Life Blood --VII---Page 26

chances do you get to do a documentary about somebody like this? I should have brought a Betacam for some video.
        He studied my test records as a jeweler might examine a
diamond, his serious eyes boring in as he flipped through the pages. The rest of his face, however, betrayed no particular
interest. I finally felt compelled to break the awkward silence.
        "As you can see, I've had every test known to science. And
none of them found anything wrong."

He just nodded, saying nothing, and kept on reading.

After a long, awkward silence, I decided to try and open things up a bit.

"Tell me, do you have any children of your own?"

The question seemed to be one he didn't get asked too often, because he stopped cold.

"All those who come here are my children," he replied, putting aside my records, dismissively finished with them.
        "Well"—I pointed to them—"what do you think?"
        "I haven't examined you yet," he said, looking up and smiling,
 indeed beaming with confidence. "Nothing in those records tells me anything about what may be your problem. I look for different things than do most physicians."

He fiddled with something beneath his desk, and the room

was abruptly filled with the sound of a hypnotic drone. Perhaps its
frequency matched one in my brain, because I instantly felt
relaxed and full of hope. Much better than Muzak. Then he rose
and came over.

Is he going to do my exam right here? I wondered. Where's all the ob/gyn paraphernalia? The humiliating stirrups?
        Standing in front of me, he gently placed his hands on my
heart, then bent over and seemed to be listening to my chest. His touch was warm, then cold, then warm, but the overall effect was to send a sense of well-being through my entire body.
        "You're not breathing normally," he said after a moment of
unnerving silence. "I feel no harmony."

How did he know that? But he was right. I felt the way I had
the first time I tried to sit in Zen meditation in Kyoto. As then, my
body was relaxing but my wayward brain was still coursing.

"I'll try," I said, attempting to go along. What I really was

feeling was the overwhelming sense of his presence, drawing me
to him.

Next he moved around behind me and cradled my head in his
hands, placing his long fingertips on my forehead, sort of the

same way he'd done when I was standing with him on the windy heath, nursing a killer cold. All the while, the drone seemed to be increasing to a piercing, overwhelming volume, as though a
powerful electrical force were growing in the room, sending me into an alpha state of relaxation.

"What are you doing? Is this how you do an exam for—?"

"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.