A Stand-In for Dying Read online

  He approached the entry gate. The rusted iron, like the face of the building, looked clean, smooth, and freshly painted. A bright, shiny brass lock replaced the ancient one that had been there before. The brass frame of the doorbell was also bright and shiny. He rang the bell and was buzzed in.

  Once inside, Ray noticed that the building’s formerly somber interior seemed light and airy. The stairs no longer creaked under his feet. As he reached the doctor’s floor, he found her door ajar. Light poured out of her apartment into the corridor.

  “Come in, Raymond,” the doctor called from within. As he entered the apartment, she approached from across the room, her right hand extended.

  There before him was not the frail, elderly woman he’d come to know, but the vibrant younger woman in the photographs. Only her eyes, and the serenity of her smile still identified her as the same person.

  Ray stopped in his tracks. “You’re not supposed to be young,” he nearly shouted. “How can you help me if you’re young?”

  “Of course I can still help you, Raymond, It’s still me.” Her voice was resonant and clear. “Come, take my hands.” She now extended both hands in his direction.

  He hesitated a few moments longer, then stepped forward and grasped her hands in his. They felt soft, warm, and velvety to his touch, but suddenly turned cold and firm, then rock hard. When he looked up, her face and body were rigid and shiny. Only her eyes were still alive and now stared helplessly into his. She’d turned to bronze.

  “Ray! Ray! Wake up,” Lena shouted, shaking him. “You’re having a nightmare.”

  Ray awoke in a cold sweat, panting hard. He stared blankly straight ahead, still unaware of his surroundings.

  “You looked like you were trying to scream, but you weren’t making any sound.”

  He blinked a few times, then drew in a deep breath. When he turned to face her, he was back in the present.

  “A nightmare, yeah...thanks for waking me.” He could still feel his heart pumping, but the rhythm was regular and beginning to slow.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “It was about that doctor I’ve been seeing, Dr. Jensen. I went to see her, but everything was different. Everything was new, including her...she was young and beautiful.”

  “So what part was the nightmare?”

  “When I touched her...when I took her hands, she turned into a statue...a bronze statue, all except for her eyes, which looked so frightened. It was like I’d killed her.” He shook his head, then brought both hands up to cover his face.

  “Like Midas,” said Lena.

  “Yeah. Like Midas. No matter what good I try to do, everyone I touch gets hurt.”

  “And what do you make of her suddenly being young?” asked Lena.

  “Nothing...I don’t know,” Ray lied. “It was probably just seeing the pictures, wondering what she was like back then.” He couldn’t share with Lena what old people turning young really brought to mind.

  When Ray next visited the doctor’s apartment, everything was in its familiar decrepit condition, including the aging doctor. He felt safe as he settled in the softness of the upholstered chair, no longer concerned about contamination from his contact with it. The doctor sat opposite him, hands folded in her lap.

  “Where would you like to begin today?” asked the doctor.

  “I had a dream,” Ray began, “about coming here...about you.” Ray narrated the dream, the details of which were still vivid. The doctor listened patiently until the end.

  “When I first met you,” the doctor observed, “you were afraid to let me touch you, lest I contaminate you and bring you harm. But in your dream,” she continued, “your touch brings harm to me. It seems what you’re really afraid of is harming those who get close to you.”

  Ray nodded in agreement.

  “Tell me, then,” she added, “Who called you Raymond?”

  That was a detail that Lena had missed and that Ray had overlooked even in the second telling. Tears welled in his eyes and his lips trembled like a lost child.

  “My Mother...my mother always called me her Raymond. Except for my teachers, she was the only one.” His tears were now flowing freely.

  “So your dream was connected with what you began to tell me last time. Are you ready to resume your story?” Her voice was steady and gentle as she encouraged him to proceed.

  “Our lives settled to a new normal. After my eighth birthday, Mom and I grew closer and together bore the pain of his loss. We even spoke of him from time to time and visited his grave on his birthday and on the anniversaries of his death. Mom never remarried or even dated. She’d joke that I was the only man in her life. She made me feel that I was enough.” Ray cleared his throat and fidgeted a bit in his chair. During his pause, the doctor said nothing. She sat ready to listen.

  “One day when I was thirteen,” Ray resumed, “I was riding my bike home from school when the fire engines raced down the street in front of my bike just a few blocks from our house. I took off following them. By the time I’d caught up, they’d stopped right in front of my house. Flames were shooting out through the windows and the roof was crumbling. I ran toward the front door, but one of the firemen caught me in a bear hug and held me back.” His voice cracked. He swallowed several times and sighed so deeply his whole body shook.

  “Another fireman in an asbestos suit and gas mask wheeled a stretcher through the door. The man who was holding me swung me around so I couldn’t see, but it was too late. The last thing I saw was her scorched, motionless body. By the time the ambulance arrived, they’d zipped a bag around her and I never saw her again. It was as though they’d zipped the bag around me...around my life. My world turned so dark and hopeless...and so awfully lonely. I missed her so much.”

  “So much loss for one so young,” said the doctor. “That was a lot for you to carry.”

  “That wasn’t the worst of it,” said Ray. “What’s haunted me most is the guilt.”

  “You felt responsible for her dying? How?”

  “I’ve gone over it in my mind a million times. Our house was only ten years old and had been built for safety. My mother was very cautious. She’d insisted on electric heat, hot water, and oven. A gas cooktop was her only concession to my father, who loved to cook. She taught me from when I was very small always to turn the gas all the way off after using the burners. I’d fried an egg for breakfast that morning and was sure I’d turned off the burner. That was automatic, habitual, unthinking...the kind of thing you don’t actually remember doing every time.

  “I scoured my memory for that moment, but the more I searched, the more elusive it became. I could never be certain.” He brought the back of a hand to his face and wiped tears from his eyes with two fingers.

  “After the fire, I went to live with my mother’s brother and his wife. They’d heard about my hot shot behavior and were worried about how they’d keep me safe, but their worries were needless. My daredevil days were over. I became obsessed with safety and the need for certainty in all things. I began checking doors to be sure they were locked, brushed my teeth four times every morning to be sure I’d brushed them at all, and always ran back into the house at least twice before leaving to make sure the stove was off. It became so tedious to go out that I seldom left the house at all except to go to school.”

  Ray failed to connect that this was also the moment of origin of the odd jerking motion of his head that looked as if something had suddenly caught his attention. Was he looking at whatever it was...or looking away from it? The movements were so random, it was anybody’s guess.

  “So you’ve always blamed yourself,” said the doctor. “You’ve lived your life believing that you killed her, just like you imagined killing me in your dream. What a horrible burden to carry.”

  Ray was too overcome with emotion to speak. His chest rose and fell in shudders, punctuated by high pitched wails of agony. His head was bowed, avoiding even a passing glance at the doctor’s face. At long last his b
reathing slowed and became more regular.

  “So there you have it,” he said. “Now you know just how much death and destruction I’ve brought upon the world.”

  The doctor searched for words of reassurance, but found none. The best she could do for now was to sit with him in his pain.

  “I tried to make up for it,” Ray went on. “I devoted all my time and energy to my studies so I could accomplish something good for the world. I knew it could never bring her back, but if I could do something big that would save lives and spare others from suffering, then at least something good would have come about from her dying.

  “When I invented HibernaTurf, it felt as though I’d redeemed myself. For the first couple of years, the world was better off. Water became more plentiful. People were no longer dying of thirst or drowning in squalor. My pain subsided for a while, but the admiration made me squirm. People were treating me like a hero while I still felt like a murderer inside. Then when it all fell apart and people began to hate me, it was like they’d discovered who I really was. At least then, what others felt about me seemed to match how I felt about myself.”

  “You’ve been stuck in this narrative for a long time,” said the doctor, breaking her silence. “Now that you’ve finally shared it, would you be willing to revisit it next time so that we might discover new ways to understand it?”

  “Yeah. I guess I could do that, but I don’t see how it will change anything.”

  “We’ll see, Ray. We’ll see. Our time is up for today. Until next time.”

  *****

  When Ray showed up at Dr. Jensen’s office for his next session, he looked disheveled and haggard. There were dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. His feet shuffled as he entered the room. When he plopped down in the overstuffed chair, he looked as though he hadn’t slept in a week.

  “Tough week,” observed the doctor.

  “The worst. I’ve hardly slept and when I have, I wished I’d stayed awake. The nightmares just kept coming. I’ve spent most of the past week in my dreams as a thirteen-year-old. I can still hear the sirens.”

  “Perhaps we can put an end to the nightmares. Do you feel up to working today?”

  “I guess so. Doesn’t seem like I have much choice. How much worse can things get?”

  “I’d like to address your childhood memory with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR, a technique developed toward the end of the last century for treating trauma. We’ll start with a series of questions. Once we’re done with that part of the protocol, I’ll ask you to visualize aspects of the memory and to be in touch with the pain. That’s the hard part. While you’re imaging the scene, I’ll ask you to track my hand with your eyes as I move it back and forth.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “We’ll stop the eye movements from time to time and sample whatever is in your awareness. Then we’ll focus on that and resume the eye movements.”

  “So how will that help?”

  “The eye movements help to reorganize how your brain processes and interprets the memory. Usually the end result is that the pain diminishes or goes away altogether.”

  “And the memory?”

  “May persist, but without the same emotional intensity, or it can fade.” said the doctor.

  “What if I don’t want it to fade away? What if I need the pain? It’s defined me for most of my life. Maybe I’m not supposed to forget.”

  “Perhaps. But the process tends to respect your inner wisdom. If part of you needs to remember, then you will. And if part of you still needs to suffer...well, then, that may still go on as well. You’ll need to have faith that it will unfold however it’s supposed to.”

  “OK. What happens now?”

  “I want you to imagine the scene you described last time and identify the worst part of it.”

  “That’s easy. Being held back by the fireman and seeing her charred body being wheeled out.”

  “What emotion is most connected with that image?” asked the doctor.

  “Horror…utter horror.”

  “Where in your body do you feel the horror?”

  “In the back of my throat...and in the pit of my stomach.”

  “And the intensity of the feeling on a scale from one to ten?”

  “Twelve! It’s the worst feeling I’ve ever had.”

  “OK. Now as you picture the scene and feel this emotion in the back of your throat and in the pit of your stomach, what present-day belief about yourself is connected with it?”

  “I’m a menace. I bring death wherever I go and I don’t deserve to live.”

  “And if you could believe something else, however implausible it may seem at the moment, what would you like to believe instead?”

  “That there’s a reason for me to be here...that I belong on the planet after all.”

  “How true does that feel on a scale from one to seven?”

  “Right now? One...no, zero.”

  “OK, then. We’re ready to begin.”

  The doctor moved a chair up just to the left of Ray’s so that her legs rested beside his body and his legs beside hers. She held her left hand eighteen inches in front of his face with the index and middle fingers extended.

  “Is this distance comfortable?” she asked.

  “It’s fine.”

  “OK. Then bring up the scene, starting wherever makes sense. When you have it clearly in mind, nod your head and we’ll begin.”

  Ray nodded and the doctor began moving her hand back and forth at a moderate pace. After twenty or thirty seconds, she stopped, had him take a deep breath and asked what came to mind.

  “I’m on my bike at an intersection and hear the sirens coming toward me from the right.”

  “Go with that,” said the doctor and began moving her hand again. “How about now?” she asked when her hand had stopped.

  “The engine has passed and is speeding down the street. I’m following it, but it turns and is out of sight.”

  After several more sets, Ray had arrived in front of his house. His breathing had become rapid and sweat was pouring off his brow. His hands had the arms of the chair in a death grip.

  The doctor performed the next set of eye movements in slow motion. Toward the end of the set, his arms began to relax and his breathing became regular.

  “How about now?” she asked.

  “I can see her body, but it’s like looking through a fog. It feels as if I’m in a dream...no, more like watching a movie. It doesn’t feel real.” His expression had changed from shock to perplexity.

  “Go with that,” said the doctor and sped up the tracking again. When she saw a few involuntary beats as his eyes shifted direction, she stopped and cued his response.

  “The sun is high,” Ray said, “and I realized that when I’d left the house for school, it was still low in the sky.”

  By the end of the next set of eye movements, his expression was relaxed.

  “A lot of time had passed. Seven or eight hours. Mom would have been out for the morning on her shift. If I’d left the burner on and caused the fire, it would have burned the house down while she was out. So it must have started since she got back that afternoon.”

  At the end of the next set, Ray was shaking his head. A faint smile began to break across his lips.

  “So it couldn’t have been my fault...well, it would have been very unlikely. I’d have had to turn the gas almost all the way off so the flame went out. She could have come home, turned on the burner, and caused an explosion.” Some of the tension returned to his face. He drew in a sharp breath.

  “Go with that,” is all the doctor said as she began again moving her hand.

  “If the gas had been on all that time,” said Ray at the end of this set, “she would certainly have smelled it when she entered the house. She was smart and perceptive. How could she miss that? No, it couldn’t have happened that way.” His body had again relaxed.

  “Now pull up the image of your mother being wheeled
out of the house.” When he signaled that the image was in mind, she began again moving her hand.

  “I can see her,” said Ray when the doctor’s hand had stopped moving, “but now it’s just a memory. And it seems so long, long ago. I feel sad, but the horror is gone. And so is the guilt. It wasn’t my fault. Thank God it wasn’t my fault. I’ve suffered for so many years believing it was.” Tears welled in his eyes, tears that seemed now to wash away the pain. Dr. Jensen’s own eyes moistened as she witnessed his relief.

  “One more step,” said the doctor. “I want you now to visualize the scene along with the words ‘I belong in this world. I have a place here.’”