Althea's Homeopathy Appointment

The night after her visit to the old healer, Dr. Blackstone, Althea remembered two of her dreams. In one she had been with another mystery lover with whom she had the perfect chemistry. They had never slept with one another. He was wearing a gray suit, nicely tailored. They were standing close to each other, near a counter, with other people in the background. When he stood next to her it was as if they were enclosed in a small closet, just the two of them. She could barely breathe or move. No words were spoken. Everything was known between them.

In the other dream, she peeked through a torn barbed wire fence and saw green, leaves, the beginning of a path. As she stared at the beginning, the path became the space between two rows of orchard trees, and she was taken back to her childhood, one of its rare idyllic moments. Although she couldn't see fruit on the trees, she knew it was an apple orchard.

"Is this a phone number where you can be reached at night?" Dr. Blackstone had asked as the appointment ended and they both stood, he glancing over his notes, she pulling on her coat. It was possible, he said, that she might receive a phone call from him some evening, if something else occurred to him.

Then he had taken two steps over to her and held the small piece of creased paper, like a cigarette rolling paper only thicker, near her mouth. "Open up," he said, and she had opened her mouth like an obedient child, and he had aimed the contents of of the paper, a pile of tiny pills that were really only a bit larger than granules, into the space under her tongue.

"I think these will help you to feel a lot better, soon," he said in his quiet voice. She looked at his thinning gray hair, his face that appeared to be in its sixties although she suspected it was much older. He wore a rumpled, long-sleeved black and white plaid shirt, shabby gray corduroy pants, and what seemed to be either very thick gray socks or a pair of gray bedroom slippers that may have had leather soles. No shoes.

Posted at 07:34 AM in Alternative Treatments - Information, Jane's Journey | Permalink