With the coffee brewing, he threaded his way through the labyrinth of the sleeping twins to the bathroom and took a warm shower. After shaving, he dressed and headed out to the front porch with hot coffee in hand. He wondered what the day would bring. Jill had made his appointment. He tried to put it out of his mind.
The Sun was now peeking above the eastern horizon, painting the abstract morning sky with beautiful pastel hues of orange, yellow, and cerulean blue. The sunrise helped Ben to forget his troubles. He loved the morning. It was always his favorite time of day. When he went back for his second cup of coffee, Jill was in the kitchen pouring one of her own.
“Why are you up so early?” Ben asked.
“Good morning to you as well,” she replied sarcastically.
“I’m sorry. Good morning. I was hoping you would be able to sleep in today.”
“No, I heard you again.”
“I thought that maybe I might have been quieter this time. You looked like you were asleep when I climbed out of bed.”
“No, I was just laying there with my eyes shut.”
Ben knew that when he had the dream he would mumble garbled words, usually ending in an unintelligible shout.
“Are you going to see Doctor Levine today?” She asked.
“Jill, I don’t think we can afford—”
She cut his words off mid sentence. “You promised me you would see him today! You know you can’t go on night after night having this awful dream wake us! You promised you would see him! How long does this have to go on Ben? You know how hard it is to get a Saturday appointment? He only sees people one Saturday a month!”
Jill had the look on her face that Ben was all too familiar with. It was the look that said, “You do not want to mess with me on this one.” Ben didn’t often get that look, but he had learned during their twenty-three years of marriage to walk away from it whenever possible.
“Okay okay I will go in and see the shrink Jill. I don’t know how he can help me, but I will give it a try.”
Ben could read on Jill’s face that he had said enough to put out the fire.He asked, “When is the appointment?”
“One thirty.” She answered back curtly. “You know very well when the appointment is Ben! Why do you ask when I have been reminding you for two days?”
He could see the fire beginning to ignite again and he knew he had better zip it and take his coffee back outside. “I promise I will go in but I still don’t know how a total stranger can help me.”
He spun around before his wife could answer and having managed to get in the last word, he got out while the getting was good. As he was making his way back through to the front door, Ben could hear that the twins were awake by the sounds of the explosions on the flat screen. “Sometimes I wish I had never bought that system.” He thought to himself.
Later, when he was driving to the shrink’s office, Ben tried to imagine what the psychiatrist visit would be like. He had never been to a shrink in his life and he pondered over whether or not he should tell all that was really bothering him or if he should play it cool and ease in over time to the heavy stuff.
He imagined the doctor placing him into a mental institution at the drop of a hat. He had seen “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” more than a few times, and shock therapy was not one of his short-term goals. He could feel the anxiety welling up inside him with each passing mile. He felt like he was driving to an inquisition. He turned right onto Corporate Drive and he knew that he was within minutes of arriving at the office. He thought about turning the car around, but the look on his wife’s face that morning was enough to keep him moving towards the feared shrink’s modern office building.
He was early. He parked in the lot, but was in no hurry to go in. He rolled down both front windows of his car. He sat inside, even though the temperature outside was climbing towards the predicted ninety degrees.
“It is going to be a hot, dry summer.” He thought to himself.
As he was sitting there, an orange-colored county truck rolled up fifty yards from where he was parked. It slowly backed and turned in an arcing movement to be close as possible to the “dead end” sign which was at the corner. Two men climbed out of each side of the truck, and one said to the other, “It’s starting to get hot out now Tom.”
The other man didn’t answer. The talkative one climbed into the back of the truck, chatting all the way, and in two minutes time, with power-drill in hand, removed a perfectly good existing sign, and replaced it with a brand-new one. Two minutes of work. Two bolts.
Ben watched the two men as they climbed back into the truck. He wondered why the sign needed replacing. He expected the men to drive away with some urgency to their next sign-changing location, but the orange truck just sat there. He watched the truck for what seemed like fifteen minutes. He looked at his watch. He thought about his own unemployment.
He wondered why it took two guys to change a street sign.
Looking at his watch again, he realized he had run out of time. He had to face the music inside the office building with the shrink. He was still looking at the orange truck as he walked through the doors to the building foyer. The thought of the two men sitting out there doing nothing in an obvious patronage job angered him. He tried to put it out of his mind. He didn’t want the shrink to send him to the funny farm.
As he walked through the double-doors to the large waiting room, Ben thought at first that he had mistakenly entered into an up-scale fish store for the very rich, or possibly the foyer of Sea World. On each wall, there stood large built-in aquariums filled with brightly colored tropical fish. Ben scanned the room looking at each of the tanks, and then his attention stopped at the receptionist’s desk. He was in the right place.
The fish were obviously there to calm down all the overly-excited lunatics who were seated in the soft leather chairs of the waiting room. Ben looked at his fellow mental patients. He expected them to be fidgeting or trying to suppress nervous ticks, but they looked comparatively normal. He walked to the receptionist’s desk. The young blonde who was sitting there was working on her chewing gum at a ferocious pace. She gave Ben the obligatory forms to fill out, and after he did, he wished he hadn’t. He wanted very badly to turn right around and head back out the door. He thought again of Jill, and stifled back the urge to bolt.
He was too nervous to sit down. He didn’t want to sit next to any of the schizophrenics, so he decided to get a closer look at the fish. He walked from one aquarium to another, finally stopping at the largest. The tank looked as if it was a coral reef plucked right out of the Caribbean, and he watched the fish swim this way and that with great interest. The fish were doing their job. He was feeling more calm.
He followed a puffer fish as it moved to and fro in the largest tank. It was a beautiful fish, grayish in color with pink-magenta and midnight-blue features and it had very large eyes. Ben was transfixed. The soft movement of the fish coupled with his own fatigue was lulling him to sleep. He needed sleep.
“What a beautiful fish.” He thought to himself.
The puffer fish swam around and around in the tank, and then it swam opposite of Ben and stopped. It seemed to be looking at him as it stayed in place, and Ben was thinking that maybe the fish was expecting a feeding. All the other fish were still swimming around, oblivious to him or the dry outside world, but the puffer fish kept watching Ben with great interest.
The fish seemed to be in a stare-down with Ben. It’s gentle side to side motion and it’s two side-fins slowly moving back and forth were lulling the over-tired Ben into a hypnotic trance. Ben bent his head closer to the glass to see what it would do. The fish only moved its fins just a tiny bit faster, but it held its position directly opposite of Ben.
“What an odd experience.” Ben thought.
Suddenly in an instant, without warning, the fish inflated to three times its size. Ben was so surprised by this that he stumbled backwards and tripped over one of the plush waiting room chairs.
As he laid there on the floor, Ben felt a sharp pain on the back of his head. He also noticed an unusual cool sensation spreading there. It felt kind of like a gentle breeze on wet skin. The room started spinning slowly around. Ben noticed that the loonies were in a state of great agitation, and as he drifted off to sleep, he smiled and mused at the chaos all around him.
The last thing that he noticed before he closed his eyes was the aquarium and the puffer fish, still inflated like a grayish volleyball with pinkish fins and blue eyes, still looking at him with the same keen interest, and then he remembered no more.
“Mr. Fisher, can you hear me? Mr. Fisher can you hear me? Mr. Fisher. Cathy, please go put a towel under cold water for this man’s forehead. Mr. Fisher, can you speak?”
Ben slowly opened his eyes, and looking around, he had no idea where he was. He was lying on a soft leather couch in a richly decorated room full of wooden cabinets and book shelves. Where there were no books, the walls contained framed documents of all types, penned with fancy embellished calligraphy. The vertical blinds were mostly closed allowing a filtered light to enter from the sunny outside world. He wondered why he had fallen asleep in some strange random library.
“Mr. Fisher, can you hear me? Do you know where you are?”
Both the room and the man were slowly coming into focus, as was Ben’s memory, and it suddenly dawned on him where he was. He wanted to close his eyes and go back to sleep.
“Mr. Fisher, can you hear me?”
“Yes, yes I can hear. I had a fall. The fish.”
“Cathy, the towel please.”
The doctor placed the wet towel on Ben’s forehead. Ben instinctively reached back with his right hand to where the pain was, and noticed that his head was wrapped in a gauze bandage. When he touched the injured place, he felt a sharp pain. He winced.
“Mr. Fisher, you have had a fall. I am Doctor Levine. This is my receptionist Ms. Beck. Can you tell me, how many fingers am I holding up?”
Ben suddenly realized the gravity of his situation, and he knew he had better focus on the doctors fingers and give a proper reply before the men in white coats would show up and haul him to the happy factory. “Two. Two fingers. I’m sorry for having caused a commotion in your waiting room doctor, but the fish startled me and—”
“Mr. Fisher, if you please. Can you tell me where you are?”
Ben did not like the sound of that question. “Of course I know where I am! You shouldn’t have fish that blows up in front of your patients or none of this would have happened!”
Ben was agitated and he was trying to lift himself into a sitting position. The wet towel fell into his lap. He wanted to run out of the building, but he knew that was impossible now. His head ached.
“Mr. Fisher, the fall you took does not seem to have injured you badly. You have a small superficial wound which bled quite a bit as head wounds do, but it is my opinion and Ms. Beck’s that the fall and the bump may not have caused your blackout. I need you to answer each of my questions carefully so I can ascertain whether or not to send you down the hall for an MRI.”
Ben thought to himself, “Now I am in for it. The good doctor thinks I should be institutionalized.”
He looked for the exits. He wondered why his lap was wet. Had he peed himself?
He looked down and noticed the wet towel and put it back in place on his forehead.
“Mr. Fisher, can you tell me what day it is?”
Ben thought about the question: “Saturday.”
“Good Mr. Fisher. Now, can you tell me where you are specifically?”
Ben was still agitated but he knew his freedom depended on his playing along. He answered, “Yes Doctor Levine, I am in your office which is on Corporate Drive in the town of Vernon Hills, and I am here to see you at my wife’s urging about a recurring dream. Is that specific enough, or shall I give you your address as well, or maybe—”
The doctor cut him off again. “Okay Mr. Fisher, you have said enough. Why don’t you go into the washroom and freshen up, and then we can begin anew. Go collect yourself, and then you and I can talk.”
As Ben was walking to the rest room adjoining the office, he thought about what he could say or do to get out of his appointment. His head was pulsing with pain. In the rest room, he looked for a possible escape route. There was no way out except the office. He splashed water on his face and collected himself. Exiting the rest room, he noticed that Dr. Levine had already sat down on a comfortable chair with notebook in hand, and glancing up, he gave Ben a friendly smile. It seemed as if nothing had happened. The nurse was gone.
“Come and sit down Ben. May I call you Ben? Come in and sit down and tell me why you are here.”
Ben looked over at a bust of Sigmund Freud. He knew there would be one. No self-respecting shrink would have an office without a proper bust of Freud. He sat on the couch. “Doctor, I’m sorry for the disturbance in your waiting room.” Ben noticed, this time, that the doctor didn’t interrupt him. He just sat quietly and waited for Ben to continue.
“Yes, okay call me Ben.”
The doctor still sat there, giving no reply. Ben continued to talk. “I have been having a dream which wakes my wife and I up each night, I mean, that is, I am having the dream and not my wife, but my shouting or rather my mumbling wakes her up and it is causing problems. We— I am not sleeping well.”
Ben’s head ached.
Still the doctor listened. Ben stopped talking. Doctor Levine broke the silence. “Is that all that is bothering you?”
Ben was astonished at the question. He didn’t answer. The doctor looked down at his notebook and started jotting something down. The doctor asked again, “Is there anything else bothering you besides the dream?”
Ben thought about what he should say. “Doctor, I am not sleeping well. I am having the same dream night after night. I am waking up my wife. I am out of work. I haven’t worked in three years. My home is being foreclosed. My family and I may soon be homeless. I keep having this frigging dream, and I don’t know why, and I am not sleeping.”