Alexis Murphy breathed several deep, calming, breaths. She clenched her hands in her lap over and over and tried to bring the shuddering down.
Lex was very much her father's daughter, blonde, tall and thin. She was a pretty woman in her early thirties. At the moment, she was wearing a cotton blouse and a pair of white shorts; she was seated on the lush safari style bedspread of her hotel room. She had made a sort of nest for herself on the floor with all the cushions and blankets in the room and was now sitting cross legged, doing deep yoga breaths as she had been instructed. She had done this exact routine every day for the last twenty years. She felt like she had made great progress to this point and she was very proud of herself.
"Dinosaur" Lex said to herself, bracing herself for the rush of adrenaline associated with her fear.
She had been diagnosed with severe ornithoscelidaphobia, the irrational fear of dinosaurs. For most people the idea of being afraid of dinosaurs was somewhat laughable. After all, what could there be to fear from an animal that had been extinct for millions of years? But for Lex, the mere mention of anything to do with dinosaurs sent her immediately into a blind and overwhelming panic. Lex knew that it had something to do with the visit she had made to her grandfather's island, this island, when she had been thirteen. However, neither hypnosis nor any other treatment method had been able to unlock the door in Lex's mind that hid the memory of the most horrific moments of Lex's life. She had simply blacked it out, buried the memory of the trauma as deep as it would go in her subconscious, the memory was just too powerful, too overwhelming for Lex's mind to grasp.
But it was these suppressed memories that gripped Lex with paralyzing fear, impeding her ability to lead a normal, functioning life. She never knew when a panic attack would strike, but the most common trigger for these attacks were SUV's, thunderstorms, kitchens, and open freezer doors… all sorts of random events. But the most immediate and most over powering response was triggered by anything to do with dinosaurs. Once, a few years back, Lex had been watching tv and had caught the tail end of a commercial featuring a cartoon dinosaur singing about nose and throat medicine. Lex had smashed the television set with a lamp and screamed until she was hoarse and for days afterwards she had been unable to function for sheer panic.
She had a vague memory of the visit to the island, but it had seemed pretty cool. She remembered the helicopter ride, like a rollercoaster, it had been fun. She remembered meeting Dr. Grant and Dr. Sadler, Dr. Malcolm and… Mr. Ginaro.
Suddenly, Lex caught a flash in her mind. Rain pounding on the roof of a car, the ground shaking, a blast of thunder and a bellowing roaring sound that pounded in her head. And just like that, she had activated a trigger. The roaring sound filled her head; she clamped her hands over her ears, rocking back and forth in terror. She had a vision of huge jaws smashing down through the sun roof of a car. The jaws were right on the other side of glass, snapping, snarling trying to get at her. An eye, a HUGE eye was constricting as a light shown on it. Rain poured down off of pebbly leathery skin. Claws grasped a thick wire. Blood running over glass in a pouring rain. Her brother falling away from her, she reached out for him but he was trapped. Headlight splashed across her and a car fell from above her. The roaring went on and on in her head and Lex was feeling the familiar panic.
Feverishly she squeezed her thumb and ring finger together, the anchor motion to trigger the positive feelings she had worked hard to build up. Over the last twenty years, every time she had felt strong, confident and in control Lex had made this same simple gesture and now as she made the motion she felt the happy memories supplanting the fearful visions. She began to calm down.
Lex became somewhat aware that she had been repeating "He left us!" over and over without thinking about it. She had no idea what any of the visions meant, or what the significance of 'he left us' was. She had tried working through it with Dr. Gillman, her therapist, but whenever she got close to the traumatic memory, her brain locked it down.
Lex took several more calming yoga breaths, steadying herself.
"Tyrannosaurs Rex" said to herself in a clear voice.
Lex wasn't sure why the name of this particular dinosaur was more fearful to her than, say, brontosaurus or triceratops, but it was. Invariably, the name of this dinosaur triggered all sorts of disjoined images. A goat laying down, a giant flashlight, something about a culvert under a towering wall. They didn't make any sense, but she almost always fell into the terror that lurked at the back of her mind when she looked into any of those sorts of images. It had seemed liked most everything triggered a panic moment in the early days. Today, Lex gave a small nervous smile, because even though her hands had shook and her heart rate had gone through the roof, she was still in control. She was winning the battle against the fear.
It had been Dr. Gillman's suggestion that she customize herself to the idea of dinosaurs. Speaking the words aloud until she no longer felt the panic when she heard them. From there she had moved on to drawings of dinosaurs, revealed very slowly so she could take them in a little bit at time. Lex reached out for the manila envelope she had brought with her to the hotel room. She opened it and very slowly removed the first of a series of full sheet pictures. She had deliberately put the pictures in the envelope upside down so she could move up slowly from the feet to the head. The first picture wasn't very challenging, it depicted a painting of a Tyrannosaurus Rex from the turn of the century. The dinosaur was depicted in a grassy field near a family group of triceratops facing it. But everything was wrong about the animal, it was dragging its tail, walking upright with a lizard head and the feet of a bird. Dr. Gillman had chosen this image to start off with because it was so in accurate that it barely represented the dinosaur at all and Lex had no real problem with this image. It was just so different from the way real dinosaurs were that it was laughable.
The next image was slightly more difficult. This one was a picture of an old toy of a deinonychus toy. Again this depiction was very wrong, the body was too stocky, the head was the entirely wrong shape and its skin was pebbled like a lizard. One thing that had been a problem with this image was the huge curving claw on the end of the toe. Lex remembered that Dr. Grant had owned a fossilized raptor claw like that. He had been sitting on it when they were in a tree, though Lex couldn't remember why they were in the tree. When she saw the plastic toy's claws the first time she had experienced a flash of a claw, as sharp as razors tapping on the floor of a kitchen. She had a vision of something with glowing eyes, jaws full of sharp teeth, its arms spread wide as it charged towards her.
The third image had been very difficult to overcome, it depicted two dinosaurs fighting. One had fallen over on its back and the second was leaping at it, claws extended. The artist had depicted the animals in action, tails lashing, jaws open, all claws and teeth and scales. Lex had had a lot of trouble with this image. She kept having visions a monsters flying through the air at her, arms spread wide, jaws full of teeth, of a clawed hand with three fingers scrambling at the sides of a door. She had an impression, a recurring dream really of dinosaurs fighting. One was huge, two others much smaller, the big one had snatched the little ones up in its jaws and smashed them. She didn't know if the memory was real or just imagined but she saw it again and again in her sleep.
The fourth and final image had been the hardest to deal with. This was a more modern picture, it showed a group of tyrannosaurs drinking from a mossy puddle as a family group of triceratops looked on. The rexes were depicted with their tails held out behind them, balancing them. It was a sunny scene, but in her mind Lex morphed it to a stormy night. Lightning flashed, rain was running off the animal's pebbled skin. The roaring started to fill Lex's head again, she pressed her thumb and ring finger together and took deep breaths until it faded.
Lex had not known what her mother had been developing until recently. They hadn't been close since her parents got a divorce, Lex had always been close to her father, but Susan had always butted heads with her daughter. It had been a surprise to Susan when Lex had called out of the blue and asked if it would be okay for her to come and stay on Isla Nublar for a while. Susan had agreed and had helped her daughter cope with the mental stress of having dinosaur themed attractions around her all the time. It had brought mother and daughter closer than they had been for years. Susan had revealed that IGT had engineered dinosaurs. Lex had toured the lab, seen the eggs, even braved a meeting with a baby stegosaurus. All of this seemed very familiar to Lex for some reason, like déjà vu, but she couldn't put her finger on why.
Susan had consulted with Dr. Gillman and he had agreed that in order for Lex to overcome her fears she should face them head on, though he hadn't believed that Jurassic Park had real dinosaurs at first. In line with that, Lex and Susan had a dinner date tonight at the Sky Lounge, a large and luxurious restaurant that over looked the park. The slowly rotating glass restaurant had a perfect view over the big field where many of the herbivores grazed, the old volcanic crater where the rollercoasters and rides ran into the night and, in the shadow of a volcanic ridge, a view down into the tyrannosaur paddock.
Lex felt intensely nervous as she boarded the gondola up to the observation deck that housed the Sky Lounge. She was worried she would have a panic attack right there in the restaurant, in front of everyone, but she was resolved to try. She would face her fears (all be it from quite a distance and twelve stories up) and she would concur them. However, the dinner was nowhere near as bad as she had hoped. Lex had even stood at the window of the restaurant and looked out calmly at the herds of parasaurolophus and hadrosaurs feeding in the reeds by the lake, at the massive apatosaurs and brachiosaurs moving slowly across the field, she looked at the herd of triceratops and the stegosaurs and she felt a sense of contentment. This was a scene from another world, but it was an idyllic scene none the less.
Lex and her mother had finished eating and were waiting on coffee when they rotated around to the point where they could see the tyrannosaur paddock. It was mostly dense jungle, but there was a clearing, an open area and there, in the center was a huge earthen mound. Susan gasped and looked worriedly at her daughter.
"Mona Lisa is out on her nest." Susan said, "You don't have to look if you don't feel ready. I don't want you to push yourself."
Lex shook her head, her expression grim. She was going to do this! She would not be afraid anymore. No more nightmares, no more panic attacks, she would finally move on. Without saying a word she turned in her chain and looked out of the window. Her fingers were gripping the table cloth tightly and her heart pounded in her ears but she looked out and down, at the tyrannosaur.
Nothing happened. Seconds lengthened to minutes before Lex said, "She- she's asleep."
Susan looked out the window and saw that Lex was right. The big rex was laying down, her head in the shadow of the trees, her feathery body lay partially on its side, its legs stretched out. Lex was shocked to find that she didn't feel any fear at all looking at the big dinosaur. It wasn't the same. Tyrannosaurus Rex had haunted her nightmares for twenty years but it had always seemed more reptilian, colder, crueler. This animal looked like a huge bird. It reminded Lex of a wingless condor. She had expected… well she wasn't sure what she had expected, but it certainly wasn't this. She couldn't see the protruding teeth very well from this distance and the rex's peaceful sleep seemed to put her at ease. Their coffee arrived and Susan and Lex drank in silence, by the time they were done the tyrannosaur paddock had moved out of sight.
Lex wasn't sure about her feelings. She had thought she would be elated that she had concurred her fear, or perhaps she had expected to be terrified when face with a really, live, T-Rex but she wasn't. It was odd how time and again she had imagined a t-rex in her mind's eye and this animal was completely unlike her mental image of a tyrannosaur. It felt sort of anti-climactic in a way. Still, she had remained calm and slowly, a smile had spread across Lex Murphy's face. She had looked at an honest to god Tyrannosaurus Rex and felt nothing.