From A Field Guide to Infectious Agents and Biotoxins:

It was during an episode of mania that I first considered holding a seance to contact the spirit of Oliver Sachs. Then came the inevitable nastiness of family intervention, and the reintroduction of Lithium into my physiology. The wondrous circus tent of my mind collapsed again to the muddy earth, scattering many such good ideas like frightened animals.

Lithium reduces my amplitude. You may think of me as an extremely powerful and expensive stereo system, throbbing with bass and shimmering with treble tones far outside the range of the human ear. Taken regularly, Lithium forces me to broadcast on the narrow span of awareness that is accessible to most people's limited equipment.

Dr. Sachs, author of such popular works as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, is one of those rare scientists who manages to bridge the gap between the esoteric world of research and the public's simpler tastes. His books and PBS projects inspired popular fascination with neuroscience and the study of the human mind. He achieved this by thoughtful use of real case studies, the astonishing stories of patients he has treated. The man for whom the above-mentioned book was named suffered damage to his parietal lobe, after which he was unable to recognize and differentiate between common objects around him. These real situations, though unfortunate, have made significant contributions to our understanding of the workings of the mind.

I read this book and became very curious about what eventually happened to the individuals in Dr. Sachs' case studies. I spent a lot of time wondering how some of them turned out. Contacting his spirit by seance would afford me the opportunity to question him in more detail about some of the case studies he wrote about in his books.

Dr. Sachs was not, at that time, dead. Nor is he dead at the time of this writing. I did not consider this a significant obstacle to contacting his soul using supernatural means. Clinicians who are familiar with bipolar disorder may see this as a sign of grandiose thinking, a characteristic of the condition. To this I can only say that clinicians are seldom trained in theology. If a man's soul exists in some invisible, unknowable dimension, why should it reside in different locales before and after the moment of death? What is so special about the act of dying, that it should force the ageless soul out across the border like a refugee?

I preferred to think of Oliver Sachs' soul as existing in some parallel plane, operating and animating his body through some form of remote control. Perhaps our souls merely smile at our bodies from their celestial home, the way one love-smitten schoolchild will stare across the classroom at another, and manifest life in the corpse through the brief pitter-pat inspired by its beatific glance.

Lithium came blundering into my life with all the delicacy of an iron, flattening me out and making me presentable. Some of the ideas I'd been considering during the manic phase immediately began to seem logically suspect. I sheepishly packed up the language tapes I'd checked out from the library -- eighteen different tongues and dialects, part of some research I'd planned on cultural correlates of the pronunciation of vowels.

There is a period of adjustment as the medication shuts down the manic phase. I can feel my life curling back into the ball-shape of normal. People I care about are angry with me, and I must make amends. They feel betrayed by my secret decision to cut back on my Lithium, which eventually led to the chaos of the manic phase. I have, essentially, signaled to them that I would rather live in the wild terrain of my condition than in the relationships I have with the them and everyone else in the common world. There must be a period of sorrow and humbleness. I surrender my manic ideas as a show of peace, like a gang leader turning in his guns.

A month or two passed in the business of recovery. Strangely, neither drugs nor habitude could extinguish the idea of a seance. Oliver Sachs' immortal soul was somewhere out there, and with it the endings to all those stories he started in his many books.

I began with the most obvious means available: I called a psychic service I saw advertised on television late one night. I had no illusions about the relative fallibility of this option, but they said I would get the first ten minutes free, and I figured this would provide me with ample time to assess their ability to contact Dr. Sachs. Having scrutinized the infomercials of several competitors, I knew that Psychic Fone specialized in contacting the spirits of the dead. Close enough.

I dialed the number and started the stopwatch feature of my watch when the line began ringing. There was a series of clicks, and a recorded voice answered. "Welcome to Psychic Fone!" it said. "You are about to embark on an amazing journey. Prepare to hear answers to your most important, private questions. Psychic Fone is like no other psychic hotline..."

I looked at my stopwatch with increasing irritation. Already, two of my ten free minutes were consumed by the breathless, nasal drone of this answering machine. The voice asked me to enter the month, day, and date of my birth. I complied, although I doubted this would be particularly relevant to my request. At the insistence of the automated voice, I entered my credit card number, knowing I would be hanging up before I incurred any charge. Then I was told to wait on the line, because my personal psychic would be right with me.

With four minutes and twenty-eight seconds left, a woman's voice came on the line. "I am Belinda," she announced. She had a faintly exotic accent, which my limited experience with eighteen different foreign language tapes suggested was fake. "Welcome to Psychic Fone. I will be your personal psychic tonight. Are you ready to receive your psychic reading?"

"Yes, hello, Belinda," I said. Four minutes and sixteen seconds.

"I can tell you are very curious about something," Belinda said. "You don't know if you should ask me, but you don't know where to turn. Please be at ease and tell me your concerns."

"That's true," I allowed. "Can you see what my problem is?"

Belinda paused, humming faintly for at least twelve precious seconds. "I see there is someone you want to see... someone you would like to talk to. Who is it you are thinking about?"

In spite of myself, I was impressed. For the first time since I began listening to the time-consuming answering service, I began to believe this might just work. I have three minutes and twenty-four seconds left.

"I need to contact the spirit of Oliver Sachs," I told her. It came out like a confession. It was a confession. By acting on an impulse from a manic phase, I was validating that part of myself. Any one of my friends and family would consider this to be over the line. I was flirting with those old powers again.

"Tell me about Oliver," she said. She sounded like she thought he was my father, or a lover I once knew. I had two minutes and fifty-two seconds.

"I have some unfinished business with his spirit," I said. "I have some questions for Dr. Sachs. I need to know if he's out there."

Belinda paused thoughtfully, consuming precious seconds in my rapidly dwindling supply. I had no doubt that she was taught to do this in whatever two-hour class she took on being a phone psychic.

"It is no easy matter to contact the spirit," she said finally, sounding like she was reading off a script. I noticed that her accent was fading in and out a bit. Now she was sounding almost like Count Dracula in a black-and-white movie. "The spirit exists on a plane far beyond our imagination. I will use my spirit guide to help me find," she paused, "Oliver. We can ask him some questions, and my spirit guide will relay the answers. We are entering a realm that our minds can barely understand. Sometimes the spirit will tell us things we do not understand, but that is because they can see what we cannot. All will be made clea-"

"Please, I understand, just try to get through to Dr. Sachs for me. I just want to know if he's there." Just over a minute thirty five left.

She paused, flustered. I realized I'd probably made her lose her place in her script. "My spirit guide is named Emily. She was born in eighteen forty two in Pennsylvania. I am calling out to her now." Belinda's voice grew muffled. "Emily? Are you there?"

Come on, Emily, I thought. Get your nineteenth century ass over here. A minute twenty six.

"Emily is here," Belinda said. "She hopes she can help you. She wants to know if there is anything else you can tell her about Oliver. She needs to be about to find his spirit in the Other Place."

I strained to remember Oliver Sachs' picture from the dust jacket of the book. "Maybe a big guy, kind of burly," I stammered. "A beard, maybe? He's a neurologist. Is that enough?"

Belinda didn't say anything for a moment. "Emily asks if there is a question that only he can answer."

"What?"

"A question that only Oliver will know the answer to. Emily will use this to make contact with him."

Fifty seconds.

"What happened to the man who mistook his wife for a hat?" I say.

Belinda didn't seem to know what to do with this. She made me repeat it, and it sounded like she was writing it down. Then she asked me what the answer should be, so that we'd know if we've made contact with Oliver's spirit.

"I don't know," I explained. "That's what I want him to tell me. Can't Emily just ask around?" But I already knew this attempt was doomed.

Belinda seemed to sense my desperation, and she kicked into higher gear. "I am sending Emily out to the Other Place in search of Oliver," she said quickly.

Twenty-one seconds.

"Emily says she has found someone. Perhaps it is Oliver. Emily, can Oliver speak with us? She says he can. I am asking Emily to ask Oliver the question. Emily, ask Oliver," a brief hesitation, "what happened to the man who mistook his wife for a hat?"

Six seconds. Damn it.

"He is looking a little puzzled. Emily says he is laughing a little now. Emily, can you-"

I slammed down the phone in frustration. Clearly, I was in need of more professional services.

[end of part 1]