Dream doctor

She turns to me on the Skytrain with pleading eyes. I’m watching the buildings go by. There’s no one sitting beside me when I get up to leave. I’m startled to wake up with her the next morning. By the time I go to work, there was never anyone there.

There is a level of consciousness that lies below the survival instincts.

There’s a photograph of a bunch of World War One army musicians on the wall of the psychiatrist’s waiting room. It’s in black and white and they all have the vacant stare of people that have been told to keep smiling and not to move for a minute. There are two people who have moved and their heads are doing this blurry thing halfway between Jacob’s Ladder and The Ring. They aren’t in North America. It looks tropical. They’re wearing clean sailor uniforms. There’s a black blur across the bottom of the photo that I guess is a monkey that wouldn’t sit still.

It’s immediately apparent to me that because of the age of the photograph, everyone in it is probably dead. It’s a creepy photo. I don’t know why it’s in the waiting room of a doctor that’s supposed to specialize in putting people at ease.

The door to his office creaks open and I hear my name mumbled and an invitation to come in.

I stand up, brush invisible dust of my pants to stall my increasing sense that something is wrong, straighten up, and walk forward into his office. I close the door behind me.

There’s a lot of wood in this office. Mostly dark brown. Some pine highlights. It looks tasteful and expensive. The blinds to the outside world don’t let in nearly enough light. There’s a smell of incense in the office that smells like its being used to cover up the smell of cigar smoke.

There’s a man sitting on the giant leather couch against the opposite wall of the office. He’s very, very fat. He has wild red hair and freckles. He’s peering sleepily up at me over bifocal glasses. He has a face that looks like it’s used to laughing at rude jokes. Right now it looks like he just woke up. He’s still staring at me with wet cold eyes that seem to be on hold.

With a shock, I realize that this is the doctor. There is no one else in the room except for us and by a clever process of elimination, I come to the conclusion that since I am the patient, the strange creature in front of me must be the doctor. I half expect him to grunt or wet his pants or something.

With a click, his mouth closes and he looks up and me and seems to really see me for the first time.

“Come in, come in.” he says. He sounds jovial and British. He looks at his fingertips with mild surprise. I look at the office and my sense of wrongness continues. He is sitting in the center of a modest couch and that is the only place to sit in the room. Aren’t psychiatrist’s offices supposed to have two places to sit? Or more?

He shuts off again and goes back to staring. I walk over and sit awkwardly beside him. My shoes make soft sounds on the carpet and the leather couch seems to be very loud when I sit down. I stare in the direction he’s staring in but I can’t see anything fascinating.

There’s a bright flash of light from outside and I notice that there is a severed woman’s hand on the floor. I am not alarmed. There’s music coming from the waiting room.

I look past the fat man on the couch and I can see now when I lean forward that there is someone on the other side of him sitting on the couch with us. I am relieved because this must be the doctor.

There’s a door slamming repetitively somewhere else on the floor of the building.

The doctor is very pale in a very black suit. He gives me a nod with a wide smile and that’s when I start to feel really frightened.


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