Billy’s voice rose to a cry: “What are they doing in there?” “What are they saying to you? That might help us to understand. Are they giving you directions or guidance or counsel?” “Sounds like they keep saying, ‘Listen to what he says. Listen to what he says.’”

“Referring to whom? To me?”

“I guess so.”

“When I’m not with you, when you’re alone, do you hear them talking to you too?”

Billy sighed. “Kinda like they’re talking about me. With other people.”

“Do they act as if they need to protect you? Talk about you to other people, but as if they need to shield you?”

“I think they make me go to sleep.”

“When do they make you go to sleep?”

“When I get too upset.”

“Do you feel it’s when you can’t handle the upset? Because that’s one of the reasons people go to sleep, to get away from whatever’s upsetting them. Do you feel as if you’re getting strong enough now so that they wouldn’t have to be so protective of you?”

“Who’s they?” he cried out, his voice rising in alarm again. “Who are these people? Why don’t they let me stay awake?” Dr. George realized he had to take another direction. “What are the things that are hardest for you to deal with?” “Somebody going to hurt me.”

“Does that frighten you?”

“It would make me go to sleep.”

“But you still could get hurt,” Dr. George insisted. “Even though you didn’t know it.”

Billy put his hands on his jiggling knees. “But if I go to

“What happens then?”

“I dunno … Every time I wake up, I’m not hurt.” After a long silence, he looked up again. “Nobody said why these people are here.”

“The ones who have been talking to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe its because of what you’ve just been saying, that somehow when you didn’t know how to protect yourself from some danger, another side of you has been able to figure out a way to protect yourself from being hurt.”

“Another side of me?”

Dr. George smiled and nodded, waiting for a response. Billy’s voice quivered, “How come I don’t know the other side?”

“Because there must be some great fear inside of you,” Dr. George said, “that prevents you from taking the actions that are necessary to protect you. Somehow it’s too frightening for you to do this. And so you have to go to sleep in order for that side of you to take those corrective actions.”

Billy seemed to be considering it, and then he looked up, as if struggling to understand. “Why am I that way?”

“There must have been things that frightened you terribly when you were very small.”

After a long silence, Billy sobbed, “I don’t want to think about those things. They hurt.”

“But you were asking me why you had to go to sleep when there were situations you were afraid of being hurt in.”

Billy looked around and in a choked voice said, “How’d I get here in this hospital?”