The Footprints of God

I see donkeys… a date palm. Naked children. A brown river. I feel the cold, jarring shock of immersion, the beat of my feet on sand. I see a young girl, beautiful and dark-haired, leaning toward my face for a kiss, then blushing and ru

Sometimes the dreams had no logic, but were only disjointed fragments. When logic finally returned, it frightened me.

I'm sitting beside the bed of a small boy. He can't move. His eyes are closed. He's been paralyzed for two days. His mother and aunt sit with me. They bring food, cool water, oil to anoint the boy. I speak softly in his ear. I tell the women to hold his hands. Then I lean down and speak his name. His eyes squeeze tight, expressing mucus. Then they open and light up with recognition of his mother. His mother gasps, then screams that his hand moved. She lifts him up, and he hugs her. The women weep with happiness…

I'm eating with a group of women. Olives and flat bread. Some women won't meet my eyes. After the meal, they take me into a bedroom, where a pregnant girl lies on the bed. They tell me the baby has been inside her too long. Labor will not begin. They fear the child is dead. I ask the women to leave. The young mother fears me. I calm her with soft words, then lift the blanket and lay my hands on her belly. It's distended, tight as a drum. I leave my hands there for a long time, gently urging, speaking softly to her. I can't understand what I'm say¬ing. It's like a soft chant. After a time, her mouth opens. She's felt a kick. She cries out for the other women. "My baby is alive!" The women lay their hands on me, trying to touch me as if I possess some invisible power. "Surely he is the one," they say.

"These are stories from the Bible," Rachel said, "known by millions of schoolchildren. There's nothing unique about them."

"I've been reading the New Testament," I told her. "There's no record of Jesus healing a little boy of paraly¬sis. No description of him eating a meal with only women, then inducing labor."

"But those are both healing images. And you're a physician. Your subconscious seems to be casting Jesus in your image. Or vice versa. Perhaps the problem really is your work. Have you moved further away from pure medicine? I've known doctors who fell into depression after giving up hands-on patient care for pure research. Perhaps this is something like that?"

She'd guessed correctly about my moving away from patient care, but my lucid dreams weren't some strange expression of nostalgia for my days in the white coat.

"There's another possibility," she suggested. "One more in line with my original interpretation. These images of divine healing could be subconscious wishes that you could bring Karen and Zooey back. Think about it. What were two of Jesus' most notable miracles?"

I nodded reluctantly. "Raising Lazarus from the dead."

"Yes. And he also resurrected a little girl, if I'm not mistaken."

"Yes. But I don't think that's the significance of these dreams."

Rachel smiled with infinite patience. "Well, one thing is certain. Eventually, your subconscious will make its message clear."

That turned out to be our last session. Because that night, my dreams changed again, and I had no intention of telling Rachel how.

The new dream was clearer than any that had come before, and though I was speaking in a foreign language, I could understand my words. I was walking down a sandy road. I came to a well. The water was low in the well, and I had nothing to draw it with. After a time, a woman came with an urn on a rope. I asked if she would draw me some water. She appeared surprised that I would speak to her, and I sensed that we were of differ¬ent tribes. I told her the water in the well would not cure her thirst. We talked for a time, and she began to look at me with appraising eyes.

"I can see you are a prophet," she said. "You see many things that are hidden."

"I'm no prophet," I told her.

She watched me in silence for a while. Then she said, "They speak of a Messiah who will come someday to tell us things. What do you think of that?"

I looked at the ground, but words of profound con¬viction rose unbidden into my throat. I looked at the woman and said, "I that speak to you am he."

The woman did not laugh. She knelt and touched my knee, then walked away, looking back over her shoulder again and again.

When I snapped out of that dream, I was soaked in sweat. I didn't lift the phone and call Rachel for an emergency appointment. I saw no point. I no longer believed any dream interpretation could help me, because I was not dreaming. I was remembering.

"What are you thinking about?" Rachel asked from the passenger seat.

We were nearing the UNC campus. "How you got here."

She shifted in her seat and gave me a concerned look. "I'm here because you missed three sessions, and you wouldn't have done that unless things had taken a turn for the worse. I think your hallucinations have changed again, and they've scared the hell out of you."

I gripped the wheel tighter but didn't speak. Somewhere, the NSA was listening.

"Why don't you tell me?" she said. "What could be the harm?"

"This isn't the time. Or the place."

The UNC theater was up ahead on the left. To our right the Forest Amphitheater lay in the trees below the road. I made a hard right and coasted down a dark hill on a street that ran between two rows of stately homes, a single-entrance neighborhood that housed tenured pro¬fessors and affluent young professionals. Fielding had lived in a small, two-story house set well back from the street. Perfect for him and the Chinese wife he hoped to bring to America.

"Where are we?" Rachel asked.

"Fielding's house is right up here."

I looked in the direction of the house but saw only darkness. I'd expected to find the place ablaze with light, as my own had been after I lost Karen and Zooey. I had a moment of panic, a premonition that I'd driven into one of those 1970s conspiracy films where you walk up to a familiar house and find it vacant. Or worse, with an entirely new family living there.

A porch light clicked on thirty yards from the street. Lu Li must have been watching from a darkened win¬dow. I turned my head and sca

"A Nobel laureate lives here?" Rachel asked, gestur¬ing at the modest house.

"Lived," I corrected. "Stay here. I'm going to the door alone."

"For God's sake," she snapped. "This is ridiculous. Just admit this is all a charade, and let's go get some cof¬fee and talk about it."

I grabbed her arm and looked hard into her eyes. "Listen to me, damn it. It's probably okay, but this is the way we're going to do it. I'll whistle when it's all right for you to come up."

I walked up to the front door of my dead friend's house, my hands in plain sight, my mind on the.38 in my pocket.