They tell me I’ll fly home as soon as I’m strong enough.
They tell me I may be strong enough day after tomorrow.
They tell me all my belongings are in the closet.
They tell me they brought them from my hotel room.
They tell me all my notebooks are intact.
They tell me I shouldn’t be looking at them now.
They tell me I shouldn’t be writing in them now.
They tell me I shouldn’t be getting excited now.
They tell me I shouldn’t be worrying now.
They tell me I shouldn’t be thinking now.
They tell me I should be resting now.
They tell me I should be taking it easy now.
They tell me it’s time for an injection.
I tell them I need to keep my notebook.
They tell me my notebook will not get lost.
I tell them I need to remember what I’ve written here.
They tell me it’ll be right here when I wake up.
They give me the injection.
I start taking it easy.
Date unknown
It appears that this was actually written by me.
Date unknown
I, Jared Osborne, write this down for Jared Osborne for when you wake up in the middle of the night, as you seem to do, and you don’t know where the hell you are. The preceding pages, beginning “They tell me I’m in a hospital,” were also written by me for when you wake up in the middle of the night—but I don’t remember writing them any more than I will remember writing this the next time I wake up in the middle of the night and find it sitting on the table beside the bed.
Date unknown
This is a concussion. That’s what you have to get fixed firmly in your head. You have a concussion and for the time being your long-term memory is out to lunch. We hope it’s “for the time being”—all of us Jareds who read and write in this notebook. The doctors who patiently tell us their names every day and that we regularly forget every day, assure us that very probably this is a temporary condition.
May 31
Apparently I sleep a great deal. I have no idea whether it’s for hours or for days. Now, when I wake up, I reach automatically for this notebook. I don’t remember what’s in it, but I do remember that it has the answers.
I think the idea is, even if my long-term memory never returns, this notebook can serve as a kind of cumulative record. I’ve collected a lot of information in the last hour, which I should put down here.
To begin with, I’m back in the United States. (I keep wanting to say we, meaning the Jared who is writing this entry and all the Jareds who will read it in days to come.) I’m at what seminarians used to call “the Company Farm,” which is where you go when you “need a little rest”—or a little vacation from booze—or the whispers about you and the altar boys are beginning to get a bit noisy. All the big orders have them, of course, some of them have several, thoughtfully specialized. Naturally they’re not called penitentiaries anymore; nowadays they’re called retreat centers. This one is located in the rolling countryside about a hundred miles south of St. Jerome’s.
I found this out by picking up the phone on my bedside table. Apparently I always do this. Tim, the young man who answered (I don’t know that he’s young, but he sounds young), told me to read the entries in my notebook, and I told him I’d already done that. Then he told me where I was, that I’d been here for two days, that it was two o’clock in the morning (evidently my favorite time for calling), May 31.