The Accident

2

2

Two Weeks Earlier

Cole Hempstead strolled into my office with a big grin on his face, gave me a fist bump and sat on my couch. In any other place, we would have hugged as we were close. Here he was a patient, the son of a friend of mine, who I saw sporadically whenever he felt the need. In the confines of my office, a hug would have been too personal. I needed to maintain a therapeutic structure to accomplish our goals. Cole was twenty-three, a handsome devil with a shock of unruly brown hair, a dimple in a strong chin, and mysteriously deep sunken brown eyes that drew people in. He was a recent college graduate, who I hadn’t seen for over a year because he was away at school.

“Do you miss school?”

“I miss the partying, some of the guys, the women. I’m glad it’s over. Now I can do what I want.”

“Which is?”

“Hell if I know.” He playfully grinned and waved a finger at me. “I’ll know when I find it. I’ve got to be honest with you, Grant. I slid through. Never really applied myself, but I got the sheepskin from a good school. That’s got to be worth something.” His smile faded. “Not enough for my old man though. He said he’d get off my ass once I graduated, but he hasn’t. He’s pushing for me to go to graduate school. He even suggested Pharmacy the other day. That was out of the blue. He thinks if he keeps throwing suggestions at me, maybe something will stick.” His breathing became rapid and labored as he took a few beats. “I’d like to trade him in. He’s on my ass again, the f*****g control freak. I just graduated in January. It’s only March–two f*****g months. He can’t stand it that I’m not employed and that I haven’t applied to graduate school.”

“I’m sure he only wants what’s best for you.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“I’m not on any side. I was only…” I hesitated, reconsidered. “You’re right. My comment was inappropriate. I was letting my friendship with your father interfere.” I guess if I have the right to keep my patients focused, my patients have the right to call me when I get out of line. Even if I’m the authority figure here, I don’t need to be authoritarian. This approach, regarding us all as flawed beings, has worked well for me.

“I don’t want to go to graduate school. I don’t know what the hell I want to do. Maybe, I should go to Europe. Shouldn’t I be sowing my wild oats – isn’t that what they used to call it? I need to find out who Cole Hempstead is. I need to get in touch with who I am.” He was totally frustrated and needed to break the parental constraints.

“I can’t find fault with that.”

Deep in thought, Cole played with his lower lip. Finally, he said, “I want to tell you about my dream.”

“Okay,” I said. I watched Cole straighten up on my couch, slide his fingers up and down the arm, and take several deep breaths.

“It’s kind of strange,” he said, his eyes darting to mine.

“Most dreams are.”

“Anyway…I keep having this dream.” His eyelids rapidly fluttered as he lifted them toward the ceiling, searching his memory. “I’m in this house or apartment. Apartment I think because I can see this old paneled door that leads into a corridor. Anyways, there’s a large room with two cribs and a baby in each crib. I don’t know if they’re male or female, or if it even makes any difference. I don’t know if these are my children or not, but it is my responsibility to watch over them. A woman–pretty I think, but I can’t describe her. She’s a blur…” He shook his head, trying to remember. He hesitated.

“Continue with the dream.”

“She asks me to watch over them because she has to go out. She singles out one of the babies and warns me about him, saying he has an uncanny way of getting out of the house. I smile, humor her. I mean…in my mind there is no way he is getting out of the house. He’s too little to even crawl out of his crib. But, she’s insistent. Very serious. Can’t emphasize the danger enough. I don’t know if she’s my mother, my wife, my significant other, or simply my boss. Anyways, she leaves.”

I’ve known Cole Hempstead for years, and I consider him to be a pretty normal young man with typical adjustment problems. He visits me to touch base when he feels a need to be recharged. I suspect he regards me more like a Dutch uncle than a therapist. He’s a recent Stanford grad who I’ve seen a few times when he’s come home from school.

Cole continued, “I sit in the room and watch the babies. They’re both good. They do regular baby things… coo, lay on their backs, swing their arms, kick their legs, get lost in the movement of the mobiles that hang over the crib.” He smiled. “I smile to myself, amused at this woman’s concern. Her vivid imagination. I mean…no way is this baby getting out of the crib. I’m worried about this woman’s mental health.”

“When the babies fall asleep I need to leave the apartment for a few minutes. I can’t remember why.” He looked at me, apologetically. “In real life, I wouldn’t leave a baby alone in a house.”

I smiled and reassuringly nodded.

“In the dream I convince myself it will be okay. They are asleep. I lock the door and leave. Next, I remember I’m in the hallway. I don’t know where I’ve been and what I did. Only that I was gone for minutes, a brief period of time. Returning, the door is locked because I open it with a key. When I return to the bedroom the one baby is gone. I panic. How can that be? He was too little to climb out of the crib. How could he get out of the house? I check every room in the house, every place where he could possibly go. I come up empty. There’s no indication that anyone entered the house when I was gone. How could he have gotten out on his own?”

“You don’t think that the mother, or someone with access, could have come into the house and taken the baby?”

“That would be a logical explanation, of course, but in the dream I’m convinced he got out on his own. The boy’s mother–I guess I’m assuming it is a boy–made it very clear about his ability to get out on his own. Doc, you know that dreams don’t always make sense…”

“You’re right. They don’t. They’re usually symbolic.” I took a sip of water from my cup. “What do you think the dream means?”

“I haven’t the foggiest…”

“You’re not getting off that easy, Cole. Try.”

He smirks. “My folks don’t want me to go to Europe. They think I should go to grad school. Make something of my life.” He added quotes, raising his hands. “I disobey the woman, my mother, in the dream. Maybe that’s part of it.”

“What else?”

“Gee, Grant, I don’t know. I can’t figure it out. That’s why I came here.”

“Okay, I’ll give it a try. You remember we talked about the ID, the Ego, and the Super Ego?”

He cast his eyes to the ceiling and thought for a while before responding. “Yeah, the ego is the conscious me, the me I know; the super-ego is my conscience that judges my behavior as right or wrong, and the id…” He closed his eyes and thought. “The unconscious?”

“Yes. Good job. The id contains all the primitive emotions. My initial interpretation is that the baby represents your id, the man – you – the watcher, represents your ego, and the woman–the mother–your super-ego…”

“My parents want to baby me, stop me from going to Europe, but I need to escape!”

“Quick. Impressive. You need to act on your impulses.”

“I should go to Europe?”

“Yes, your dream is saying you need to grow, explore.”

“Wow! Can I tell my old man you said I should go to Europe?”

I laughed and shook my head. “I didn’t say that. I interpreted your dream as saying that. You can tell him if you put it that way. I’m invited for dinner, and I’m sure he’ll have something to say about that.”

“I’ll be gone. You can talk about me then.”

“So how are you spending your free time?”

“Hanging out. Getting in touch with friends I hadn’t seen for a while.” Becoming quite serious, he added, “Stanford came with a lot of stress. I’m still unwinding, shaking off the tension. I’m probably drinking and getting high too often.”

“Probably?”

He grinned. “It’s temporary.”