The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [32]
“It pretty much is what it is,” Nada said.
Jameson straightened and began reciting details from memory, like a professor extemporizing on his favorite subject in front of a class. Or else like a man trying to impress a girl with near-photographic memory.
“When you were a child growing up in Chicago, you suffered from severe attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. You were literally bouncing off the walls of your Lincoln Park home. Screaming at parents and teachers and classmates. You couldn’t sit still, even had frequent seizures. On the polo grounds of Oak Brook, you once punched your mother’s horse in the jaw. The horse was more levelheaded, thank goodness.”
Nada felt the same chill she’d encountered when she realized someone had been in her apartment.
“Drugs were the common treatment at the time, but prescription medication in any combination seemed only to make your behavior worse. The side effects were unbearable. Several times you ran away from home, only to resurface after days spent on the streets. Friendships were few and didn’t last. After many consultations, your father found a specialist who recommended deep brain stimulation in the form of a neurostimulator—basically a pacemaker for your nervous system, a device that was initially developed as a treatment for Parkinson’s. The FDA had a warning out against configuring the device for ADHD, but your behavior had become so unmanageable that your father gave the go-ahead and the doctor falsified the diagnosis.”
Nada tried not to appear startled. “You have my attention, Gary Jameson.”
“Chicago Reader. A lengthy article dated about eight years ago. I uncovered it during a LexisNexis search.”
Right. The article. “Okay.” She gestured for him to go on.
“Deep brain stimulation soon became a huge success, a drug-free treatment for all kinds of neurological disorders and maladies, from depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder to chronic pain and obesity.”
“Last year the FDA approved one for boners,” Nada said with a half smile. “I guess I can take a little bit of credit for that.” Jameson acknowledged the joke with a deferential nod and turned his drink like a dial on top of its cardboard coaster—back and forth, like a safecracker. Not so much as an extra tick in the man’s pulse rate.
He continued, “But for the treatment of ADHD, the results were mixed, to say the least. In fact, Dr. Falcone quickly stopped using the device as treatment for that disorder. The few neurostimulators that had been activated as part of Dr. Falcone’s trial were immediately recalled. There was a scandal. She lost her license to practice medicine.”
What the hell? “Your point?”
“From your abilities, at least as they have been described to me, it would seem that yours is still operating. At least you no longer seem to be struggling with the effects of your disorder. Before we go any further, I’m curious why.”
“What is this?” she said. “You’re dressed too well to be a reporter.”
He enjoyed that. “I should hope so.”
She considered the question. “I still have the neurostimulator because there’s nothing wrong with mine. They still write to me every once in a while, asking me to come in so they can slice it out. I just ignore them.”
“Deep brain stimulation is supposed to treat only the illness and have no side effects. But I understand many ADHD patients had an extreme reaction to the pacemaker.”
“You mean they went nuts.”
“Several committed suicide.”
“They tried to come up with different names for it. Acute sensory integration disorder. Neural stimuli incapacitation. Some of the kids just went batshit. Two jumped off bridges. One crashed his plane into an office building during a flying lesson. One kid almost died trying to cut it out himself.”
“But you were unaffected?”
“I didn’t say that. I went through a rough period.”
“You almost burned down your parents’ house.”
“Summer house,” she said, correcting him. “And that was before the operation. No, I just learned to cope.”
“And how did you do that?”
Nada looked down at