Page 39 of Hello Stranger

“It’s a little bit like a Salvador Dalí painting.”

“Oh my god, is your facemelting? Like a Dalí clock?”

“No… the pieces are all technically kind of in the right place. Ish. It’s not surrealism, exactly. It’s just…”

“How bad is it that you can’t even find the words?”

“It’s a little ghoulish.”

“Ghoulish!” I had my answer. “Ghoulish is super bad. Ghoulish is a catastrophe.”

But she came over and hugged me.

“It’s certainly eye-catching,” she said, trying to accentuate the positive. “Nobody’s going to be bored looking at this thing.”

But eye-catching wasn’t going to cut it.Not boredwasn’t what the judges wanted. And don’t get me started on ghoulish. This was a puppies-and-kittens type of organization.

These North American Portrait Society folks were about following the rules—not breaking them.

I stared at the painting and tried to see what Sue was talking about—or any face at all. But I just couldn’t. I squinted and concentrated and tried to make the pieces click for so long that frustration finally burst up out of my body like a geyser. I slammed my fist down on the paint table, accidentally hitting a book… that hit a glass jar of brushes… that went flying and shattered on the concrete floor.

“Shit,” I said, deflating.

I moved to start picking up the shards, but Sue stopped me. “Go sit down. I’ll get this. Take some breaths.”

I did as I was told.

Sue found a broom and a pan. “What about Chuck Close?” she suggested. “He was a portrait artist with face blindness. How did he do it?”

I’d been reading up on him. He was a face-blind artist who painted enormous photorealistic faces. But I shook my head. “He superimposed a grid over a photograph. But for this competition, it has to be a live model. No photos allowed. It’s in the rules.”

“What do other face-blind portrait artists do?”

“Shockingly, a search of ‘techniques of face-blind portrait artists’ does not turn up a huge number of results.”

“You’ve tried it?”

“Many times.”

“Well, then,” Sue said, frowning again at the painting. “We’ll just have to get creative.”

I ASKED DR.Nicole about it when we had our first meeting outside the hospital.

I’d been supposed to start twice-a-week sessions with her the day after I came home. But in my Pajanket stupor, I’d missed that first appointment. And then the next two. And I was seriously considering just never going at all when she started calling me—stalking me, really—until I finally gave in.

I Ubered to her office.

Which wasn’t an office at all. It was a 1920s bungalow in the Museum District.

It’s not a stretch to say that I fan-girled Dr. Nicole with the same intensity that I was now madly in love with Peanut’s new veterinarian. This whole brain surgery thing seemed to have really turned up the volume on my emotions.

In the hospital, she had seemed to glow with comfort and compassion. Now, here in the real world, as she opened the door in a belted maxi dress, dangly gold earrings, and open-toed flats… she was even better. Her short, naturally graying hair seemed to ring her head like a halo.

“Hello, Sadie,” she said, taking my hand and giving it her signature squeeze. “Come in.”

What was it about her? She was so damnedtogether.Her voice. Her calm. So balanced and solid and like she had it all under control.

The opposite of me, basically.

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