My Life, Deleted by Scott Bolzan Page A

floor, which only complicated the situation. “Stupid dog!”
    At that point Joan jumped in, trying to calm poor Mocha—and me—and mopped up the mess on the tile. “Go sit down, Scott. I’ve got it.”
    But the dog didn’t get treated any worse than Joan, Taylor, and Grant—or the rude car insurance agent I cursed out after he wouldn’t listen to my side of the problem.
    â€œThat stupid son of a bitch!” I’d mutter loudly, usually after a conversation hadn’t gone well or I’d had difficulty communicating with someone.
    After I’d calmed down, Joan told me this was one bad habit that hadn’t changed since my injury, joking that she wished it had. Although I’d been largely nicer and more compassionate since the accident, she said, I was just as short-tempered and even more intense than before the accident. She said we couldn’t be sure, though, if it was me or the pain medication.
    I wasn’t immediately cognizant about the reasons for these outbursts, but thinking about them afterward, I realized I was feeling tortured about being lost within myself, not knowing if I was ever going to feel right again. The new Scott was battling with the shadow of the old Scott, whom I pictured as lost somewhere in the crevices of my gray matter. I was supposed to be getting better, but I felt I was actually getting worse in the sense that I still had no memories. Not a single one had come back as the doctors had promised. Meanwhile, I could sense my family was waiting, desperately hoping that the memories would return along with the man they had once counted on, the man Joan described as “the rock, ” who seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
    The old Scott, Joan said, was a guy who knew what he wanted and would speak his mind, loudly, when the mood struck him, which tended to intimidate people, partly because of his size. I wanted to hear more about this man, whom Joan described as an “alpha male.”
    â€œWhat’s an alpha male?” I asked.
    â€œWatch the way people react to Tony Soprano,” she said, knowing that The Sopranos was still one of my favorite shows.
    Telling me to disregard the Mafia ties, extramarital affairs, and violent problem-solving tactics he often employed, she explained that Tony and I had been uncannily similar in terms of our language and mannerisms and our approach to running the household, even down to buying the same car, a Chevy Suburban. In one episode Tony said something like “It may be 2003 outside, but it’s still 1950 in this house.” Joan said that was true for us too in the old-school way we lived: I’d always brought in most of the money, she’d made decisions about where the kids went to school, and we’d never let Grant and his girlfriend lie kissing on the family room couch.
    She also said that although I’d retained Tony’s strong family loyalty, I seemed much more sensitive and emotional these days. She didn’t seem to be making a judgment about it, but I still wasn’t sure I liked the feminine sound of that. I’d heard men on TV say, “Quit acting like a girl,” or “You’re crying like a woman,” and yet that’s what I was doing. I wanted to be more like what my impression of a man was, the strong rescuer who put his fist down and solved everyone’s problems. But at this point I couldn’t even solve my own problems, so I guessed there wasn’t much I could do about that. I was slowly coming to grips with the possibility that the old Scott wasn’t going to reappear, and this was just the way things were going to be.

Chapter 7
    W HEN JOAN TOOK ME to see neuro-ophthalmologist Thomas McPhee, we were hoping to get a more specific diagnosis for my partial loss of vision and, ideally, a cure.
    â€œIs my sight going to return?” I asked him. “Or can I expect to wake up someday and all the vision will be