She

by Shireen Jeejeebhoy

chapter three

  MIND AND FLESH

  “THAT’S YOUR NAME,” Jim, her fiancé, says while his eyes remain glued on his laptop.

  “Oh.” She lifts her head, looks around. She’s had to wait six weeks to get in to see Dr. Kale and his team at the Haoma Clinic. It feels like it’s been forever. “Are you coming?” she asks.

  “No.”

  She waits for a second. Realizing that’s all he’s going to say, she pushes herself out of her chair and follows the nurse waiting for her at the waiting room doorway, trying not to drop the X-rays in their envelope that she’s been clutching since she got out of the car. The nurse pounds down the hall to the door of another room while she strives to keep up. In response to the nurse’s gesture, she walks through the door.

  A small dark-haired man gets up from his behind his desk, strides round it, with his hand outstretched toward her. She hands him the X-rays; he takes them in his left hand, and he shakes her hand with his right. Pain shoots up her arm into her shoulder and her neck. She tucks her right arm into her body and sits down in the ubiquitous office chair that he’s indicated to her.

  He sits back down, sets the X-rays aside with a muttered “I’ll look at them later” and pulls a pad of paper toward himself and picks up a pen. “Now then, I see Dr. Basset has referred you for possible neck and shoulder sprains and strains.”

  “Yes.”

  “What we’ll do is I’ll begin with your medical history and then we’ll talk about how you got those sprains and strains. After that, the physiotherapist will do some tests, and then you’ll meet my colleague Dr. Jones. We believe in a multi-disciplinary approach here.”

  She nods.

  “So I see here you were born on May 16 —”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you have any childhood diseases, break any bones, sprain ankles, that kind of thing?”

  She frowns, concentrating, trying to remember.

  “I had the usual. I think. Colds. Flu. I don’t remember bones, breaking any bones. I s-s-sprained my ankle. My right one. A few times. I think.”

  “Have you been in any car accidents, skiing accidents, get hit when playing sports?”

  “No.”

  He nods and jots some notes down. “Okay then. How did you receive these strains and sprains? Tell me about that day.”

  “Well, um,” she thinks for a bit. “We were driving home on S-s-sunday night. No, Monday morning.”

  “What day was that?”

  “It was Sunday. No, Monday. Monday, June 21 at 12:57 a.m.,” she says, thinking between each word.

  He looks up in surprise, “You remember the time that clearly?”

  “Yes. I was looking at the clock. It was the summer solstice.”

  “I see. Go on.”

  “Well, anyway, we were driving, driving on s-s-some country road.” She frowns, “I think it was, it was near Highway 10, yes, that’s right, just west of Caledon.” She starts to pick up steam, “And it was real dark. We were at the top of this-s-s up and down road, in the middle of a f-f-forest, when this huge wind hit the car and spun, spun us around. Jim was fighting to get control of the car back, and I was leaning towards him, s-s-so I wasn’t si-si-sitting up straight, straight, and then the glass cracked. I felt the wind on me, and it was like pushing me or something. And then it all stopped. It stopped, and we were out of the forest.”

  “Mmmm …” He writes a few words, then looks up at her and nods at her to continue.

  “Well, um, that was it. Except this, um, this Akaesman patrol …”

  “Akaesman?” He sits up and looks at her sharply.

  “Yes. I think I’m pronouncing that right.”

  “Yes you are. What did they say?”

  “They said, they said I had some, some minor s-s-sprains or something. Go see my GP, which I did.”

  “Anything else?”

  She slowly shakes her head but stops as the pain expands. “No.”

  He writes a few more words down, and then he reaches into his drawer and passes over a metal grip device shaped like a spray handle nozzle with a dial on top.

  “Squeeze that as hard as you can with your right hand.”

  She holds it and squeezes it. Nothing seems to happen. The dial needle budges barely.

  He gestures at her to pass it back. He looks at the dial, writes down the number, and then passes it back to her. “Now your left hand.”

  She dutifully squeezes with her left hand. Nothing moves, except once again the needle. She passes it back to him, and he again looks at the dial and copies down the number he sees there.

  “You’re left-handed?”

  “No.”

  “Right-handed?”

  “Yes.”

  He notes it down. “Okay,” he stands up. “Please stand up and come over here.”

  She stands and goes toward where he indicates. He touches the back of her neck and slides his hands down it, squeezing gently. She tries not to wince. Grandmother hated wusses and people who complained of pain, as she’d made clear on those days when she wanted to stay home from school because she had a cold or a headache. He slides his hands down the top of her shoulders and gently probes the muscles there. He repeats the same procedure down her back. Next he asks her to raise her arms out to the sides, then in front, then up, then to touch her nose, walk along a straight line, one foot in front of the other and back again toward him. He watches her closely as she does all these things.

  “You may sit down again,” he instructs as he returns to his chair to make a few notes.

  She waits.

  He hands her a pen and a sheet of paper with diagrams of a human body on it, one showing the back view, one showing the front. He asks her to mark where her pain is. She looks at it for a moment to make sure she knows which one is the back view and which one the front, and then she scribbles, going over the diagrams’ lines, and smudging into areas that aren’t painful, but her hand doesn’t want to obey her, clutching the pen too hard and spasming. Done, she hands it back to him.

  He inspects her work and confirms with her where the pain is.

  “That’s all for here. I want you to see our acupuncturist. He’ll help you regain strength in your arms and hands, along with our physiotherapist, but he’s away this week. I’ll ask the nurse to schedule you in for an assessment when you start physio. She’ll call you with an appointment. But for now, go back to the waiting room, and the physio will take you in for her own assessment.”

  She gets up, clutching her purse, opens the door, and walks down the hallway. But as she’s about to enter the waiting room, she hears her name, and a woman is standing next to her.

  “Come with me, please.” She follows. They walk into a large room with a chair and desk next to the wall, and another chair sitting in the middle of the room. A bed is at the far side.

  “Put this gown on, and I’ll be back in a minute.” She leaves, shutting the door behind her.

  She strips off her loose T-shirt and sweatpants. No bra. She had ditched wearing one weeks ago. And quickly puts on the gown. She can’t reach the ties at the back and awkwardly holds it closed with her left hand.

  The door swings open, and the woman comes in.

  She sits in the wheeled chair in the middle of the room, wheels herself to be right in front of her, asks her to turn around, and ties the gown closed. And then she quickly, silently starts examining her, giving her terse instructions when she needs her to lie down on the bed or stand back up. She follows all the instructions to the letter, wondering why this woman is doing things like testing her reflexes and then pondering why her right leg doesn’t move upon being tapped.

  “I’m going to test fibromyalgia trigger points. These might be uncomfortable. Please stand up and face away from me.”

  She turns around and feels the woman pressing firmly on either side of her spine. She hisses in air, nearly ratcheting away from the woman into the wall with the pain. She manages to register that the woman is telling her to sit.
She sits, and the woman finds another bunch of air-sucking painful spots, this time on her legs.

  “Put your arms up,” the woman barks as she’s still trying to recover from the pain. She’d managed not to scream, but she wants to lie down badly. Instead, she raises her arms. “I’m going to push down. Resist me.” She doesn’t do a good job of resisting or of pushing either with her arms or her hands.

  In response to more barked commands, she tries to move her head from side to side, ear to shoulder, chest to back, but her neck feels locked in stone. Her shoulders hardly move either. The woman asks her to lie back down and a miracle happens. Under the guiding hands of the woman, her neck rotates with ease, with barely any resistance or pain.

  She looks up at the woman looming over her from behind. “Um …”

  “I’m testing the flexibility of your vertebrae, not your muscles.”

  Oh.

  “We’re all done here. Get dressed and go back to the waiting room. Dr. Jones will see you next.” The physiotherapist is gone with a whoosh of the door, and she is left to untie her gown by herself.

  She takes her time getting dressed and shuffles back to the waiting room. She sits next to Jim, who’s engrossed in his laptop. She’s starting to feel zombie like.

  “Hi, I’m Dr. Jones.”

  A slender but tiny man is standing in front of her. He’s completely bald with green eyes. She stands up and shakes his hand. She’s starting not to like this handshaking thing. She used to pride herself on a firm grip, but now she’s thinking the fishy handshake is more her style.

  She follows him to a darkened room with a computer on a desk and two ergonomic chairs. Finally, she gets to sit in a comfy chair.

  She strains to focus on him as he tells her, “We’re going to look at your brain waves, get a feel for what your nervous system is doing. It won’t hurt a bit.”

  She follows his movements with her eyes as he takes out a tube and squirts some whitish cream on his fingers, asking her to remove her earrings. With some difficulty, she does and then wonders where to put them. She holds them in her hand on her lap. He scrubs her earlobes. The grit burns, but she says nothing. He squeezes more of that stuff on a Q-tip, which he lays down on the desk. He measures her head in two directions with a thin, soft tape, parts her hair back at the precise middle top of her head, picks up the Q-tip, and scrubs. She squints at the abrasiveness but remains quiet. He opens a wide jar and scoops out some goop on a small palette knife. He takes out electrodes from a drawer on her right. He sorts out all the wires and then spreads goop on the inside of the tiny metal clips at the end of one wire. He clips one to her left ear. Repeats with another set of clips. And then he puts goop on a small circular piece of metal at the end of the last wire and presses it down on the top of her head. The pain spreads like lava over her skull. She cringes.

  He plugs the other end of the wires into a box, turns it on, and moves the computer mouse. Up on the screen appears a program to test the connections. They’re all green.

  “Great. We’re ready to go. We’re going to measure the power of your brain and what kind of waves it’s producing.”

  “Okay.”

  She sees window after window appear on the screen in front of her; bar graphs and waves scroll by. She tries to focus as he explains what all these things mean, but she only hears that her brain is showing low power and that their goal will be to shift her brain out of the twilight zone and into the thinking waves area, or maybe he said the dreaming waves. She’s still trying to decide which when he tells her they’re all done, removes the electrodes, and cleans up her earlobes and scalp.

  “I’ll see you once a week. I’m a psychologist, but we won’t be doing talking sessions like you’re probably familiar with from television programs. Instead I work on mind, body, and soul, using a variety of techniques. You can make an appointment at the desk. I’d like to see you at the same time on the same day every week. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she nods up at him.

  He watches her eyes for a moment and smiles encouragingly: “You’re tired. I’ll explain this again at our next meeting.” He gestures her out the door and back to the waiting room.

  “I’m done,” she says to the top of Jim’s head.

  “Great.”

  She stands beside him as he closes the lid of his laptop, swiftly slides it into his briefcase, and stands up before threading his way through people and chairs. She follows his disappearing back slowly to the car.

  Back home, he drops her off, telling her he has a meeting to get to. She climbs slowly into her house. Smokey is nowhere around. She needs to talk. She’s so tired, yet she needs to talk. Nance will talk to her. She dials the familiar number.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. It’s me.”

  “Hi! How’d it go?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She does, to the sound of keys clicking in the background. Nance says encouraging mm-hmms throughout her narrative and then, when she’s finished, says brightly, “That sounds fantastic. It sounds like they have a plan for you, and that Dr. Jones sounds nice.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, he’s like a tiny, perfect psychologist.”

  “It’s good then you got to see him. Look, I have to go. The boss cometh. Talk soon.” She listens to a dial tone for a few seconds. She replaces the receiver and stares into space.

  Minutes and seconds expand like an elastic being stretched. Mornings are like yesterdays, and evenings seem impossibly far into the future. Yet somehow a week has passed, and it’s time to see Dr. Jones.

  Jim had agreed reluctantly to drive her to her weekly appointments with the psychologist. Although she is able to start treatments right away with him, the clinic had called her to say the physio is booked solid for the next two weeks, and then she’ll see that woman every week. The same day she begins physio, she’ll be assessed for acupuncture. She can’t wait. Her thoughts are interrupted by Jim pulling up to the door of the clinic. Reluctantly she opens the car door and, with slow, jerky movements, gets out.

  The waiting room is as packed and noisy as it was her first time there. Dr. Jones comes and gets her as before, but this time they go into a different room. The door faces a large window, in front of which sits a desk facing the door. Cheerful paintings cover the wall. Sitting on his desk is a water thingy. She frowns as she tries to retrieve the right word, but only “thingy” comes to mind. Well, she thinks, at least the softly flowing water makes a soothing sound. A black ergonomic chair faces his desk, and a green zero gravity chair sits near the door with a hutch next to it. She walks to the chair in front of the desk as he takes his own seat.

  She listens as he explains the treatment, about how he focuses on mind, body, soul, about how this is not counselling, but rather a way to restore her balance of energy and focus. Each session will last forty-five minutes. By the time he’s done explaining, there isn’t much time left. Still, he wants to try what he calls “a neurofeedback device” on her. He goes over to the bench and picks up a black box with a set of headphones and mirrorshades plugged into it. He puts the box on the desk and hands her the shades while asking her to sit back and relax. Next he places the headphones on her head.

  “Are you comfortable?”

  “Yes,” she says, but she’s not comfortable. She doesn’t know if she can be anyway, so what’s the point of saying no.

  “Tell me when it’s too bright.”

  Suddenly flashes of light appear in front of her eyes.

  “Close your eyes.”

  Oh. She closes them.

  “Is it too bright?”

  She considers it and decides yes. “Yes.”

  He dials it down incrementally.

  “Okay.”

  Then he turns on the sound. Thrumming fills her ears.

  He asks if it’s too loud.

  “It’s too loud,” she almost yells. He dials it right back down until she’s comfortable.

  “We’ll do this
for five minutes. Let me know at any time if you feel uncomfortable or if it becomes unpleasant. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  As she sits there, her senses brimming over with patterns of lights, of colours, of soothing repetitive thrums, she sinks deeper and deeper into sleep but not sleep. It’s more like awake sleep. Her head nods forward.

  “How do you feel?”

  His voice startles her. She jerks her head up, opens her eyes, and realizes that it’s all stopped and that the shades and headphones are off.

  “I fell asleep?”

  “Yes,” he smiles at her. “That’s good. Do you feel relaxed?”

  “Yes.” Like a dehydrated person thirsting for water, she wants more.

  “I’m glad to see you responded positively. I’ve seen great results with this, even with clients five years after their event, after they were invaded by Akaesman. We’ll do this again next week, only longer.”

  She smiles briefly in relief and thanks him as he shows her out the door.

  Back in the waiting room, she tells Jim she’s done. She tells him how well it’s gone as he snaps the laptop lid closed, slides the computer smoothly into his briefcase, lifts it and himself in one movement, and strides out the room to the car. She stops talking as she can’t keep up. She finds him already sitting in the car when she gets there, Shania Twain belting out That Don’t Impress Me Much through the car speakers. She opens her door, eases herself in stiffly, turns her whole body to reach for her seat belt, and then turns the other way to click it home.

  “I’m ready,” she says to his profile.

  He starts the engine, wheels the car to the left out of their street parking spot, and roars straight down industrial-looking Research Road. He doesn’t say a word. But she doesn’t notice; Dr. Jones’s words are trickling into her consciousness. What did Dr. Jones mean when he said “invaded by Akaesman”?

  The next week she finds out. Near the end of her session with him, he leans toward her, puts his hand on her knee to hold her attention, and says, “I think you’ve been invaded by Akaesman, and you need to see a specialist to confirm that you have been.”

  “A s-s-specialist?”

  “Yes. Dr. Dering is the best. Dr. Kale will refer you. I’ll speak to him about it, and our receptionist will call you with an appointment date. He will know whether you were just buffeted about by Akaesman or fully invaded. If it’s the latter, it’s very important you get treatment, else it will become permanent.”

  She frowns at him. This is all so confusing. Who is “Akaesman”? What does “invaded” mean? What does he mean by “permanent”? She only has a simple sprain, doesn’t she? Well, not simple; it hurts like hell. But at least she knows what that is. This, this is all too dramatic. It’s not happening. Sensing her thoughts, Dr. Jones searches her face with empathy in his green eyes, “Don’t worry. We and Dr. Dering will take good care of you.”

  ~~~*~~~