Jaguar

by Bill Ransom

  The being we do not know is an infinite being; he may arrive,

  and turn our anguish and our burden to dawn in our arteries.

  —Rene Char

  Mark White worked with Eddie Reyes twice a week throughout the summer of his sixth year. When school started, Mark hoped that Eddie would be taken up in the normal life of a six-year-old and that the dreams, the imaginary friends, would disappear as they generally did. But the small-town school was unwilling to let go its favorite gossip. The gossip, and the absolute unwillingness of his grandparents to relate to him, kept Eddie visiting Mark at least once a week throughout the winter.

  His work with the boy felt different from the start, and Mark had to admit that Eddie had caught him up in two ways—sympathy for the pitiful home life he led, and curiosity about the rich fantasy life that he willingly displayed. That winter Dr. White fell in love. He would not regret the love, but he someday would regret the blur that it made of his work on The Hill and in the Veteran’s Hospital in the city.

  Late-night soul-searchings in his spartan apartment reassured him that city life for the sake of career advancement was not acceptable. The tradeoff was too great. His frugal ways had allowed him to build up enough savings to put a down payment on a house in the coming year, and he’d decided to buy in the valley for its beauty and for his piece of mind. He could dismiss, once and for all, whatever Mindy might think.

  Mark White was the new promising young professional in the valley. The town’s patriarchs paraded their eligible daughters past him at the various obligatory socials. Mark remained polite, charmed, flattered but alone.

  He was merely alone during that time; not the least bit lonely. He became painfully alone only after he met Sara Lipko. Sara had received an arts council grant to work with disturbed patients in facilities throughout the state. She came loaded with books and loaded for bear and wasted no time on the likes of Mark White.

  “Most people in institutions aren’t sick,” she declared when they first met. She blew a lock of brown hair out of her browner eyes. “They’re victimized by a system that’s trying to perpetuate itself. If you didn’t have any patients you wouldn’t have a job, right? They’re drugged by people like you until they’re confused, then led into hearings where it’s proven that they’re confused, and they’re sent back to the lockup so the state can keep you in Porsches.”

  Hostile to authority figures, Mark noted. Typical knee-jerk, low-grade liberal paranoia. Assessment: pain in the ass.

  That Monday in the day room at The Hill. Mark walked away in frustration and disgust, comforted by the administrator’s assurance that she’d be gone in a few weeks.

  “I’ve got a Porsche oil cooler in my Volkswagen,” Mark confided to a colleague in the cafeteria. “It cost me thirty-five dollars at the wrecking yard. Does that count?”

  Still, he was as troubled at the thought that she’d be gone as he was comforted. She was, after all, interesting. And outspoken. And there was no question that she was beautiful.

  Thick, shoulder-length dark hair haloed her Slavic face and high cheekbones. Her large brown eyes looked into his own the whole time they talked, and Mark noted that she wore contacts. Eye contact with patients was an important part of his life, but it took tremendous will to hold his own with this woman.

  He guessed her at five-eight or five-nine against his five-ten. His peripheral vision took in her bejangled, gypsy-type dress that dipped just enough at the neckline to pique his curiosity. She stood very close to him when she talked; no ring on her left hand.

  Mark found himself doing something that surprised him. In spite of her brashness, and his uneasiness in her presence, he borrowed her records from the office.

  “I want to see who’s going to be meddling with my patients,” he mumbled to Sherry at the desk.

  “When you read the records, you’ll see that ‘meddling’ is not quite the word,” Sherry said. She watched him over the tops of her spectacles as he tapped the folder in his palm, then turned to go.

  “Will you be offering private therapy to the visiting meddler?” she asked.

  “Fat chance,” he said, and heard her chuckle as he closed the door.

  On Thursday, Sara showed up for his volunteer day at the Soldiers’ Home and he knew he couldn’t ignore her. Her records had revealed a Guggenheim Foundation grant to write in two wars in Latin America. Her most recent book, Daughters of Fire, had won awards from five countries and was up for this year’s Pulitzer prize. If he’d had any doubts about avoiding Sara Lipko, the Colonel dispelled them when he ordered Mark to escort her on his rounds.

  “You’re here on Thursdays, she’s here on Thursdays,” the sad-faced Colonel told him. “She’s a goddam liberal pain in the ass. She can’t be running around here loose and you’ve got the light work load.”

  “How long will she be here?”

  “Eight weeks. Make her happy. If the state won’t send us money, at least they can send some entertainment. That’s all.”

  That cold Thursday in February he might’ve walked away from her in the Soldiers’ Home anyway, except that he’d just spotted an EEG that got his attention, one very much like Eddie Reyes’ aberrant tracing. Eddie’s dreaming event that Mark couldn’t duplicate revealed a rhythmic rise and fall—more like a respiration record than brain-wave activity. This EEG was coded for the fifth floor of the Soldiers’ Home, the high-security floor. No accompanying chart.

  He’d conferred with several older colleagues about Eddie, and the consensus on the EEG was “atypical, unidentified seizure activity.” Clinical diagnoses ranged between multiple personality disorder and psychosis induced by sleep deprivation.

  Mark had tried various medications to change sleep and dream patterns. The boy continued to be a contradiction—a patient who made good progress in therapy but whose sleep disorder was increasing to the point where it interfered with his life.

  It must be organic, Mark thought. There’s some brain dysfunction that I’m not picking up on.

  But here in the Soldiers’ Home he saw another EEG that matched Eddie’s spike for spike.

  “I’m interested in dreams,” Sara said. She scanned the tracing over Mark’s shoulder. Her breath smelled like Juicy Fruit gum. “Dreams are where everybody lives, you know. Can you tell anything about them when you read those strips?”

  Mark couldn’t resist.

  “Well,” he said, “it’s confidential, you know. I shouldn’t reveal anything personal about my patients. . . .”

  “I can keep a secret,” she said.

  He nearly fell into her wide, brown eyes.

  “I believe you. But this violates a patient’s trust. Would you want some stranger to know your innermost dreams? Even dreams that you don’t remember?”

  “Of course not,” she smiled. “But I’m as much a voyeur as the next guy. I’d like a peek at someone else’s dreams. Actually, I’d like a peek at yours, doctor.”

  Mark blushed, then blushed all the more for catching himself at it.

  “Scarlet is your color,” she laughed. “You wear it well.”

  Sara, too, was blushing and that made him feel less awkward. He liked the flash in her brown eyes and felt closer to her, but still he couldn’t resist leading her on.

  “Here,” he pointed to a series of squiggles, “he’s not dreaming yet. Here’s his transition state. And here, the dream starts. It’s a pastoral dream, you can see the countryside here and here you see trees at the edge of a clearing. . . .”

  “How do you know they’re trees?”

  “Well, see these tall, fuzzy spikes?”

  She nodded, her lips pursed and serious.

  “Bushes are squatter and fuzzier.”

  “I see.”

  She squinted, and moved closer to the EEG. She picked up a corner of it and her shoulder leaned into his.

  “What difference does it make to the therapist whether the guy dreams of a tree or a bush?” she asked.

  “Depends.” />
  “Yeah? On what?”

  Maybe she’s getting wise.

  He cleared his throat and didn’t back down from her touch.

  “On the color,” he said. “Some people only dream in black-and-white. That’s one thing. If they dream in color, that’s another. And if they dream in color, which color. . . .”

  “You’re bullshitting me,” she said, and snapped a finger against the tracings. “At least it’s interesting bullshit. Are you going to take me to see this guy for real, or not?”

  “Nothing here’s that easy,” he said, and he was right.

  “Gotta clearance?” the surly ward clerk asked.

  “I don’t need clearance,” Mark said. “I’m staff.”

  “For Fifth Floor you need clearance, I need clearance, the president needs clearance.” His gaze never left Mark’s. “You and I just follow the orders, we don’t write ’em. And the civilian stays.”

  “That’s ridiculous. . . .”

  “I’m sure that Colonel Hightower will be happy to explain, Doctor. Technically, that tracing you’re holding is a breach of security. Will you hand it over, please? It’s not to leave this ward.”

  Mark hesitated, then responded to the firm, unemotional gaze of the mechanical sergeant and handed him the chart.

  “Thank you, sir. I’m sure the Colonel will respond to your request for clearance. Ma’am.”

  The sergeant accorded Sara a nod, then returned to his desk as though neither of them existed. A pair of pale-faced marine guards flanked the ward’s locked double doors.

  “We’ll take it up with the Colonel,” Mark said.

  “You do that, doctor,” the sergeant said, and didn’t look up.

  Mark took Sara’s arm in an automatic gesture to guide her back to the elevators, then realized what he’d done and dropped it. She hooked her arm in his.

  “Well, genius, what now? Are we going to let some illiterate bozo keep us away from the man of our dreams?”

  Mark laughed, and realized how little he’d been laughing lately.

  “I’ll talk to the Colonel. He likes having you around, it gives the place class.”

  “He said that?”

  “No, but that’s how he’s using it for clout. If you like dreamers, I’ve got the perfect patient for you. How do you relate to kids?”

  The elevator’s doors slapped open and they stepped aboard.

  “Great,” she said. “I was one myself once. Why?”

  “I have a very young patient on The Hill who has me somewhat stumped.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Imaginary friends,” he said. “He doesn’t have friends his own age, so he’s made one up, complete with another world and society.”

  “Sounds normal to me,” she said. “Maybe that means I’m next. How old is he? When can I meet him?”

  Mark put up a defensive hand and they got off at the first floor.

  “I’ll need to get permission for you to see him . . . a formality, don’t worry.”

  They wound their way through a maze of patients and wheelchairs cluttering the lobby.

  “He’s six, going on seven, and used to living with adults so he’s pretty easy to talk to when he gets going.”

  “Why are you being so helpful all of a sudden?”

  She gave his arm a squeeze, and Mark’s heart rate picked up.

  “You’re a writer,” he said. “Maybe you can draw him out more than I have, get him to verbalize more. You’ll like him, I’m sure, and he’s the kind of kid who could use a lift. I usually see him on Saturdays because of school, but I’ll see what I can do about Monday.”

  “I’d come in on Saturday, too,” she said. “He sounds interesting. Dreams are interesting, and the whole mystery of sleep. Even you are interesting, doctor, and I don’t say that to embarrass you. It’s my job to notice people and things that would interest other people. You’re one of them.”

  The tour seemed a blur to Mark. He knew he’d covered most of the hospital, but all he could remember was her touch and the way she asked knowledgeable questions. She was someone who did her homework.

  He returned to The Hill and riffled through the last workup on Eddie. A month ago he’d turned Eddie over to the staff neurologist, Brenda Colfelt, who ran him through the complete battery. Mark was desperate for a long shot winner.

  “I’ve put him through everything,” she told him. “Until Saturday I got nothing. But there is something different, something that showed up just before he came to see you.”

  “What is it?”

  “On his EEG. You say he has a sleep disorder, right? So I tested him daily for a week. Nothing. All within normal limits, the kid slept well through the tests . . . nothing.”

  “So what did you get?”

  “I’m coming to that, relax. I thought you shrinks were supposed to be patient.”

  “Sorry. I’ve gotten myself more involved in this case than I intended. . . .”

  “That’s ok,” she laughed, “I’m glad to see it. The granite statue has a heart . . . just kidding,” she said, and put up a hand. “Ok, I had given up and was going to bring the charts down to you when he came in Saturday to see you. I saw him in the hallway and he looked disoriented, tired, listless—nothing like his usual self. He’s a sharp kid, right?”

  “Right.”

  Now Mark was downright eager.

  “He was early,” she said, “so I asked him to come down to my section. He looked like he could barely stay awake, so I thought, ‘What the hell’ and set him up for a tracing. He zonked out right away, and I got this.”

  Brenda handed Mark the sheet of tracings.

  That had been a month ago. Mark had never seen tracings like these. They documented incredible electrical disturbances that he normally would only interpret as seizure activity, though he had never seen seizure tracings with a rhythm to the chaos, and with this huge amplitude.

  Something strobed in there big-time.

  “Tumor?” he’d asked Brenda.

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t know what this is,” she said, “but he checks out clean as far as that goes. You’re probably right about the seizure. He appears to be in a post-ictal state of some kind. Obviously, he was coming out of it when he got here. If we can catch him in one of his special dreams, maybe we can find out more.”

  Mark cut his case load down to study up on this Eddie business. He could make money when he needed it by taking private patients. Staying on at The Hill gave him the hardware he needed to study Eddie Reyes, and the prospect of getting to know this Sara Lipko a little better.

  A lot better, Mark thought. He felt a flush at his cheeks, and smiled.

  We have, each of us, nothing.

  We will give it to each other.

  —Carolyn Forché, The Country Between Us

  Eddie Reyes had done everything that Dr. Mark asked, like visiting his mom in that cold room. They couldn’t close her mouth very well without her lips, but they covered her hands with a blanket so no one could see they were gone. She had flowers by her head, the tall, blue kind that she liked with the yellow throats. She lay inside a coffin, just a cardboard box with a flat lid, and Eddie cried because they would shut that lid down on her face. He hated being shut inside dark places alone, like when his grandparents shut him inside the pantry.

  “We can’t pay somebody to watch you,” his grandmother told him, “and we can’t have you wandering the streets or they’ll put you in jail.”

  He never told anyone, not even Dr. Mark.

  His grandparents took him to Dr. McCabe’s office, and there his grandmother brought out a little blue box from her bag and she set it on the desk.

  “What’s that?” Eddie asked.

  She had said it was his mother in there.

  “How did they get her in there?” Eddie asked.

  “You wouldn’t understand, Eddie,” his grandfather said.

  “But . . . how did they do it?”

&nbs
p; He imagined that she’d been miniaturized, like a doll, and laid inside. But then his grandmother opened the lid and he saw the gray pile of dust inside.

  “Your mom was cremated,” Dr. McCabe told him. “Do you know what that means?”

  Eddie shook his head.

  “It means . . . it means that instead of putting her body into the ground in a box, her body was burned and the ashes are put into a box. . . .”

  Eddie jumped up and started to cry. He saw his grandfather through his tears, ran over to him and pounded his fists into his grandfather’s legs.

  “You let them burn her up!” he sobbed. “You let them burn her up!”

  After that, Eddie didn’t have anything to say to anybody. He visited Dr. Mark at The Hill three times a week until school started, then Saturdays for the rest of the year. He got to go to his first year of school in town but he didn’t remember much of it.

  Dr. Mark tried a lot of medicines to stop the dreams that year. Most of the time Eddie didn’t dream at all. He only missed the dreams about Rafferty, and sometimes caught a glimpse of him anyway.

  Some of the medicines made him hurry all the time, and his heart beat really fast. Most of them made him forget things, like school. It didn’t seem long to him at all when his birthday came around again. His grandparents promised him a trip to an uncle’s place in Montana if Dr. Mark would let him go.

  A pretty woman who worked on The Hill, Miss Sara, became his friend at the end of the year, and Eddie liked seeing her. She smelled good, and hugged him a lot, and usually gave him presents even though Eddie knew that Dr. Mark told her not to. Sara gave him a book on bugs, with color pictures, because of the earthquake dream he had about Rafferty. And she gave him a silver pin with a hook-nosed, smiling face on it like the ones he drew from the stone figures in his dreams.

  Every time he told Dr. Mark about seeing Rafferty, Eddie got a new medicine. Eddie didn’t like taking them because they reminded him of his mother’s back medicine. One of them, a blue pill like his mother’s, made him tired and made the days go fast, but it stopped the dreams.