Chapter 12

12

All About You

In classical myth, Poena is the personification of pain, deriving from the Greek word ποιυ? , meaning penalty . Goddess of divine retribution, she is sent to punish mortals who angered the gods, and for centuries afterward physical suffering continued to be viewed as a penance for sin.

Ancient cultures placed their faith largely in magic and ritual, votive offerings, sacrificial animals and scapegoats sent off in the hope of driving pain out into the wilderness.

Early modern thinkers such as René Descartes, the seventeenth-century French philosopher, scientist and mathematician, were the first to consider pain in a different way. Descartes, in his Treatise on Man , theorized that pain originated in the brain, a revolutionary idea that suggested physical suffering wasn't inflicted by an omnipotent external force. This raised the radical possibility of individual agency, if pain was created internally, then surely it was within our own power to find a cure.

"So, I'm thinking we need a bit more of your early life in here," I say. "Childhood memories, your mom and dad, recollections that make you relatable, that sort of thing?"

Nate stretches across the sofa, hands interlaced behind his neck, and I sit in the armchair opposite, tapping away on my laptop as he talks. Over the last three weeks, we have settled into a familiar routine. It's an absorbing process, working out how best to navigate his moods. If my questions are too direct he can often withdraw, other times he is animated by our conversations, springing up to elaborate on a memory and pacing around the room.

Very quickly the memoir has become a kind of refuge for me, an excuse to avoid the heat of Tony and Amira's rekindled romance, their smug couple status. In the evenings I escape to my room to transcribe and write. Tony's possessions are scattered around the flat. His presence lingers, the smell of his aftershave in the bathroom, his moldy running shoes in the hallway next to mine.

When I enter a room, they spring apart like guilty teenagers. The nights are worse since Tony moved their bed away from the radiator. Now the headboard pushes up against my wall, a thin partition that divides the original room in two. Their lovemaking seeps into my unconscious. I wake frequently from variations of a recurring nightmare, the sound of plaster splitting and their faces pushing through cracks in the bedroom wall, fingers poking through the holes, clawing to get at me.

I try to avoid Tony in the mornings. I am a stranger in my own apartment, tiptoeing from bedroom to kitchen, a spook hazing at the margins of their life. Ironic, really, that I feel more visible here with Nate, where my role is to evaporate on the page.

"Well, let's see," says Nate, staring up at the ceiling for inspiration. "My dad was a maths lecturer, my mom a history academic. When I was around ten years old, she told me I was going to boarding school in Edinburgh."

He catches my quizzical expression.

"My dad had died suddenly and my mom felt it was a good thing to send me away." He shrugs. "I got a scholarship and my mom wanted me to get on with it, not just hang around. The day after he passed away, my two brothers and I went straight back to school as if nothing had happened. We didn't discuss it again. I buried myself in books. We've all moved on."

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't be." He looks at me. "It was decades ago now, there's nothing to be sorry about."

"It sounds like a tough start. Losing your father when you're young is—" I shake my head, wanting to say more, much more, but a text suddenly lights up my screen. Tony.

I'm meeting Amira at a hotel launch tonight for some free booze. Wondered if you wanted to come along too?

An invitation to play third wheel for the night, no chance. I swipe it away rather than reply but I can see Nate looking, noticing the time.

"Sorry," I say. "A work thing. Your childhood. You were saying?"

I feel caught out but he doesn't seem to notice. "I was about to say it didn't feel so tough, but looking back, well, I've recognized how the adults didn't know how to handle grief. You weren't expected to talk about any of that stuff."

I nod in unspoken agreement. "Maybe a good place to begin is what happened after you met Eva. You said in our interview that a colleague told you about her case, how did you make contact?"

"Yes. I'd begun a research project actively searching for people with Eva's condition, congenital insensitivity to pain, and my colleague put us in touch. I wanted to find out which part of her brain was able to trigger those responses, shut down all those sensations." He sits up now. "It's always been a part of my research. Do you know how many painkillers we pop globally? Fourteen billion and that's per day. If we can pinpoint that master switch, we can create a completely different kind of painkiller."

"Hugely profitable, I imagine."

"I didn't mean that." He gives me a look. "I don't want to be the next Sackler family if that's what you're implying. It's about alleviating so much misery with an alternative that isn't necessarily addictive."

"So you called Eva?"

He nods. "We spoke for a few minutes. Being Eva, she was open, receptive to the ideas, my research. Instantly, she could see how helpful it could be for other people like her."

"Except that it couldn't really help her , could it?"

"Well, no. I was looking at how to control chronic pain, not help someone actually feel it. But there was always a chance that the research could throw up other possibilities too. It was a million to one I'd find someone like her. I'd never seen a case before, only read about them. Often, they die young, many before they reach thirty, usually due to some unforeseen accident. Only the ones that are diagnosed early learn how to live carefully by constantly assessing the physical risks around them. The tragedy is their lives are often more defined by pain than people like us who are born to feel it."

"Even so, Eva survived unscathed."

"That's what made her case exceptional. But she wasn't exactly oblivious about her condition even if she wasn't diagnosed. Eva knew how much her life depended on being super cautious, and yet her nature fought against it. She yearned for the freedom that she perceived in everyone around her. That's where I think her hedonistic streak came from, partying hard to feel something, anything, that was memorable. When she first came to the Rosen, she told me how at the age of ten she managed to bite off the tip of her tongue. It upset her that she could damage herself so badly yet not feel a thing."

"She opened up to you in that first meeting? Can you remember how she seemed, what she wore, the chemistry between the two of you?"

He looks disapproving, his expression catches between a frown and a smile. "I see what you're doing."

"Do you? I mean, I think we need a hint of the dynamic, a sense of what was going through your mind, how this meeting would change your life."

He looks at me for a second or two, deliberating. He exhales sharply. "Okay, I suppose I have to go there. When I first saw her, what did I really feel? I guess all I could think was, imagine being her. Imagine not being wired up to the universal alarm system we all have, that enslaves us in fear, in so many ways."

"But you're always telling me it's what keeps us alive. That people like Eva are terribly vulnerable, unlucky even."

"Rationally, yes. And yet. As Eva sat there in front of me, I felt that I'd never met anyone more free. She wasn't tied down like the rest of us. Despite her diagnosis, she was innately fearless. I admit I envied that about her." He picks at the side of his nail while I tap away at my keys. As confessions go, it is hardly revelatory, but with a bit of work it could be a nice chapter opener, how he felt himself letting go, lifted and inspired by this contagiously wild, carefree woman. Nate leans forward.

"Actually, scrub that." He swipes the air. "I don't want people thinking I envied my wife."

"You've only said you envy her ability to feel so free." I look up from my laptop. "That's very fallible, likable even."

He looks unsure.

"We're onto something here. Eva had that unique ability to provoke strong emotion in everyone around her. It's part of who she was. Let's at least leave it in for now and move back to you for a bit. It would be good to have a bit of context, an early memory of what drew you to your work in the first place, perhaps?"

This relaxes him, the possibility of recalling his earliest personal ambitions. It always does for successful men, who've never had to question their limitless vistas. He tells me how he was instantly captivated by a science book he found in a friend's house when he was fourteen years old—full of vivid photographs of dissections through each of the brain's hemispheres.

"This strange mass that you can fit in the palm of your hands," he said. "That it holds our dreams, our memories, everything it means to be us. That everything happening to us in any given moment is right there."

"You mean it was love at first sight," I suggest, tapping away.

"Love at first sight," he muses. "You could put it that way."

I begin to sketch out the opening paragraph. "Perfect. Which brings us back to Eva. Now let's go back to that first meeting again and how you really felt."

He sighs, and eventually says, "What I think you're referring to didn't happen straight away."

"And what do you think I'm really referring to?"

"Attraction?" He leans forward, eyes honed on me. "Have you ever stopped to wonder what's happening in your brain, when you meet someone attractive, I mean?"

"No, not exactly." I waver, feeling as if I'm caught in the crosshairs. "Is it relevant?"

He leans forward, pushing his fingers through his hair, and I catch myself studying him. The tendons on his forearms, the shape of his throat as he swallows.

"The nonconscious you is the powerhouse of every interaction, every reflex and desire, even sexual attraction. Crack that and you can control any aspect of human behavior. What I'm trying to say is I had no intention, no conscious attraction, toward Eva at all. She wasn't remotely my type. I'm not sure I'd usually have been drawn to someone so...out there."

"You'd usually go for someone a little more straitlaced?" I suppress a smile.

"Who knows? What interests me is how little conscious control we have over any of this." He whisks one hand in the air, talking quickly. "Any attraction we feel toward anyone. Our brain's circuitry makes up its own mind, there's very little we can do about it."

"I believe we always have a choice, in the end," I say with more conviction than I really feel.

"You're sure of that?"

There's an awkward pause as he watches me. "So, tell me about her. Conscious or unconscious, what was it about your attraction, not what the science books say." I smile. "Describe her a little bit."

"Well, there's her photograph." He nods toward it but I don't turn around.

"I'm not interested in her photo. I need your own words, your own impressions of her."

He looks lost somehow, his features shifting uneasily. I let him sit with his silence until muscles in his face start to relax a little. "When we finished the research project, when the newspapers got hold of the story about Eva, it was big. People wanted to interview her. This gorgeous-looking woman, a hugely talented artist who only realizes her skin is burning when she smells singed flesh. One tabloid described her as a...sexy mutant." His mouth twists.

"She must have hated that."

He nodded. "She was a serious sculptor but they had a sort of voyeuristic obsession in her condition. The truth is, as an artist she felt like a fraud."

"Really? Her work was hugely respected."

"Eva's idol was Frida Kahlo, an artist who struggled her whole life with chronic illness after her pelvis and spine were shattered in an accident. Eva felt pain was intrinsically connected with great art. If she couldn't suffer, how could she create? Maybe she had a point." He thinks for a moment. "Scratch gorgeous, by the way," he says, abruptly. "Sounds naff."

"But how did you feel when you looked at her? Protective, perhaps?"

He lets out a short brittle laugh.

"I couldn't have protected Eva if I'd tried. When the project finished, I took her out. We drank a bit, and in the end, it was me and her in this bar. Somehow, we got around to talking about our greatest fears, and I admitted after all my research, extreme pain was mine. That, and losing your mind. She was quite drunk by this point and rolled up one sleeve of her jumper. ‘Your real fear should be not feeling anything at all,' she told me, showing me her arm from where she'd accidentally cut herself. The raised skin was like a silverfish trapped in scar tissue. I'll never forget the way she looked at me, her face suddenly stiff and serious. ‘How funny you fear pain when all I can think of is new ways to find out what it really feels like.'"

The sound of Eva's voice echoes in my ears. I type away. "So do you think there were other ways she liked to hurt herself?" He blinks, frowns a little. "I could unpack the question more, but—"

"The kinky angle? I should have guessed."

"Readers would want to know," I add, quickly.

"Well, you can check my wardrobe, if you want. No whips in there," he says, his tone playfully indignant.

"I had to ask. But back to what you were saying, she eventually grew sick of people seeing her as superhuman?"

"The more the media reported on it, the more she shrank away from it. I guess I felt guilty because I had courted the publicity. But I told her that the research I was doing was a stepping stone, and once we found the part of her brain responsible for turning pain on and off, we could help her too. If we could switch it one way, why not the other?"

"Is that true?"

"It could be, but no one would really bother trying."

"Why not?"

"Well, who's going to fund research into curing a condition that affects less than twenty people a year? No point. Drug companies are only interested in chronic conditions that impacts millions of us. One-off treatments aren't profitable; a lifetime of medication is what they like best. A condition like Eva's? No chance. But I didn't spell that out to her back then."

"And that fact didn't really bother you?" I can't help wondering how much he viewed Eva as a necessary sacrifice, a guinea pig to help in the pain race that he hoped to win.

"I thought about it a lot," he says, sharply, looking up at me. "But I didn't want to hurt her. Never tell someone everything they want to hear, only what they can bear." He stops himself. "On second thought, I'm not sure I want that in either. None of it makes me sound good."

"You're not meant to sound good. Good is bland. This—" I nod at my screen "—makes you sound authentic. You felt for her."

"Yes. I emailed her after that night. I was concerned, maybe guilty, that I hadn't been as helpful as I could. I mentioned a few colleagues she should make contact with who could offer advice. She got back to me and after that we began to email each other a lot. We wrote letters."

"Letters. Really? How romantic. Her idea, not yours, I'm guessing?"

"Obviously." He smiles.

"Well, maybe we should take our cue from that. A series of reflections, like the letters you used to write. As I see it, this memoir is a love story above all else. Wouldn't you say so?"

I begin to type. Rather than answer me, he turns his face away instead, and for the briefest moment I think I see him flinch.

Chapter 1

Two years ago, I lost you, in the most upsetting circumstances. And ever since, somehow your story, our story, won't leave me alone. When I first read newspaper reports about the night you died, I thought this must be happening to someone else. I always assumed tragedy only happened to other people. Until it happened to me.

The only way to make any sense of those early days was to get it down in words. Of course, part of it was a vain hope of somehow writing you back into being; that as long as I tapped away, conjuring you up from the past, it brought you closer to me.

Naturally, as a neuroscientist, I am aware of the challenges—how flawed memory can be, no more concrete than footprints in the sand. Yet putting thoughts down on paper offers a permanence that appeals to me. I have tried to be a reliable narrator. It is so easy to idealize the person we have lost, focus on their perfections and forget their flaws, but I believe placing you on a pedestal, which would be so easy, would really be a cage.

I hope I've avoided this and created something that is honest; the essence of you.

This, my love, is what drives me on. Wondering, what would you say now? How would you feel if I told it this way?