“What do you want, Gabriel?” he asked groggily, knowing full well what the dog’s response would be.
It was no surprise when he felt a tennis ball thump onto his chest.
What was a surprise was when the dog answered his question.
“Want to play ball now,” Gabriel declared in a very clear and precise voice.
Aaron opened his eyes and gazed up into the grinning face of the animal. There was no doubt now. The day’s descent into madness was complete. He was, in fact, losing his mind.
CHAPTER THREE
Dr. Jonas seemed genuinely pleased to see him.
“You’re not someone I’d expect to see waiting out front at eight thirty on a Friday morning, Aaron,” the burly man said as he walked behind his desk, removed his tweed sports jacket, and hung it on a wooden coatrack stuck in the corner.
“How long has it been?” the psychiatrist asked, smiling warmly as he began to open the paper bag he’d carried in.
Aaron stood before the chair stationed in front of the doctor’s desk. He glanced casually about the office. Little had changed since his last visit. Cream-colored walls, a framed Monet print bought in the gift shop of the Museum of Fine Arts—in a strange kind of way it felt comforting.
Dr. Michael Jonas had been his counselor after his placement with the Stanleys, and had done him a world of good. It was with his help that Aaron had learned to accept and cope with many of the curves life had seen fit to throw at him. The man had become a good friend and at the moment, Aaron was feeling a little guilty for not making more of an effort to keep in touch.
“I don’t know, five years maybe?” he responded.
Jonas shook his shaggy head, smiling through his thick salt-and-pepper beard. “That long?” he mused as he removed a banana and a small bottle of orange juice from the bag. “Doesn’t seem it, does it? But again, once you hit forty, the dinosaurs don’t seem all that long ago.” Jonas laughed at his own joke and sat down in the high-backed leather chair behind the sprawling oak desk. He grabbed the banana and juice and held them up to Aaron. “Do you want to share my breakfast? I’m sure I could find a fairly clean mug around here somewhere.”
Aaron politely declined as he sat facing the doctor.
“Suit yourself,” Jonas said. He twisted the metal cap off the juice and took a large gulp. “If you don’t want breakfast, you must’ve skipped school for some other reason. What’s going on, Aaron? What can I do for you?”
Aaron took in a deep breath and let it escape slowly, gathering his wits so as not to spew out the events of the past twenty-four hours in an incoherent babble. How exactly do you explain that you can suddenly understand foreign languages—and, oh yes, your dog has started to speak to you?
“You okay?” Jonas asked, starting to peel his banana. The man was smiling, but there was definitely a touch of concern in his tone.
Aaron shifted nervously in his seat. “I don’t know,” he answered with uncertainty.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you.” Jonas broke off the top of the banana and popped the fruit into his waiting maw.
Aaron gripped the armrests tightly, sat back, and began to explain. “I’m not exactly sure what’s happening…but I think I might be having some kind of breakdown.”
The doctor took another swig of juice. “I doubt that very much,” he said, “but if you want to explain, I’m all ears.”
Aaron was very careful as he talked about what had happened at school the previous day, at the lockers with Vilma and her friends. He was sure to include that he had been experiencing a very bad headache just before he was suddenly able to understand their Portuguese. He decided to stop there, not yet wanting to broach the incident involving Gabriel.
Aaron had been staring at his sneakers through most of his explanation, and gradually looked up to meet Jonas’s gaze as the psychiatrist finished the last of his banana.
“It’s all right,” Aaron said, again looking down at his feet. “If you want to call and get me a room up at Danvers State, I’ll understand.”
Jonas continued to chew as he picked up the fruit peel and threw it inside the empty paper bag. “This is interesting, Aaron,” he said after swallowing. He wheeled his chair over to the side of his desk and tossed the bag into the trash barrel. “Very interesting.”
“And I think…no, I know I could speak it if I had to,” Aaron added, “and…and it’s not just Portuguese.” He thought of the conversations he’d had with his dog since last night.
“Definitely not just Portuguese.”
The doctor drank some more juice. “Let me get this straight,” he said as he wiped the excess from his beard. “You had a headache and now you can understand and possibly speak foreign languages. A skill you’ve never had before. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Aaron felt a flush of embarrassment bloom across his cheeks and leaned forward in his chair, studying his shoes. “I know it sounds really stupid but…”
“It doesn’t sound stupid,” Dr. Jonas said, “but it does sound a little weird. Do you have any other symptoms?”
Aaron looked up. “No. Do you think it has anything to do with my headache?”
The doctor had been smiling, but his smile gradually began to fade as Aaron spoke.
“Is…is there something wrong?” he asked.
Jonas reached over to a pile of papers at the corner of his desk and removed a yellow legal pad. “You understood what I just said to you?” he asked, picking up a pen and writing something on the pad.
Aaron nodded. “Sure, why?”
“What exactly did I say?”
Aaron thought for a minute. “You said that what I was saying wasn’t stupid, although it was weird and did I have any other symptoms.”
Jonas stroked his beard. “I was speaking to you in Spanish, Aaron.”
Aaron squirmed nervously in his chair. “But…but I don’t know Spanish.”
“You’ve never taken it in school?” Jonas asked. “Or had friends who spoke it?”
Aaron shook his head. “The only language I ever took in school was French, and I never got a grade higher than a C.”
Jonas nodded and began to write again. Finished, he set his pen down on the pad and looked up. “Describe your headache to me, Aaron—but do it in Spanish.”
Aaron rubbed at his temple. “In Spanish?” He smiled uneasily. “All right, here goes.” Aaron opened his mouth and began to speak. “It was like somebody was sticking a knife into my head.” He touched the top of his head. “Right here. Like somebody put it through my skull into my brain. I’ve never had a headache like it, I can tell you that.”
He stopped, and a lopsided grin crept across his features. “How was that?” he asked, returning to English.
The doctor was shaking his head in disbelief. “Impressive,” he said, failing to keep his growing interest in check.
Aaron leaned forward, eager to know why this was happening to him. “So you don’t think I’m crazy or anything? You believe me, Doc?”
The desk chair creaked in protest as the doctor leaned back. He held the pen in one hand and was tapping it against the palm of the other. “I believe you. I just don’t know what to make of it,” he said thoughtfully. “Let’s see…”
Aaron watched as the big man wheeled his chair over to a bookcase against the wall on the other side of his desk. He disappeared as he bent down to take something from the bottom shelf. When he came up, he laid a large text on top of the desk. Aaron could not see what its subject was, and waited nervously as the doctor thumbed through the pages.
“If you…can tell me…what I’m saying to you…right now,” he said, struggling with the complexity of the words he pulled from the book, “I’ll have no choice…but…to believe…the incredible.” Jonas looked up from the text and stared with eager eyes.