Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe by ;Bob Berman MD Robert Lanza Read Free Book Online Page B

become the doctor. She was very bright and tried so hard to do her very, very best—an “A” student, I recollect. All the teachers loved her. But that was not enough. By the tenth grade, she had dropped out of school, and had entered on a course of destruction with drugs. I can only understand that this happened because of the poor conditions at home. The ill that was done to her had little remission and occurred in a cyclic, almost mindless manner. She was beaten, ran away, and was punished again.
    How well I recall Bubbles hiding under the porch, wondering what she was going to do next. I remember the terror that hung about the place; I shiver at my father’s voice upstairs, penetrating through the walls; I can see the tears running down her face. I sometimes wonder, when I think about it, that nobody intervened on her behalf. Not the school, not the police, not even the court-appointed social worker could do anything about it, apparently.

    Sometime later, Bubbles moved out of the house—although I am conscious of some confusion in my mind about the exact events—I learned that she was pregnant. I only recollect that through some loose-fitting dress, I felt the baby moving in her body; when all the relatives refused to go to her wedding, I told her: “It’s okay! It’s okay!” and held her hand.
    The birth of “Little Bubbles” was a happy occasion, an oasis in this life in the desert. There were many faces that I knew among those who visited her in the hospital room. There was my mother, my sister, and even my father looking on. Bubbles was so kind-hearted and had such a pleasant manner that I should not have been surprised at seeing them all there. How happy she was, and when I sat down by her side on the bed, she asked me—her little brother—if I would be the godfather to her child.
    All this, though, was a short event, and stands like a wildflower along an asphalt road. I wondered on that occasion what cost she might pay for this happiness; I saw it materialize at a later date when her problems reappeared, when her lithium treatments failed. Little by little, her mind began to deteriorate. Her speech made less and less sense, and her actions took on a more bizarre quality. I had seen enough of medicine then to have gained the capacity to stand beside myself, aloof from the consequences of disease, but it was a matter of some emotion to me, even then, to see her child taken away. I have a deep remembrance of her in the hospital, utterly without hope, restrained and sedated with drugs. As I went away from the hospital that day, I mingled my memories of her with tears.
    Bubbles knew of no place anywhere so comforting as the house of our childhood during the rare times of peace, no place half so shady as its green apple trees. They had been planted there more than fifty years ago by my friend Barbara’s dad. On one occasion, long after my parents had sold the house, the new owners saw Bubbles sitting on the sidewalk with her elbows on her knees. The bedroom windows were all open to let in the blossom-scented breeze. Wild roses still dangled from the old trellis on the side of the house.

    “Excuse me, ma’am, you okay?”
    “Yes,” said Bubbles. “I’ll be all right. Is she—is my mother—home?”
    “Your mother doesn’t live here anymore,” said the new owner.
    “Why are you telling me that? It’s a lie.”
    After some squabbling, the new owners called the police, who took Bubbles to the station and notified my mother to fetch her, that she might be taken to the clinic for her shots.
    Despite all that had happened to her, Bubbles was still a very pretty woman, who often drew whistles from the boys in town. But whether she was afraid of the dark or simply got lost, it was not uncommon for her to disappear for a day or two. She was found sleeping in the park once, quite distressed, her hair hanging down in her face. Her clothes were torn, of which she knew as little as we did. But I recall that