Concussion

“I believe the universe may be coming back together again.”

Julian Hartsock. “Concussion” Precipice: The Autobiographical Ramblings of Julian Hartsock. (Chapter) A & A Publications, 2123.

Generalized Intelligence—(Hartsock, Julian Q.) 100^th Percentile: Generalized Intelligence (G, AKA IQ or Intelligence Quotient) is the psychometric score assigned to an individual’s measured proficiency in the successful completion of cognitive tasks across multiple domains of cognition. Individuals extraordinarily high in G are peerless in their ability to solve problems and generate new relevant questions or avenues for exploration in both the abstract and concrete domains. They find the correct answers to problems faster than less intelligent people. They are especially adept at the abstract representation of problems and the translation of abstractions to physical reality and back. Extraordinarily intelligent people generally cluster toward the top of their chosen fields, regardless of the domain of expertise, as G remains an extremely transferable trait, useful in nearly all fields. Peerlessly intelligent individuals may have difficulty relating to others, as they often struggle to accurately perceive or tolerate the limitations of less intelligent collaborators.

A score in the (100^th) percentile, coupled with the distribution profile of psychometric measures herein, suggests a mind of peerless potential. Directives from the examiners on career choice or potential outcomes would prove neither predictive nor useful based on the subject’s Generalized Intelligence score.

“You broke the scale, Julian,” is what the examiner at MM³ said to me. “I’ve never seen anything higher than 99% on any metric. That’s what it usually says, 99.” That, I told her, is what the word exceptional means: I am the exception. Gladstone et al. didn’t get the memo. Their feedback read: G rated as exceedingly high—99th percentile.

So about that last one percent, there’s a lot of territory on the right end of that bell curve—so much so, that an otherwise exceedingly reliable metric—IQ—gets surprisingly wonky. Since the concussion, I’ve tested my brain a lot. You could call it a hobby of mine. I view psychometrics in much the same way an athlete might view the stopwatch. How can you hope to improve or understand unless you can first measure the phenomenon?

IQ, as the metric was once commonly known, is one of the most stable and reliable measurements in all of social science. Mine has declined slightly over the course of my lifetime, as fluid intelligence typically does, stabilizing again once I passed the prime of my cardiovascular and cognitive health. Year-to-year, though, it has been replicable almost to the point. I don’t like to give out that number, because it then becomes a loaded number, heaped with expectations, comparisons, musings—“Oh, the things that I could do, if only I had Julian Hartsock’s IQ!” I’ll leave it at the above statements and the declaration that it is well into the 200s.

That was not evident from the start, not something we wrestled with in the Hartsock house while I was growing up. I was smart, and I knew it, and my family knew it, and my teachers knew it. Nobody had any idea exactly how smart I was, though, not until I hit my head so hard I couldn’t see straight anymore.

We Hartsocks were farmers. Unsurprisingly for such a clever bunch, we were great farmers, for ten generations, my father said often when I was a kid. Ten generations of Hartsock corn. Both Dad and Pop were damn smart too, so it didn’t jump out that I was so particularly brilliant. Dad introduced me to the complexities of growing and was unsurprised when I got it. There were a lot of variables to manage—soil health, weather, fertilizer, irrigation, timing, markets, regulations, runoff, light. There were not a lot of family operations still going in Ashtabula County by the time I came along. Dad took pride in keeping the legacy going strong, and I think, for most of my childhood, he thought he was going to pass it to me. For my part, I didn’t give it much thought. I was too busy playing sports, mostly soccer as we Americans call it.

I thought I was going to play in Europe. That was my ambition from about as early as eight or so. My team was Ajax out of Amsterdam. There was something about the lore of the Greek warrior icon that called to me—that and their greatness. In that era, they had some squad, and they played a brand of football that was hard to beat—a hybrid style mixing German stoutness and resoluteness in the defensive third with a more general European convention and organization through the midfield, mixed with a creative and fluid attack that resembled the best attributes of South American football. I never missed a match.

In my own game, which sounds a funny thing to say about a thirteen year old, but I was a midfielder, and a seriously good one at that. It might sound funny, but in my household, there was little thought of me as an academic prodigy because all the focus was on the prodigy I was turning myself into on the soccer pitch. Dad loved that I was self-motivated, and he approved of sports as a vehicle for teaching tough life lessons. His sport was baseball, he told me, which fit both the place and his personality far better than soccer. He’d played a little soccer himself as a kid, but it wasn’t his game. He knew enough to watch and make observations, though. And his observation that shaped my game more than anything was that the most important aspect of great midfield play was awareness—positional, situational, visual: a top-level midfielder knew what was going on around him and knew what was going to happen next. That required vision and anticipation.

Vision and anticipation could be practiced. Dad devised ways to help me practice both from a young age. He built me a training aid out of a set of American Football shoulder pads—gluing to those pads a thin, opaque ring made of a layer of plastic that prevented me from seeing anything near me if I looked down for the ball at my feet. I hated it, of course, because for weeks I would kick the ball away clumsily every time I was lucky enough to locate it. But he insisted I learn to be aware of the ball and my feet and that I figured out how to marry the two together without my eyes doing the work.

I did dribbling exercises, kicking the ball all over the place at first. But it was like farmwork and homework for me. Before I could shoot around and kick the ball off the barn, I had to do those drills. By the time I was twelve, I had almost completely erased the temptation to look down at my feet.

It paid off on the field. I saw everything, and more than any of my peers, I understood the game—knew how to strategize and win. Most teams, at that stage in development, have no strategy whatsoever. The kids just line up and play. Sometimes they listen to their coach. Most of the time, not so much. My teammates listened to me, though. From the back of the midfield, I organized the defense, kept them in formation, pressed when it was appropriate, and controlled ball movement through the midfield, directing the attack.

With my local team it was harder, but at under-elevens, I started playing with sectional and then district teams, and at twelve, I made alternate on an Eastern Midwest all-star team. I was one of the youngest players at that level, but I got used to playing in front of college scouts and, on a few occasions, even national team coaches. By then, conventional school became much more of a hindrance than a benefit, so I started homeschooling. The only time I ever went back to the school grounds was for the Russian mathematics group that met after hours at the local high school.

I always had a plan. Back then, it was to either go to Europe to play for a club at the developmental level or play college ball and then play professionally stateside. That was it.

The play that ended all that didn’t seem so particularly violent. It’s probably too many times to count how often it happens in a young career when two players go up to head a ball and knock heads. Almost always, both players grab their heads, go to one knee for a minute, get escorted to the sideline, put some ice on it and either hop back in that game or return on their next start. Occasionally, a concussion gets diagnosed. I’d seen that happen a handful of times over the years, but it was rare. My hit seemed like any one of those regular head knocks.

We were playing an all-star team from Indianapolis, and I went up for a ball on a corner kick. It wasn’t that I blacked out or lost consciousness or anything like that. I just didn’t see who hit me or how. I felt a pain in the side of my head and stayed down when everyone else cleared the box. I even remember the goalie tapping the ball out of play as our coaches ran on.

I remember everything.

I had a minor headache, and we had a lead, so I didn’t pressure the coaches to put me back in. The game was in hand. I felt good enough to go, though. I remember thinking that.

And then later that day, things got worse. Headache, photophobia, vomiting. Dad knew right away when I got dropped off. He put me through the best protocol he found and followed it to the letter, fully expecting me to recover in a couple days. And then I just didn’t.

The headaches got worse and worse. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t read to do my schoolwork, and most concerning for me, I couldn’t run without each step resulting in a pounding pain in the side of my head. I couldn’t play soccer like that.

Still, though, we continued to follow post-concussion protocols as closely as we could. Dad consulted the family doctor, who agreed that it should pass.

I believed that until the night of the sixth day, when I spent the entire night wide-awake, trying not to cry out in pain. I waited for dad to wake up, to put on his coffee, and then I struggled down the stairs, clutching the banister of the staircase for dear life, my feet seeming totally disconnected from my awareness, as though the wires I’d spent years working to meticulously connect were now all somehow crossed.

I remember stumbling into the kitchen to my father’s shocked face and saying, “Dad, this head thing. I think this is going to be a real problem.”

We had a video-call with a neurologist that afternoon. I couldn’t even look at the screen. I remember the tone being totally different from my family doctor’s. She was gravely concerned. She wanted to see me right away.

Dr. Wu was young to be one of the top-rated neurologists in the Midwest, and she was very well trained. All the right schools and hospitals. It was a much shorter drive into Cleveland than almost every regional soccer game I played, but I remember the ride being agony. Even with my eyes closed the light was tough to take, especially as we approached the city, with the trees and buildings functionally strobing the sunlight as we got closer to downtown Cleveland. And with my eyes closed and the car moving, I got so disoriented I couldn’t help but get carsick, and that brought on the most terrible headache I’d ever had in my life.

Dr. Wu took one look at me and told dad she wanted to admit me, not just for treatment but for confirmation of her diagnosis. I could see in her face that something was gravely wrong.

“It’s a rare pattern,” she told dad, “but not one we haven’t seen before. I wish we’d have seen him sooner.”

“What can you do here that we can’t do as outpatients?” dad asked her. “Wouldn’t he be better off at home, where he’s comfortable.”

“This isn’t going to be a comfortable process, Mr. Hartsock. Here, we can prioritize Julian’s long-term health, maximize recovery and cognitive function. How was the ride down?” she turned to me and asked.

“Murder,” I said.

“He should stay with us,” Dr. Wu insisted.

When she left the room, dad just said, “I’ll call Pop, Julian. He’ll have to come down and stay with you when I’m not here. I won’t leave you with these people in your condition.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

“I don’t trust doctors,” he muttered. “You never know what their motivations are.”

“Helping patients get better, dad?”

“Wouldn’t that be nice if we lived in that world, Julian.”

He could see in my face that I probably didn’t need that added concern heaped on top of the current predicament.

“Don’t worry, Julian. One of us will be with you every step of the way. We’ll worry about the doctors. You worry about getting better.”

Dad didn’t trust much he couldn’t control. And he didn’t like anything he didn’t know about. Head injuries were almost entirely unknown terrain for him, so he started reading incessantly.

I started doing whatever the doctors scheduled. Tests, scans, medications, rest, food—whatever they said. And when they asked me why I seemed so motivated, I told them all, “I need to get back on the field.” And every last one of them looked at me the same way—I’ve got some bad news for you, son. But they never gave me the news in so many words, not in those early hours. Even they didn’t fully know yet.

They had me scheduled for a full slate of tests, which was a concern for them. They were wary of heaping stress on top of a brain injury. Dr. Wu made me promise to report accurately on any symptoms. Apparently, it was important I didn’t try to tough my way through exercises or tests or scans if I had a headache or was tired or dizzy.

They kept asking me about my pain—scale of one to ten, over and over again, all the damn time.

“That’s so subjective, though,” I said to a nurse the second day. Her name was Ayla.

She sorta looked at me funny. “Right. Yes, it is. Why would we ask you then, Julian?”

“Oh,” I said. “To follow any changes in status. On a graph, too, you could begin to correlate activities that worsen symptoms or time of day—other things—what’s the word? Triggers, maybe?”

“Provocations is the terminology we’d use. How old are you, Julian. Your chart said thirteen.”

“That’s right. Why?”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Okay.”

“I’m having a little trouble finding the right words.”

“Sure. That’s fine. Try not to worry about it.”

“It’s only my head, right?”

“The technical term for that is noggin,” she said, smiling. “Says so in your chart—Grade 1 knock to the noggin.”

“It was Grade 2 at best,” I joked.

She laughed and shook her head. “Thirteen, huh? Read this for me,” Ayla said, putting her tablet in my hands.

“What, aloud, or to myself?”

“Either or.”

I tried, but I had a hard time making out the words, sort of like it was blurry. I guess I winced a little.

“Painful?” Ayla asked.

“I’m not sure,” I answered. “I’m sure I’d know the perfect word …”

“He ever have trouble with reading comprehension normally?” she asked dad.

“Not since he was three,” he answered. “No. Never.”

“I’m going to talk to Dr. Wu,” Ayla said. “Your intake scores from yesterday have you at above average intelligence.”

“They tested that? I don’t remember.” I asked her. “Sounds about right, though. Above average.”

“You’re smarter than half the doctors on this wing, and they specialize in brain surgery,” she joked. “I can tell that much talking to you, kiddo. I’m going to have them re-test your baseline cognition. Then we’ll get the eye doctor in here. I’d bet good money you’re out of alignment.”

“My eyes?” I suddenly found myself blinking involuntarily at the suggestion. “That happens?”

“It can,” she said, nodding apologetically. “Sometimes it does.”

She could see that concerned me. I couldn’t help but think about the worst possible outcomes. The human body didn’t exactly come with dials you could adjust back to zero if things got out of whack. What good would a midfielder be if he couldn’t see the field around him properly or walk in a straight line without a pounding headache for that matter.

“Hey. Relax and don’t worry about it,” Ayla said. “Worrying will raise your stress hormones in your noggin there. We don’t want them in there right now, okay? Relax and answer my question, Julian, will you?”

“What question? I don’t remember you asking any question.”

“Your pain. Scale of one to ten?”

“Oh, sorry. I forgot. Brain injury,” I joked. “Let’s call it five and a half.”

“I’ll call it six.”

“I suppose you’d have asked me on a scale of one to twenty if you wanted that level of resolution.”

She shook her head and smiled at me. “The computer only lets us input whole numbers. Don’t ask me why.”

I tried to relax. I tried to sleep. When I closed my eyes, I felt strange, as though the two sides of my body were on slightly different planes from each other. Only opening my eyes or sleeping resolved this sensation. Still, though, when my eyes were open, it was difficult to focus.

They tried to test my cognitive function the following day using a paper test. It was better than the screen, but it still hurt to focus on words on the page in that way. I asked them if it was okay for dad to read me the questions. The answer was no. Instead, they sent in Ayla to read the questions to me. I was still so off kilter that I couldn’t really lie there and close my eyes to visualize anything. Instead, I lay on my back on the bed, staring at the ceiling with the lights off, the curtains closed, and my eyes wide open.

“I had a feeling you were smart, Julian,” Ayla said when we’d finished. “Just remember, this is like the pain scale—a baseline we can test against later. It isn’t meant to diagnose anything.”

“What’s it say? I mean, what’s my score?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “All I know is I couldn’t answer half those questions with the internet, a calculator, and no concussion, and I’m no dummy, Julian. You can talk to Dr. Wu about it if you’re really interested.”

“I’d just really like to play soccer this summer,” I said. “I had a teammate Dale Addison who moved from Pennsylvania. A teammate of his back there missed an entire season.”

“You should be prepared to miss some time, Julian. Dr. Wu insists on being cautious in cases like yours.”

“I might settle for seeing straight sometime this week.”

“Don’t put a timetable on anything. This is about today and tomorrow right now. How’s your pain?”

“Five,” I said.

“Is that what it is or what you want it to be, Julian?”

“I told you all I’d be straight with you.”

“Good then,” Ayla replied. “Somebody will be down to take you to the ophthalmologist in a couple hours. Try to get some rest. That’ll be a tough appointment.”

Ayla knew. The eye doctor put me through more vision tests than I could’ve imagined existed. He forced me to change my point of focus, follow points of light, read tiny letters and describe pictures, and then he dilated my pupils and put on this headgear that I swear he was using to stare into my soul.

He had results right away.

“Your right eye is slightly out of alignment, young Julian, but I’m very confident it’s going to resolve. In the meantime, you will get some headaches. Your two sides of your brain are trying to reconcile conflicting sets of information. It takes a lot of work to compensate. You’ve got a young brain, though. You’re lucky in that regard. I want to see you again in a week.”

When I got back from that appointment to my room, another nurse was there. She had orders from Dr. Wu to give me something to help me sleep.

When I woke up again, it was quarter to six in the morning, and Pop was sitting by my bedside, half snoozing in the hospital chair. I had no idea when dad and he had switched places. I became aware that I had some kind of headband on, a big fat head covering of some kind. I reached up to feel it.

“They want you to keep that headgear on, Jules,” Pop said. “The doctors are running scans. They wanted to put a bunch of nanotech in your head to monitor your brain function, but your dad wouldn’t let them. So they insisted on the headgear.”

“Oh,” I replied.

“It’s not bothering you, is it?”

“No. It was just funny waking up with something on my head that shouldn’t be there.”

“How are you feeling otherwise?”

I sighed. “Off kilter, I guess.”

“There’s something deeper, isn’t there?”

“Every time I do get to sleep, I wake up and my first thought is that I hope I’m back to normal again. When it hasn’t happened yet …”

“A little scary?”

“No. A lot. I’m not going to lie. What if it doesn’t get better, Pop?” I closed my eyes and instantly felt the two sides of my body out of balance, on different planes, ever so slightly. When I opened my eyes again, I was disoriented.

“You were about three years old when I lost your grandmother. You probably don’t remember much of her.”

“No, not much, Pop.”

“She had a stroke, Julian. Do you know what that is, medically speaking?”

I shrugged.

“It’s when blood flow gets cut off to the brain somehow, usually from a clot. That’s what it was in your grandmother’s case. We had breakfast together that morning on the porch—the most perfect spring day. There are some days when the coffee just tastes a little better, you know? That was one of those days, and we laughed like we hadn’t in months, me listening to my news hour and your grandmother working through her word scramble, the dogs chasing each other around. I remember thinking how blessed we were. She fell that afternoon and hung on for another four weeks after that.

“No matter how good things are or bad things are, the one guarantee you get in life is that they’ll change. And you’ll never know how or when. Today’s gonna be today. And tomorrow …”

“Could be better, Pop. I know.”

“Smart boy. How’d you know I was going to say that?”

“Dad says it all the time—tomorrow, could be better; tomorrow, could be better.”

“I wonder where he learned that?” Pop smiled at me. “A menu alert popped up on your bedscreen for your breakfast. I didn’t know what you wanted. If it hurts for you to read it let me know and I’ll help you put your order in.”

“I’ll give it a try first,” I told him, and with a little effort, I winced my way through it.

That morning after breakfast, Dr. Wu came in and examined me, asked me a few questions, and said she still had a few more tests for me. “If all goes well, we should be sending you home tomorrow, though, Julian. We’ll still have a lot of work to do.”

“Sure. Whatever it takes.”

She smiled at me halfheartedly, as though she knew what I was thinking and didn’t want to say what she was thinking. What I was thinking was that I would do whatever it took to get back to normal, back to playing again. I thought that half-smile was a guarded reservation, maybe doubt about the timeline. Maybe she didn’t want to make promises.

It turned out that it wasn’t just my eyes that were out of alignment.

Ayla came back toward midday. She forced me to drink this awful concoction of nutraceuticals that were all mixed into this fruit smoothie, which she promised me was the only way I could get it down.

“We’re going to do that cognitive test over again,” she told me.

“What was my score?”

“Well,” she said, “we’re not exactly sure. Dr. Wu thinks it’s because we did it orally. She’s going to come in and observe when she has a break in her schedule.”

There was something Ayla wasn’t telling me. I had a sense she was hoping I didn’t press the issue.

“Whatever you say,” I told her.

“How’s your pain?”

“A four,” I said. “Better. Sleep helped.”

“That’s good. Eat something, take a nap, and I’ll be back when Dr. Wu’s ready for you at the latest.”

I did take a nap, and Pop was still there when I woke up. It was early afternoon, and Ayla had just come in to let me know Dr. Wu was on her way down.

I had a theory, and I wanted to test it. “I think they’re going to ask you to leave, Pop.”

“Oh?” he said.

“I think they think dad and I might have been communicating somehow yesterday—probably why they’re testing me again.”

“You’re part right,” Ayla said. “Dr. Wu was going to ask your grandfather to wait outside, Julian.”

“I didn’t use dad to cheat, if that’s what you were thinking.”

“We haven’t made any assumptions, Julian, but there were some irregularities with your test results.”

“What do you think your dad would say?” Pop asked.

“About what?” I asked him.

“About leaving you alone with these highly suspicious characters?” Pop winked at Ayla.

“I think he’d be okay,” I told him just as Dr. Wu was arriving.

Pop excused himself. He told me his shift was ending and dad would be up shortly, said he’d see me back home.

Dr. Wu told me to ignore her, to do just what I’d done the day before, answer the questions as best I could.

So I did.

It was a fairly long test, but as long as I kept staring up at the ceiling and didn’t shut my eyes for very long, I felt okay. It actually felt better to have something to occupy my mind rather than lying there aimlessly with nothing to do but obsess over the degree to which my senses or my pain level were improving or growing worse.

There were only a couple questions I considered even marginally difficult. At one point, Dr. Wu interjected. Ayla was in the middle of a section of simple math questions that were really logic questions disguised as math questions.

“Julian, how are you doing this?” she asked me. “This math, you’re doing it in your head?”

“Not exactly in my head, no.”

“Then how?”

“Well, I’m cheating.”

“How are you cheating?”

“I’m using the ceiling.”

“The ceiling?”

“Yeah, it’s a grid—a five-by-five section, subdivided in half is basically like a piece of graph paper. You can visualize just about any base-10 math problem on a ten-by-ten grid. It’s more or less like having a calculator.”

“Did you learn that in math class?” Ayla asked me. “Because I sure didn’t.”

“Nor I,” Dr. Wu said, shaking her head. “Who taught you to do that?”

I shrugged. “No one did. I was just staring at the ceiling and it’s right there. It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

They both gave each other a funny look.

“Not to most people, no. That would not be obvious,” Dr. Wu said. “I’m sorry I interrupted. Please, Ayla, continue.”

“It’s just a matter of scaling up with the decimal place for larger numbers.”

“It’s fine, Julian,” Ayla said. “We’re done with that part. Are you feeling up to looking at the shapes again?”

“Yeah, sure. I feel pretty good.”

After they’d finished the testing, Dr. Wu told me she’d discuss the results with me at some point but that she wanted to talk with dad first, and she gave the indication that it had to do with how overprotective dad was being about the hospital staff taking any liberties in treating me.

Outside, I could see Ayla and Dr. Wu talking through the glass. I couldn’t hear them, but it was the second or third time I had the distinct feeling they were holding something back from me—not a good feeling to have in a hospital. I started wondering. What could it be? Is there something really wrong with me? Why won’t they just tell me.

Dad showed up a little later. I knew there was something very significant going on when I detected that same reticence in his body language. Dad was never one to mince words with anyone, especially me.

“What is it?” I asked him as he sat. “Can you tell me?”

“The discussion is more about how and when, Julian. We’re talking through all that.”

“Is it bad? Do I have a brain tumor or something?”

“No. Oh, no. It’s nothing like that. Everything seems to be progressing. Dr. Wu is much more optimistic than when you came in.”

“Why can’t you just tell me then?”

“Stress. It’s important that your brain heal, and the more relaxed you are the lower the volume of stress hormones pumping around that big brain of yours.”

I rolled my eyes.

“It’s complicated, Julian. This would be a tough conversation under perfect circumstances. We’re going to do what’s best, though.”

“Do I get a say in that, dad?”

“Right now, no. Your job is to be a patient getting better and a kid trusting the people who love him to do what’s right for his short- and long-term health.”

“For my big brain, you said.”

“I did.”

“Did Dr. Wu say something about that? The longer they delay telling me my score, the lamer the excuses get. What’s the deal, dad?”

He sighed.

“Okay,” I said. “So the calculation would be whether telling me the truth would be more stressful than the worrying I’d do about what you have to tell me, correct?”

“That’s the calculation, Julian.”

“Look, dad, I’m not dumb. I know it’s high. I get that I’m smart. I’ve always known I was different.”

“Just how different do you think you are?”

I winced. I wanted to shake my head at him, but it would’ve cause me pain.

“You can say it,” he told me.

“I’ve never met another kid as smart as me. Few adults for that matter. But I don’t exactly live in Tokyo or Shanghai, so on our scale, who knows?”

“The issue, Julian, is that Dr. Wu doesn’t exactly know. You’ve taken three generalized intelligence tests since you arrived. The first you didn’t complete. The second returned only an estimated score, so Dr. Wu decided to test you again, and the third test returned a marginally higher estimate. Do you know how IQ tests work?”

“No, dad, but I can guess a little. Correct answers mean smart. Incorrect answers mean stupid. Something like that.”

He completely ignored my sarcasm. “I’m going to explain it the way Dr. Wu explained it to me,” Dad said. “Like all the different tests they gave you on your cognition, the test itself doesn’t measure anything directly. It only measures whether you answer correctly or incorrectly and the time it takes you to do it.”

“Okay.”

“The score isn’t how many right or wrong you get, it’s how many you get right or wrong relative to the rest of the test pool. In the case of IQ tests it’s a huge population over a couple hundred years now, millions upon millions of people.”

“I follow, dad.”

“So you tell me then, Julian, under what circumstances would it be necessary to estimate a subject’s score?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with the head injury, does it?”

He shook his head. “No. It does not.”

I didn’t want to say it aloud, and he could read it in my face.

“It’s okay, Julian. You can say it.”

“There’s only one reasonable possibility.”

“Which is?”

I sighed. “There isn’t a sizeable enough portion of the pool to compare the subject against accurately. So they extrapolate their estimate based on the data they do have.”

“That’s correct.”

I don’t know how high an IQ one needed to have to connect the dots on the conclusion that followed, but I knew mine was certainly high enough.

“You’re never going to let me play soccer again, are you? That’s what everyone’s afraid of telling me.”

“Before you get all worked up, Julian, let’s focus on the here and now, okay? If we don’t get that brain of yours healthy first, any talk of soccer is a moot point anyway.”

“Misdirection, dad.”

“No, truth. We are talking with this medical staff here, Julian. That’s the phase we’re in.”

“Put the decision on their shoulders?”

“Mine can take whatever you have to dish out, believe me, Julian. My chief concern is now and will always be about what is appropriate and best for you.”

I closed my eyes because I was starting to cry. I hated crying in front of my dad, even when I was younger. I made the mistake of shaking my head. I got so wobbly I felt the sudden sensation that my whole body was going to fall off that bed and out the window to the street below. I opened my eyes and jerked back in the bed, stretching out both my hands against the mattress to stabilize myself, and before I knew what had hit me, I was vomiting uncontrollably, a pounding rush of the blood to the head accompanying each retch.

I turned into a flailing mess with perhaps the worst headache I’d had the whole time since the concussion. Before I knew what was happening, Ayla and an aide were at my bedside, and not long after that, one of Dr. Wu’s younger colleagues was there as well.

“We’re going to give you something to relax, Julian,” Ayla stated. “Okay?”

I turned and looked at dad. I had drool and snot and vomit all over my face, tears filling my eyes, and I felt so ridiculous I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Julian?” dad said.

“I think telling me was a miscalculation,” I told him, snorting and wincing from the pain as I laughed.

“Yeah, thanks, super genius,” he said. “I figured that out on my own.” And I could see a pained look on his face as he clutched his chin.

Then I felt my whole body get heavy and slow. Ayla began wiping off my face with a cold cloth and telling me to shut my eyes and sleep. Then, nothing hurt.

That was the low water mark. When I woke again, I felt better than I had since coming to the hospital. “A three” I told the nurse who visited in the morning. Dad stayed through the night, and like Pop the previous day, was snoozing. When he returned after getting his coffee, he explained that he’d had a long talk with Dr. Wu about treatment. Overnight while I was sleeping, they’d begun using nano-scale neurotech to attract vascular flow to certain areas of the brain they’d identified using that headgear. They were also going to start treating me with a type of magnetometry. They didn’t explain that well, but it turned out to be a type of helmet that went on my head for a spell and seemed totally inert to me while I had it on.

When Ayla came in, she explained that similar to my vision, my sense of spatial awareness—proprioception was the word—had been jarred out of alignment. That was the cause of the sensation that the two halves of my body were on slightly different planes. But I told her it was getting better, and so were the headaches.

“You’re not just saying that,” she asked me, “so you can play soccer again?”

“I told you I’d be honest with you.”

“A lot of liars say that,” she joked.

“So do a lot of honest people.”

Ayla informed me they were going to keep me for a couple more days, so they could oversee the treatment dad approved. He’d been hoping things would resolve on their own, but after witnessing the episode the day before, he’d reconsidered. He even apologized to me.

“I didn’t understand until then,” he said. “I don’t ever want to see you like that again, Julian. I’m sorry.”

“Sure, Dad,” I told him. “You’re looking out for me like you always do.”

I could tell he was exhausted. He told me Pop would be along in the afternoon and headed home. He had work to do back on the farm.

Dr. Wu came in about an hour after dad left, apologizing for stopping by then, but she told me it was the only break in her schedule. She asked me if we could talk.

“They’re overprotective,” I said.

She shook her head. “No. They’re appropriately protective, Julian. I wanted to talk with you about yesterday. I got a report from Ayla and Dr. Desputi. I understand you had a tough reaction to that conversation with your father.”

“That’s a way of putting it,” I joked, “tough reaction.”

“I understand how a change like this can be difficult to process. Many of my patients have neurological issues they need to learn to adjust to. Sometimes we can intervene and help them maintain the lives they had before. Sometimes, though, for all our advances, the best we can do is adjust.”

“I’m not sure there’s a way you can talk to me about this that will make it any easier to accept, Dr. Wu.”

“You don’t want to accept it. I understand that.”

I shrugged.

“Are you a spiritual person, Julian? Religious?”

“Is that a medical question, doctor?”

“You know these bodies we treat, everything we do to heal them is in service of the life people live once those bodies walk out of this hospital. Especially for a neurologist, someone who treats people’s brains, it’s important to know about their mind—how I can help a person live the life they choose to live. So I do ask about the things that are meaningful to them. In a way, it is a clinical question. So, what do you say, Julian? Are you spiritual?”

“I wouldn’t say so, no. I suppose my dad is a little, but we don’t go to a church or anything.”

“About forty years ago, there was a very prominent French neurologist who pioneered several neurotech interventions, but what he’s most famous for was a paper he wrote about the mind, after he had a kind of religious experience. Have you ever heard of Pierre Manet?”

“Can’t say that I have, Dr. Wu.”

“He’s famous in neurology for the term ‘Pierre’s Paradox.’ Have you ever heard of it?”

“No.”

“He became fascinated with a reality that every neurologist confronts at some point—the idea that everything in the universe that you know about occurs in your mind. For example, I can’t perceive you, Julian—your existence, how you look, what you sound like when you talk, your social situation, anything—except by what my brain perceives about you. It’s the same for anything else in the universe. You follow me, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So in a way, the entirety of the universe—the physical world, science, mathematics, language, our society—it all exists for each of us only in our minds. What do you think about that?”

I closed my eyes for a moment to think. I felt the two separate planes of my body drawing closer. I put my hands out in front of me and pointed both of my index fingers together, drawing them closer until I felt like they were about to touch. It was an exercise, or I guess a test, Dr. Wu had done to see how far off my brain was in spatial awareness. When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to see that my fingers were close to touching—maybe less than an inch but still a little off center.

“I believe the universe may be coming back together again,” I said, smiling.

“Is that all?”

“I don’t know. What did Pierre have to say about it? Why was it a paradox?”

“He said that fact was what spawned that religious sentiment in him. The neuroscientist in him should have resolved to figure out how all the connections worked to create the universe he spoke of. The word he used was that it should have made him more solipsistic. Do you know that word?”

“No, but I can guess its meaning from the prefix.”

“Quite right. But he said that realizing that this was true for everyone else as well as himself, for him, meant that even the existence of other people was an act of faith, a religious proposition. He chose to believe in the existence of other minds, to make that leap of faith, because he believed, even as brilliant as he was, that he was incapable of thinking of such things like special relativity, telecommunications, or even how an elevator works. He believed his mind was incapable of creating so many intricacies of the world—therefore other minds had to exist beyond his. We all had to have faith in each other.”

“It seems a reasonable conclusion. I guess I’m just at a loss as to how this is relevant to my concussion, Dr. Wu.”

“Julian, I have treated a lot of people, seen a lot of brains, and each with a unique mind that lived inside of it. I have never seen the like of yours before, and statistically, it is almost impossible that I ever will again. Your brain reminded me of Pierre’s Paradox, because I know your mind has the potential to be capable of things beyond my conception, just as he said. But not just that, what happens in your mind has the potential to change the course of the billions of other universes cohabitating this world of ours and maybe every person who comes after too. That’s how unique and special your mind is. I know that must be a terrifying thought, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I think, though, what is most striking for me isn’t just that you are more intelligent than anyone I have ever met or will ever meet—and I am a neuroscientist, mind you—Julian, you have a good heart. Having met a lot of highly intelligent people, believe me, big brain and good heart do not necessarily correlate. In fact, sometimes it seems the opposite is true. I can see you care about people. That’s what makes your universe so special.”

“What happened to just getting better, you know, get your head right?”

“Yes, that’s fair. Saying as much implies a large responsibility. But again, ignoring it instead of saying it wouldn’t make it any less true.”

“What does this have to do with yesterday? With my father?”

“Well, I had hoped he would let me have this conversation with you—to break this news to you.”

“About my unique brain or about not playing soccer again.”

“Mostly the latter, but you sniffed it out, didn’t you?”

“It was the logical conclusion.”

“Yes. Like how big a loss it might have been for the world if Paganini went around breaking his knuckles in bar fights instead of playing violin.”

“Do you know that he didn’t, Dr. Wu?”

She laughed. “I suppose not, but one can presume.”

“That’s not dad’s way. You have to know him. He wouldn’t just insist on telling me because it’s his responsibility, he also wants me to see him taking that responsibility. Pushing that off on you … just, no. That’d never happen.”

“I want you to know though, Julian, that even if your mind weren’t unique, I’d still have grave reservations about you ever returning to any contact sports ever again. You are exponentially more likely to suffer another concussion again, and it’s liable to be worse next time. It’s true that your father came to his own decision about the matter, but I am absolutely unequivocal about the fact that even if he hadn’t, I would have recommended it one hundred percent. That is my clinical recommendation.”

“It sucks, Dr. Wu. It just …”

 She put her hand on my leg. “I know it does. I know. I’m sorry for everything you’ve lost, Julian.”

“I do appreciate your help. I feel like I’m getting better. Me and my whole universe.”

“And, Julian, it’s important to remember what you said. You can and should take it one day at a time. Focus on healing first. Then, once you have, all the rest of it.”

“Thank you, Dr. Wu.”

“I’m going to follow up with you till you’re better. We’ll make sure you get through this.”

That afternoon and evening, I did quite a few laps around the floor, getting progressively steadier and more in tune with my feet as I walked. I had a pair of cheap sunglasses on that Pop had brough down from his tractor—old man shades. That brought quite a few smiles out of the nurses as I passed them by.

Ayla came and found me at the end of her shift.

“You should be gone tomorrow by the time I come in,” she told me. “You’re feeling better, right? You look better.”

“Two,” I said. “Two and a half tops.”

“You’re a smartass, aren’t you?”

“Apparently a very smart smartass. Thanks for doing your part to reveal that to the world.”

“Well, don’t let that big head of yours get any bigger. That’s kinda what I liked about you in the first place, Julian.”

“I think I’m going to try and still be me, I guess. Maybe a different version.”

“You’re going to be fine. I look forward to hearing about you again someday.”

“No pressure, though, right?”

“What fun is life without a little pressure?” she asked me. “You wouldn’t even want to play soccer if it were never a tough match.”

“That’s a good way to think about it, I guess.”

She gave me a hug. “Take care of your dad and your pops.”

I found myself staring at the squares on the ceiling that evening thinking about how many patients Ayla might develop a relationship with if she kept working in a hospital and had a long career. The squares on the ceiling told me it was roughly sixty-five thousand people. About the capacity of Ajax’s home grounds in Amsterdam. An entire stadium. A whole lot of universes affected for a profession that didn’t scale.

I felt even better the following morning when I was discharged. As we walked out of the hospital, I kept Pop’s sunglasses on for good measure. People parted around us figuring I was blind, dad escorting me by the arm, as I was still a little unsteady with sudden shifts in my surroundings. But my head wasn’t pounding—today a little better than yesterday. Tomorrow, too, could be better.

On the ride home, dad asked me if the sun was bothering me. I told him it wasn’t.

“You’re quiet,” he said. “We can talk if you need to, Julian. It’s been a lot.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay, Julian? It’s all right if you’re not.”

I sorta shrugged. “I guess so.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“With the exception of Ayla, every single person on that floor who knew about me started looking at me differently. That’s what I was thinking about. I was wondering if that’s how it’s going to be now.”

“I’m not sure,” dad said. “Maybe with some people it will. We don’t have to publicize your score, you know.”

“I think I’d prefer it if we kept it as quiet as possible.”

“That would probably be wise,” dad said.

“It’s so strange.”

“I imagine a lot of things about this experience have been strange.”

I nodded, and I became aware of the fact that it didn’t cause me hardly any discomfort.

“I think I’d just like to be quiet if that’s okay, dad. I have a lot to think about.”

“Fair enough,” he said.

That afternoon, I took a walk outside. I thought maybe it might have been that it was the familiar surroundings, but I felt like my feet were more solidly under me. Home field advantage, maybe. I was thinking about what Dr. Wu had said to me, about the possibility I might affect billions of lives for the better, looking out on our fields, trying to calculate whether we had a billion kernels of corn on our entire grounds—what that meant, a billion people, and then more.

As I came around the back side of the barn, I could see the grass hadn’t been cut. It looked different even after those few days without my cleats pounding away at the sod, hour after twilight hour. I glanced up at the reinforced wooden framing my dad had put up on the back wall where I’d spent all those hours practicing, kicking the ball off that barn. I could feel, in the span of one blink of the eye, my vision seemed to suddenly overlap into a comfortable symmetry, the outline of the painted-on goalposts popping into clear focus.

So many goals. So many universes.

With a G in the 100^th percentile, I was intelligent enough to know that nothing I ever could have done on the soccer pitch could have changed our shared universe. A blessing; a curse. Same situation; different name. After my concussion, never again would the focus of my life be a game. There were far too many universes at stake.

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* This story is dedicated to my friend Collette and the many other people like her living with the effects of a traumatic brain injury. Your universe may have changed, but it is no less meaningful.