Fade to Black - Proof (15 page)

Chapter

17

Jack woke up feeling a lot more
rested. At first he didn’t remember his dream and lay in bed with a contented
smirk; again the medicine had beat out his sanity. Then slowly he felt the
dream rematerialize. He watched the ceiling fan turn and wondered what it meant.

Maybe you’re
asking the wrong questions…

Maybe. Hell,
probably. He had to admit he had given up any belief that he had a clue what
the hell was going on. What were the right questions?

Are you sure
this isn’t the dream?

Jack shuddered
a bit, and then forced the thoughts from his head and swung his legs out of
bed. There would be plenty of time for this horseshit when he got to Lewellyn’s
office.  He shuffled to the bathroom slowly on stiff legs and saw a yellow Post-it
note with Pam’s handwriting pasted to the mirror. He squinted his tired eyes
and then reached behind him to turn on the light as he pulled the note down.

Jack,

I decided to
let you sleep in ‘cause you looked so peaceful. I have taken Claire to her
playgroup at Melissa’s. I am running to the store and then I will be home. Call
me after your meeting if you want and maybe we can meet somewhere for lunch.

Love you.   

   –Pam

Jack felt a
terrible disappointment that he wouldn’t see his girls before his meeting. Is
that what it was, a meeting? Not her style to call it a head-shrinking session,
Jack supposed. Then he realized he had no idea what time it was and dashed into
the bedroom to look at the clock.

Nine fifteen?
Oh, shit!

Jack took a
very quick shower and then pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweat shirt. No
reason to get all dressed up for Lewellyn anymore. They were way past any first
impression bullshit. He dashed out the door, hoping for time to get coffee on
the way. By nine thirty-five he was warming the Volvo in the driveway.

As Jack
flipped through his CD case looking for a Kenny Chesney disc, he saw the
newspaper he had left in the passenger seat.
Marine Corps Times
it
announced in bold red script. Jack wondered why he had impulsively grabbed that
paper. He started to reach for it, but then realized he was still running late.
What could he hope to find in there anyway? He popped in the CD and backed out
of the drive.

Twenty minutes
later he was parked in the same spot he had left from the day before, feeling almost
as nervous. Without much thought he grabbed the little paper off the passenger
seat as he got out and tucked it under his arm as he locked the Volvo’s doors
with his fob, a satisfying chirp-chirp announcing his success. Maybe he would
flip through the paper in the waiting room. There might be something about the
3/1 and the action in Fallujah.

Jack arrived
at the glass receptionist window at nine fifty-eight, Citgo coffee in hand
(black) and smiled at the receptionist, a flash of embarrassment as he recalled
his last encounter with her in the waiting room.

“Good morning,
Jack,” she said, no hint that she remembered how crazy he had seemed just
twenty-four hours earlier. “How are you this morning?”

“Feeling much
better, thanks,” he answered with a charming smile.

No dead guys
in the waiting room today are there?

“Good.” She
smiled back. “Dr. Lewellyn is ready for you, so you can go right back if you
like.”

“Great,” he
said, though he felt more anxious than great. He headed for the hall, then
turned and hesitated. “Could I leave my paper with you until I’m done? I’d
rather not take it back,” he said to the girl behind the clean glass. Why had
he brought it with him? The last thing he wanted was for Lewellyn to see it.
Why stir the pot?

“Sure, Jack,”
she answered and took the paper from him, setting it on the desk beside her.

“Thanks,” Jack
said with a little wave and then headed for the dark door at the end of the
hall.

The psychologist
greeted him warmly and offered to freshen his coffee, which Jack accepted, and
then they both took their now expected seats. Jack crossed his legs and sipped
his coffee, waiting for the inevitable question so he could begin recounting
his day after their last session and his dream from last night. But Lewellyn
had other plans.

“I want to
start a bit differently today, Jack,” he said, opening his little leather‐bound
notebook and clicking his pen. “I think today we should talk a little bit about
death. I think we should start to ask the questions that may unlock your fears,
okay?”

Jack felt his
mouth go dry and his pulse quicken at the words. What the hell? Lewellyn
couldn’t possibly know about his conversation with Hoag in last night’s dream.
He felt a panic growing in the middle of his chest and set his coffee on the
end table with a trembling hand.

“Jack?”
Lewellyn sounded concerned, but maybe it was his imagination. “Jack, are you all
right?”

“Yeah,” Jack
answered. “Just a little early for such a heady conversation. I was sound
asleep less than an hour ago.” His attempt at sounding casual failed miserably
and he felt the psychologist’s dissecting eyes on him. Jack could feel a sense
of surrealism creep into his already jumbled mood. Was this the dream after
all? Wouldn’t that explain Lewellyn tossing back his own mind’s (Hoag’s) words
at him?

“Are you
uncomfortable talking about death, Jack?” he asked.

Jack’s mind
reeled and he forced himself to calm down. He was overreacting. Lewellyn was
asking the inevitable question that Jack had somehow known he would ask. That
was where his dream had come from.

“No,” Jack
lied. “No, not at all. Just a little surprised. I thought we might start with
things that happened yesterday.” He hoped he could intrigue the doctor to a
more comfortable conversation, but Lewellyn wasn’t biting.

“We’ll come
back to all that, Jack,” he said softly. He sat motionless, and Jack felt he
was studying him. “I’d like to start with this, okay? It seems to be a relevant
theme for us.”

“Sure,” Jack
said. He succeeded a little better at sounding casual this time. “Shoot.”

“Well, let’s
start with the basics.”  Lewellyn scribbled in his book now. “What do you think
death is, Jack?”

“Well, I don’t
know,” he answered, “but who does, right? We all find out, I guess, but no one
is talking.”

At least not
to everyone else.

They spent the
next quarter hour talking in generalities about death. Jack was very
uncomfortable talking about something he felt he knew so little about,
especially now that he felt his views might be changing with all that was going
on in his mind. They discussed, briefly, his beliefs about death from a
religious standpoint.

“I was brought
up believing that death isn’t the end,” he said, “that God has something else
in store for us when we leave here.”

“Do you still
believe that?” Lewellyn asked.

“I think so,”
Jack answered. In fact he wasn’t at all sure what he believed. His nightmares
and hallucinations had him thinking a lot about the moment of death. Especially
the violent and grotesque death he had seen not just in his dreams, but on the
television news. He had not given much new thought to what came next.

“Are you
afraid of death, Jack?” Lewellyn asked. He looked at him patiently and seemed
quite comfortable with this very uncomfortable topic.

“Isn’t
everyone?” Jack asked, evading the question a bit.

“I don’t know,
Jack.” Lewellyn answered. “I’m most interested in how you feel, though.”

“At least
during my billable session,” Jack joked, vying for more time. He regretted it
immediately, though the psychologist seemed unruffled.

“Right,” he
said easily, okay with the joke apparently.

There was a
long pause during which Lewellyn watched him impassively and Jack fidgeted
uncomfortably. After a few moments his doctor spoke.

“Well?” Lewellyn
said.

“Well, what?”
Jack asked innocently.

Lewellyn uncrossed
his legs and leaned forward like he always did when Jack squirmed. His attempt
at being more personal, Jack thought.

“You haven’t
answered the question, Jack. But I’m sure you know that.”

Jack sighed
heavily. He wasn’t going to get out of this conversation.

“Sure,” he
answered. Then looked up and held Lewellyn’s gaze. “Yeah, I’m scared of death. Isn’t
everybody, at least a little? Who knows what it really is, right? I mean, I
think we all harbor fear of the unknown.” There. That should do it.

“What scares
you the most about dying, Jack,” Lewellyn asked, not at all content to leave
well enough alone.

“I’m most
afraid of having to leave my girls—to be without Pam and Claire,” Jack answered
without a second thought. Then he leaned back against the thick leather
cushion. That was true, wasn’t it? Leaving his life with his family unfinished
was what he feared the most.

“Okay,”
Lewellyn said and reassumed his cross-legged position of interrogation, scribbling
again in his notebook. Then he took a moment and reviewed a few notes from
farther back in his notebook. “What do you think the Navy chaplain represents
in all this, Jack?” He flipped a few more pages. “Commander Hoag,” he said,
finding his name in his notes.

Jack thought
about that a moment. Who was the chaplain to him? He was an irritating son of a
bitch, that was for sure.

“He asks me
questions,” Jack answered simply.

“What do you
mean?”

“Well,” Jack
thought carefully. “When I’m thinking about things, he seems to sort of show up
and ask questions.”

“What kind of
questions?” Lewellyn asked, intrigued.

“He asks
things that sort of, I don’t know, get me thinking in a different way. Sort of
like you do.”

“Well that’s
interesting,” Lewellyn said. “What do you make of that?”

Jack was
determined to give the psychologist a good answer.

“I think that
Hoag is really coming from a part of my mind that stimulates me to think and
analyze things in a different way,” he said. Yeah, that sounded good. “He is
sort of the rational part of me. He separates me from the emotional impact of
the nightmares and stuff, and lets me think more critically, I think.”

“So he’s your
own voice?”

“My own
thoughts,” Jack corrected.

Lewellyn put
down his pen and seemed quite satisfied.

“That’s very
good, Jack.” He got up and crossed over to the couch, taking up a seat next to
him. “Very good.” He patted Jack lightly on the leg. “So what do you make of
that?”

Jack felt more
relaxed. He felt like he had made some breakthrough, but was remarkably
unconcerned that he had no idea what the hell it was.

“Well, I guess
I’m listening to him a bit more,” Jack laughed and held up a hand, “in my mind,
not in a crowded restaurant, but we’ll get to that. I guess listening to my own
rational and unemotional side,” he corrected, “will help me look at things
differently and get to the answers I need.”

“I think so,
too, Jack.” Lewellyn patted him on the leg again.

There’s a good
boy.

“Well, this
makes a nice transition into my day yesterday after I left you,” Jack said.

Lewellyn rose,
crossing back over to his driver’s seat and opening his little book, pen again
at the ready.

“Ok, Jack,” he
said, “tell me about yesterday. I’ll give you a break for a minute, but we have
more talking about death to do, I think,” he cautioned.

Jack enjoyed
the moment of control and started in on his day from yesterday. Lewellyn
scribbled furiously as he spoke.

Chapter

18

Jack left the office an hour
later, feeling pretty good with himself. They had returned to the “death talk”
as Lewellyn had promised, but had not really unraveled any great mysteries.
They talked again about the idea that, to Jack, death represented separation
from his family. Lewellyn seemed very interested in that for some reason. That
Jack seemed not to have a great concern for what death was, where we go from
here, what it all meant, also seemed to intrigue him. To Jack, the only real
issue was leaving his life with his girls unfinished; not being there for them,
watching Claire grow up, holding and comforting his wife. The rest seemed
fairly petty and something that couldn’t be answered anyway, so why worry about
it? Lewellyn pointed out that this all seemed to imply a young death for Jack,
and Jack had considered that only briefly. He told him that maybe that was
because of his empathy for all these Marines, dying far away from home and
family at such a young age, their lives so unfinished. That seemed to satisfy
Lewellyn.

They agreed
that Jack’s dream the night before, and the control he seemed to maintain over
its course and outcome, showed real progress. Lewellyn reassured him that while
they didn’t yet have the answers to what had precipitated all this “instability
in his emotional and psychological life,” that they were getting very close. He
also predicted that his progress meant that things should continue to improve
for him over the coming days, and that the dreams might become less disturbing.

“You may still
have some setbacks, some intense emotional hallucinations or dreams,” the psychologist
had cautioned,  “but I think you have shown real progress in your ability to
deal with them both intellectually and emotionally.”

Jack had felt really
good about that. Again he felt filled with a sense of hope. Lewellyn’s focus on
finding the root cause was less important to Jack, who really just wanted the
nightmares to stop and to return to his happy life with Pam and Claire. He
realized he very much looked forward to going back to school on Monday, after
what he hoped would be a relaxing and healing family weekend.

Before he left
Lewellyn’s office, he borrowed the phone to call Pam. He was now excited by the
lunch they had planned. They decided to meet at an intimate little Vietnamese
restaurant they both enjoyed, but rarely went to anymore, what with Claire
being so young and the long drive downtown to get there. The restaurant sat
just a few blocks away and Jack stopped by his Volvo to feed the meter. He decided
the walk to Viet Gardens would help him relax and kill some of the time it
would take for Pam to drive there to meet him. The parking meter’s hunger for
coins having been sated, Jack started out towards the restaurant and passed by
the Military Recruiting Station without a glance or thought.

 “You forgot
your paper,” a familiar voice said from the alley he was passing.

Jack stopped,
forcing away the moment of panic at the sound of Hoag’s voice. There was
nothing to fear here. Hoag was just his own mind trying to help him find things
that he needed to find. Jack turned to see the Navy chaplain standing just
inside the alley, again dressed smartly in his dress blue uniform with white
hat. He looked a bit like an airline pilot in that uniform. Jack had always
preferred the crisp green Class B uniform of the Marines, which he felt looked
more military. The chaplain smiled and held out a folded paper in his hand.
Just a part of his own mind, Jack reminded himself again. He was unconcerned at
how ridiculous it should seem that his mind had fetched his forgotten paper from
the receptionist and brought it a block and a half to an alley for him to pick
up.

“Thank you,”
Jack said and took the paper, tucking it under his arm. Then he turned to
leave.

“You don’t
really have a choice about leaving them, you know,” the commander said softly
at his back. Jack stopped and turned to face his demon again.

“Who?” he
asked.

“Your girls,”
the chaplain answered. He was cleaning his glasses again, a nervous habit, Jack
thought. “Leaving our loved ones for death is not a decision any of us would
make. We can only choose to love them fully while we’re alive. That’s what
makes our lives mean something when we’re gone.”

Jack felt
anger grow inside him, a rage almost, and he stepped towards the ghost from his
mind, his fists balled up. For a moment he thought he might take a swing at the
chaplain, who his mind knew wasn’t really there.

“Well, that’s
real fucking nice, Commander,” he said, his voice trembling with anger.
“Especially from you. I notice you are the only one in this little passion play
who isn’t fucking dead or dying, so what makes you the goddamn expert?”

The commander
replaced his round glasses on his face and smiled.

“And what
makes you think I’m not dead?” he asked.

Then he turned
and walked back into the dark alley. After a few short steps, he was swallowed
by shadows. A moment later, in a flash of white light which made Jack blink and
raise his hands to shield his eyes, he was gone.

Jack stared
for a moment into the empty alley, his anger replaced with fear and surprise.
He had lost control again, he thought. Then he shook his head.

It’s just my
mind fucking with me,
he thought.

Then he turned
abruptly, nearly knocking into a young woman dressed sharply in a grey suit,
the skirt cut well above her knees.

“Are you ok?”
she asked, concern and confusion in her face as she glanced past Jack into the
empty alley. He noticed she clutched her purse tightly to her chest.

“Fine,” he
mumbled as he stepped past her. “Excuse me.”

Then he headed
on down the block, fuming, his paper tucked under his arm.