"Hey, relax. Let me give you a--"
"No! I don't want to sleep!"
"Listen, Elaine. It's just a dream. You can't let it get to you like this. It's just the
rain keeping you here. It makes you sleepy, and so you keep dreaming this. But don't fight it. It's a beautiful dream in a way. Why not go with it?"
She looked at me with terror in her eyes.
"You don't mean that. You don't want me to go."
"No; Of course I don't want you to go anywhere. But you won't, don't you see? It's a dream, floating out there between the stars."
"She's not floating. She's ramming her way through space so fast it makes me dizzy whenever she shows me."
"Then be dizzy. Think of it as your mind finding a way for you to run."
"You don't understand, Mr. Therapist. I thought you'd understand."
"I'm trying to."
"If I go with her, then I'll be dead." ***
I asked her nurse, "Who's been reading to her?"
"We all do, and volunteers from town. They like her. She always has someone to read to her."
"You'd better supervise them more carefully. Somebody's been putting ideas in her head. About spaceships and dust and singing between the starg. It's seared her pretty bad."
The nurse frowned. "We approve everything they read. She's been reading that kind of thing for years. It's never done her any harm before. Why now?"
"The rain, I guess. Cooped up in here, she's losing touch with reality."
The nurse nodded sympathetically and said, "I know. When she's asleep, she's doing the strangest things now."
"Like what? What kind of things?"
"Oh, singing these horrible songs."