Barbara looked at her patient. “Peter Yang?”
“The same,” Caitlin said. “You know him?”
“Read his full-throated defense of atypical antipsychotics and the treatment of schizophrenia,” she said. “I don’t like it when GPs play in my sandbox.” Barbara came forward. She continued to regard Caitlin. “You look like you’ve been in a war zone.”
“That bad? I haven’t looked.”
“Yeah,” Barbara said. “You want a brush?”
“No thanks. But you do have an iPhone 6, right?”
“Yeah—”
“You happen to have your power cord?” Caitlin asked, holding out her hand. “My phone is kaput.”
Barbara fetched the cable from her shoulder bag and plugged Caitlin’s phone into a wall socket.
“There needs to be a study about this,” Barbara said.
“About what?”
“Why I always feel physically healthier when my dead phone starts to charge.”
“There have been lots of studies about it,” Caitlin said. “It’s called dependent personality disorder.”
“It’s more than that,” Barbara said. “I mean, why should energy in a device make us feel physically charged?”
Caitlin did not answer that. She could have.
“So,” Barbara said looking down at her friend. “Small talk duties—check. Why am I really here?”
“Regression,” Caitlin said. “I have to go back. I think Jacob is stuck in the past and there’s military activity brewing in the South Pole.”
“And that’s your problem how?”
“If they find or destroy or start messing with the relics under the ice, my conduit there may be damaged,” Caitlin said. “I have to try and connect, somehow. Regression may jump-start me. Nothing else is working.”
Barbara had pulled over Nancy’s chair and sat in it. “Caitlin…”
“Barbara, it’s not in my head and it’s not a dream,” Caitlin told her. “I was there. Now Jacob is stuck there while his body is semicatatonic in the apartment.”
“In the apartment? Caitlin!”
“Don’t,” Caitlin said. “Anita Carter is with him. Doctors cannot help. I can.”
“Honey, I cannot go along with that.”
“Do you think I’d risk his life if I weren’t sure?” Caitlin asked. Their voices were rising; Caitlin brought it down. “Barbara, tell me—what would his pediatrician do? You know the drilclass="underline" blood tests, check his thyroid, see if he hit his head.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to begin that process, Caitlin.”
“But none of that is what’s wrong with him! His spirit may be stuck forty freakin’ millennia from here! How is Synthroid going to help that? I want him as quiet and “the same” as is possible, not drugged, not away from his bed. At least now I know generally where he is and how he is.”
Barbara considered that. The psychiatrist was always a voice of caution and devil’s advocacy, but she respected her colleague/patient and was not an entirely hard sell. Caitlin knew Barbara was open to the idea of an astral “pool” of experiences, the possibility of tapping into the energies of those who came before us. If she weren’t sold, at least the door was open. But Barbara also was not one to humor her patients’ delusions. To her, this straddled both those possibilities.
“Barbara?” Caitlin said, reaching for her hand. “I know what I’m doing. It worked for my other patients in similar circumstances. But I need your help.”
Barbara threw up her free hand and shook her head. “I’ve said my piece. He’s not my patient, you are.”
“Thank you.”
“And since you are, I want to go on record as saying that regression is a tool to give me information as your therapist—not for you to jump to convenient conclusions.”
“The two are not mutually exclusive.”
“They are not. But that is for me to decide,” Barbara said.
“With an open mind,” Caitlin pointed out.
Barbara’s mouth twisted. “Are you done last-wording me, Dr. O’Hara?”
Caitlin nodded.
“All right, then.” Barbara fixed her dark eyes on Caitlin. “So. Your usual self-hypnosis technique… did not work?”
Caitlin made a face. The way she said “technique” made it sound like “trick.” “It helped me to blow up Washington Square Park.”
The dark eyes opened wider. “You’re saying that was you?”
“It was, full of the same kind of power I had the first time I went back,” Caitlin told her. “But since then, something is blocking me from accessing the past. Either the host body back then is closed or dead, or it could be that the tiles are shut down. I don’t know. I had a dream—or a vision, something—about a snake or snakes in a ringlike shape. I have no context for that either, except that it’s similar to what I saw during a trance in Haiti.”
“Symbol of trouble? Phallus? Death?”
“No idea,” Caitlin said. “None. That’s why I need help. Consider the alternative.”
“What’s that?”
Caitlin whipped her hands to her sides, over the railings. “I’m gonna keep throwing my two fingers out, trying to plug into the ether, until they dislocate.”
Caitlin stopped suddenly, her left hand fully extended.
“What is it?” Barbara asked.
“I thought—I thought there was something there,” she said. Caitlin wriggled her extended fingers. “It’s weak but… there’s something, some energy.”
“You still want to do this?” Barbara asked.
Caitlin hesitated a moment longer then lowered her arms. “Yes. I do.”
Deciding there was no point in debating further, Barbara told Caitlin to lie back comfortably.
“Thank you,” Caitlin said as she snuggled back into the crisp polyurethane.
“You want me to record the session?”
“Yes, please.”
Barbara pushed the record button on her phone and placed it on the nightstand. She shut the light off, then lifted the chair and moved in even closer, so she could bend nearer to Caitlin’s ear. Her smooth, low voice would be Caitlin’s only connection to this world. That would leave her free to give up all other tethers, to float in her subconscious. The only light came from the monitors at Caitlin’s bedside and a sliver that slashed across the floor beneath the door.
Caitlin shut her eyes and forced herself to relax.
“All right, Caitlin. You’re going to answer each question with the first thing that comes to your mind,” Barbara said. “Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Where are you?”
“In a hospital room.”
“In your mind’s eye, look up,” Barbara instructed. “What do you see?”
“The ceiling.”
“What do you see beyond it?”
“A room above me.”
“Who’s in the room?”
“A… a very sick… woman.”
“What’s her name?”
“Jessica.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Car accident.”
“Where?”
“FDR.”
“What is she thinking?”
Caitlin’s voice caught, choked. “How… how good her life has been.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s had love.”
“Whose?”
“Her husband’s. Her children’s.”
“What does she see in her head?”
“Her family. Her parents. And…” Caitlin smiled. “Summer camp.”
“What is there that makes her happy?”
Caitlin continued to smile. “First love. First kiss.”
“Where are they in the camp?”
“At a dark lake.”
“What’s the lake called?”
“Garbage… beach.”
“Why?”
“Counselors… drink… there… make out…”