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asked about it. Today her voice was almost indifferent. "I have to get used to it. I'm going to keep having it until the knife catches up with me. It will, you know."
    "Laurie, in therapy we call acting out an emotionally disturbing memory abreaction. I'd like you to abreact for me now. Show me what you see in the dream. I think you dread going to sleep because you're afraid you'll have the dream. Nobody can do without sleep. You don't have to talk. Just show me what is happening in the dream."
    Laurie got up slowly, then raised her hand. Her mouth twisted into a cunning thin-lipped smile. She started walking around the desk toward him, her steps deliberate. Her hand jerked up and down as she swung an imaginary blade. Just before she reached him she stopped. Her posture changed. She stood, riveted to the spot, staring. Her hand tried to wipe away something from her face and hair. She looked down and jumped back terrified.
    She collapsed on the floor, her hands over her face, then crouched against the wall, shivering and making hurting sounds like a wounded animal.
    Ten minutes passed. Laurie quieted, dropped her hands and got up slowly.
    "That's the knife dream," she said.
    "Are you in the dream, Laurie?"
    "Yes."
    "Who are you, the one who has the knife or the one who is afraid?"
    "Everybody. And in the end we all die together."
    "Laurie, I'd like to talk to a psychiatrist I know who's had a great deal of experience with people who have suffered childhood trauma. Will you sign a release to let me discuss your case with him?"
    "If you like. What difference can it make to me?"

    Chapter 17
    AT SEVEN-THIRTY Monday morning, Dr. Justin Donnelly walked rapidly up Fifth Avenue from his Central Park South apartment to Lehman Hospital on Ninety-sixth Street. He constantly competed with himself to cover the two-mile distance a minute or two faster each day. But short of actually jogging, he could not better his twenty-minute record.
    He was a big man who always looked as if he'd be at home in cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat, not an inaccurate image. Donnelly had been raised on a sheep station in Australia. His curly black hair had a permanently tousled look. His black mustache was luxuriant, and when he smiled, it accentuated his strong white teeth. His intense blue eyes were framed by dark lashes and brows that women envied. Early in his psychiatric training he had decided to specialize in multiple personality disorders. A persuasive ground-breaker, Donnelly fought to establish a clinic for MPD in New South Wales. It quickly became a model facility. His papers, published in prominent medical journals, soon brought him international recognition. At thirty-five he was invited to set up a multiple personality disorder center at Lehman.
    After two years in Manhattan, Justin considered himself a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker. On his walks to and from the office he affectionately drank in the newly familiar sights: the horses and carriages arriving at the park, the glimpse of the zoo at Sixty-fifth Street, the doormen at the swank Fifth Avenue apartment buildings. Most of them greeted him by name. Now as he strode past, several remarked about the fine October weather.
    It was going to be a busy day. Justin usually tried to keep the ten-to-eleven time slot free for staff consultations. This morning he'd made an exception. An urgent phone call Saturday from a New Jersey psychiatrist had piqued his interest. Dr. Peter Carpenter wanted to consult with him immediately about a patient who he suspected was an MPD and potentially suicidal. Justin had agreed to a ten o'clock meeting today.
    He reached Ninety-sixth and Fifth in twenty-five minutes and consoled himself that the heavy pedestrian traffic had slowed his progress. The main entrance to the hospital was on Fifth Avenue. The MPD clinic was entered by a discreet private door on Ninety-sixth. Justin was almost invariably the first one there. His office was a small suite at the end of the