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tortured by storms. I'm diving now, diving down through the clouds, like a satellite image zooming in to ground level. There's an ocean below, but it's not blue. It's red, and boiling. I plunge through its surface, deep into the red. I'm looking for something, but it's not there. This ocean is empty."
    "A lot of things came to me when you described that," Rachel said. "The color imagery first. Red could be important. The empty ocean is a symbol of barrenness, which expresses your aggrieved state." She hesitated. "What are you looking for in that ocean?"
    "I don't know."
    "I think you do."
    "I'm not looking for Karen and Zooey."
    "David." A hint of irritation in her voice. "If you don't think these images are symbolic, why are you here?"
    I opened my eyes and looked at her perfectly composed face. A curtain of professionalism obscured her empathy, but I saw the truth. She was projecting her sense of loss about her own family onto me.
    "I'm here because I can't find answers on my own," I said. "Because I've read a mountain of books, and they haven't helped."
    She nodded gravely. "How do you remember the hallucinations in such detail? Do you write them down when you wake up?"
    "No. They aren't like normal dreams, where the harder you try to remember, the less you can. These are indelible. Isn't that a feature of narcoleptic dreams?"
    "Yes," she said softly. "All right. Karen and Zooey died in water. They both drowned. Karen probably bled a good bit from her hands, and where she hit her head on the steering wheel. That would give us red water." Rachel reclined her chair and looked at the ceiling tiles. "These hallucinations have no people in them, yet you experience strong emotional reactions. You mentioned combat.
    Have you ever been in combat?"
    "No."
    "But you know that Karen fought to save Zooey. She fought to stay alive. You told me that."
    I shut my eyes. I didn't like to think about that part of it, but sometimes I couldn't banish the thoughts. When Karen's car flipped into the pond, it had landed on its roof and sunk into a foot of soft mud. The electric windows shorted out, and the doors were impossible to open. Broken bones in Karen's hands and feet testified to the fury with which she had fought to smash the windows. She was a small woman, not physically strong, but she had not given up. A paramedic from the accident scene told me that when the car was finally winched out of the muck and its doors opened, he found her in the backseat, one arm wrapped tightly around Zooey, the other arm floating free, that hand shattered and lacerated over the knuckles.

    What had happened was clear. As water filled the car and Karen fought to break the windows, Zooey had panicked. Anyone would, and especially a child. At that point, some mothers would have kept fighting while their child screamed in terror. Others would have comforted their child and prayed for help to come.
    But Karen had pulled Zooey tight against her, promised her that everything was going to be all right, and then with her feet fought to her last breath to escape the waterbound coffin. For her to cling to Zooey while suffering the agony of anoxia testified to a love stronger than terror, and that knowledge had helped bring me some peace.
    "Green clouds and a red ocean have nothing to do with a car accident five years ago," I said.
    "No? Then I think you should tell me more about your childhood."
    "It's not relevant."
    "You can't know that," Rachel insisted.
    "I do."
    "Tell me about your work, then."
    "I teach medical ethics."
    "You took a leave of absence over a year ago."
    I whipped my head toward her and opened my eyes. "How do you know that?"
    "I heard it at the hospital."
    "Who said it?"
    "I don't remember. I overheard it. You're very well known in the medical community. Physicians at Duke refer to your book all the time. They did at New York Presbyterian, too. So, is it true? Did you take a leave of absence from the medical school?"
    "Let's stick to the dreams,