The Family Secret

by Daniele Botti

  “His office is the last door on the right,” Michelle informed in a reassuring tone. “You don’t have anything to worry about. You’ll be just fine.”

  If only Paula were as optimistic as Michelle and her aunt were. The click and the thud of the door closing behind her wasn’t as reassuring as she had hoped.

  • • •

  The sound of the door closing reverberated down the white-tiled hallway and Paula had to take a couple of seconds to adjust to the clinical bright, white light that filled the area. She began her journey down the corridor as any journey commenced, with one step, and then another.

  The walls of the bright corridor were adorned with oil paintings with scenes from tropical islands, which were the only color in the otherwise colorless hallway. Upon closer inspection of the paintings, the lower right-hand corners were marked with a “JS,” which made Paula assume that Doctor Sanchez had painted them himself. To Paula, that had made a statement. The otherwise clinical look of the white hallway had been interrupted with swatches of color painted by the very doctor she was going to see. It meant to her that he went against the grain, and that he was rebellious in his nature; that he imposed his will over what had been established. While Paula walked down that corridor, she tried to weigh in her mind whether or not that was a good thing or a bad thing and what consequences it might have on her therapy.

  Paula had finally reached the door to Jose Sanchez’s office. She reached her hand out slowly for the shiny brass knob that represented a choice. Turning this knob would signal making a commitment to battle her inner demons, which she wasn’t sure if she had the strength or presence of mind to do it. To walk away from the knob meant that she would continue to suffer but keep herself from becoming mentally scarred any further.

  Suddenly, her thoughts turned to Doctor Jose Sanchez, and how much she really wanted to get to know him. A thousand thoughts flew through her mind at the speed of light, and she came to one conclusion. “I need to defeat this curse once and for all,” she thought. How could she have a normal life like this? Without another thought, she turned the knob and stepped into the office.

  Jose Sanchez’s office was much like his waiting room, warm polished hardwoods with a personal flair. The room had a pair of display cases containing items he had accumulated on his travels – trinkets and collectibles from six different continents. At the end of the room, there was a large floor to ceiling window with the rain beading off the outside of it. The window looked out over New York City, giving a magnificent view of lower Manhattan and the Hudson River. Flanking either side of the window were large vases, one that seemed to be African in origin, and the other Asian - most likely Middle Eastern. Each vase was filled with tall stalks of dried grass with fluffy white plumes on the tops of them.

  The walls were covered with photos of the places Doctor Sanchez had been – Japan, Australia, China, Russia, France, Rome and London – at least those were the places Paula had recognized from the landmarks in the photos the doctor had been mugging with. At the other end of the room opposite the large window, there was a doorway that led to another chamber. On each side of the chamber door, there were large bookshelves, filled with reference volumes, and various books on psychology. In the middle of the room was a nice mahogany desk, and on that desk was a decent pile of paperwork, some files, and a framed picture of Doctor Sanchez in front of The Great Wall of China. Doctor Sanchez was not sitting behind his desk; he was standing in front of it waiting to welcome Paula.

  “Hello there,” he said with a gentle smile and a clipboard in his hand. “I assume you’re Paula Lindsay. I am pleased to meet you.” He motioned his left hand toward the other chamber, “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  Paula turned her head toward the other chamber where Doctor Sanchez had begun to walk to. Cautiously, she followed him into the dimly lit room where a comfortable looking chair, a metronome, a sofa, a plant on a small table, and a day bed were the only items in the room. Instead of the warm, natural hardwood look, this room was decked out in a soft, pastel blue, which felt very calming when she entered.

  “Please, take a seat on the sofa,” Doctor Sanchez said. “Let’s take a few moments to get to know one another.” As he sat down in the comfortable chair, Paula noticed there was a panel on one of the armrests, which Doctor Sanchez used to adjust the lighting in the room, bringing it up to a normal, conversational level. Paula moved over to the sofa and took a seat, sinking into it and feeling its comfort enveloping her.

  For the first time, she could take a good look at Doctor Sanchez. What surprised her the most was that he had very kind features, and he was thoughtful and gentle in his speech and his manner. His thin frame hosted a slightly bulging belly, not uncommon for a man in his mid-thirties, but he seemed as if he was in fairly good shape overall. His head hosted a good hairline full of short dark brown hair, with some graying on the sides and in his well-trimmed beard. On his face, he wore an expensive looking pair of silver wired frame glasses with bifocal lenses in them. All in all, he seemed like all the rest of the psychologists she had been to see. Doctor Sanchez was silent for a few moments while he flipped through the file of paperwork on the clipboard, nodding a few times as he studied the notes in the text.

  “I have your transcripts from Doctors Parsons, Wilson, and Smith,” Doctor Sanchez said deep in thought, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “It says they have made little to no progress with your case.” The only reaction that Doctor Sanchez got from Paula was a blank stare and a blink of her eyes. “It also says that you have been given some time to gather yourself today because you would not cooperate with Samuel Thornton, your company’s head-of-staff.”

  Paula began to feel anger well up in her and became defensive hearing this. She didn’t come to see Doctor Sanchez to be reminded of the way she had been treated by her employees. She had come for help, but now it seemed as if Doctor Sanchez was as useless as Doctor Parsons, Wilson, Smith, and Thornton were.

  She found herself blurting out defensively, “He started the fight with me. Mr. Thornton often says some very stupid things, making me wonder how a man of little intelligence like him got the post of head-of-staff in the first place!!”

  “That’s not so uncommon; colleagues not getting along at work,” Doctor Sanchez said, almost as if he were agreeing with her. “And what of Doctor Parsons? How do you find him?”

  “Doctor Parsons, I’d only met him in the office that one time,” Paula answered. “And I didn’t want to talk to him because he was a total moron. He was theorizing about my problems without even trying to communicate with me. He is just a phony psychologist. He doesn’t care about my problems, and he doesn’t care about helping me.”

  “The transcript also says you have an enormous amount of disdain for your butler,” Doctor Sanchez added.

  “The man doesn’t give me many reasons to like him,” Paula replied, confident and self-assured. She sat in silence for another moment while Doctor Sanchez finished looking over the transcript. When he was done, he closed the file, and opened his notebook, and made sure his pen was ready to write the things she would be willing to talk about.

  “I suppose while it is true that Doctor Parsons is a colleague of mine, I too, consider him to be somewhat of an idiot,” Doctor Sanchez said, breaking the tension in the room. This was the last thing Paula expected to hear from this psychologist, especially since Thornton claimed to be a friend of his. “I attended school with him. Doctor Parsons’ grades were the lowest in our class. He may not know his stuff, and he’s fairly pompous, but he’s a heck of a nice guy.”

  Paula needed confirmation of Parsons’ claims of friendship. She’d wondered if it was another one of his lies. “Doctor Parsons said you are his friend, is that true?” Paula chimed in, studying Doctor Sanchez’s reaction in hopes that they might betray something about him. No such luck.

  “Yes, he and I are friends,” Doctor Sanchez
explained. “He was considered to be a joke in our college graduating class. He was having a lot of difficulty with the course, so I would help him out; tutor him from time to time. A lot of the other students were cruel to him, yet I couldn’t treat him like that. It meant a lot to him to become a psychologist. It was a promise he had made to his late father, and I couldn’t stand by and let him fail at that promise; not when it all came so easily for me. We also worked together briefly for a company in New Jersey many years ago. Sam didn’t mean to misjudge you; he’s just not good at what he does. I’m not sure in reality if he could even help himself with his own problems.”

  Paula’s assumptions about Doctor Sanchez rapidly melted away. She thought he would be just like everybody else who had ever attempted to examine her, but the truth of the matter was that he was a person who truly wished to help others. She wanted to know more about this new doctor and what he could possibly do for her. She suddenly felt remorse for having treated Samuel Parsons so disrespectfully.

  “If you talk to Doctor Parsons anytime soon, could you please tell him that I’m sorry for the things I said to him?” Paula asked politely. “I had no idea.”

  “I’m sure you’ll get the opportunity to tell him yourself soon,” Doctor Sanchez replied. “I should be able to get you back to work in no time at all.” He seemed to relax in his chair a little bit and continued talking to her. “My eye has been on you for some time now, Miss Lindsay. Despite my sincerest efforts at procuring your case, my efforts have gone mostly unnoticed up to this point.”

  Miss Lindsay? Paula had hated when Samuel Parsons had addressed her as “Miss Lindsay,” but coming from Doctor Sanchez, it didn’t sound so bad, in fact, she kind of liked it. “You…know who I am?” Paula asked shyly, a look of misperception upon her face.

  “I know a lot about you, Miss Lindsay,” Doctor Sanchez responded, focusing on Paula and her reactions to his words. “I know about your family. I know your problems, and I may have solutions that you haven’t yet attempted or even thought about.”

  Paula scoffed at the thought. “A solution? The others couldn’t help me, what makes you think that you can?” She wanted to treat this visit just as much of an intake interview for Doctor Sanchez as it was for her. She needed to know that he was a good fit for her and that she was a good fit for him.

  “I can help you because I am willing to take certain risks for you,” Doctor Sanchez stated in a reassuring manner. “I’m willing to take risks that the others wouldn’t. I’m willing to go the distance for you because your recovery is what’s most important.”

  No matter how confident or reassuring his words were, Paula needed to push him until she heard a specific answer, one she was waiting to hear for a long time. “Yeah, all the others said that too,” Paula stated defensively, realizing she was sounding a lot like her aunt. “Why are you shrinks all so arrogant? Why does each of you think that you’re the only one that can solve my problems?”

  Doctor Sanchez set down his pen and leaned forward slightly in his chair, locking his fingers together, his sad piercing eyes staring into hers. “Miss Lindsay, I’m not asking for your trust today, and I’m not offering any solutions today either. There’s nothing special about me, but I may have suggestions to offer you to help alleviate your unique challenge, and I can only offer them to you. It would be up to you to implement those suggestions. I want to help you live a normal and fulfilling life, and I’ve been theorizing about this particular scenario for a long time. I’ve been involved in this longer than you realize. Now, are you ready to listen to what I have to say?”

  This was pretty close to what Paula was hoping to hear, and it made her heart glad. Perhaps there was light at the end of the tunnel for her. For the first time, she realized that she was ready to open her ears, her eyes and her mind to what Doctor Sanchez had to say. She didn’t trust him any more or less than the previous doctors but was willing to give him a chance.

  “Okay,” Paula responded, feeling her nervousness melt away like sheets of ice in the springtime. “What is it you want me to do?”

  • • •

  Doctor Sanchez sat back in his chair again, getting comfortable and clicked his pen open. “I have been interested in the practice of dream therapy since my college days,” he began to speak in that silky-smooth monotonous voice of his. “I believe that our dreams tell us things about ourselves that we don’t or can’t see in the world of the conscious. We don’t see these things because we either choose not to or because the signs are beyond our comprehension or are too obvious to pick up on.”

  Paula was suddenly confused by what Doctor Sanchez was telling her, but it was certainly something that none of the other shrinks had hit her with. But she couldn’t understand what he meant by all of this. “Signs?” Paula asked, scratching her head. “What kind of signs?”

  This line of questioning was not completely surprising to Doctor Sanchez as he continued to explain. “The signs are things that are linked to your subconscious. They are the things that tell you the complete meaning of your dreams,” he stated, sounding knowledgeable on the subject. “For example, if you went down two floors to Molly’s Book Emporium and found a book on dream interpretation, it would tell you many things. Say you had a dream, and in that dream, you lost one of your teeth. The interpretation in the book would tell you that sometime in the future you would be parted with a significant amount of money, or at the very least, are worried about losing some money.”

  Paula thinks that she was following what the Doctor is saying and finds herself moving her tongue around the inside of her mouth in an effort to check if any teeth were missing. Much to her relief, they were all still there. It was a good as time as any for Paula to defend her point of view on the subject. She knew that everything that happens in her dreams is completely obvious to her and will inevitably happen. Worse yet, she would experience the emotions and the pain of the people around her.

  “No, my dreams aren’t like that,” Paula said, attempting to put the experience into words. “My dreams are more real than that. I dream it, and it is as if I see what will happen. And then I feel the pain of the victims and the emotions of the bystanders. I feel the sadness of their families, and I am burdened with the same sense of loss and grief.”

  “I’m sorry for the loss of your family, Paula,” Doctor Sanchez said, looking remorseful. He continued, trying to take Paula’s train of thought to the next station, “Where other people have dreams and there are signs that may show them what happens, your dreams are more literal. There are no signs for you and everything that happens in your dream; you are completely powerless to stop it from happening.”

  Paula simply nodded in agreement. “Yeah, that’s right,” she said, completely in awe that somebody else understood her dreaming process. “I dream it and it feels like I make it happen.”

  “Everybody has the ability to tap into the future by decoding their dreams,” Doctor Sanchez continued, trying to evoke understanding in his patient. “They only need to recognize the signs. Some people are very good at it, and others are oblivious. Where you differ, is that the signs automatically decode themselves and manifest in a literal interpretation. Your mind translates all of that data without you having to do it manually.”

  “What you’re telling me is that my brain does all the work for me?” Paula asked with a befuddled look on her face. “That my brain figures all of it out, and I just see it like I’m watching a movie?”

  “Correct,” Doctor Sanchez replied, a slight smile forming on his face from the satisfaction of Paula’s revelation.

  “What are we going to do about it then?” Paula was suddenly beginning to feel more hopeful about things than she had in years. “How can we make me no see the signs?”

  Doctor Sanchez got a look of shock on his face. “Why on Earth would you ever want to be blinded to the signs?” He was tossed into a state of confusion, not understanding what
it was that the young lady in front of him was seeking.

  Paula felt her sense of outrage rising, she felt as if she’d suffered from these nightmares long enough and it was something she never wanted; something she never asked for. She just wanted to be normal, to have the same opportunities and social interactions that other women of her age had. Was that too much to ask? Her voice became raised, though only slightly, “I am tired of having these nightmares, and I hate being scared all the time.” Her voice was filled with defiance, trying to make the meaning of the agony she had endured for so long clear to him, “I’m fearful of having to relive these dreams shortly after I have them. More than anything, I hate that I blame myself for causing those accidents. All of the deaths.”

  “And it’s completely alright to feel that way,” Doctor Sanchez calmly stated, trying to reel Paula back into a comfortable place to express herself. “Your emotions are validated, but I think that what you’re looking at as a curse, could really be a gift.”

  Paula’s anger was escalating, and she felt herself stand up, intending to walk out the door and cut the appointment short. It now appeared to Paula that Doctor Sanchez was as clueless as his colleagues were. She didn’t want to think of her problem as anything but evil. It was no gift, not when it caused so many injuries and deaths.

  “This is no gift!” Paula practically screamed. “Not when it brings the deaths or injuries of so many people. It makes me feel responsible for all of it. You have no idea how it feels to experience so much discomfort and death. I just want it all to go away! I thought you might have an answer; it seems I was mistaken.”

  Paula found herself moving ever closer to the door when Doctor Sanchez spoke again. “Why should you want it to go away when you could learn to control it?” There it was again, that silky, convincing voice, the one that brought her attention back to the topic at hand. “Have you ever heard of dream control, Miss Lindsay?”