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  “What makes you ask? Do you know when you’re dreaming?” he fi nally asked.

  “No, but I used to when I was little.”

  Heather wondered when and how she had lost the awareness. She couldn’t remember if its loss had been a blessing or a burden and she cursed her brain for blocking out so much.

  “You remember being aware of your dreams as a child?” Dr. Angel asked.

  His intrigue made Heather tread further into the conversation. His willingness to participate gave her the validation was looking for. She couldn’t believe it was the fi rst time they had discussed it in all their years together.

  “I wasn’t just aware. I used the awareness to escape from my nightmares,” Heather said with a note of pride evident in her voice. She found it easier to be impressed with the child she was rather than the adult she’d become.

  “How?” Dr. Angel wanted to know.

  “When I was scared or trapped in a bad dream, I’d create an escape route out of anything that was elevated,”

  she explained before pausing briefl y. The short silences didn’t bother her as much as usual.

  “Now I have no idea when or if I’m dreaming,”

  she continued. “I could be dreaming right now for all I know.” Spooked by her own statement, she looked at him and waited for a response even though she hadn’t asked a question. When he didn’t offer one, she decided to go ahead and ask it.

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  “I’m not, right?” Heather wondered. “I’m not dreaming, right now, am I?”

  “No. You’re very awake and with me in my offi ce right now.”

  A nervous giggle raced from her lungs to her tongue and then shot out of her mouth.

  “I know. I was just kidding,” she fi bbed.

  “How did the awareness of your dreams help you to get out of them?” he asked as he scribbled on the bright yellow pad. She tried to ignore the secrets he told his steno but realized she really wanted to be included in the fi ndings and was suddenly annoyed by the intimacy she’d been excluded from.

  “What did you write just now?” Heather asked.

  His lip tugged as he fought a grin but the doctor’s tone couldn’t hide his amusement.

  “Let’s talk about why that’s important to you,” he said.

  She wanted to tell him it was normal to wonder what someone was writing about them but didn’t feel like wasting one of her precious minutes on the pointless subject. Instead, she brushed off her annoyances and told herself that as long as Dr. Angel was focusing on her, it didn’t matter how he expressed it.

  Heather closed her eyes and fought hard to kick-start her impotent memory. She knew if she could transport herself to one of the memories that scared her, she would be able to explain her thoughts with more clarity.

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  A frown spread itself into tiny wrinkles between her eyes and its appearance told Dr. Angel that she had hit on a recollection. The downward turn of her bottom lip told him it was closer to a nightmare than a dream. Speaking softly, Heather narrated the frightening memory in which she stood on top of a stranger’s dining room table as a terrifi ed fi ve year old.

  “I’d fi nd something high enough to jump from and when I wanted out, I’d jump. Sometimes I’d wake up from the dream still airborne,” she fi nished.

  The casual tone she tried to force was phony and had been born of her need to counteract the real she felt.

  Heather glanced up at her doctor and waited for his hand to move as it poured out more secret observations but he made no movement.

  “Tell me more,” he encouraged.

  The blurriness tried to take over and Heather felt drops of confusion gradually seeping in. Her memories were merely clips of scattered, broken thoughts that fl oated by randomly. When she would reach out to grab one, she’d realize it was impossible to catch and the lack of tangibility would make it harder for her to believe herself.

  The scent of pine jammed up her olfactory system and the sound of kitchen appliances coming to life fi lled her ears. Dim candlelight glowed softly in the background of her memory. Without even realizing it, she had tilted her head in her effort to keep the memories inside.

  Heather pulled her knees in toward her stomach as she 258

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  subconsciously sought the fetal position for comfort.

  When she spoke, her voice was barely audible.

  “I once had a dream that my mom’s friend took me,”

  she whispered. “She kidnapped me.”

  “Is that all you remember?” he asked.

  “Mostly,” Heather answered. “She made me stay inside her house and I kept crying for my mom but that’s all I really remember.”

  She felt the child fi ght to take over and an involuntary shrug pulled at her shoulders. She didn’t have any more memory to draw from. Although vivid, the memory of a nightmare so long ago remained severely defi cient in its content.

  “But you remember getting out,” Dr. Angel stated more than asked.

  “Yes, that I remember clearly,” she answered fi rmly.

  “I remember planning the jump in my head and then waiting for her to leave the room so I could make my big move.”

  Heather smiled at the memory. She was proud of the gutsy kid she’d been and she welcomed the rare sensation of pride, or at least the momentary lack of shame. She marveled at how she had such mind control as a child but had somehow managed to have none as an adult

  “What was your plan?” Dr. Angel asked.

  Heather knew by his questions that her doctor had traveled the distance with her and hadn’t silently dubbed her ridiculous for the weird disclosure.

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  She shifted in her seat and tried use to his interest as fuel for her waning memory.

  “I planned to stand on her coffee table and jump as soon as she left the room. It was something I had done before but still, I was terrifi ed of getting caught,” Heather said.

  Dr. Angel’s hand transcribed his thoughts into words on paper and Heather laughed at the thought that hit. She wondered what her doctor would do if she grabbed his yellow pad off his lap and ran out the door. Instead, she continued vocalizing the memory.

  “I remember pretending to be happy when she was near me but as soon as her slipper hit the next room, I climbed up on the coffee table. I knew I didn’t have much time. The table was short and didn’t offer a lot of distance so I worried it wouldn’t work.”

  “Did it?” he asked.

  “Yes. I woke up alive and well and safely in my bed,”

  she answered, allowing herself a small smile.

  “What do you think it means?” asked the doctor.

  “You think I’m looking for something supernatural again, don’t you?”

  “Do you think you are?”

  “No,” she answered defensively. She thought about it a little bit longer and added, “I don’t get it. Why is your burning bush my magical thinking?”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” he said seriously.

  She thought about what her doctor had taught her about magical thinking and how he had often applied the 260

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  term to her most spiritual beliefs. She remembered that each time she dared to allow herself belief in the things she couldn’t see, her doctor had credited her missed developmental stages for it. When she had sworn to him that she felt another presence in the room, he had referred to it as magical thinking instead of believing it could be true. When she pointed out how a guardian angel seemed present after every attack and began perusing thoughts of divine intervention, he saw it as a malfunction. And when, Heaven forbid, she told him she believed Jade and she shared telepathic powers, he saw it as a malady he needed to cure rather than a valid sign of faith.

  Heather struggled with her next question because of her love for him. She di
dn’t want him to think she was being disrespectful but she couldn’t go on working with him if they didn’t clear it up. She knew he welcomed some type of resistance from her but the thought of allowing him to claim an adversarial role bothered her. Uncertain how to word the question, Heather decided to just blurt it out.

  “What do Jews believe?” she asked.

  He smiled.

  “You’ve brought this up before,” he replied. “This is important to you for some reason.”

  “Yes, it is,” she stated. “Please answer my question and tell me what you believe exactly.”

  He sat back in his chair and Heather could see the wheels spinning. He was adept at sorting quickly through which questions were appropriate enough to answer and 261

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  he was obviously putting some deep thought into what he should say.

  “We believe in God and we pray to Him a lot,” he said simply.

  It was Heather’s turn to smile.

  “It feels like you’re leaving a little out,” she joked.

  When he didn’t respond, she continued.

  “What about the Ten Commandments?” she asked.

  “Do you guys believe in that one too?”

  “Yes, we believe that as well,” he answered carefully.

  “Okay,” she said, trying to pave the way gently.

  “Why?”

  “Why do I believe in the Ten Commandments?” he asked, bewildered.

  “Yes.”

  “Because I was taught those were God’s rules,” he said simply.

  “Exactly, that’s what you’re taught. You don’t believe it because it’s logical. You don’t believe it because you were born knowing in your heart. You believe it because that’s what they taught you. They told you that the creator of the world disguised himself as a burning bush and delivered the rules that were to forever govern mankind and you just believed them,” she challenged.

  “Well, your version might be differ a little different but yes, I do believe in the stories that were passed down to me,” he said, obviously grasping the point behind her question.

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  He didn’t sound defensive but Heather wondered if he was secretly offended. She considered quitting while she was still ahead but realized she couldn’t.

  “I believe in God,” she said quickly. “As a matter of fact, I can’t say that I’ve truly ever doubted His existence.

  And yes, at fi rst it’s because that’s what they told me that’s I should believe. But later, I came to believe some things all on my own. Some answers just became obvious. I think His existence is pretty clear, actually. Just look at the circulatory system and there’s no way you can say that we were thrown together by accident; that we burst through from a big bang and just happened to come together so perfectly. I mean, the eye was handcrafted, Dr. Angel. Everyday logic tells me that we’re here because of intelligent design but do I demand that other people believe me? No. Do I tell people they must have magical thinking because their beliefs are different than mine?

  No, I don’t,” Heather fi nished, defensively.

  Her last sentences propelled out with more force than she had intended but not because she was angry with her doctor. She actually gave Judaism more credence than she did the Baptist beliefs she’d been hand fed so she wasn’t defending one religion over another. Heather was bothered by something else.

  “Are you upset with the way I handle our work here sometimes?” Dr. Angel asked. His tone promised he wouldn’t be upset with her if that happened to be the case.

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  “No,” she lied.

  “It would be all right if you were, you know,” he promised.

  “No, I love the way you handle the therapy. You know me better than I know myself and I don’t think I would have made it this far without you and your boundaries and your ability to assess things the way you do,” she said sincerely.

  “’You could think that too,” he taught. “You could think all of those things about me. I can be good and I can be grouchy and I can be upset and I can be tired. I’m not perfect and if you wanted to think all of those things, it would be okay.”

  He was trying to push her out of the extremes again and to nudge her into the gray area where she belonged.

  He wanted to teach her that she was allowed to feel more than one thing at once and Heather wanted to bask in the lesson but she found it diffi cult. All she’d ever known was the black and the white. Accepting that an entire world lived between the two spectrums felt unnatural and made her uneasy.

  Thoughts of death plagued her mind. Heather despised the thoughts more than anything else and tried to will away the visions of her own funeral. Even worse than her own death was the constant nagging reminder that she could lose someone she loved at any given moment. A by product of her post traumatic stress disorder was Heather’s habit of letting herself ruminate in gruesome thoughts. Although most of the bad thoughts 264

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  were unlikely, the fact is, they were still possibilities and that was enough for her to know.

  Heather noticed when Dr. Angel glanced at the clock.

  He started to speak but she cut him off.

  “Time’s up!’ she said before he got the chance.

  Instead of allowing her doctor to end the sessions himself, Heather had started ending them on her own the year before. She assumed it gave her a greater sense of control and decided it was healthy.

  She stood up and watched as he wrote out her prescriptions. For the fi rst time since meeting Dr.

  Angel, Heather wondered if the visit would be her last opportunity to relish the warmth and safety of his offi ce.

  His logical thinking couldn’t help her if he didn’t believe her and Heather knew she had a choice to make. She wouldn’t waste time questioning her sanity anymore because she knew in her heart that something was really happening. Allowing herself to believe she was insane wasn’t going to keep her boys safe and she decided the time had come to believe in something bigger than her.

  She couldn’t even continue to allow for the possibility that everything she believed in was simply magical thinking so Heather decided then and there to say goodbye to her doctor for a little while.

  For the fi rst time ever, Heather crossed the boundary of touch with her doctor. She leaned in and hugged his neck before walking out of his offi ce without so much as a backwards glance. Heather needed help from a different 265

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  source now and she resolved to stop questioning herself anymore. She got into her car, locked her doors and headed to church for the fi rst time in years.

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  Chapter 21

  Seven Nation Army

  Pastor Eric smiled and Heather knew she’d ended up in his presence for a reason. She needed to learn more and somehow knew the answers were grounded in religion.

  She wasn’t sure why since she was the least religious person she had ever known but she was interested in anything that would help her to not die anytime soon.

  Pastor Eric wore a pair of jeans and a red T-shirt with the church logo on it. His dark wavy hair looked as perfect, as usual. He was always dressed casually and his laid back attitude helped to earn him a huge congregation.

  His parishioners were loaded and what they lacked in morality, they made up for in money. Most of them truly believed their weekly trips to church absolved them of their sins.

  The hypocrisy of the church had been the part Heather hated most as a child. As an adult, she discovered that her distaste lie more in the weakness of their minds than their habit of living one way and preaching another. In their desperate bid to pave a golden road for themselves 267

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  post death, they had allowed themselves to believe the teachings of others rather than fi nding the answers within themselves. Heather bega
n the conversation with her pastor by telling him exactly that.

  “Heather, we don’t have the answers by ourselves.

  Our answers come only through Him.” His voice was soft but fi rm. She saw the same concern in his eyes that she often saw from her aunts and uncles and cousins. It’s the look you give a dead man walking and Heather wanted to scream at him to stop. She didn’t like being looked at with sympathy or like a Pagan in trouble.

  “I don’t want to have a debate with you if that’s all right. I mean no disrespect, I promise. I just need some answers that I think you can give me,” she said, trying to hide the desperation.

  “I’d be happy to help you, Heather. What’s got you so riled up today,” he asked.

  She had thought to visit her old pastor after the memory of her Sunday school class teased her while she sat on Dr. Angel’s couch. It was a memory she had always held steadfastly to and she felt the need for an answer. She sensed it was important.

  “When I was really little, one of your teachers told our class that if we didn’t believe in God, we would burn in Hell forever. I got really scared because my father didn’t believe and fi gured the lady would take it back when I told her that my dad wasn’t a believer but she didn’t.

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  meeting me in heaven. I cried and ran out and found my mom. She was furious with the teacher.”

  “I agree. That was needless and she should have worded things differently. I’m sorry you were made to be scared at an age too young to handle it.”

  “What? Are you saying that you agree with her words, just not the way she said them?”

  “Of course I agree with her words, Heather. It says it in the Bible. All you have to do is accept Jesus into your heart and really mean for . . . .”

  “And all my sins are gone?” she interrupted loudly.

  “In God’s eyes, yes.”

  “That is so convenient. I mean, to be able to commit all kinds of sins and live any way you want and then just ask for forgiveness and it’s gone, poof.”

  Heather knew she was threatening the lines of respect in this room as well and the pastor shook his head in pity over her inability to grasp the concept.

  “Heather, what about your own family? You don’t doubt that they live a Christian life, do you?” he asked, obviously trying a different tactic.