Mind Over Mind (18 page)

“I’m fine,” he said as he started to stand up, then winced as the motion brought a fresh stab of pain. He turned it into a sardonic smile. “I could use a couple of Tylenol.”

“Come on.” Sachiko led him out and toward the nurses’ station. She took out her keys, unlocked the medicine cabinet and pulled out a bottle of analgesics.

“Let me have three.”

She frowned, but did as he asked. “This may sound callous,” she said, “but Ydrel isn’t going anywhere. No one would think less of you if wanted to wait until tomorrow, or even just a couple of hours.”

Joshua resisted the urge to shake his head. It was pounding enough already. “No. I’m not giving Malachai any chance at going back on this. I’ll be fine, promise. Besides, I don’t think I could go to sleep tonight with the thought of Ydrel rocking like that.”
Or the haunted looks on Edith’s face, and yours
, he added silently.

She had that look again now. “Can you really do this?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then.”

He walked to Edith’s office to grab some of the articles he had on using NLP on catatonic or autistic people, including the case study he and his father had written for a psychiatric quarterly magazine. It also gave the painkillers time to work. When he got to the observation room, they had set Ydrel up on the floor on a couch cushion with his back to the door and his profile to the one-way mirror that lined one wall. He continued to rock, completely unaware. Another cushion lay on the floor opposite him. The observation room was actually four rooms: the room where the action took place, a small bathroom that led off of it, the room behind the one-way mirror where observers sat, and a smaller room that held the recording equipment. Edith and Dr. Hoffman were waiting for him at the entrance; Dr. Malachai, apparently, had more pressing matters.

“Here’s some reading,” Joshua said to Dr. Hoffman. He handed him a folder as he slipped off his shoes.

“Part of the therapy?” Hoffman asked wryly.

“I may be at this a couple of hours. I’d just as soon be comfortable. Edith, is there any way I can record something before I go in?”

She led him in and showed him how to operate the equipment. He sat in the chair, turned on the microphone and spoke the date, his name, and Ydrel’s. Then he gave a brief description of Ydrel’s condition and what he planned to do.

“This afternoon, Ydrel was complaining about feeling overwhelmed by the thoughts and emotions of others. He claimed that the proximity of a client with bi-polar one disorder—a client who he believed was not taking or responding to his medication—had broken down his defenses. He did not feel he had either the energy or the focus to rebuild those defenses in light of the onslaught he perceived. With this as his frame of reference, it’s probable he’s retreated into himself to someplace where the thoughts of others cannot touch him. Because of this, he will either be very easy or very difficult to draw out. A lot will depend on whether he feels this time inward has helped him renew his strength, and whether or not he trusts me to protect him while he rebuilds his mental shields.”

He switched off the microphone and turned to Edith. “It’s really important that no one disturb me while I’m doing this. It wouldn’t ruin anything, but it’d make the process longer. I don’t want anybody to come in after us, either. This afternoon, he expressed a lot of paranoia and feelings of defenselessness. He may have to work through some of that before he’s ready to face anyone. We’ll come out when he’s ready. And Edith, thanks.”

“Just help him if you can.” She sounded more like a mother than a counselor. He gave her an encouraging smile and went in.

He sat down on the cushion facing Ydrel and spent a few minutes studying him. He was rocking at a steady 48 beats a minute; his breathing regular, as if he’d left his body in some kind of holding pattern. Joshua reached out and placed a hand against Ydrel’s shoulder. “I don’t suppose you’d make this easy on the both of us and just tell me what’s going on?”

The boy stared through him, unseeing. He continued to push against Joshua’s hand at a steady 48 beats per minute.

The rocking made things both easy and hard for Joshua. He didn’t have to match Ydrel’s motions to reach him; matching breathing and other less obvious signals would probably be enough. On the other hand, it might be the one key to reach him. Either way, it provided easier access, if Joshua could keep it up long enough.

In the end, the cameras decided for him. They probably wouldn’t pick up the subtleties of breathing well enough to show what he was doing. He took a deep cleansing breath, arranged himself comfortably, and entered uptime. First, he began rocking, easy and small, in counterpoint to Ydrel. It took a few minutes to match him, and too soon, he felt his abdominal muscles start to protest. To pull his attention from them, he began to work on breathing. It was no easy task to perfectly match another person’s breathing pattern, but Joshua had been learning and practicing this since he attended his first seminar with his father at the age of eight. He was soon in synch with Ydrel’s pace; a few minutes later, he matched its depth.

This much established, he simply kept pace until he thought they had rapport; occasionally, he’d introduce a subtle change in the pattern, to see if the client would follow. Twice, Ydrel started to break rhythm to follow, only to fall back into his own pattern.

Fine. Be difficult. I’m not giving up on you yet
. Joshua now concentrated on the patterns of Ydrel’s eye movements. Eyes were always harder for him—he seemed to need to blink more often. He usually avoided this step by sitting at an angle to the client, so that he wasn’t in their direct line of sight. For some reason, however, he felt the need to be facing Ydrel. It took several minutes to get it right. He became very aware of the ache in his left eye and had to concentrate beyond it.

Rock, rock, breathe, rock, rock, breathe, rock, blink. Try a variation; return to the pattern when it failed to hold. Rock, rock, breathe, rock, rock, breathe, rock, blink. The ache in his side reached a crescendo and faded from awareness. His focus narrowed to just Ydrel. Rock, rock, breathe, rock, rock, breathe, rock, blink.

He had lost track of time when the world began to go gray around him, and he felt himself enveloped in a kind of cottony fog. This was something that had never happened to him before, but he merely filed his surprise away and continued to concentrate on Ydrel and his patterns. Rock, rock, breathe, rock, blink…

For a moment, even Ydrel faded from his awareness, but he couldn’t seem to feel concerned. He felt secure in the clouds around him, like a child wrapped up in a big downy comforter. He followed the feeling, and the rhythm. Rock, rock, breathe, rock, blink—

Then, he saw Ydrel, in the distance, enveloped by the same gray clouds.

Gradually, he changed the rhythm, rock, breathe, blink, rock, breathe, blink.

Ydrel followed. Each motion of the new routine brought them a little closer until once again, Joshua could reach out and touch him. He knew he was ready.

“So why are we doing this?” he asked causally.

“It’s comfortable.”

“Maybe for you.”

Ydrel blinked, out of turn. “It’s safe.”

“Ydrel,” Joshua reached out, gripped his shoulder. “Talk to me.”

Ydrel stopped rocking.

Suddenly, the gray clouds were gone and Joshua was once again aware of the surrounding: the hard cold walls, the flattened cushion beneath him, the incredible ache in his sides. Ydrel blinked, disoriented, then focused on Joshua. Tears filled his eyes and he threw himself sobbing into the intern’s arms.

“Joshua, I tried! I swear, I tried! But they made me go in—couldn’t find the line—and he was so mad. Angry at you, you were interfering. And I got mad, but it wasn’t me, it was him and he wanted to kill someone and I couldn’t let him feel like that. I’d feel it and I
could
do it—with a
thought
. Just a thought! I couldn’t let it happen over again. If he’d just have taken one pill, just given me a chance to breathe. He made me want to kill. I ran. I di-didn’t know what else to do!” He continued to babble incoherently while Joshua held him, murmuring reassurances. When at last, his cries turned to hiccups, Joshua pushed him away enough to see his face.

“Ydrel, look at me,” he spoke gently as if to a child. “We’re going to fix this right now, the two of us, OK? Look around. This room is ours for as long as we need it. No one is going to interrupt us, and you don’t have to be near another human being except me until you’ve got your defenses in place and you feel strong enough to face others.”

Ydrel sniffed and glanced around. “This is an observation room.”

“Screw it,” Joshua replied rudely. “You’ve been living in a fishbowl for five years. This way’s just more honest. Now, if you want to wow your audience, you prove to them that you can solve this problem on your own with just some advice from a friend. OK?”

“But Malachai—”

“—is not in this room. One thing at a time. All right?” Ydrel nodded. “All right. Will you be OK for a few minutes before we start? ‘Cause I don’t know about you, but my muscles are getting cramped. I need to stretch.” As he spoke, he uncrossed his legs—it was more difficult than he’d expected—and moved his protesting body into a series of basic stretches, moving slowly in deference to the ache in his muscles and the dizziness in his head.

Ydrel replied, “I’ve still got my ground. That’s all that’s kept me from losing myself.” He stood easily, bent forward, and touched his forehead to his knees. Then he bent the other way in a lazy back-walkover.

“Show-off. So what’d you do with the energy from your ground?” Joshua crossed his legs, one foot flat on the floor against the opposite knee, braced his arm on the bent leg and twisted. The stretch along his lats felt both painful and oh, so good.

“What do you mean, energy I got? I thought I was supposed to use the ground to shunt energy.”

“Works both ways, remember? The earth is full of energy—heat energy, magnetic energy, living energy—so you should just be able to tap into it, right? Why don’t you try it now?” Joshua changed legs and twisted in the other direction. He hissed as the stitch in his side twinged, then resolved.

Ydrel, meanwhile, settled into an armchair and closed his eyes in concentration. A moment later, he frowned and opened one eye to regard his friend. “Why didn’t you tell me I could take in energy through my ground?”

“Well, really, let’s see,” he answered with annoyance. “I had about forty-five minutes. I had to find you. Talk you out of a tree. Watch you do a great Darth Maul imitation—”

“Darth
who
?”

“You are so missing out. Are you tapped in yet, or do you want to waste more time discussing movies?”

Ydrel growled but closed his eyes again.

Minutes passed in silence. Joshua finished his stretches and, feeling sore but better, replaced the cushions on the couch and lay on it. He was sure he looked totally unprofessional, but he didn’t want to sit again anytime soon.
Besides,
he thought tartly,
I’m just the intern. I don’t practice psychology unchaperoned.

Nonetheless, if he didn’t want Ydrel to be thinking about who might be looking on, he’d better not either. So he relaxed into the comfortable couch and ran through the notes and settings of the song Rique had sent him Saturday, working out the fingerings on an imaginary keyboard.

Ydrel made a sound of disgust and opened his eyes. “This isn’t working. I don’t know what I’m supposed to search for. I could be right on top of it and not even know,” he complained.

Joshua lowered his hands, but otherwise didn’t move. “Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. The books always talk about energy having a flavor or color or something…?” Ydrel shook his head. “All right, let’s try a human analogy. You’ve said you can read some people more easily than others, right? And there are some you can’t read at all? Good. Here’s what I want you to do: pick one person on each end of the spectrum. Then think about the differences between them. Psychically, I mean.”

“That’s easy. One bombards me with images and feelings and thoughts. The other, nothing. It’s like being around a wall.”

“That’s a start. Think again about the first person, the sender. Can you focus through all the sights and sounds and emotion to the—I don’t know—the aura or energy underneath?” Ydrel’s brow furrowed in concentration, and Joshua turned onto his side so he could watch his eyes. The pupils contracted, as he expected. They moved one way, then the other, as he psychically accessed (and, Joshua suspected, discarded) first sight, then sound, memory, then thought. Finally, Ydrel smiled, bemused.

“Wow. There is something there, something…more. That’s kind of cool.”

“Good. Good job. Now see if you can find a similar kind of more right in the earth.”

After a few moments, Ydrel laughed. “It’s all over. It’s different—I can’t explain how—but it’s there. So how do I take it in?” Joshua thought for a moment. “Is your memory just photographic?”

“Why?”

“You told me once that your mom healed your hand with just a touch. Assuming she didn’t use a psychic band-aid, she must have transferred the energy. See if you can remember.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then we think of something else.” Joshua let his head get heavy on the couch cushion, glad he was facing away from the mirror. He didn’t think he would move for a week. He wasn’t sure he could at the moment. He might throw up. Maybe he should have listened to Sachiko and waited.

I’m fine. Besides, I did it. Now all I need to do is sit and talk and wait. And the couch is plenty comfortable
.

“All right.” Ydrel’s voice woke him from a doze he hadn’t realized he’d fallen into. “I figured that out. Now what?”

Joshua’s thoughts felt like sludge. He sat up lest he fall asleep again, but refrained from shaking his head. “Defenses?”

“Yeah. E=mc
²
. Build my walls again.”

He again settled into concentration, and Joshua settled to wait. Joshua did some more stretches, ran over the songs, and was just starting to wonder what he should do about dinner when Ydrel let out a great, relieved sigh. “That feels so much better, better than I’ve felt in a long time.”