My Other life

CHAPTER ONE






“Mommy! Stop!”
Running footsteps, maybe a child’s.
Screeching tyres. A soft thumpy noise.
I woke up with a gasp of pain.
It was as dark as a crypt.
I racked my brain, but no clues came as to where I was or how I had got there. I felt something soft against my face and reaching up to see what it was discovered that I held a teddy bear in my hand. I raised the other hand, and touched what felt like an item of clothing hanging from above.
Helpful.
So I was in a closet. Okay, good, I was in a closet.
Whose closet? Why was I in a closet?
Soft footsteps approached, and the door opened. I looked up with relief into the worried face of my wife Pam.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi”, I replied brightly.
“Something you want to tell me?” she asked.
“Nope. No, everything’s fine. Just having a little lie down”.
I tried to stand, only remembering that I had still not fully recovered when I struggled to take my weight on my legs. Holding the clothes rail for support, with Pam holding my elbow, I got up and edged my way slowly out of the closet to the bed.
The physiotherapy had done wonders, but sometimes, if I forgot, the pain would rear up and I would struggle to stay standing. It had been 8 months already, and I was beginning to lose my sense of humour. You know what they say; if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans for the future. This had certainly not been in my plans. Stupid God.
Pam sat down beside me on the bed.
“You are very cute, but the time has come to find out what is up with you,” she said. “Last week I found you asleep in the garage, tonight the closet. What next? The roof? The cute neighbours house?” she smiled.
She put her hand on my leg, her face close to mine.
“You need to speak to Dr Dillon, find out if your sleep walking might be related to your coma. I will make the appointment for you in the morning.” She looked me in the eyes waiting for an argument. There was none. She patted twice me on the leg as if to seal the deal.
We both lay down, and she switched off the light.
I lay awake, trying to remember what I had been dreaming about. Some sort of accident obviously. And a little girl. Who was she? Why did she seem so familiar, even from the few small steps she had taken through my dreamscape?
Where is my teddy bear?
I fell asleep, and woke up the next morning, secretly relieved to find myself in my own bed.





CHAPTER TWO






Standing at the basin, brushing my teeth, I examined my reflection in the mirror. My face did not look a day over thirty. Maybe I had discovered the secret to staying young; fall into a coma. If only I could put that in a bottle and market it! My mind still boggled at the concept that the world was six years older, as was my body, and yet to me it was still 2002. God had better remember he owes me six years.
In my world, Hansie Cronje was alive and well, nobody had heard of Charlize Theron, George Bush was new in the Whitehouse, and that still seemed like a good idea to a lot of people. The twin towers were still standing and the only global bullying going on was that of America over any country with oil fields.
I decided Pam was right. I had not told her that I had been having nightmares for the past few months, each time causing me to jolt awake but leaving no traces on my memory, just a sweat on my brow.
Feeling the need to be in control after months of feeling powerless, angry and frustrated, I told Pam that I would make the call to Dr Dillon myself.
Frank Dillon had been my doctor for the past 6 years, although I had officially only met him 8 months earlier. I called early enough to get hold of him before he started his rounds.
He assured me yet again that physically I was well on my way to full recovery, but suggested, as he had done once before, that what I needed was a psychologist. He had suggested this to me a few weeks after I came out of my coma, saying that I was going to need all the help I could get to face the challenges that lay ahead. I had scoffed at him; so I had been in a coma for a few years, big deal. I should now be completely rested and ready for any challenge!
This time I agreed meekly, and he referred me to a woman called Linda Potnik who had rooms a twenty minute bus ride from my house. I phoned her number and left a message on her answering machine.
I hoped she wouldn’t call back.
Then I wished she would.
I paced, thinking how much better my legs felt than they had a few months ago.
I drank coffee.
I had a cigarette.
Just as I sat down at my desk to review a design that I had recently started working on, the phone rang.
Feeling completely inadequate and somewhat sheepish, I accepted a slot the following afternoon at 4:30pm. Luckily (for me, anyway) her usual 4:30 had had some sort of accident. Go on, I thought, tell God your plans! Ha!
I don’t think any member of my family had ever been to therapy before. Along with the feeling of inadequacy, I felt slightly exhilarated. I was trying something no Bolan had ever done before. It’s not that my family ever said anything negative about therapy; it’s more like we never said anything about anything at all, lest we step on somebody’s toes.
They say it’s prudent never to discuss politics, religion or sex, but in my family everything that happened had to do with politics, religion or sex.
When my eldest brother converted to Islam before I had my little 6 year mental sojourn, my devout Christian parents didn’t bat an eyelid, and not a word was said. I know lots of words were thought, but not a word was said. My mom still keeps Paul’s old missal in her cupboard for the day that he sees the light, so to speak, and returns to the Right God.
My younger brother came out a few months ago by nonchalantly arriving at a family dinner with a boyfriend on his arm. To this day, this small matter has never once been the topic of conversation in my family. Except of course for Pam’s comments, such as “So Paul, where’s that gorgeous gay hunk of yours?” and “So guys, what do you boys think of the new gay rights bill?” which are completely ignored by everyone except Paul.
Needless to say, I swore Pam to complete secrecy on the matter of my therapy and current crisis of sanity; she loved nothing more than to argue politics, religion and sex – that’s the reason I fell in love with her.







CHAPTER THREE






I arrived at my appointment on time and Linda met me at the door to her office. She was not what I had expected at all. What had I expected? Well, I guess someone older, more serious, less of a glint in her eyes. Someone with comfortable shoes. Somebody who did not appear to have a life but just sat in her chair waiting for her next patient. Linda was gorgeous, tall with shoulder length blonde hair, and very little makeup.
She greeted my warmly with a hand shake and invited me to follow her into her office. Another surprise. I had not even realised that I had preconceptions (okay, misconceptions) of what I was going to encounter in my forays into mental health, but her office was nothing like I had anticipated.
It was brightly lit by sunshine which streamed through a north facing window, with a non-descript but oddly pleasant painting on the wall, and while there was a couch, it sat facing the chair in which she sat. There was a laptop on a table in the corner, closed. On a table close at hand sat a clock, a box of tissues, a glass and a pitcher of ice water. I guess I took too many movies at face value.
“Tom”, she said. “I take it this is your first time in therapy?”
I nodded. How did she know that?
“Well, therapy is about trust. If you don’t trust me then you are going to hold back and that will defy the point of therapy. By the end of today’s session, I want you to decide if you feel you can trust me as your therapist, or if you would prefer to be referred to a colleague. Are you comfortable with that?”
I nodded again. A test. What if I fail? What if she doesn’t want to see me again?
“Okay, for today’s session let’s just get to know each other a little better. Why don’t you start by giving me a bit of background; family, relationships, any key moments in your life that you feel are important in shaping who you are?”
I was both enormously relieved that I would not have to discuss “the issue”, and at the same time disappointed that we wouldn’t get to the crux of the matter today, I had half expected to sit down and an hour later leave, having all my problems resolved. Nevertheless, I figured that Linda knew what she was doing, and what I knew about therapy could fit on the back of the list of people who like Brussels Sprouts.
I prattled on about my brothers and my sister, my folks, my first love, my wife, my first car and the events in the latest episode of Prison Break. It was when I found myself discussing my favourite television series that I realised that I actually did trust Linda. I trusted her to just let me talk about whatever was on my mind, knowing that the important stuff would come crawling out of the woodwork as my brain meandered here and there. Not to say that she was disengaged, with a skill that was flawless and completely oblivious to me at the time, she constantly identified keys bits and pieces from my conversation and would gently steer my ramblings.

By the end of that first session I think she knew more about me than any other person alive, which was actually a little sad. I made a mental note to talk to Pam about life, the universe and Prison Break, and to listen to her do the same. And yes, I trusted Linda completely to help me with what ever was causing my nightmares and sleep walking.
“Now Tom, if you are keen to continue seeing me, I get the sense that you feel an element of urgency. Correct?”
I passed the test?? Well done Tom!
“Oh yes, I would appreciate any available sessions that you have. How often can you see me?” I asked.
“Well, except in cases of severe trauma, I don’t think more than twice a week is conducive to recovery, your subconscious needs time to process what we talk about, and very often you will have insights when you are not even in my office, but making supper or taking a stroll. I always keep a couple of slots open for emergencies, so I can offer you 7am on Tuesdays and the same slot as today, at 4:30 if that suites you?”
I accepted, feeling relieved that I was finally taking some sort of action, and she made a note in a black book sitting on the table next to her. Now that bit had been in my preconceptions.

That evening, when Pam got home, I had prepared dinner, half hoping that some revelation would occur to me in the middle of washing lettuce or slicing onions; It didn’t, but nevertheless Pam was thrilled to see the table set with candles and a bottle of champagne, and the way she kissed me when she walked into the kitchen told me it was going to be well worth the effort.
Pam was an architect, as was I before the coma. Technically, I guess I was still an architect; I had just not done any work in six years. She was an exceptionally good one, with a talent for combining beauty and functionality into her designs. We had started our own firm two years after getting married. We had been at varsity together, but oddly enough had not spoken a word to each other until some arbitrary party in our third year.
The first time we spoke to each other, we had a heated argument over something or other; I can’t even remember what it was. I fell in love with her there and then, I was so unaccustomed to people who had the confidence to put themselves out there without worrying about what other people would think.
“So I take it you are cured then?” she laughed, indicating the champagne and the candles. “You have been in therapy for 50 minutes already, after all”.
Over dinner, I told her all about the therapy, not even leaving out how gorgeous Linda was. Another thing I loved about Pam was that she was far too self confident to be jealous of anybody else. When the champagne was finished, she got a bottle of wine out of the pantry, and returned to the table with two clean glasses.
We sat at the table and spoke for hours like we used to do when we were first married. Speaking to Linda seemed to have pried open a crack into the past, and all sorts of bits and pieces came tumbling out like all the stuff that had been packed rather precariously into the hall cupboard.
Finally, she took me by the hand and led me to bed. The effort spent on dinner was definitely worth it.





CHAPTER FOUR






Tuesday morning, I got off the bus outside Linda’s office at 6:40, and sat down for a cappuccino at a sidewalk café.
At 7am she greeted me at her door and led me into her office.
“Right,” she said. “Would you like to pick up where you left off on Thursday? You had just told me about your firm and how good business was.”
I hesitated. Whoa, who had hit the therapy turbo button? I had not spoken about this next episode in my life to anybody and was reluctant to break the seal on it. Up until now I had been completely focused on moving ahead, getting better and getting on with the rest of my life. I had an irrational fear that if I verbalised my experience, I might invite it back or worse, that I might discover that I had done something to deserve it.
“I was in a coma for six years”, I said.
“That’s a long time”, she said evenly.
“It happened the morning after a cocktail party at the firm. We were celebrating the successful completion of a major project, and we had invited all our clients and a handful of potential clients. There were investors there, as well as Pam’s family, and my brothers. My mom and dad were overseas on some religious pilgrimage, and my sister had just given birth to her second child.”
“The party was a huge success, everybody had a great time and we got some good leads for new business and a lot of interest from a big investor. Everything was turning out better than I had ever dared to hope for.
Pam and I made it home before midnight, and went straight to sleep, both exhausted and a little drunk.
When I woke up, it was over six years later and I was in a hospital bed being fed through a tube. My first thought was “I think I’ve peed in my pants”, and the first thing I saw was Pam going hysterical next to me yelling and screaming for the doctors, tears running down her face. It was 2008, but to me it felt like the morning after the party
Apparently, I simply did not wake up that next morning. Initially they thought that somebody may have spiked my drink, but the tox reports all came back negative.
Over the course of the next week, my body was put through every medical test known to modern man, but still the doctors could come up with absolutely no cause for the coma. Ironically, I had been in peak physical health at the time, we had led a very active lifestyle, cycling and swimming regularly. The CT scans showed normal brain activity, and yet there was simply nobody home.
Luckily, well, actually I suppose more thanks to Pam’s foresight, we had excellent medical insurance, and when that ran out Pam could still afford to move me to a private institution, thank God the business had done so well. And there I lay for a little over six years, oblivious to the world moving on around me.
Pam and I had employed four very gifted apprentices by this time, so even though business took a bit of a dive, it still managed to earn a good income, despite Pam spending most of that first year at my bedside. She even had a desk moved into my room, and that’s where she worked from most of the time. She would speak to me constantly while she was working, bouncing ideas and thoughts off me, although of course she may just as well have been bouncing them off a squash ball.
After that, she returned to work, visiting me every morning and evening, reading me stories and talking to me about what ever project she was currently working on at the office.
I have no recollection of anything during that period, even though the monitors indicated a lot of brain activity throughout the time. The doctors said that judging from the brain patterns, I seemed to be leading a full and active life somewhere deep down inside my body, and they predicted that when I was ready I would choose to resurface. This was of course pure speculation; they say nothing is certain when it comes to comas.
Six years may seem like a long to be comatose, but after doing a bit of homework on Google I found many cases where people had recovered from lengthy comas. There was a polish guy named Jan Grzebski who got hit by a train, and woke up nineteen years later.
I also found a report of a nineteen year old kid who went into a coma after having a car accident. He had severed some nerves in his spinal column and would never be able to use his legs again, but he also had good brain activity on the scans. His parents refused to give up hope, and for another nineteen years they visited him in hospital every day. Then one day he simply woke up and started talking, and is now a completely healthy paraplegic.
The difference in my case of course is that I still had the use of my legs. All the while I was unconscious nurses and Pam would massage and stimulate my muscles manually every day, doing what they could to keep them healthy. They turned me over several times a day and bathed me twice a day. I told them later that they should have let physiotherapy interns practice on my body; I would have made the ideal training dummy.
Anyway, because of all the care that I had been given during this time, I was not as badly off as I could have been had Pam given up hope of my recovery. So I stayed in hospital for a few months with a sadistic physiotherapist whom I am certain revelled in making grown men cry. Those first months were pure agony as I tried to rebuild muscle tone in my body until finally I got to a point where I was fairly mobile and moved back home with Pam. We hired a full time nurse for another six weeks until I proved to Pam that I could get around the house just fine on my own.”
I stopped talking and poured some water into the glass and took a big gulp. Hey, therapy is kinda cool I thought.
Linda waited a few moments before prompting me further. “So how are you feeling now?”
“Well, at this point,” I responded, “I can walk fairly long distances without much pain, and look forward to returning to our cycling routine that we used to have. I swim everyday and physically I feel great compared to those early days.
“I still prefer to walk rather than drive though. Truth be told, I think I would be able to drive my tiptronic with no problem, but since the incident, I have a slightly irrational aversion to cars. I don’t even like crossing the road if I can avoid it. How odd is that? You’d think I was the kid who had the car accident!”
I smiled self-consciously, looking at the floor, and found myself fidgeting with the hem of my shirt. I suddenly felt very vulnerable and had the idea that Linda was noting every subtle movement and drawing some sort of conclusions from them. I made my hands stop moving, and crossed them over my chest. Oops, that might look defensive, I thought. I put my hands on my knees instead. I looked up at her, turning slightly red.
“You seem a little taken aback by your last comment” she said. “Perhaps you hadn’t consciously realised that you suffer from motor phobia until right now? Is this just since the coma?”
“Motor phobia? Is that even a word? Actually, I didn’t realise that I have been avoiding cars until the words came out of my mouth. Do you think it is important?”
“Well, very possibly. Why don’t you finish telling me everything so I have the whole landscape in my mind before I start speculating?” she suggested.
“Well”, I continued, “that pretty much brings us to the crux of the reason that I am here. A few months ago I started having nightmares. I could never recall what they were about when I woke up, but got the sense of something bad happening. Happening to me. The past few weeks I have been sleep walking, waking up in odd places with the sound of somebody screaming in my head. On Wednesday I woke up in our bedroom closet, clutching a teddy bear in my hands like it was the Holy Grail.
“And that’s another thing; the teddy bear – nobody even knows where it came from. I was clutching it to my chest when I woke up from the coma. There were no children in my ward, and it didn’t belong to any of the nursing staff, but there it was. Now I often have a silly urge to go and find it whenever I am feeling stressed about something, it gives me some sort of childish comfort.”
“Anyway, last week, for the first time I managed to remember a snippet from my dream. It sounded like a small girl being involved in an accident. She shouted something and then there was the sound of tyres and hooting. That’s when I woke up, with the creepiest feeling that it was far too real to have been a dream. And I swear, I could feel the pain of the impact of the car. I knew the girl in the dream. I know how that sounds, but there it is”
Linda nodded at me as if I was totally sane.
“I’d like to try something,” she said suddenly, leaning forward. “Do you know why in some forms of therapy the patient is asked to recline on the couch?”
Aha, so they do do that! I thought
“To relax?” I ventured.
“In a way. By having the patient lie on the couch, and positioning his chair behind the person’s head, the therapist can far more easily induce a state of regression in the patient. This technique can be very effective in certain circumstances, as most of the baggage that we sit with as adults can be traced back to childhood experiences. By reclining on the couch, with the therapist out of view, the patient regresses far more easily into the past.
Now I know we are not going back into your childhood, but this void, if you will, that you were in almost indicates a kind of rebirth when you woke up. I think this technique just might produce some insight.
Time is up for today, but I would like you to think about the regression technique, and if you are okay with it, I think we should try it when I see you on Thursday.”





CHAPTER FIVE








I climbed into the driver’s seat of my Audi A4 tiptronic. The car was brand new. At least to me it was, I had bought it three weeks before my coma, and it had not been driven once in the past six years. It still had that new car smell.
Two weeks ago, I had decided it was time to get the car running again, and had gone out to a hardware store and bought a new battery. The battery still sat on my workbench, in its plastic covering. After getting home with it, I had decided I needed a nap, and with that the battery and the car had been put out of my mind.
Until today’s session.
After I got home from seeing Linda, I had gone straight to the garage and replaced the six year old battery with the new one. Now I was sitting behind the wheel, with that feeling that one gets when sitting in a beautiful piece of German engineering. I breathed deeply, and ran my fingers over the dashboard, enjoying the beautifully finished interior.
I put the key in the ignition, and turned it one notch. The instrument panel sprang to life, needles jumping up like disturbed crickets in a field.
The CD player came on, loud; talk about a blast from the past! The Eurythmics were singing ‘Sweat Dreams’. I have always loved eighties music, and I had loaded the CD into the CD shuttle the morning before I had gone to work for the last time six years ago.
Suddenly, the car had become a time machine. I was back in 2002, feeling the anticipation of the exhilaration that I was about to experience as I took the car onto the freeway on my way to the office. I felt the excitement building up ahead of the party that we were throwing later that night. Life was just about as perfect as it could possibly get. I could think of nothing else to ask for.
The song ended, and ‘Girlfriend in a coma’ by The Smiths came on. Not cool! I thought at the universe. I slammed the off button on the radio, and sat in silence for a few moments.
Enough for one day.
I climbed out of the car, relishing the expensive sound of the door closing. Thomp. I loved this car, but I wasn’t yet ready to resume our relationship. “You are still beautiful” I told her as I walked out of the garage, and back into the present.











CHAPTER SIX








“I want you to take off your shoes and lie down on the couch,” Linda instructed, ”with your head this side so you can hear my voice but you can’t see my face.
You need to be comfortable and relaxed.”
It was my next session with her, and I had had no moments of inspiration since our last session. I was feeling slightly anxious about the regression; I wasn’t comfortable with the feeling of not being in control.
Linda got up and closed the blinds a bit, letting just a small amount of light into the room. She touched me on the shoulder and instructed me to relax. I closed my eyes, hoping I wouldn’t fall asleep, and the image of the teddy bear sprang immediately to mind. Somehow that image calmed me down, and I felt my body relaxing, and my mind begin to wander. I had almost forgotten that Linda was there until she spoke again.
“Now, a penny for your thoughts.” she said, which made me smile. “Tell me what you are thinking or seeing or feeling. Take your time, and let your mind float.”
I focussed on the image of the teddy bear in my head, remembering how it smelled, how soft it was, the little pink ribbon around its throat.
“I’m thinking about the teddy bear,” I said. “It feels like the only link between me and my coma. Did I mention that it has a small tag on the inside of its ear that reads ‘I belong to ___________’, and the name that has been filled in is Sophie? It smells like a combination of roses and hot cross buns. It has a small tear on the left hand side which was carefully sewn up, the only reason I even noticed it is because I spent so much time examining the damn thing, hoping it would tell me something, anything. When I hold it, it almost feels like a portkey from Harry Potter, a portkey that transports me to a time of safety and simplicity. I haven’t felt that way since I was a toddler. No, that’s not true. The feeling is far too familiar, I just can’t recall a time in my adult life when I felt that way.”
I stopped talking, and the more I thought about the bear, the more relaxed I felt. I felt safe, and calm and carefree.
Suddenly, the feeling of calm was ripped away as the bear was snatched from my grasp; in my mind, I jumped up from the bed on which I had been having a nap, just in time to spot Max the puppy tearing out the door, with Isabelle in his mouth.
“Mommy! Mom!” I shouted, close to tears. “Max is hurting Isabelle!”
I raced out of the door in time to see the puppy dive under the couch. Mom saw it too and managed to wrestle Isabelle away from Max before he could do too much damage.
“It’s’ okay Honey,” Mom said. “She’s just got a small tear on the side but we can fix that up and she’ll be as good as new.”
A voice intruded startling me back to reality.
“Tell me what you see,” Linda said quietly.
I sat up, feeling disoriented. I was shaking, and my eyes were moist. I had had enough.
“That was completely bizarre,” I said. “My bear's name is Isabelle.”