Something, that screamed out to anyone watching me–there is something wrong with this guy! I pressed the fourth floor button; standing next to two occupants. We rode the elevator in silence. The other passengers didn’t even take notice, when I stepped onto the fourth floor lobby area. So much for my theatric-anxiety mode being real.
My experiences with doctors’ offices had always been finding the waiting areas full of people, old magazines, and those with time on their hands, sharing their illnesses with one another. Visits with Katrina’s pediatrician were like that; just mothers with infants mainly though. Opening the hallway door and stepping inside Dr. Zimmerman’s office was different. I found matronly Mrs. Caldicot seated at a pristine desk, with an innocuous black and grey telephone, and augmented by a MacBook Pro. No seating area. No waiting patients to be found. She seemed to be transcribing notes; she looked up as my entry created a disturbance in her force.
Smiling, she greeted me, “Good afternoon, Mr. Schumacher!” Her agreeable voice flowed out just above the soft background music coming from some invisible wall speakers. Her voice was warm, cordial, and sincerely meant to put me at ease. I didn’t have to give her my name; she knew it had to be me. After all, I was expected! Her hands were motioning to a closed, unmarked door across the room. “Please, come, Dr. Zimmerman is awaiting you!”
Dr. Zimmerman had put the world on hold for everyone else. It was just the two of us connecting. Nothing, and no one else in the world mattered at this juncture in my life.
Just that quickly, I was face-to-face with my anxieties, my guilt, and the tenuous thread holding my daughter and I in our precarious lifestyle. Dr. Alex Zimmerman met me halfway across the spacious office. It wasn’t that confining exam-room scenario. No certificates, no diplomas, no ‘how-to’ posters; nothing of that sort. Plants, strategically placed, rounded out the square corners. Lighting was certainly not those nondescript, commercial fixture-types. The atmosphere was carefully crafted to feel homey–serene, placid, and worry free. It was a pleasant room, with a spacious view out over the horizon of the tree-lined park. It had a sense of feng shui design about it. The orientation of all things within it, felt in order and balanced with the natural world.
“Looking for something in particular?” He chuckled, noticing my head on a swivel movement. My gaze turned to the fatherly voice. I expected to see a stereotype shrink in a white coat with two strong-armed assistances at his side. Instead, I beheld a fiftyish, grandfatherly type dressed in a plain sweater and wearing loafers. He could have been in the elevator for all I knew, and I wouldn’t have recognized him, by his countenance.
“The, um, the crazy person’s couch,” jumped out of my mouth before I could stop it. It wasn’t any of the practiced lines I had rehearsed for this meeting. Yet, it made its appearance. The drive over was a rehearsal of every kind of conversation I could create that would make me appear normal in his eyes. This impromptu remark clearly wasn’t helping me achieve that image. An image of normalcy.
He smiled in response. “That notion of reclining to reflect on one’s problems is a bit overplayed in the movies. That came about because Freud had a ‘crazy person’s couch’ as you called it, in his reflection room. Freud wasn’t fond of being eye-to-eye with his cases. Felt a bit tense when he tried to make notes and such. So, he put them on a couch facing away from him; made Freud more comfortable in his note taking. The issue of ‘a couch’ or ‘not to couch’ has been a subject of much debate among doctors. For me? Not so much. My patients don’t seem to miss it,” he remarked, pointing to two comfortable-looking chairs by the window. He sat in one and I took the other, as he motioned for me to have a seat.
I could tell he must have done this a hundred times, perhaps hundreds of times. He was in no hurry, letting me wiggle into that deep, space-foam chair until it conformed to my body. I got the feeling that if I’d sat there long enough, it would have enveloped me completely, forming a womb around me. When my eyes met his, that was his clue, I gathered.
“Mr. Schumacher,” he began, “I am a doctor, bound by medical, ethical, and legal laws. As such, there are rights you have as a patient, and obligations I have as a doctor…”
That’s how I began to unburden myself and share the weight of my transgressions with Dr. Zimmerman. In the hopes of salving my hurt at the loss of my wife and the impact her passing had on my daughter. Katelyn had formed a pact with Katrina, our daughter. Therein lay the conundrum.
“Tell me, about that,” Dr. Zimmerman inquired, “No need to try and sugarcoat your thoughts, Ray; just speak out and let the thoughts flow. I’m non-judgmental. Everything you say, stays here. Start wherever you feel the most comfortable, and let’s see where that goes.”
“That would be with sleep, Doc. Peaceful sleep has become difficult to find, just as elusive as a solitary predator’s movements while gliding through the dark shadows cast by a full moon. But, somewhere in the early hours of the morning, my eyes become leaden and my tormented mind falls into a quasi-state of rest.”
“How many hours are you sleeping?”
“Four…sometimes, I guess, maybe. I haven’t really kept track of that. I know I see the alarm, sometimes at two or four in the morning. It is in that REM state of sleep, that Katelyn turns to me. I feel her hand flowing over me, circling my nipples, and gliding downward seeking to coax life into my cock. My eyes flutter open as the blood begins to flow into my stiffening member. Her face lights up as her eyes meet mine.”