Schreiber begins the narrative by taking us impressionistically into the experience of what it is like to be Sybil Isabel Dorsett during a moment of “dissociation”: the sudden crash of glass and an acrid smell in her chemistry class reminds Sybil Isabel Dorsett of two distant memories, referred to obliquely as “the broken glass in the drugstore,” and “the broken glass in the big dining room” (3). She rushes down the halls of Columbia University; she is waiting too long for an elevator.

Suddenly, Sybil is standing on a snowy, narrow street, confused by the fact that she isn’t holding the zipper folder she thought she had just been holding. The elevator is gone. She can’t figure out where she is, or how she could have gotten so far so quickly, and begins to panic as she recognizes she is not in New York.

Sybil wanders the streets, trying to think of a way out. There are no buses, no taxis. She thinks to find a phone booth, to call her roommate, Teddy Eleanor Reeves, and then remembers that Teddy is out of town, visiting her family. She thinks to call Dr.