Amish Breaking Point Read Online Free PDF Page A

anyway. There is no recognition, no understanding; they seem like random nightmares."
    "That's because they're dissociative episodes. You have forgotten some trauma to such an extent that you are dissociated, or disconnected, from it entirely. It is this disassociation from your past, which we must remedy. I suggest hypnosis to begin with.”
    Bailey’s eyes had widened with confusion. Much of what the doctor explained only confused him more, but it persuaded him that she knew an awful lot about something that he did not. Dr. Chivers said that she could treat what ailed him, treat what threatened his future peace.
    “You need to slow down, Bailey.” Dr. Chivers’ voice echoed in admonishment in the back of his mind. If only it were so simple.
    “Slow down?” he had demanded that final meeting. “Slowing down is the last thing I need right now.”
    Dr. Chivers’ office was always obsessively neat. Maybe she had a disorder of her own of some kind. He always meant to ask her if she had a thing against clutter. The wooden desk gleamed and always smelled of orange oil, every pencil and sheet of paper so meticulously placed that it might have been measured.
    Dr. Chivers sat behind that desk as she looked at him from over the top of her glasses. “Bailey, these dreams are trying to send you a message. You need to take the time to understand what they are saying.” She straightened her notepad and pencil as she spoke.
    “What do you think this is for?” He rubbed his chin hard as he paced up and down her pristine office.
    “Bailey... these sessions can be helpful, but only if you slow down enough for us to search out the root of the problem. Even in the middle of our meetings, your mind is going in ten different directions.”
    “How many times have we gone over my dreams, Doctor?” he asked bitterly. “How many dream journals? Talks about my childhood, my relationships? It's been a year! If there were anything to find, we would have found it by now.”
    “Perhaps,” she agreed, leaning her chin onto her laced hands in silence. “Providing you want to find the answer, Bailey, and providing you’re ready to find it.”
    “Why wouldn't I want to find an answer?” Bailey almost shouted.
    “That is what we need to find out. It could be a memory your consciousness doesn't want to deal with right now. In cases like this, we'll sabotage our efforts to remember these events by keeping our conscious minds too occupied to fill in the missing gaps. Bailey, we have spoken many times about your childhood, but there are a lot of things that you haven’t wanted to talk about. Could there be something in your past from which you are hiding?”
    The buzzer sounded, and their time had come to an end. Hers was a fitting question to end the appointment, and that appointment had become their last, as he had never gone back. Bailey walked out of the doctor’s office, into the waiting room and sat on a chair not ready to face the world. He looked at the fish tank beside him.
    He knew that fish were supposed to help calm clients or something along those lines. He watched the fish gliding through the water, and they did give him a sense of calm.
    His attention focused on one particular fish. Unlike all the others that were meandering aimlessly through the tank, this one swam with bold, strong strokes.
    The thing that disturbed Bailey was that the fish were trapped; they did not have an ocean in which to swim. They were trapped in a tiny space and would never know what it was like to be free. Bailey realized that he felt that he was trapped. In an instant, he remembered a dream he had of being trapped in a tight space. I’m free, I’m free, he told himself. I’m okay. He steeled himself to stand up and walk out the door and face the world, knowing that his dreams weren’t real.
    “Bailey,” Jack said.
    Bailey looked across at Jack and was back in the present moment.
    “You were a million miles away.”
    “I was thinking of,