I believe Jordan experienced at least one psychotic episode in her adolescence, based on what she has told me about her past life. She had very little – next to nothing – to say about her childhood: many of her formative memories involve math lessons in some way, and she often dates events by their proximity to math classes or math homework, i.e., “My mother explained sexual intercourse and reproductivity to me shortly after I completed my fractions homework.” She has described to me, in copious detail, an experience during a math class on the topic of different numeral systems, which culminated in what she claims to be a cognitive breakthrough whose after-effects lasted for nearly a month. During this break, she listened to music through headphones for long periods of time while filling several notebooks with conversions of numbers into all manner of different positional numeral systems – binary, ternary, and so on – stating that the music was a sequence of numbers undergoing similar conversions in terms of sonic transpositions from one note or key to another. She was compelled to eat only with difficulty during this period but consumed great quantities of water.

Jordan is currently hospitalized following an extremely severe psychotic break in July, 2019. She was visiting a cousin, who was in the third trimester of a pregnancy at the time. The cousin’s husband returned home after working late to find that a neighbor had called the police, and that the cousin herself had gone into labor and died of a catastrophic hemorrhage. The police had been called in response to a neighbor’s complaint about persistent, loud piano playing coming from the house and entered when they saw blood flowing out from beneath the front door. The cousin was found dead in the entry way to the house, while Jordan was sitting at the piano in the living room, within sight of the cousin, wildly repeating the same sequence of chords over and over again.

Dr. Berceau: Today I think we should go over what happened with your cousin. Is that all right, or will that be too disturbing for you?

Jordan Grean: I am satisfied – factory. Refraction, factotum, fact, faction. I am happy to assist you in whatever way I can. We are all here to help, help you.

Dr. Berceau: Thank you, Jordan. Now, in your own words, can you tell me what happened that day? When you knew there was something wrong?

Jordan Grean: That would be when my sister told me her water broke, had broken. She became agitated, collapsed, and her groin flooded her floor with the blood.

Dr. Berceau: Is that when you started playing the piano?

Jordan Grean: That’s affirmative.

Dr. Berceau: Why did you play the piano?