still angry, Clark is rough with Charly during a bathing lesson and forbids her from speaking to Jamie again. He then demands that she transfer power of attorney from her mother to him. Feeling that she has no choice, Charly agrees. Later, Jamie finds Charly and apologizes, confessing that he thinks she’s beautiful and deserves better. Before leaving, he gently turns her food tray so that left-side neglect won’t prevent her from seeing her water glass.

An eye doctor fits Charly with prism glasses to help correct her left visual neglect. During her next therapy session, she wears them and, for the first time, successfully wheels herself down a hallway without crashing. Her therapist is thrilled, pointing out that Charly is unconsciously using her left hand to help push the chair. Later, Charly realizes that she can see and tell time on her left wristwatch without consciously trying.

Charly excitedly tells Clark about her new glasses and asks for nicer frames, but he refuses because of the cost. During their next care session, he buttons her shirt incorrectly, and when she asks him to fix it, he calls her a “diva.” Frustrated, Charly attempts to rebutton the shirt herself. To her therapist Valerie’s astonishment, Charly unconsciously uses her left hand to steady the fabric and completes the task.

Waking from a nap, Charly hears her phone ringing and uses her prism glasses to locate it, instinctively using her left hand to answer. The caller is Regina Barry, the ex-wife of the man imprisoned for shooting Charly. Regina reveals that Clark was once a neighbor of hers and her ex-husband’s, that the two men became close friends, and that Clark was dating a model named Haley at the time. Charly instantly realizes that her first meeting with Clark was a setup. Regina adds that she tried to tell the police, but they ignored her. As Charly ends the call, she feels a severe headache starting, and just then, Clark enters her room.