Thomas Hoover - Life blood

"The medical tests you had showed there's nothing wrong with your uterus or your Fallopian tubes, nothing that should inhibit conception. There's no need to pursue that any further. But the mind and the body are a single entity that must be harmonized, must work as one. Although each individual has different energy flows, I think my regimen here could be very helpful to you. Already I can tell your problem is a self-inflicted trauma that has negated the natural condition wherein your mind and body work in unison."

"What 'trauma'?" I asked.

He didn't answer the question. Instead he began massaging my temples.

"Breathe deeply. And do it slowly, very slowly."

As I did, I felt a kind of dizziness gradually coming over me, the hypnotic drone seeming to take over my consciousness. Instead of growing slower, my breathing was actually becoming more rapid, as though I'd started to hyperventilate. But I no longer had any control over it. My autonomic nervous system had been handed over to him, as dizziness and a sense of disorientation settled over me. The room around me began to swirl, and I felt my conscious mind, my will, slipping out of my grasp. It was the very thing I'd vowed not to let happen.

The same thing had occurred once before, after I broke my collarbone in the Pacific surf that slammed a Mexican beach south of Puerto Villarta. When a kindly Mexican doctor was later binding on a harness to immobilize my shoulder, the pain was such that I momentarily passed out while sitting on a stool in his office. I didn't fall over or collapse; it just seemed as though my mind, fleeing the incredible pain, drifted away in a haze of sensation.

Now the pastel blue walls of the room slowly faded to white, and then I was somewhere else, a universe away, surrounded by blank nothingness. I tried to focus on the bronze Shiva directly across, but the ring of fire around him had become actual flames. The only reality left was the powerful touch of Alex Goddard's hands and a drone that could have been the music of the spheres.

Sometime thereafter, in a reverie, I felt myself in a magical forest whose lush vines reminded me of Kerala in India. It was a verdant, hazy paradise, another Eden. A child was with me, a child of my own, and I felt jubilation. I watched the child as she grew and became a resplendent orchid.

But with childbearing came pain, and I seemed to be feeling that pain as I took up the flower and held it, joy flowing through me.

Then Alex Goddard drifted into my dream, still all in white, and he was gentle and caring as he again moved his hands over me, leaving numbness in their wake. I thought I heard his voice talking of the miracle that he would make for me. A miracle baby, a beautiful flower of a child. I asked him how such a thing would happen. A miracle, he whispered back. It will be a miracle, just for you. When he said it, the orchid turned into the silver face of a cat, a vaguely familiar image, smiling benignly, then transmuted back into a blossom.

Then he drifted out of my dream much as he had come, a wisp of white, leaving me holding the gorgeous flower against my breasts, which had begun to swell and spill out milk the color of gold…

A wet coolness washed across my face, and-as I faintly heard the sounds of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Glenn Gould's piano notes crisp and clear-I opened my eyes to see Ramala massaging my brow with a damp cloth. She smiled kindly and lovingly as she saw my eyes open, then widen with astonishment.

"What-?"

"Hey, how're you doing? Don't be alarmed. He's taking great care of you."

"What… where am I?" I lifted my head off the pillow and tried to look around. I half expected Steve to be there, but of course he wasn't.

"You're here. At Quetzal Manor." She reached and did something and the music slowly faded away. "Don't worry. You'll be fine. I think the doctor was trying to release your Chi, and when he did it was too strong for you."

"What day is it?" I felt completely disoriented my bearings gone.

"Sunday. It's Sunday morning." She reached and touched my brow as though giving me a blessing. Like, it's okay, really.

At that moment, Alex Goddard strolled in, dressed again in white.

Just as in the dream, I thought.

"So, how's the patient?" He walked over-eyes benign and caring-and lifted my wrist, absently taking my pulse while he inserted a digital thermometer in my ear. For a flashback moment he merged into, then emerged from, my dream. "You're looking fine. I have to say, though, you had quite a time yesterday."

"All I remember is passing out in your office," I mumbled glancing around at the gray plastic thermometer. And that strange dream, you telling me I would have a miracle baby.

"You had an unusual reaction," he went on. "You remember I spoke to you about mind-body harmony. You see what can happen when I redirect the flows of energy, Chi, from your body to your mind." He smiled and settled my wrist back onto the bed. "Don't worry. I have a lot of hope for you. You're going to do fine."

He looked satisfied as he consulted the thermometer, then jotted down my temperature on a chart. He's already started a medical record, I thought. Why?

"I'm… I'm wondering if this really is working out," I said. It was dawning on me that I was getting into Alex Goddard's world a lot deeper and a lot faster than I'd expected. I'd come planning to be an observer and now I was the one being observed. That was exactly not how I'd intended it. Maybe, I thought, if I back off and make a new run, I can keep us on equal footing. "Perhaps I ought to just go back to the city for a few days and-"

"I'd assumed you came to begin the program." He looked at me, a quick sadness flooding his eyes. "You struck me as a person who would follow through."

"I need to think this over" I really feel terrible, I thought, trying to rise up. What did he do to me? "Maybe I'm just not right for your 'program'?" The idea of a documentary had momentarily retreated far into the depths of my mind.

"On the contrary." He smiled. "We've shown that you're very responsive."

"Maybe that's it. Maybe I'm too responsive." I rose and slipped my feet off the bed. The motion brought a piercing pain in my abdomen. "OUCH! What's…" I felt my pelvis, only to find it was very sensitive.

Pulling aside my bed shift, I gazed in disbelief at my lower abdomen. There were red spots just above my pale blue panties.

Alex Goddard modestly averted his eyes. "I didn't want to say anything," he explained to the wall above my head, "but you were in pretty delicate shape there for a while. Mild convulsions, and I think your digestive system had gone into shock. The stomach is a center of energy, because it's constantly active. So I gave you some shots of muscle relaxant. Nothing serious. It's an unusual treatment, but I've found it works. It… modulates the energy flows. I also took a blood sample for some tests, but the results were all normal."

He then asked me about my menstrual cycle, exact days, saying he wanted to make sure it wasn't just routine cramps. "The seizure you had passed almost as soon as it came, but you might actually have been hallucinating a bit. You had a slight fever all night."

"Well…" Something like that had happened to me years ago in rural Japan, when I stupidly ate some unwashed greens and my stomach went into shock. At one point a local doctor, Chinese, was trying acupuncture, which also left me sore.

"Nothing to be worried about," he continued. "But if you're the least bit concerned, maybe we ought to do a quick sonogram, take a sound picture. Ease your mind that everything's okay."

"That doesn't really seem necessary," I said. For a clinic specializing in "energy flows" and "mind-body" programs, there was a lot of modern equipment. Odd.