After losing emotional control upon being pressured by Ronnie, Tim promised to speak with Dolores on the recent dreams.

The next meeting was scheduled for this day, and Tim was already making the hour’s trek northward. Not wishing to alarm Ronnie, Tim did not share with her just how scared he was. More than scared, he feared insanity might be threatening. Why would someone continue dreaming of such horrors, and cry out as if they were actually experiencing the pain and suffering? And why were the dreams so bloody detailed?

When insanity looms as a self possessed fear, the order one has brought to their life is shattered. Everything becomes questionable, everything is threatened. What was left within, where inside could trust be placed, or refuge found?

These things floated, or more precisely, dominated Tim’s thoughts. He found a parking space open along the village green that lie in the centre of town, and having successfully parallel parked (he felt it a momentous accomplishment) reached in his car’s ashtray (used only for change, not ashes) and pulled out sufficient change to satiate the meter just alongside and to the front of his car.

Once the meter was happy, Tim headed for the pub located two floors below Dolores’ office, where he ordered his usual turkey on rye, topped with swiss, lettuce, and tomato. Tim guiltily but indulgingly added “mayo” to his sandwich request, and finished his order with a request for a Guinness draft – which was the true indulgence, but he would never concede Guinness to be such.

After paying for the order, Tim sought out a suitable table in the half full pub, where he settled in with a Tom Clancy novel that had him quite engrossed. Tim barely finished one page when the Guinness – with the mark of a four leaf clover embossed in the head of the beer – landed gently in front of him. Giving a nod and a thank you to the barkeep, he reached for the brew, raised it to his lips, and savoured the foamy, unique Guinness taste as it swished and teased his taste buds, then flowed smoothly down his throat. “Ahhhhh” he muttered with satisfaction. Guinness had become a pre-therapy ritual. One beer, one book, one sandwich, it made for a pleasant way to relax.

The sandwich arrived soon after, and within 10 minutes, no longer existed in visible and intact form. Tim now turned his attention back to Clancy, occasionally reaching for the Guinness until he reached the dreaded last pull. A half hour later and it was time to head up the stairs for therapy.

After he was safely nestled into Dolores’ couch, Tim brought Dolores up to speed on events over the last month, leaving the dreams for last. Tim described the dreams, and Dolores listened with interest – and concern. After a few sessions, she had come to like Tim, believed he was sincere in wishing to deal with his issues. This was a new wrinkle.

Finding answers on why these dreams were coming to haunt would not be easy. There was this recurring theme – bright lights, immobilisation, scary equipment, intense pain to the point of some unimaginable threshold, a sinister looking man observing and smirking, another inflicting.

Could this be self inflicted pain to assuage guilt? A way for Tim to be distracted from gender issues? A way of gaining sympathy from his family as the gender issues became more apparent? Could they be memories from an old movie, or more than one old movie, resurfacing many years later, modified by adult perceptions?

Dolores specialised in gender issues, not in dreams. She had a hunch the dream and gender issues were related in some way, though she had no idea in this moment how that might be. She was going to be busy talking to colleagues around the country, and busy scouring the Dartmouth College library for more information.

She encouraged Tim to write out his dream – his nightmare – immediately after it awakened him, and this request he resisted. He had no interest in reliving the dream and then codifying the experience.

Given this was a very serious health issue that was as yet uncontrolled, she recommended and Tim agreed to meet semi-monthly.

On two fronts, Tim was moving toward meltdown, and there would be no easy answers. Nor would there be a solution.