Page 128 of Hello Stranger

Oh, and I googled “Why men don’t text you back.”

But it wasn’t very helpful.

I also had another brain scan to check my edema. And that wasn’t helpful, either.

Dr. Estrera reported that, shockingly, according to the scan, the edema had now largely resolved. He compared last week’s scan with this week’s scan—both of which looked quite similar to me. “We’re seeing an eighty-one percent reduction in swelling in the area,” Dr. Estrera said proudly.

Big news, I guess—but it didn’t do me much good if nothing else had changed.

And nothing else had changed.

After the scan, Dr. Nicole gave me a battery of facial recognition tests to compare to my baseline. And I was exactly the same on those as I’d been a month ago. The same identical numerical score.

I knocked my head against the table at the results.

“Please don’t do that,” Dr. Nicole said.

“How can I be exactly the same?” I whined.

“These results are to help you—not make you pound your head on the table.”

“Well, they don’t feel very helpful.”

“Now that the edema is resolving, you should start to see somechanges in your facial perceptions,” she said, like that might cheer me up. Then she added, “No guarantees.”

But I wasn’t in the mood to be cheered up. I flopped down on her sofa in despair. “Nothing is going right.”

“Maybe you need to broaden your definition of right.”

“Don’t throw that cheery nonsense at me. My life is a shit show.”

This right here felt like my lowest moment so far. I thought I was supposed to be getting better, not getting worse. Learning to cope, at least. What the hell was going on?

“Tell me what has you feeling down,” Dr. Nicole asked.

“Everything?” I asked. Like, did she really think she could handle that?

“Sure. Everything.”

Okay. She asked for it. “I still can’t see faces. I submitted a portrait to this competition that I should have won—handily—that’s guaranteed to come in dead last. I’m being menaced by my evil stepsister. I’m embarrassed to go back to my favorite coffee shop. My best friend eloped to Canada and left me dateless for what’s sure to be the most humiliating event of my life. My stepmother wants to build a relationship with me and she’s coming to the show over my vociferous objections. My dog is a thousand years old. I broke up with my fantasy fiancé. And the very cute guy in my building who I might genuinely be in love with kissed me senseless the other night and then fully disappeared.”

“Ah,” Dr. Nicole said.

“That’s all you’ve got? Ah?”

“Of all of those,” she asked next, “which one is the worst?”

“All of them,” I answered. Then I had an idea. “Any chance you could be my date to the art show? So I don’t have to go alone?”

It was a long shot, of course.

But she didn’t budge. “I find our work goes better in here,” she said, “when we don’t see each other out there.”

BY THE SATURDAYof the art show, it had been a full four days, fourteen hours, and twenty minutes since I’d had any contact from Joe.

It seemed pretty clear at this point that he’d moved on. Though I continued to hold out hope for Sue’s Sicilian grandmother scenario. Or maybe an unexpected car accident, like inAn Affair to Remember.Or maybe some kind of head injury-induced amnesia?

There were still a few possible explanations that were forgivable.

---