He sat down across from her on the coffee table, scooting her papers and notebook aside. “What’s wrong, Lissa?”
“Why? Why should something be wrong?”
“Something shouldn’t. But it is. You look so worn out. You toss and turn in your sleep… Maybe you should see a doctor.”
She did not have a poker face. “I’m doing more than tossing and turning, I’m afraid. I’m sleepwalking.”
“What? I haven’t seen any evidence of it.”
“How could you? You sleep like a hibernating bear.”
“OK, but what makes you think you’re sleepwalking?”
“I’ve evidently wandered into the yard… on a number of nights and seen things going on in the neighborhood.”
“Such as?”
“I saw the Rathman’s house get tee-peed. I thought I was dreaming, but when I woke up the next morning, lo and behold, the Rathman’s house was… well, you saw it.”
“They didn’t see you—the boys who tee-peed the house?”
Lissa nearly giggled. She must’ve been standing right out in the street… wearing only an extra-large T-shirt with the 49’ers quarterback on it. “I don’t know.”
Ken looked down at his hands, folded between his knees. “Well, I have to admit, log that I am, even I’ve noticed you’ve been had some pretty restless nights. You look exhausted. You are exhausted,” he added and she realized he was afraid she might be physically ill.
She hastened to agree with him. “I’m pretty drained. I suppose I ought to see a doctor.”
By morning she was convinced of it. Another night of vivid aerial dreams left her wide awake by four A.M., waiting for sunrise. But a complete physical revealed that, except for suffering sleep deprivation, she was perfectly healthy.
“What causes sleepwalking, doctor?” she asked. “I’ve never done it before. Or, at least, I don’t remember doing it. Although, I’ve always had unusually vivid dreams.”
“Actually, not remembering is a normal function of sleepwalking.” Dr. Velasquez leaned back in his chair, looking cool, unruffled, and relaxed. “Retaining any memory of the events is highly unusual. As to what causes it—we don’t precisely know. We do know it’s a timing problem.”
“Excuse me?”
“At times during non-REM sleep a dissociation can occur between cognition and behavior. What that means in neurological terms is that the upper brain is not responding to the signals from the lower brain. The lower brain signals for REM sleep; the upper brain doesn’t respond. In the resulting confusion, the waking and sleeping worlds’ become intertwined and the body begins to act out dreams.”
Lissa shook her head. “But I’m not acting out dreams. I’m walking around seeing things that are actually happening.”
Dr. Velasquez considered that. “Alright. Could you be awake but groggy?”
“No. No, I’m not awake.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m dreaming. I don’t… walk out through the door, doctor. I fly out through the roof.”
“Which could certainly describe what it feels like as you pass from dreaming into partial awakening.”
Lissa felt suddenly foolish. “That sounds reasonable.”
Dr. Velasquez, consulting his computer screen, didn’t seem to hear her. “You mentioned insomnia. Have you been depressed lately?”
Lissa laughed. “Only about my resistance to sleep—or at least to dreaming.”
“Well, Lissa, there’s nothing physically wrong with you, that I can see. Your MRI shows no abnormalities. We could try monitoring your sleep.”
“You mean with electrodes and all that? Why bother? I think you’re right. I’m sleepwalking and as I begin to wake up, I have… interesting dreams.”
“Lissa, that’s a symptom, not a cause.”
“Alright. What might cause something like this?”
“Often sleep disorders are caused by stress, which is something for which I often prescribe meditation.”
Lissa, snatched from the verge of relief, ogled. “Meditation? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Not at all. Concentration on something other than your anxieties—whether it be a pretty scene or a pleasant memory or an actual spiritual mantra—”
“Please, doctor—this New Age stuff—”
“There’s nothing New Age about it. Meditation is as old as man’s desire for control and serenity in his life.”
“I do not believe in meditation.”
The doctor gave her a look he probably reserved for recalcitrant children who refused to take their medicine. “Fine. Then I’ll prescribe some relaxation exercises. Can you handle that?”
Can I handle that? Lissa stared at the prescription. It outlined a series of exercises (Toe-clenches, for godsake!), and recommended that she see a therapist if her insomnia and anxiety continued.
She held out against doing the exercises for two hours of what promised to be a sleepless night.
“What are you doing?” Ken asked drowsily.
“I’m meditating,” she growled and rebelliously clenched and unclenched her toes.
She held out against the idea of seeing a therapist until the following Tuesday. The therapist, a moon-faced, smiling woman who put her instantly at ease, probed her stress levels and asked about recent traumas.
Lissa couldn’t cite anything but the argument with Ken over the article. It hardly ranked as a trauma, but it still rankled.
“You’ve never argued with your husband over a piece of work before?”
Lissa shrugged. “Certainly. But he’s never condemned anything I’ve done out-of-hand before.”
“Is that what you feel he’s done—condemned you out-of-hand?”
“Me? No, he wasn’t condemning me, just the article.”
“You said he called you a fanatic.”
“He claims he didn’t. He says he yawned or hiccuped something and I heard what I expected to hear.”
“What do you think of that?”
“I think he called me a fanatic and then felt guilty about it.”
“Do you think he was right?”
“You mean, am I a fanatic? No. Of course not. No more than he is. I’m just committed to the scientific paradigm.”
The doctor made a few notes, then asked, “What about past traumas? Childhood traumas, for example?”
“Like what?”
“The death of a loved one. A terrifying personal experience.”
Lissa shrugged, trying to relax suddenly tense shoulders. “No more than anyone else. I… fell out of a tree once and broke my arm. My father died when I was twelve.”
The doctor was reading her face. “You attach no particular significance to these events?”
She did, as it happened, but shook her head. She had fallen out of the tree into the swirling waters of a rain-swollen river. She had been in the tree because the plane she was riding in crashed into the South Platte. Her father had died in that crash.
She wondered why she was withholding from Dr. Van Owen even the fact that the two events were related; but wondered only fleetingly. She was being contrary because it was her nature to be contrary. She didn’t like people digging around inside her—resented the idea that a stranger might know things about her she did not know about herself. She was not convinced, she realized, that the beads and rattles used by modern psychiatrists worked any better than the ones used by their more primitive forebears.
Dr. Van Owen veered from the discussion of PTD onto a completely unexpected tack. “Your description of floating or soaring through the ceiling of your room, the vividness of the detail you remember, none of this is consistent with sleepwalking. It is consistent with lucid dreaming or a classic out-of-body experience.”