Life Blood Part 14

"As you can see, I've had every test known to science. And none of them found anything wrong."

He just nodded, saying nothing, and kept on reading.

After a long, awkward silence, I decided to try and open things up a bit.

"Tell me, do you have any children of your own?"

The question seemed to be one he didn't get asked too often, because he stopped cold.

"All those who come here are my children," he replied, putting aside my records, dismissively finished with them.

"Well"--I pointed to them--"what do you think?"

"I haven't examined you yet," he said, looking up and smiling, indeed beaming with confidence. "Nothing in those records tells me anything about what may be your problem. I look for different things than do most physicians."

He fiddled with something beneath his desk, and the room was abruptly filled with the sound of a hypnotic drone. Perhaps its frequency matched one in my brain, because I instantly felt relaxed and full of hope. Much better than Muzak. Then he rose and came over.

Is he going to do my exam right here? I wondered. Where's all the ob/gyn paraphernalia? The humiliating stirrups?

Standing in front of me, he gently placed his hands on my heart, then bent over and seemed to be listening to my chest. His touch was warm, then cold, then warm, but the overall effect was to send a sense of well-being through my entire body.

"You're not breathing normally," he said after a moment of unnerving silence. "I feel no harmony."

How did he know that? But he was right. I felt the way I had the first time I tried to sit in Zen meditation in Kyoto. As then, my body was relaxing but my wayward brain was still coursing.

"I'll try," I said, attempting to go along. What I really was feeling was the overwhelming sense of his presence, drawing me to him.

Next he moved around behind me and cradled my head in his hands, placing his long fingertips on my forehead, sort of the same way he'd done when I was standing with him on the windy heath, nursing a killer cold. All the while, the drone seemed to be increasing to a piercing, overwhelming volume, as though a powerful electrical force were growing in the room, sending me into an alpha state of relaxation.

"What are you doing? Is this how you do an exam for--?"

"The medical tests you had showed there's nothing wrong with your uterus or your Fallopian tubes, nothing that should inhibit conception.

There's no need to pursue that any further. But the mind and the body are a single ent.i.ty that must be harmonized, must work as one. Although each individual has different energy flows, I think my regimen here could be very helpful to you. Already I can tell your problem is a

self-inflicted trauma that has negated the natural condition wherein your mind and body work in unison."

"What 'trauma'?" I asked.

He didn't answer the question. Instead he began ma.s.saging my temples.

"Breathe deeply. And do it slowly, very slowly."

As I did, I felt a kind of dizziness gradually coming over me, the hypnotic drone seeming to take over my consciousness. Instead of growing slower, my breathing was actually becoming more rapid, as though I'd started to hyperventilate. But I no longer had any control over it. My autonomic nervous system had been handed over to him, as dizziness and a sense of disorientation settled over me. The room around me began to swirl, and I felt my conscious mind, my will, slipping out of my grasp. It was the very thing I'd vowed not to let happen.

The same thing had occurred once before, after I broke my collarbone in the Pacific surf that slammed a Mexican beach south of Puerto Villarta.

When a kindly Mexican doctor was later binding on a harness to immobilize my shoulder, the pain was such that I momentarily pa.s.sed out while sitting on a stool in his office. I didn't fall over or collapse; it just seemed as though my mind, fleeing the incredible pain, drifted away in a haze of sensation.

Now the pastel blue walls of the room slowly faded to white, and then I was somewhere else, a universe away, surrounded by blank nothingness. I tried to focus on the bronze s.h.i.+va directly across, but the ring of fire around him had become actual flames. The only reality left was the powerful touch of Alex G.o.ddard's hands and a drone that could have been the music of the spheres.

Chapter Eight

Sometime thereafter, in a reverie, I felt myself in a magical forest whose lush vines reminded me of Kerala in India. It was a verdant, hazy paradise, another Eden. A child was with me, a child of my own, and I felt jubilation. I watched the child as she grew and became a resplendent orchid.

But with childbearing came pain, and I seemed to be feeling that pain as I took up the flower and held it, joy flowing through me.

Then Alex G.o.ddard drifted into my dream, still all in white, and he was gentle and caring as he again moved his hands over me, leaving numbness in their wake. I thought I heard his voice talking of the miracle that he would make for me. A miracle baby, a beautiful flower of a child. I asked him how such a thing would happen. A miracle, he whispered back.

It will be a miracle, just for you. When he said it, the orchid turned into the silver face of a cat, a vaguely familiar image, smiling benignly, then trans.m.u.ted back into a blossom.

Then he drifted out of my dream much as he had come, a wisp of white, leaving me holding the gorgeous flower against my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which had begun to swell and spill out milk the color of gold. . . .

A wet coolness washed across my face, and--as I faintly heard the sounds of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Glenn Gould's piano notes crisp and clear--I opened my eyes to

see Ramala ma.s.saging my brow with a damp cloth. She smiled kindly and lovingly as she saw my eyes open, then widen with astonishment.

"What--?"

"Hey, how're you doing? Don't be alarmed. He's taking great care of you."

"What. . . where am I?" I lifted my head off the pillow and tried to look around. I half expected Steve to be there, but of course he wasn't.

"You're here. At Quetzal Manor." She reached and did something and the music slowly faded away. "Don't worry. You'll be fine. I think the doctor was trying to release your Chi, and when he did it was too strong for you."

"What day is it?" I felt completely disoriented my bearings gone.

"Sunday. It's Sunday morning." She reached and touched my brow as though giving me a blessing. Like, it's okay, really.

At that moment, Alex G.o.ddard strolled in, dressed again in white.

Just as in the dream, I thought.

"So, how's the patient?" He walked over--eyes benign and caring--and lifted my wrist, absently taking my pulse while he inserted a digital thermometer in my ear. For a flashback moment he merged into, then emerged from, my dream. "You're looking fine. I have to say, though, you had quite a time yesterday."

"All I remember is pa.s.sing out in your office," I mumbled glancing around at the gray plastic thermometer. And that strange dream, you telling me I would have a miracle baby.

"You had an unusual reaction," he went on. "You remember I spoke to you about mind-body harmony. You see what can happen when I redirect the flows of energy, Chi, from your body to your mind." He smiled and settled my wrist back onto the bed. "Don't worry. I have a lot of hope for you. You're going to do fine."

He looked satisfied as he consulted the thermometer, then jotted down my temperature on a chart. He's already started a medical record, I thought. Why?

"I'm . . . I'm wondering if this really is working out," I said. It was dawning on me that I was getting into Alex G.o.ddard's world a lot deeper and a lot faster than I'd expected. I'd come planning to be an observer and now I was the one being observed. That was exactly not how I'd intended it. Maybe, I thought, if I back off and make a new run, I can keep us on equal footing. "Perhaps I ought to just go back to the city for a few days and--"

"I'd a.s.sumed you came to begin the program." He looked at me, a quick sadness flooding his eyes. "You struck me as a person who would follow through."

"I need to think this over" I really feel terrible, I thought, trying to rise up. What did he do to me? "Maybe I'm just not right for your 'program'?" The idea of a doc.u.mentary had momentarily retreated far into the depths of my mind.