by Rena Mason
“Mrs. Troy?” A deep voice calls out.
I stand up. “Yes.”
“Come with me, please.”
His voice perfectly fits his features. He’s an older man in his fifties, with salt and pepper hair, longer sideburns. He looks like he’s lived a little on the rough side, a biker-type, maybe. Because he’s wearing navy blue scrubs, he reminds me of someone who is retired military.
“My name’s Dan and I’ll be your tech. How are you today, ma’am?”
Oh yeah, retired military for sure, and the USMC tattoo on his upper arm gave him away.
“Good. Thanks.”
“Have you ever had a CAT scan before?”
“No.”
“It’s nothing. No worries. What we’re going to do is go back to this room. There’ll be a monster in there that looks like a giant washing machine. You’re not claustrophobic are you?”
“What? No, I don’t think so.”
“Good. So, when we get there you’re going to lie down on this narrow table, and I’m going to be in the back of the room telling you not to move around.”
“That’s it?”
“No, I’m teasing you. If it were that easy they wouldn’t need me.” He turns around and smiles. If Dan’s trying to scare me, it’s working. “After I’m done asking you questions and filling out my paperwork, we’ll get started. We’re just doing head and sinus views, so you don’t have to go all the way in. The machine is going to move sometimes and make swish noises when it rotates. We’ll be done in thirty minutes.”
“Oh good, Betty told me an hour.”
“She just says that in case we’re busy and you have to wait.”
Well, Dan’s done his job as far as allaying my time crunch fears. I’m feeling much better about it now. The monster—and I’m sure that’s what he called it—does look a lot like a giant washing machine but with a long tongue sticking out of the hole. The tongue is actually a table that slides in and out. He has me lie down on it then rolls a stool over and sits next to me. The paperwork does not take much time at all, and when he’s done asking me a bunch of questions, he disappears behind a window. His commanding military voice comes through a speaker and tells me not to move my head around. Every time I hear a swoosh sound, the bell tones almost fade out completely. To help keep me still, I close my eyes and listen, pretend to know what they mean and communicate with them in my head. Over and over I tell them to, “Show me.”
* * *
After the CAT scan, I go back upstairs to Dr. Swanson’s office and hastily change my clothes in the small exam room. I grab my purse from under the cabinet and head for the front desk. Betty is telling me things, but all I hear are the tones and swooshes. She hands me a carbon copy of something that looks like a bill. I fold it then slip it into one of the side pockets of my purse.
“Thanks.” I look down at my watch. “I’m late to pick up my son.” She was still talking as I was leaving. I hope it wasn’t anything important.
Fortunately, the school is only two blocks from here, and there won’t be any traffic. The drop-off and pick-up swarm only lasts for fifteen minutes, and I’m a good hour and a half late. When I’ve cleared the third roundabout, I glance in the rearview mirror and get a look at myself. My make-up is smeared and my hair is completely disheveled. Angry again, I reach over and dig through my purse for my cell. It’s in my hand as I’m pulling through the driveway in front of the school’s main office. I’ve got a text from Jon. “Finished early. Got Patrick. See you at home. Love you.” Then it dawns on me. That’s what Betty was trying to tell me.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck me!” I pound the steering wheel with the phone. Then I realize there’s a tall man in a blue suit standing in front of the school, staring at me. It looks like Pastor Dean.
“Shit.”
I take a deep breath, toss my phone into my purse then look up at him and smile. Nice and calm, I put the car into drive and wave to him as I pull away from the curb.
* * *
Back at home we have a relatively quiet family dinner with light conversation. Jon eyes me every chance he gets. He knows something is wrong. He’s waiting for it. When Patrick goes upstairs and I hear his door close, I gather up the dinner dishes and give him another few minutes to get his video game headset on. Standing in front of the sink, I grab hold of the counter’s edge, take in a deep breath and arch my back like a cat about to pounce.
“Jon, what happened today, will never happen again.”
“What?”
“Don’t act naïve. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“You’re mad about the appointments? But you…”
“What appointments! I didn’t see a single doctor. Just test after test, tube after tube.”
“You promised.”
“I rescind.”
“You can’t.”
“I already have.”
He steps behind me and gently rests his chin on my shoulder while I rinse and clang the silverware against the dishes. “Please, don’t.” He puts his arms around me and pulls me back against him. “I don’t know how to explain it, it’s just important.”
“Nothing’s wrong with me, Jon.” The water on my hands drips all over me and the floor.
“I got the lab work results.”
“And?”
“Everything came back normal.”
“What about the CAT scan?”
“The radiologist called me. He didn’t find anything abnormal either.”
“Then why can’t you be satisfied with that?” My voice cracks, tears begin to well.
Jon tightens his hold. “Let’s wait and see what Dr. Swanson has to say. He’ll want to see you in his office.”
“Why do I still have to go if everything’s normal?”
“Let him examine you. It could simply be adult onset allergies.”
“But…”
“I need a definitive answer. If he doesn’t find anything, I’ll let it go.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah.”
“Then fine. After Dr. Swanson, I’m done.”
“So, do you need help finishing up, or can I go do some office work?” He releases me and steps back.
I continue washing the dishes in the sink. “Please. Go.”
“You’re not still mad at me, are you?”
“No, but I’m not real happy, either.”
“Well, I think I’ve got the cure for that.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
“No. Serious.”
I turn around and look at him. “What?”
“I’ll have to show you later.”
“I knew it.”
He winks and grins, then turns away and goes upstairs.
* * *
Jon is still in the office working while I lie in bed and wait for sleep or something like it. I didn’t take any Valium to try out my theory that it could be what’s causing the weird dreams and hallucinations. I also purposely skipped the relaxation and dream scripting exercises. Instead, I have my eyes closed, listening to the tones and concentrating. As much as I want to say that I’ve been ignoring them, every now and then, I hear parts that sound repetitive. It really is some epic symphony that begins again once it’s finished, playing over and over. There is something to it, and I have to figure it out.
The harder I focus, the more the tones become words I can understand, a type of broken English. Random words that speak out of thin air. Their intensity suddenly increases. I open my eyes and they stop. No more words. No tones. It’s dark, but the room is filled with an opaque fog, glowing from the moonlight. There’s a slight chill to it, my face feels cool. I also smell the cotton candy scent of Dr. Light. I open my mouth and let the fog curl in to settle on my tongue. There is an actual sugariness in the taste.
I push the covers down, but nothing’s there. My hands alone move through the dense, cool air. Blindly feeling out everything around me, I start to panic. My fingers don’t touch a thing, only emptiness.
“Jon?” Rainbow-rippled waves come out of my mouth, cut through the fog, then disappear.
I sit up in bed, but I actually bend over. I’m already standing, I think. There’s no sense of equilibrium. I slide my right foot forward. It feels solid underneath, but I can’t tell if I’m upside down, about to walk on the ceiling, or sideways. As my heart rate increases, a red glow pulses within the fog, keeping time with the beats. I close my eyes again and take in a deep breath. While exhaling slowly, I open my eyes and examine my surroundings again.
Images begin to take shape in blocks against the fog, forming a wall that looks like flatscreen televisions directly in front of me. So many different scenes come to life with movie clips flickering as they play, the way old projectors used to run reeled films. The pictures are still obscure, gradually coming into focus. I glance around and notice nothing familiar.
The others are here, too. I sense them and Dr. Light. Twenty-six shadows in a slow drift circumvent the fog, keeping just barely out of my full view.
Their words begin as tones again, and colored waves of neon light dance around me. “See,” they say in different voices.
It’s the movies they want me to examine. At last…it is something. I look up to the screens made out of the fog. How is that even possible? The scenes are diverse. There are a multitude of people, cultures, and places, in different time periods.
My eyes study one in particular. A scene with a woman, and I’m guessing her husband, and two children. The boy looks like he’s ten years old maybe and the girl around seven. They are outside, in a large backyard. Kelly green, the lawn is neatly manicured and surrounded by a short, white picket fence. The husband grills hot dogs and hamburgers, while the wife sets out a bowl of potato salad and a bottle of ketchup onto an old style picnic table—but it looks new, painted brick red. Like the kind you still see in public parks, except the wood is gray, weathered and splintering. The children are playing on one of those old, A-frame, metal swing sets with a slide. I’m pretty sure they stopped making those, too, because children were getting hurt. The whole thing would flip over when the kids would swing too high or something. It all looks real Dick and Jane, 1950’s or 60’s, I’m guessing. It doesn’t make any sense.
I look around for another scene, trying to hone in on something I might recognize. Suddenly, I’m captivated by an image in the upper left corner. I feel the twenty-six come in around me, closer. I don’t dare move my eyes away from the screen. In it, a drove of half-naked children draped in white linen run together through stone hallways chasing some sort of ball. Most of them have on gold bangles and anklets. One of the taller boys picks up the ball and runs toward a shallow, rectangular pool of water. A young girl chases after him. Their raucous laughter is loud and hauntingly familiar. They are the children from my daydream, laughing in the office. The same girl I followed down the halls under Dr. Light’s hypnosis—me.
“Are these all images of me?” The colored waves of my words slice through the television wall in laser beams.
“Yes,” I hear in tones that are intelligible to me now.
“It’s not possible.”
“You have lived all these lives.”
They drift in, even closer.
“See,” they say.
“No.” I keep my eyes forward and shake my head. They want me to look at them, but I can’t. I find another scene. It is the woman in Victorian England. Then in another, I see the woman in a Colonial church. Why always women? Women and children…families?
“What does it mean?”
They are almost upon me. So close! I’m cold again, frigid. The screens and images disappear. All around me, the fog has turned the deepest shade of blue. My heart pumps faster. A faint red glow skirts the outer edges of the fog. Every pulse of red—a heartbeat—a pounding drum in their symphony. Yes! My heart will save me. Wake me up before I SEE!
“Oh, no.” It’s too late. They have come through the fog. I see them! My god, their faces are melting like candle wax! Dripping people—heavy, wet shadows. They wrap their icy stinging appendages around me, pulling me down. I’m sinking fast with their weight, feeling heavier than lead. There is nothing I can do. It’s too hard, so cold. Maybe this is it, and I should let go. Then memories of Jon and Patrick fill my head, and I begin to flail wildly. I’m kicking up, swimming upwards—hungry for air, surrounded by water.
As everything goes black, I hear a faint whisper.
“Come back to us.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The cold heavy darkness does not let me go. I move around like a frog, struggling to get through dense algae. My arms and legs catch in the gooey strands, tiring my muscles.
Suddenly, Jon grabs my hand and pulls me out. “Stacy, wake up. You’ve wet the bed.”
“What?” Oh my God, it’s bright. I cover my eyes and blink until they adjust to the light. Then I realize I’ve been swimming in our bed, fighting sheets soaked with my own urine. “What happened?”
“You tell me. One minute I’m sound asleep then I feel a slap and a kick. I reach over, and you’re soaking wet. I thought it was another bloody nose, so I hit the lights.”
“This is disgusting. Sorry.”
“Was it a nightmare?”
“No. I must’ve been in a really deep sleep.”
“Well, at least you’re getting some. Go get cleaned up. I’ll change the sheets.”
“Thanks.” I peel the rest of the top sheet from my legs, then get out of bed and bolt to the bathroom. In the mirror, I look like a losing contestant from a wet T-shirt contest. Then the odor of pee wafts up, making me gag. I carefully roll the drenched nightshirt up my body and lift it over my head. Once it’s off and I have rinsed it in the sink, I spread it out across the edge of the bathtub to dry.
The hot water in the shower feels good. I close my eyes and see flashes of the nightmare. I quickly open them again, afraid of seeing anything else.
Jon barges into the bathroom carrying the sheets a full arm’s length away from his chest. He walks over to me in the shower and opens the door.
“Smell these,” he says, practically shoving them into my face.
I push them back. “Jon! They stink, I get it. Shut the door. It’s cold.”
“No. They’re not just foul. I noticed a familiar smell when I took them off the bed.”
“Gross. What?”
“Sugar.”
“Now, you’ve lost it. Stop sniffing the sheets and put them next to my shirt. I’ll wash them tomorrow.”
“Stacy, I’m being serious. I want you to go back to GenLabs for a urinalysis.”
“I’m too tired to argue.”
“Good. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before…you could have diabetes.”
“What?”
“Sugar in your urine is a sure sign that your body’s not breaking it down properly.”
“You’re wrong about this. I’m certain I don’t have diabetes.”
“A urinalysis would prove that.”
“Whatever.”
Finally, he closes the shower door. I have goose bumps all over, and my nipples are so hard, they ache. I turn up the water temperature and stand directly under the shower head. Thick steam fills the shower stall, reminding me of the sweet tasting fog from the nightmare. I quickly turn off the water then step out. After drying, I put on another nightshirt and crawl back into bed.
“Goodnight again,” Jon says. He leans over and kisses my cheek.
“Night. Thanks for fixing the bed.” I snuggle into my pillow and pull the covers. The sheets come all the way up, exposing my feet. “You didn’t tuck in the sheets?”
“It’s not going to be perfect.”
I kick the blankets over my toes. “Not a biggy.”
* * *
Morning comes too soon, and the coffee can’t come soon enough. Jon must have woken up late then rushed off to work. Funny though, I didn’t hear him, and he always wakes me up. Maybe the whole bedwetting thing really threw him of
f schedule.
I get dressed then head downstairs with my nightshirt rolled into the damp sheets. Jon meets me at the landing.
“I was just coming up with your coffee.”
“I thought you left already.”
“Without a kiss?”
He’s right. He always kisses me goodbye, even if I’m still asleep in bed. Sixteen years of marriage, and he has never once forgotten.
He steps up and pushes his lips against mine, then quickly backs off. “Phew, that stinks! Don’t forget to go to GenLabs today. I’ll call them on my way to work.” He turns around and walks back down with me two steps behind him. “I’m going to try and get a hold of Terry Swanson again, too. I’m pretty sure he sees patients on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and this Thursday’s out, because of Thanksgiving. Maybe he can work you in. Keep your cell close.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Where do you want me to put your coffee?”
“Just set it on the kitchen counter. I’ll get it after I start the laundry. I don’t want Patrick to know. And please—don’t say anything to him.”
“I won’t. But I think he’d get a kick out of it that mom wet the bed.”
“No. He wouldn’t.”
He looks at me when we get to the kitchen, and I snarl at him on my way to the laundry room. He puts the coffee cup on the counter then follows me down the hall.
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell.” He pulls open the hatch door of the washing machine for me.
“I know.” I turn my head and look at him.
He smirks then turns around to leave.
“Wait, Jon, I almost forgot.”
He stops in the doorway. “What now?”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“Sorry dear, what is it?”
“Cally invited us to go to Chopsteaks tonight. They have VIP table reservations.”
“Excellent. What time?”
“Seven.”
“I’ll be done. You up for it?”
“Yeah.”
“Then we should go.”
“I’ll confirm.”
