The Seventh Direction

PART ONE: The Flow. Episode 8

The door suddenly flew open, and the rush of a much different energy brought me back to the moment, back to my lesson, back to a world filled with interpretations and concepts and beliefs and ears that could not (would not!) hear the Otherside—back to two interns and an aide rushing in. But I had no idea how it happened! How it was so.

How will I ever explain?

Huddled up, the three interns were babbling-on about something I couldn't decode. I could easily imagine, though. One broke away and rushed to the window as if someone might be standing on the ledge out there.

"Before you react," I said, "get real for a moment. We're up on the fifth floor here!" The window appeared to have been painted shut years ago. "Go ahead. Check out the bathroom, beneath the bed, behind the drapes." I'm sure that they would. "And there's little chance he slipped through the door, got past the nurse's station, ran down five flights of stairs and out into the cold autumn night! Not in his condition. Besides, he'd freeze out there with nothing on other than his 'jammies!"

I opened the closet door, killing two birds with one stone. No Wyl, just his clothes.

The three of them looked wildly round at each other, as if in some bizarre way they were telepathically debating the logic (or non-logic) of the situation: 'How is it that a boy, lost in coma, his body unmoved for more than three months, can now be up and gone?' Their pooled-thought was easy enough to read, and in veiled agreement they returned from their mysterious mind-meld, confused and staring at me querulously—awaiting explanation, I suppose. I offered none, sat down on the bed and stayed detached from their demise.

There was a brief pause.

A brief pause, then I felt the moment crash—their moment, their common ground as it crashed; and chaos began erupting. One scurried off to check out the bathroom; a second searched beneath the bed; and the intern who appeared to have forgotten his part, glared dumbfounded at his watch. Another pause, as they all looked dubiously at me, then out the door they scrambled, stirring "it up" as they went. A faint, fluctuating laughter rolled through me. "The gods" were amused, by this tomfoolery—by this play being acted out in a room in hospital in a town in a world created by some very strange characters. I took a moment, and laughed inside with "them."

But even so, funny or no, I had some serious uncertainties. Unformed questions and a few unknowns were hovering—lurking—just out of reach, just beyond mind. Questions and unknowns I needed to spend time with. Like right now, while they were close! Right on time, though, wouldn't you know it, Old Doc, the head doctor, my employer, bolted through the door and slammed the brakes. I almost laughed out loud. Kramer (sigh). Coolly he said: "Andrea, what's going on here?"

"It's not that simple, Doc." I glanced up at the corner of the room, remembering. All visual traces of the event were gone from there. "Actually, it's really quite simple. Really quite natural—but it seems we have this ability to make The Natural appear unnatural, foreign, fearful, and evil, and it becomes so for those who think so. Don't you think, Doc, that we—mankind, that is—have been exercising this ability for a long time. And that perhaps mankind, in general, continues to do so? Continuously creating inharmonious conditions upon our dear Mother Earth, and in the world at large, cannot and will not go on forever. A great, widespread change is up and soon coming you know . . . " My voice trailed off with a note of foreboding I hadn't been aware of earlier. But I felt myself still, awaiting his response.

"I am going to need an explanation," he countered, like he hadn't heard a word I'd said! "I think it's part of your job-description to tell it to me like it is. Or like it was—" he reiterated. "I've been hearing rumors. They spread very fast, you know. Those babbling interns? Well, they should be babbling, from what I've been hearing about this strange presence coming from the room and maybe from you they think. Talk to me, Andrea . . ." his voice was warming, but not in a good way. "Tell me in your own words." Louder. "Make me understand how a young man who was here a moment ago, can now be up and gone without a trace! What's going on around here? There's a growing crowd of others rapidly catching wind of this!" he squeaked it out, his anger subsiding by degree, mine growing by degree. "They will want to understand, too!"