“My name is John Lewis,” the man said with certainty. He’d been just as certain a minute ago that he was Bill Peterson.
“Do you know where you live?” Helen asked.
The man shrugged.
“Do you know where you are now?”
“Geneva?”
“The town in upstate New York?”
“Don’t know it.”
Despite two sweaters, social worker Helen Mayfield sat huddled against her tiny desk at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Senior Outreach Center; at least the piles of folders full of lost causes provided a buffer against the draft. And the draft was no bother compared to the square dance class. The wall between her office and the rec room was so thin, it felt like the dance caller was hollering directly into her ear.
Not unrelated was the migraine, like a railroad spike through the base of her skull and into her left eye. Then there was the pharmacy three blocks away, where she might obtain a remedy. Closed December 25, sure. But also today, December 26.
For St. Stephen’s Day!
She could help the man sitting at her desk, though. So everything else was relegated to minor annoyance.
He looked to be in his early sixties. Five-ten or eleven, weight about right, plain features. He had a moderate amount of white hair and an average amount of wrinkles and spots. His muscles were firm, but not so much that anyone would notice, except on close inspection. He’d spent the night here after volunteers in a Meals on Wheels van spotted him wandering Brooklyn yesterday afternoon in just the flannel pajamas and bedroom slippers he still wore. He had no wallet, no watch or jewelry, no identifying marks. And then there was his accent, or, really, the lack of one. He could be anyone from anywhere.
Still, Helen wasn’t without clues. Each year the center cared for more seniors with neurodegenerative conditions than a neurologist typically saw in a career. Although he was relatively young, she suspected her John Doe had Alzheimer’s. Its trademark was damage to the memory-retrieval process, manifested by a veil over the past and present. Symptoms also included humming and rocking without self-awareness. Mr. Doe: all of the above.
And the wandering was a classic. Alzheimer’s caused minimal motor impairment. Ten years from onset, patients could tie a tie, bake a cake, even create a Web site. Driving a car was nothing for them. Except now and again, they departed for the corner store, only to be found halfway across the country. Such spells of disorientation often were prompted by unfamiliar surroundings. Out-of-towners visiting relatives frequently wound up as Does.
“Do you, by chance, have family in the New York City area?” she asked.
The humming ceased. The man sat ramrod straight. “Yes, ma’am. My son, Charles. Three-oh-five East Tenth Street in Manhattan, unless he’s had difficulty making the rent again.”
A few keystrokes at the social services database, and her computer screen filled with the driver’s license data and a photograph of Charles Jefferson Clark of 305 East 10 Street. He was a year and a day older than she, five eleven and 170, with strong features and playful blue eyes that shone through scruff and tangles of sandy hair. In that shabby Yonkers Raceway T-shirt, she thought, he could be a rock star who dressed in defiant opposition to his means.