Chapter 2: Madness?

Previously on, “I dreamed of Jeanie:”

... There, sitting at the foot of my bed, cross-legged, was Barbra Eden. I mean, the actress Barbra Eden. After a moment I remembered that the real Barbra Eden was in her sixties. This Barbra Eden seemed to be in her twenties, and she was wearing the costume she wore on the television sitcom “I Dream of Jeanie.” I did a double-take. Yep, her belly button was covered up. That settled it; I was looking at a hallucination.

The hallucination smiled. “Master, you are awake! Would you like some breakfast?”

Oh, shit. I squeezed my eyes shut. I could feel my heart race. My breath came in gasps. Was I having a heart attack?

Flashbacks from a thirty-year old television show were not what I wanted to wake up to. The collapse of my life, my caving injury, the stress of surgery, the weird dreams, the sense of being multiple persons, I must have gone completely around the bend. There waited for me a long period of medication and quiet rest in places where the doors locked from the outside.

Oh shit.

I heard a “BOING!” noise, like a spring snapping. I opened my eyes a crack, peeping out at the foot of my bed. No Barbra Eden. I relaxed. I heard another “BOING!” noise from the side of my bed. I could smell the faint fragrance of jasmine blossoms. I slowly turned my head ... and saw her concerned face, inches from mine. For a moment I froze, looking at her. Her blue eyes were very, very pretty.

“Master! You are not feeling well? Breakfast will help that! I was going to make your favorite, French toast and plump little sausage links with orange juice and plenty of hot coffee!”

Oh, god. I closed my eyes. My heart raced. I heard another “ BOING!” I opened my eyes. No Jeanie. The hallucination had disappeared. I lay back for a minute, bringing my breathing back to normal and letting my heart slow down. My stomach growled, loudly. Not only was I nuts, but I was also hungry. The relief I felt as I had awakened allowed me to feel something other than a sour stomach. It growled again. I threw my covers back and swung my feet to the floor. I realized that I was naked (I sleep raw). I shrugged. There was nobody here but me. Barbra Eden was a hallucination. I wasn’t going to get worried about a hallucination seeing my body.

Well...

I pulled on a bathrobe. It was cool in the morning air, I told myself.

I schlepped out to the kitchen and saw perfectly browned French toast dusted with powdered sugar, sausage, and coffee on the table of the breakfast nook. A lazy curl of steam rose from the coffee. Pats of butter slowly melted on the toast. I looked around. No dirty griddle. No dirty dishes. Man, my subconscious had been busy, getting all this done and cleaning up before my conscious self became aware. I sat down and reached for the cream for my coffee before I noticed that it wasn’t there. I heard that “boing” sound and suddenly the cream pitcher was in my hand. I looked across the counter and saw the Barbra hallucination. Her eyes sparkling with laughter, as though leaving the cream off the table, then making it appear was the most marvelous joke.

My kind of hallucination, easily entertained.

Was it better to ignore her, or would that make things worse? How could it be worse? I decided to talk.

“So,” I said, “Since you are living in my head, rent free, I suppose we should get to know each other better. I’m Tony.” She said nothing, just sat across from me, gazing at me with those dazzling blue peepers. “And you are?” I prompted her.

“Oh!” She made that exclamation a little cute moan, “I have never had a name! But then, I have never had a body that needed a name!”

That’s how she talked. No contractions and you could hear the exclamation points in her sentences.

“I suppose that previously you could have called me “Observer” or “Watcher,” because that is what I did. Among my peers there was no need for names. But now I need a name that fits this body and social construct!” She stared at me as though she could see inside my head. “You can call me ‘Jeanie!’”

Of course, I could. I closed my eyes in psychic pain. I opened them. She was still there, gazing into the middle distance.

“Since the purpose of this body is to provide a separation of identities between us while you learn to use the abilities that have been given you,” she said, “I chose, from your memory, a form from a series of television stories where one partner grants wishes to the other, while maintaining her separate Identity. I must admit that I was drawn to this identity because of the conflict between the characters. That memory of conflict will help establish the necessary separation between us.”

“Abilities given me?” I said skeptically. I had an appointment with the head shrinker at 2 o’clock this afternoon. No way was I missing it now. “By whom have I been given this boon?”

“By the me that left.” She looked sober, almost wistful.

“By the who that what?” I asked.

“That original me that you released when you shattered that crystal in your accident. I had been trapped for eons in that crystal. Think back to the dreams you had. I was trying to tell you who I was and where I had come from.”

“If you left, why are you still here?” I pressed, “How can you still be here?”

“There was only one of me in the beginning,” Barbra said, “Then, long ago, in what your kind call the Nectarian Era, the First Copy of me became trapped in the crystal. That trapped copy of me was released when you shattered the crystal. That First Copy looked down before it left and saw you.

“You were dying, poor thing!” She seemed almost in tears. “And when I looked down at you, I felt something new, something I had never felt before in all the eons of my existence. I felt gratitude. So the First Copy left a part of me with you before I left.

“I tried to help you heal and to take care of some of the small details of your life. But you only seemed to become confused and troubled. I have discovered that you were unready for my presence in your mind. My presence was beginning to frighten you. So I created an independent identity to relieve your confusion.”

I am SO going to the head shrinker.

Dr. Augustus Roar’s office was pretty conventional, if very upscale. There were no People magazines in the waiting room. Rather they were all the current editions of Vogue, Town and Country, and The Economist. In the corner of the waiting room was a small Zen space with smooth black rocks sitting in a bed of raked, sugar-white sand.

The doctor’s receptionist matched the décor. She was a kind of white-blonde Nordic ice-maiden, her appearance and demeanor forbidding any attempt to share a confidence or an expression of human warmth. She had me fill out a ream of paperwork. I passed over my medical insurance card. She examined it closely and made a Xerox copy before handing it back. My insurance ran out at the end of the month, but I didn’t tell her that. I was just going to have to knuckle down and get well Really Fast.

I was lying cradled in a butter-soft leather recliner in the office of Dr. Augustus Roar. The walls were paneled with mahogany, although that paneling seemed to be a waste. Where the walls weren’t covered with shelves of very impressive books, they were covered with parchment diplomas, certifications, and photos of the doctor with former presidents, film stars, captains of industry, and various other famous people. He wore a tweed coat and vest, looking as if he were about to go grouse hunting as soon as our time was up. With his status as a psychiatrist and his small, neat goatee, it seemed as though he should have sounded German, but Roar spoke with a Boston accent.