Chapter Four

“First, I want to congratulate you on taking the initiative to protect your mental health. You’ve been living with your grief for a long time now, and it’s smart of you to realize you can’t get through this kind of pain on your own with just the passage of time.” Sanantha sat facing Randy in identical low back, light blue armchairs across a small coffee table in an alcove end of her office, away from her desk. She was pleased to see him sitting more relaxed than he had in the initial interview. Although his long legs were still crossed, he had them stretched out and crossed at the ankle. Instead of clasping his hands together, he was absently stroking the textured fabric of the chair arms with his fingertips. “You said you’ve never seen a psychiatrist before, so coming to me was also a step outside your comfort zone. For that you should be proud of yourself.”

The sandy haired scientist smirked slightly and said, “Thanks for the pep talk.”

She gestured in the air with her pencil while a pad lay across the lap of her long white skirt. Her tall yellow turban accentuated her head movements. “It’s not just that. I want you to start these sessions with the feeling that we will be making a fresh start. I want you to have the confidence that we can do anything. Have you moved into that apartment here in town that Young Nae mentioned?”

“No, not yet. I don’t mind the drive. At least I haven’t tired of it yet. I want to stay in Kuantan to be with my daughter.”

“Okay. Then I have to make sure you get real help to make it worth that long drive.”

“Well, I know a psychiatrist helped my mom a lot when my dad died. So I’ve seen that this can help.”

“How old were you when he passed?”

“Sixteen.”

“How did his passing affect your mom?”

“Badly. She pretty much had built her world around him.”

“Were you close to him? How did it affect you?”

“Yeah. It hit us both pretty hard.”

“Do you have any siblings?”

“No. Just me.”

“I don’t mean to open up any old wounds, but I need to know how you’ve handled grief in the past. Did he die after an illness, or was it sudden?”

“Oh, quite sudden. He killed himself. He had a string of bad things happen and it just overwhelmed him.”

Sanantha tilted her head and waited for him to continue. Her tall turban made the gesture more dramatic than she intended.

“He thought my mom was having an affair with his best friend. She wasn’t, but he became convinced of it. He also lost a bunch of money on a failed business venture. I was pretty rebellious and so I gave him no comfort. He just couldn’t handle it. We didn’t see it coming, so it was quite a shock when he did it.”

“You said your mom sought counseling and it helped her. Did you talk to anyone about it at the time, like a priest or a family friend?”

“I remember our priest wanting to help. I also remember I wasn’t having any of it.”

“What church did your family belong to?”

“We’re Episcopalians.”

“Do you still go to church?”

“No, I haven’t been in years. Not since Desiree was in grade school. What does that have to do with how I’m dealing with my disasters today?”

“The faith traditions we are raised in help mold how we think about responsibility and how we process guilt. Do you still feel any guilt over your father’s suicide?”

“No, I’ve come to peace with it. I did blame myself at the time, but that was thirty-five years ago.” He laughed. “Remember, I’m an Episcopalian. I think it was Robin Williams who said Episcopalianism is Catholicism-lite, all the ceremony but only half the guilt.”

Sanantha chuckled good-naturedly while she made a quick note on her pad: ‘Suicide watch.’ “How did you feel toward your father for having killed himself?”

“Angry. Eventually I came to understand what he had faced, and how he must have felt. It took a few years, but I did finally see that he wasn’t trying to harm me.”

“Did you forgive him?”

“Yes. I guess it was right around the time I graduated from UCLA.”

“Do you think of yourself as a forgiving person? Or do you hold grudges?”

He scratched the back of his head while he worked on the question. “I hadn’t thought about it in those terms. I guess I am pretty forgiving. Young Nae has given me crap about it a few times. He says I’m too tender hearted to be in business. Good thing I’ve got him to play hardball for us.”

“So Young Nae is not as forgiving as you?”

“No, not really. I figure, we all make mistakes, and we all need a little slack. If I never let anyone slide, then no one will ever let me slide.”

Sanantha made another note, ‘Needs forgiveness.’

“Let’s move forward to now. Do you feel any guilt over your wife’s death?”

The question took him by surprise. “Guilt? No. She traveled the world as part of her job. She was a UNESCO director. We always knew there were dangers in her job. I mean, she had a couple of close calls. She would go somewhere to raise money or oversee how money was being spent, and she’d have to be evacuated by the military when some riot broke out or a coup went down. Thankfully, she wasn’t in Indonesia last December when the tsunami hit. She rushed down here in January to help. Their area headquarters is in Jakarta.”

“Do you feel any connection between her being halfway around the world and her being in danger?”

“No, she died in a car accident. She could just as easily have been going to our local supermarket. So no, letting her wander into dangerous places had nothing to do with her death.”

“Clearly you miss her. Other than that, how do you feel about her death?”

“Isn’t missing her enough?”

“Well, are you angry? Do you think more could have been done? Do you still have questions about how the accident happened? Are you suspicious or are you satisfied that you have a clear understanding?”

“No, I’m pretty clear on what happened. Young Nae checked it out at the time and he gave me a complete report. It was just an accident. A truck slammed into the driver’s side of her car. The truck’s engine caught fire, and both the driver’s and Cheri’s bodies were lost.”

“Oh dear. I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, it was apparently quite violent. As far as we can tell, she died instantly.”

“Do you feel that you had a chance to say goodbye to her? I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I assume there was no casket at the memorial service?”

“No, there wasn’t,” he answered, but then hesitated in thought. “What do you mean by ‘say goodbye’?”

“An important step in grieving is identifying that point in time when you have accepted that the person is gone–the time when you say goodbye. That’s why people have caskets at funerals, even if they are closed. Since you were in the U.S. when she died, and you didn’t get to see her body when you got here, I was wondering if you had noticed a moment when you realized she was gone.”

He looked at the floor beside his chair for a long moment. “No, I guess not.” He looked back up at her. “I mean, I didn’t doubt the news when I heard it back in Maryland. So I have accepted that she was gone. I remember everyone talking about all the death from the tsunami once we got here. Death and loss was kind of in the air. You’re right, though. I don’t think there was ever a moment when I felt like she was no longer part of my life.”

“That’s an important landmark to achieve. Without that, you will color all your future experiences with comparisons to her and regrets of her passing.”

“I had a moment like that when I first saw Desiree lying in a coma the other day. It hit me all at once that Cheri was gone, and Dez needed my help. That I was alone to help her.”

“How did that leave you feeling?”

“I remember the irony slammed me pretty hard.”

“Irony?”

He looked up and met her gaze. “Yeah. Like you said the other day, I may have discovered the Fountain of Youth. I know so much about how life works, but I can’t do anything for my own family.”

“Do you feel more could have been done?”

“No, it’s not that. I believe Young Nae and the doctors did everything they could. I just can’t shake the feeling there was more I could have done, with what I know.”

She made a note, ‘Guilt after all.’ “We will make a point of addressing this feeling as we work on how you’re handling Desiree’s condition. Last time, you said you were having difficulty making decisions on your own, now that Cheri is gone. Were you the kind of couple that made a lot of decisions together? I mean, if she was on the road a lot, how did that work?”

“Well it wasn’t like we were codependent or anything, but we were in touch pretty much all the time, on cell or online.” He uncrossed and recrossed his legs, this time more tightly above the knee. “I never thought about it then, but now I’m seeing just how much I counted on always being able to talk with her about things, anything. I found her work fascinating, and she loved to tell me about all the interesting people she met and places she saw. Our house is filled with trinkets she brought home from her travels.”

“What about raising your daughter? Were you happy with being the parent who stayed home?”

“Oh yeah. Dez and I have always been best buddies. With Cheri on the road so much, I think we were lucky to have skipped that whole mother-daughter power struggle thing that I’ve seen so many other families go through.”

“You are a highly successful professional person yourself. Did you ever feel strained having to juggle raising a teen with the demands of your work?”

“Sure, there was stress, but I happily stepped up to the challenge. I mean, Cheri wouldn’t have been able to do the great things she did without my support on the home front.”

Sanantha noted, ‘Self-sacrificing love. Still hasn’t let go.’ She looked up and flashed her big warm smile. “New subject. You mentioned before that you have been having graphic nightmares. Are these nightmares preventing you from getting good sleep?”

“Yeah, when I have one it usually wakes me up. I’m finding myself taking a lot of naps, so I get enough rest.”

“Are you napping because you’re tired, or is it from boredom? Are there any particular situations that seem to bring on the urge to sleep?”

Randy frowned and thought about this for a moment. “Now that you mention it, I find myself nodding off a lot when I’m sitting with Desiree. I just assumed it was the quiet of her room.”

Sanantha jotted down, ‘Stress sleeping-depression.’ She scratched her scalp under the corner of her turban with the eraser of her pencil while she looked at her notes. “You described the nightmares as ‘graphic.’ What do you mean by that word?”

“Oh, they’re horrific. I remember every detail when I wake up, even if I wish I didn’t. You know how you usually forget details once you wake up? Not these. The images linger in my mind for hours afterward.”

“Are they violent? Are you hurt during the dream?”

“No, not that. They’re just overwhelming. I feel completely out of control, tossed around by events.”

“Can you recall one in detail for me now?”

“Sure, the one I had last night. I was climbing along this ridge of rocks that was sticking up out of a desert, looking for Cheri. For some reason, I thought she had come that way and I might catch up to her. The sun was blazing and I was sweating. I was barefoot and the rocks had lots of sharp edges. My feet started to slip, and I assumed it was from sweat, but I looked down and it was blood from where the rocks had cut my feet. I looked back and saw I had left a trail of bloody footprints on the rocks. Then the blood started eating away at the rocks, and water started bubbling up through the holes. I remember being kind of awestruck at this, and I stood there and watched. The water trickled down the sides of the ridge, and out onto the desert floor. Wherever the water went, plants started springing up. Even in the dream, I recognized the savior fantasy aspect, that my blood was bringing life to the desert.”

Sanantha smiled and nodded for him to continue.

“Then things turned sour.” He uncrossed his legs, spread his feet, leaned forward and started gesturing with his hands. “I spotted a scrap of white fabric further down the rocks. I climbed over to it and it was a scrap of the white wedding dress that Cheri is always wearing in these dreams. I looked around for her, but then I heard the water rushing behind me. The footprint trickles had become founts and the water was gushing out like rivers and spilling all out over the desert. The sun was covered over with clouds and it started to rain. By now, the desert was an ocean and big swells started lashing at the rocks I was standing on. I scrambled for better footing and that’s when I heard her. Cheri’s voice was calling me over the wind and the crashing waves, from somewhere up ahead. I tried to continue toward her, but a huge wave swatted me off the rocks. I remember going under right away, being tossed around by the currents, helpless to find the surface. That’s when I woke up.”

Sanantha kept her sober, unaffected expression as best she could. She did jot down, ‘More than grief.’ She looked up at him and smiled again. “Thank you.”

“You aren’t going to share with me what you think of that.”

“I will level with you. It could mean a lot of things. It could mean very little. We are going to figure it out together, but we don’t know enough to figure it out yet.”

She noted the skeptical look he gave her.

“Dreams do sometimes give us a glimpse of what’s going on in our heads, but interpreting them means finding the right context. We need to know a lot more about how you are processing all that has happened to you before we can start trying to explain dream images.

“Let’s look at the whole sequence. You said you recall getting the news from Young Nae about Cheri’s death. You recall coming to Malaysia with Desiree for the funeral. Then your memories go completely blank for almost four months until you woke up at Young Nae’s house last week. During that gap is when your daughter was bitten by a poisonous snake and went into a coma.”

“That’s right.”

“So hearing about what happened to Desiree was quite a shock to you?”

“Utterly blew me away.”

“Have you gone back over the last thing you can remember, before the gap starts?”

“Yes, I remember coming back to Young Nae’s house with him and Desiree after the funeral. That’s it.”

“So you don’t remember blacking out at the funeral, or anything happening of note once you got back to the house?”

“No. We were all really sad. We were all crying and hanging on to each other. Then my recollection just ends. Do people’s memories just break like that?”

“Usually something has to change. Being a doctor yourself, you’ve probably heard of state-dependent learning.”

“Yeah, it’s why you don’t really learn anything from cramming. The memories of what you cram are encoded while you are stressed out and exhausted. You get some sleep before the test, and then you can’t access those memories anymore because your brain chemistry is different.” He paused and thought about what he had said. “So you think something happened to my brain chemistry to mask my memories?”

“It’s one possibility.”

Randy ventured further. “Can alcohol create a big enough change to accomplish that? I mean you can’t remember where you parked your car after you’ve been drinking, for the same reason.”

“Alcohol and stress dependent learning mask details,” she explained. “You may not remember where you parked, but you don’t forget that you drove a car to the bar, or what your car looks like. That kind of memory loss means something much more significant happened, like a trauma. Since we don’t know if there was a chemical change, or if there was, then what that chemical change was, we can’t test the theory directly. Thankfully, the brain is a very flexible organ. There are other ways to help it to find a memory. Have you ever been hypnotized?”

Randy laughed nervously. “Young Nae said you came with a reputation for being results oriented. If I can be completely honest, I have to admit that when I first met you, I wasn’t sure what to think. I mean you come highly recommended and all. I have to say, though, with your accent and the turban and the paintings, it wasn’t what I expected. No offense, please believe me.”

“None taken. I usually don’t discuss my personal details with patients, but my resume is not a secret. As you noted, I am indeed from Haiti. I received my degree and did my residency at Rush University in Chicago. I worked for a few years in Washington, D.C. before coming here to Malaysia. So yes, I have seen a lot of strange things in my life and in my practice. The good news is, all my experience is now at your disposal, to help you find what you need to find.”

He nodded, a bit embarrassed. “Fair enough. Still, isn’t hypnosis a bit extreme?”

“Please allow me to recap. I am very happy to find you do not seem to carry significant guilt about your wife’s death. Guilt is far and away the biggest impediment to completing the grieving process. I am also very glad that your memories of your learning of Cheri’s death and your memories of the funeral are still intact. That will be crucial in you coming to grips with her being gone. So I am confident we can reach a healthy result for your dealing with her death.

“On the other hand, I do not see how you are going to be able to come to a healthy grasp of what has happened to your daughter as long as you have no recollection. You said you wish there was more you could have done, especially given your special knowledge. That’s going to haunt you as guilt.”

“Well, I don’t think I had anything to do with it.” His voice tensed up. “Young Nae says she was bitten by a snake while hiking. Sure, I wish I had been there to help, but Young Nae says we didn’t find her for a while, a half an hour after the bite. Does that make me responsible?”

She knew she was putting him on the defensive, but she needed him to face this. “I don’t mean you are responsible. We’re talking about your feelings. Since you can’t remember what happened, I need to know how you feel about what happened.”

“Well…” He clasped his hands together and seemed to struggle. “What kind of parent wouldn’t feel like they failed their child when one day you wake up and find she’s almost been killed?”

She leaned back in her chair. “Very good. That’s what you need to hear you say. That is a feeling that will plague you until we get rid of it.”

He looked away and frowned. “From what you’ve said, that means I have to remember exactly what happened in that four months.”

She was surprised by his sudden reluctance. “Isn’t that why you came to me?”

He took a shaky deep breath. “I guess so.”

“Can you tell me why you wouldn’t want to learn what happened?”

“Not really. It’s nothing rational, it’s more a feeling I can’t shake. My only window on that time is my nightmares. They leave me wondering if I did something terrible during that time.”

“Do you have any factual basis for such a suspicion?”

“No, the facts all point to me just being the victim of Hamlet’s outrageous fortune.”

She raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Hamlet had a playwright who made sure he was doomed. What he needed was a psychiatrist, which you now have. You can’t put too much credence in dreams. Yes, dreams like yours mean you have unfinished business to work through. That they are scary and end badly does not mean you did anything wrong. It certainly does not mean you should fear uncovering your memories for such a large period. Especially when learning what happened will allow you to cope with the whole turn of events.”

“Because if I don’t know, it will just continue to plague me?”

“Most certainly. You need this. So no, hypnotism is not too extreme a tool. We need to fill in your memory gap or you will never be able to look at your daughter with a clean conscience, even though there is no evidence you are responsible for her condition.”

Randy thought about her words for a long moment. His hands unclasped. “I see your point.”

“To put your mind at ease, hypnosis really isn’t that big a deal. It’s just a way to take advantage of the brain’s language-centric processing to achieve a heightened state of focus. Think of it as concentrating on something, but with me as a partner helping direct your efforts.”

“Okay. How do we do this?”

“Oh, right here.” She got up and went to a bookshelf. She returned with a nautilus shell that had been cut in half and stripped to expose the opalescent mother-of-pearl interior. She sat it on the coffee table between them. “I want you to stare at this shell while you listen only to my voice. Are you comfortable in that chair? People tend to slump when they’re hypnotized.”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“Let’s begin. You must listen to my voice as if it were the only sound in the world. Every word rings in your ears with a clarity and surety of a church bell. My words are the center of all direction in your universe. You are free of all inhibitions and fears because you know you are safe within the sound of my voice. You feel wonderful, healthy, strong, and potent. You are gifted with the ability to do anything I tell you to do. The more you hear my voice the more confident you become.

“Look at how the light reflects off the shell. How every color and every curve require your full attention. You world is simpler now. Your total sensory experience is just seeing the shell and hearing my voice.

“Your body is completely relaxed now. Your breathing is calm. You can no longer feel your hands or your feet. Your world is simplifying and becoming more comfortable. The shell is fascinating, captivating. You cannot look away from it. My voice is soothing yet invigorating. You draw strength and confidence from my voice.

“Now close your eyes, but continue to imagine the shell. Your whole world is now only the image of the shell and the sound of my voice. You have complete control over your thoughts. Any doubts you have had about controlling your thoughts is gone now, because you can take the power from my voice.

“I want you to imagine yourself in the past. Go back to the day of your wife’s funeral. Imagine yourself standing at her grave side. Look around at the people there. Smell the flowers. Hear the minister’s words. Young Nae and Desiree are there with you. Are there others as well?”

“Yes, but only a couple of people I don’t know. I am surprised there isn’t a crowd of Cheri’s friends from her work.”

“What is the weather like?”

“It’s a beautiful day. Sunny, but with a breeze so it’s not too hot.”

“Okay. Now you’re getting in the car to leave. Who else gets in the car with you?”

“Just Dez and Young Nae. It’s a big limo, and it seems kind of empty. I try to lighten the moment by asking Dez if she had talked to her boyfriend back at Syracuse.”

“Do you go straight back to Young Nae’s house?”

“Yes.”

“Now you’re going into the house. What do you do when you get inside?”

“We go in the main house. I go into the kitchen to get a beer. I ask Dez if she wants anything, and she says ice water.”

“Where is Young Nae?”

“I don’t know. I guess he went upstairs.”

“So you get your beer and you take the water to your daughter?”

“Yes. She is sitting on the couch crying. I sit down next to her and put my arm around her. I start crying too.”

Without any warning or sign at all, Randy stopped talking and his head fell forward onto his chest.

“Randy?” Sanantha got up and grabbed his hand from his lap. It was limp. “Randy!” No response. He had stopped breathing. She put her head to his chest. No heartbeat. She blinked furiously thinking of what to do next. She wondered if she would be able to find the Epi-pen in her medical kit in the bathroom.

She startled and sucked in a short breath when she realized what had happened.

She got up in his face, grabbed his head with her hands, pried his eyes open with her thumbs, and yelled at him. “Randy! You are still in complete control of your mind! Roll the clock back to the funeral site! You are still standing at your wife’s grave!”

Just as quickly as he had dropped off, he was back. She let go of his head and it came up straight. His breathing resumed. His eyes fell back closed, and he was still hypnotized, but he was back. She put her hand on his chest, and found his heart was beating normally.

She dropped back into her own chair and blew out a deep breath. She grabbed her mouth and squeezed her cheeks with her hand, stared at him, and slowly shook her head.