16.

The Well

Holley first met our friend Sylvia in the 1980s, when both were teaching

at the Ravenscroft School in Raleigh, North Carolina. While there, Holley
was also a close friend of Susan Reintjes. Susan is an intuitive—a fact
that never got in the way of my feelings about her. She was, to my mind,
a very special person, even if what she did was, to say the least, outside
my straight-and-narrow neurosurgical view. She was also a channel and
had written a book called Third Eye Open, which Holley was a big fan of.
One of the spiritual healing activities Susan regularly performed involved
helping coma patients to heal by contacting them psychically. On
Thursday, my fourth day in coma, Sylvia had the idea that Susan should
try to contact me.
Sylvia called her at home in Chapel Hill and explained what was
happening with me. Would it be possible for her to “tune in” to me?
Susan said yes and asked for a few details about my illness. Sylvia gave
her the basics: I’d been in a coma for four days and I was in critical
condition.
“That’s all I need to know,” Susan said. “I’ll try to contact him
tonight.”
According to Susan’s view, a coma patient was a kind of in-between
being. Neither completely here (the earthly realm) nor completely there
(the spiritual realm), these patients often have a singularly mysterious
atmosphere to them. This was, as I’ve mentioned, a phenomenon I’d
noticed myself many times, though of course I’d never given it the
supernatural credence that Susan had.
In Susan’s experience, one of the qualities that set coma patients apart
was their receptivity to telepathic communication. She was confident that
once she’d put herself into a meditative state, she’d soon establish
contact with me.