Dr. Thomas Cavanaugh, PhD, looked anxiously at the clock on
his desk. David Halpin had missed their appointment for the third week in a
row. It was so unlike David to miss a meeting and now it had been three weeks!
The psychologist straightened his tie absentmindedly as he
struggled with what to do. As a clinical professional, Dr. Cavanaugh knew exactly
what he should do. He should report to David’s case worker his absences and let
the system handle things. And yet . . .
David had been referred to Dr. Cavanaugh’s office as a
disability case. The diagnosis was agoraphobia. Simply put, Mr. Halpin had left
his job because he refused to go out of the house anymore. His family had
applied for disability after this went on for several months and, amazingly, it
was approved. The only catch was that Mr. Halpin was required to see a
psychotherapist each week in the hopes of being cured and returning to work.
When Dr. Cavanaugh had first gotten the referral to meet
with David, he assumed it would be a very straightforward course of treatment.
However, after several sessions, David began to open up and Dr. Cavanaugh
started to see that there was far more going on than just a simple fear of
being outside.
It had all started in August 1997 when David began having
dreams about Princess Diana. The dreams happened every night for weeks and were
always the same. David would see the princess running and running, trying to
get away from something David couldn't see. Then the dream would change to a
funeral scene that David could tell was for the princess. Once the dream ended,
David would wake up. This went on night after night for several weeks until the
beginning of September.
One evening, David saw a picture of Princess Diana on the
evening news. That night, the dreams stopped. Three days later, the princess
was dead in a car accident.
At first, Mr. Halpin shrugged the whole bizarre event off.
But a few months later, the dreams began again. This time, he had recurring
dreams about Sonny Bono. Just like before, the dreams went on for several weeks
until Mr. Halpin saw a picture of Sonny in a magazine. Within a week, the
entertainer and politician was dead.
Months later, the same thing happened again. This time, Mr.
Halpin didn’t recognize the person in the dreams at all. It was only when he
saw the man’s face in the television interview that David knew Jerome Robbins
was about to die.
Soon, it happened again a fourth time. Then a fifth.
After this last experience, Mr. Halpin stopped watching
television or reading magazines. His only source of news became the radio. To
his great relief, the dreams stopped.
In 2005, though, the dreams began again. Only this time
David would personally know the people in the dreams. It started with a distant
family member whom David had not seen in years. The dreams began five weeks
before David met his great aunt at a family reunion. She passed away in her
sleep five nights later.
In 2006, David dreamed of the same young lady walking
through a parking lot. For four weeks, he saw her walking by him with a gentle
smile on her face. When the dreams stopped, David made sure not to even glance
at a magazine or computer or television. He was terrified of seeing the woman’s
picture.
Then it happened.
While walking out of the grocery store David
happened to look up in the parking lot just in time to see the woman smile at
him as she walked by. It took a few seconds for David to realize that it was
not just another dream. He turned around to look at the woman again – only to
see her hit by a car and killed.
From that point on, David tried as hard as possible to not
dream or see people. He avoided sleep, took medication to make him sleep so
soundly that he wouldn't dream, and found a night job that kept him away from
people. That worked for several months until David began to have the dreams again.
In terror, Mr. Halpin refused to leave his house or even
come out of his bedroom. He would not even see his own family members. By the
time David had come to see Dr. Cavanaugh, he had not even looked at another
person in over three months. In fact, the only way his family was able to get
David to see the psychologist was by allowing David to wear a blindfold the
entire time he was out in public.
It took some time, but after several meetings, Dr. Cavanaugh
was able to convince his client to remove the blindfold. As a result, David’s
meetings with the psychologist became the only instance of face-to-face human
interaction David had each week.
During their therapy sessions, Dr. Cavanaugh worked with
David to help him see that all of these events were just coincidental. There
was obviously no connection between David’s dreams and the deaths that followed
them. While still filing his paperwork with agoraphobia as the diagnosis, Dr.
Cavanaugh was also seriously looking at treatment modalities for grandiose
thinking and paranoia.
Finally, after months of therapy, Dr. Cavanaugh convinced
David to try removing the blindfold for a drive in the country. Soon, he was
able to get the blindfold removed for other short excursions where there was
little chance of encountering many people.
Dr. Cavanaugh wrote encouragingly in his case notes that
things looked like they were coming around finally. Mr. Halpin might even be
able to return to work sometime in the future.
Then the dreams began again. This time, the dream was about
a famous skier. David recognized his face from years before. Night after night,
he would wake up seeing the skier careening out of control in the middle of a
race and crashing.
Of course, this all scared David so badly that he locked
himself in his room and refused to leave without his blindfold. Dr. Cavanaugh
lamented the set-back, but was hopeful that he could use this opportunity to
show David how foolish his thinking was.
A week after the dreams ended, though, a tragic event for
David happened. He was out shopping with his wife per Dr. Cavanaugh’s
instructions. David still had his blindfold on, but at least he was outside.
Unfortunately, as they came around the end of an aisle, a display hook caught
David’s eye mask strings and pulled it off. In the instant before David could
shut his eyes, they fell upon a People
magazine with this skier on the cover.
Two days later at their appointment, Dr. Cavanaugh assured
David that nothing was going to happen to the skier and, if it did, David’s
dream would have nothing to do with it. Mr. Halpin was not significantly
consoled by this, but Dr. Cavanaugh felt that he had mitigated some of the
damage from this unfortunate event.
That is, until he saw the news that night and learned that
the skier had died in a horrific accident in a World Cup downhill race.
Of course, it took several weeks of therapy to help David
cope with the trauma of the skier’s death. Dr. Cavanaugh felt that this was a
significant set-back, but he still hoped that some progress would be made. It
would just take a while longer for it to happen.
And then, for no apparent reason, David quit coming to his appointments.
This was now his third missed meeting and Dr. Cavanaugh was worried. He glanced
at the clock again, David was half an hour late. He was almost certainly not
coming yet again.
The psychologist struggled for a few minutes and then made up
his mind. He grabbed his coat, locked the office, and drove the four miles to
Mr. Halpin’s house. He knew this was well outside of standard clinical
procedure, but Dr. Cavanaugh was too concerned about David to let that stop
him.
Mr. Halpin’s house was in a run-down part of town. David's wife worked at a nearby hotel as a housekeeper. Between
her paycheck and David’s disability income they managed to scrape by.
Mrs. Halpin answered the door. Her face showed open shock at
the sight of the doctor at their house. She invited him in and hurriedly began
straightening up. Dr. Cavanaugh was unconcerned.
“Where’s David?”
“He’s back in his room. The one on the right.”
Dr. Cavanaugh brushed past Mrs. Halpin to David’s room. He
considered knocking, but decided that he didn’t want to find himself
negotiating through the door. Instead, Dr. Cavanaugh grabbed the doorknob and
walked right in.
David Halpin had been sitting in bed reading a book. He
looked up in surprise at the intrusion and his face became terrified once he
saw his therapist. The troubled man dropped his book and collapsed in tears.
The psychologist was not sure at first what to make of the
situation. Was David grateful that Dr. Cavanaugh had sought him out? Was David scared
that he was in trouble for missing their meetings?
Dr. Cavanaugh waited a few
minutes in silence.
Finally, he spoke softly, “What’s the matter, David?”
Dr. Cavanaugh’s client wiped his face and looked up at the
doctor with deep, sad eyes.
“I have been dreaming about you.”
(c) 2015, Kevin H. Grenier
