Chapter 7

The lid was lifted off and the ceiling light blinded me for a moment. I also felt a rush of cooler air and realized that, inside the box, there was adequate air for breathing but not enough air circulating to allow for temperature control. My clothes are soaked with sweat.

"You OK?" Sandy asked me.

"I guess. I need a shower in the worst way. You should have told me to bring a change of clothes."

"Want some lunch?"

"I need to clean up, before I go out anywhere. I guess I should just go on home."

"Not too impressed with the treatment, huh?"

"Well. Since you ask, not really, no."

"That's OK."

"I don't mean to hurt your feelings."

"You aren't hurting my feelings. Go ahead, tell me what you think."

"Well, I think it was -- primitive. And, sure, the noise scared me a couple of times. But, jeez, Sandy, there's a big difference between being startled, momentarily, by a sudden noise, and being threatened by a 95 mile-per-hour fastball coming at your head."

"You mean, because one instance of being frightened was clearly only a lab experiment."

"Well. I mean, I wasn't in any real danger from your noisemaker -- what the hell was making that noise, anyway?"

"It was a flat piece of metal -- flexible, like a whip. It makes a helluva bang on that solid surface!"

"Yeah. It did. Good thing I peed first, like you said. I mighta wet my pants!"

"Oh, I knew it wouldn't scare the pee out of you. I suggested you go to the bathroom first because of how long you'd be in there."

"How long was it?"

"Take a guess."

"Hour? Maybe an hour and a quarter?"

"You went in at 10:20 this morning," she said.

I looked at my watch. It was 2:07 p.m. "Fuck! I was in that box way more than three hours!"

"Yeah."

"Weird. But I gotta tell you, Sandy m'girl, it ain't gonna be that easy to 'cure' me. I mean, it was interesting and all, but, like I said, I'm not exactly a true believer."

"There will be an element of transference," she said. "Can't be certain how much."

"You mean, the experience of getting blitzed in the coffin, there with sudden noises is going to help me face fastballs fearlessly?"

"Hey, good alliteration, there, baseball-boy! 'Face fastballs fearlessly!' -- Fabulous!"

"I can't see it. It's like I said, the two kinds of fear are too disparate. And your little therapy session, there, didn't involve any real risk, so it's not an authentic test of anything."

"You're pretty bright -- for a baseball player," Sandy said. "But it's really not essential that you were in any kind of risk situation here. It's enough that you experienced some stress -- some tension -- from the noise."

"And experiencing that is going to help me?"

"Well -- what is likely to help you isn't just hearing some scary noises. It's the being in there and getting accustomed to hearing those sudden noises. I mean, it got easier, didn't it? After awhile?"

"Yeah. It got easier pretty quickly -- except once I think I dozed off, and when you woke me up with that crash, well, that one was a biggie, even though it came later."