Before I Wake

by Robert J. Wiersema

I angled down, headfirst, toward the surf and rocks below me.

  I’m sorry, Sherry.

  The black water looked like asphalt after rain.

  I’m sorry…

  Without warning, I was wrenched backward. The wind caught in my shirt, my hair. It felt as if a hand had grasped my shoulder and pulled me back toward the cliff. I landed heavily on my side on the wet grass. The force of the impact left me breathless, and I struggled to sit up.

  “What the hell…?”

  The beacon light flashed, and the shadows of the trees danced in the wind, but there was no one else there. No one else who could have pulled me to safety.

  I was completely alone.

  But I could feel the pressure of the hand, of the fingers, on my shoulder. By morning I’d be bruised, the handprint clearly visible on my pale skin.

  SIMON

  Dr. McKinley summoned a night nurse from the station down the corridor to witness Sherry’s death. Once she was in the room, he closed the door. The sound of the medical equipment was overwhelming.

  “Mr. Barrett, could you please make your request one more time?”

  I cleared my throat. “Knowing that the damage to her…Knowing that there is no chance that my daughter will ever wake up, I would like you to remove her from the life support equipment.”

  The doctor glanced at the nurse to make sure that she had heard. When she nodded, he turned to Karen. “Mrs. Barrett?”

  She had moved to the head of the bed and was tracing her fingers along Sherry’s face. Tears were running steadily down her cheeks, and she was biting her lower lip.

  “Mrs. Barrett?” he asked again.

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said, stepping forward and reaching for the control panel.

  His fingers had just touched it when Karen whispered, “Wait.”

  Everyone in the room turned to her.

  “I can’t do this. I can’t just watch this.” There was no longer any pretense of control: her face was flushed bright red, eyes swollen almost shut with tears.

  “Do you mean you don’t want to—”

  “Help me,” she said to me. “Help me turn her over.”

  I moved to help her clear away the tubes and wires so she could reach under them to roll Sherry onto her right side. “She always sleeps on her side,” she explained tearfully.

  “I know,” I answered, shaking as I held the wires and tubes away from my daughter’s body like a veil.

  Karen slipped her hands under Sherry’s neck and hips and turned her on her side. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the doctor lay a restraining hand on the nurse’s arm as she started forward.

  Karen carefully arranged Sherry’s legs, drawing them upward slightly, curling her like a comma, smoothing back her hair again and whispering, “I love you, baby,” into her ear.

  I hoped she could hear.

  I hoped she couldn’t.

  I was about to lower the weight of tubes and wires, the weight of my daughter’s life, when Karen touched my arm. She had kicked off her shoes. Instead I raised them a little higher as she lowered the rail and slipped into the narrow bed with our daughter.

  I draped my burden over both of them. Karen nestled herself around Sherry’s tiny, still body, cradling her, and buried her face in the soft, bed-pressed hair below the edge of the bandages. Her body was racked with silent sobs.

  I rested my hand on Karen’s shoulder more for my own good than hers and looked across the bed at the doctor.

  Our eyes met, and I nodded just once.

  He stepped to the machine and, with the touch of one finger, turned it off.

  KAREN

  She was so small, so light, it was like she wasn’t even there. Like I was holding, trying to hold, a handful of rain.

  I could feel her breath, the steady rise and fall of it under my hand, the steady warmth of her…

  Thou shalt not grow cold

  The smell of her, her shampoo…

  May God bless and keep you always

  Her breath…

  I whispered in her ear, where only she could hear me…

  Now I lay me down to sleep

  A breath.

  And then nothing.

  I pray the Lord my soul to keep

  I heard her saying it along with me, felt her arms around my neck as I kissed her good night, pulling the covers up to her chin.

  Felt her chest stop rising in mid-breath.

  And if I die before I wake

  Felt the soft rain of her heartbeat under my hand stop, like a passing summer storm.

  I pray the Lord my soul to take

  Nothing.

  It was as if I could actually feel the life pass out of her, a motion of breath, of wings, an actual physical presence I wanted to catch.

  If only…

  Was she cold? Already?

  It seemed so soon…

  Too soon…

  I tightened my arms around her, pulling her to me, trying to pull her back inside me, where I could protect her, where I could keep her warm and safe.

  I would not let her go.

  I would not let her go.

  I would like to start again.

  I wanted that moment back, the moment that the truck pulled her away from me, the moment that I let her go…

  In my arms, her chest fell, and I could hear the breath, her last breath, escaping from her.

  Could I catch it?

  No.

  Just let it go.

  May angels guide you

  And then her chest rose. There was a wheeze as she breathed against the pressure of the machine, against the tubes in her mouth and nose.

  I could feel her heart.

  Beating.

  Beating again?

  Another breath.

  And then choking…

  Choking…

  SIMON

  The silence of the room was broken as Karen arched upright on the bed, screaming, “She’s choking! She’s choking!”

  I leaned in, whispering, “It’s all right. Just let her go—”

  “She’s choking!”

  And from the corner of my eye I could see motion on the heart rate monitor. “Holy…”

  The doctor had seen it too. “She’s got a pulse. Janet, we have a pulse. Let’s get those tubes out.”

  I pulled Karen off the bed as the nurse and the doctor stepped in, turning Sherry onto her back, swiftly removing the tubes from her mouth and nose.

  As her airway cleared, she coughed and sputtered. “Let’s turn her back onto her side,” the doctor said. “In case she vomits.”

  As they turned her, she coughed again, a small pool forming on the pillow under her mouth and nose. The nurse cleared it away.

  The heart rate monitor was still beeping out its rhythm. The doctor hastily pulled on his stethoscope and pressed it between her shoulder blades where her back was exposed. He listened for several seconds, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He changed position and listened again.

  As he straightened up, the nurse asked, “Doctor, what?” She couldn’t even form the question.

  He waved her silent, glancing at us across the bed, huddled together, shocked and confused, unable to take our eyes from our daughter.

  Using the digital thermometer, he took Sherry’s temperature from her inner ear. He shook his head as he stared at the readout. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, but everyone in the room could hear him.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.” He was too shaken to be anything but completely honest. “Spontaneous respiration has resumed. And when I listen to her breathing, I don’t hear any fluid in her lungs. It’s like the pneumonia is…gone. I’ll schedule some tests.”

  For a moment, we looked at one another. Then all our eyes turned to rest on the small form on the bed, curled into the fetal position, looking for all the world as if she were only sleeping.

  Halfway d
own the corridor, the stranger watched as nurses ran into the little girl’s room. Seconds later, the elevator doors slid open, disgorging more doctors and nurses, all rushing into the room. Then in twos and threes they came out into the hall. Most of them were half-smiling, half-confused, not sure about what they had just witnessed.

  The stranger knew.

  One nurse, young, pious, the chain of her crucifix visible at the neck of her uniform, was in tears.

  As he drew on his coat, he heard her say, “It’s a miracle.”

  A miracle. Yes.

  The stranger turned away.

  It had begun.

  November 1996

  KAREN

  Some mornings everything seemed normal.

  I would lie in bed, letting myself wake slowly from dreams I could not remember, the house silent around me, the bed warm. I would pull on comfortable clothes—jogging pants or Simon’s flannel pajama bottoms. I’d splash cool water on my face. In the hallway, I would pause outside the closed door to Sherry’s room, straining to hear any sign of waking within.

  It was only as I walked past the doorway to the living room that reality would reassert itself. Where once Simon and I had sat with friends, laughing and drinking wine, now the furniture was pushed against the walls, the couch and coffee table crammed into the corner, Simon’s chair tucked almost into the closet. The room where we used to sit around the Christmas tree was dominated by a hospital bed and the mixed smells of antiseptic cleanliness and the thick, cloying cut flowers that failed to conceal it.

  Sherry lay motionless on the bed, the covers tight around her.

  Seeing her lying there, on those mornings when I had been fortunate enough to forget, would almost kill me. I had to force myself to breathe.

  I wanted to mess up the bed, to make it seem as if she had stirred during the night, to hold on to the hope that she was only sleeping, that at any moment she might open her eyes, sit up and wonder why I was crying.

  But she hadn’t moved the night before, or the night before that. She hadn’t moved since Simon and I brought her home from the hospital.

  And she didn’t stir as I touched her forehead with the cool back of my hand, checking her temperature.

  “Hello, Princess,” I said. “It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day outside. A little cold though. Mr. Squirrel will be putting on his winter coat…”

  On the windowsill I had placed the three stones she had asked me to carry on our walk to the shopping center that morning.

  “No more than three,” I said.

  “Four?” she asked, smiling at me, testing her limits.

  “How about none?”

  She stuck her tongue out, then spent several minutes carefully choosing three stones from a gravel driveway.

  For a moment, as I pulled back the curtains, spilling sunlight into the room, I almost expected to turn around and see her looking up at me, shifting groggily and burrowing more deeply into her blankets.

  I knew she wouldn’t, but that moment, as the light fell across her, that second of possibility, was the last vestige of a normal life that remained.

  HENRY

  At first I tried to take care of myself. I looked for somewhere to sleep and to eat, somewhere warm where I could rest. I tried the Mustard Seed, the Salvation Army, the Upper Room, anywhere with a crowd of men gathered on the sidewalk outside—the sort of men who are used to looking up at people as they walk past without making eye contact.

  Everywhere I went it was the same: I would line up for a bed and no one would see me. The man behind me would get a bunk as the volunteer passed me by. When I lined up for food, the servers in their hairnets didn’t offer me anything.

  I tried to speak, but nobody heard me. Even screaming got no reaction.

  Those first few days, I screamed a lot.

  So I stopped going to the shelters, and soon I made another discovery. Even when I found a place to lie down, in an alley or a park, I didn’t sleep. I would close my eyes, feeling the tiredness in my muscles and the coldness in my bones, but I couldn’t drift off. I ached with hunger, but I couldn’t eat. Any food I scavenged from the Dumpsters behind restaurants or corner grocery stores sat like cardboard on my tongue. Eventually the hunger disappeared, and I stopped noticing that I was tired.

  And I discovered soon enough that I wasn’t being ignored: I really wasn’t seen. I could stand directly in someone’s path, and they would only veer around me, no recognition in their eyes.

  It was like I had disappeared.

  Not eating, not sleeping, not seen, I had nothing to do but walk. Along the shoreline, on the cliffs high above the surf, the cold wind in my hair, blowing through my thin clothes. I barely felt it. Along crowded downtown sidewalks, through shopping malls, bars, churches. I could feel people as they brushed against me, hear their voices, smell their perfume, their breath, their hair, their skin. They shuddered sometimes when I passed, like a chill had come over them, but they never saw me.

  For the first few weeks, I kept coming back to the hospital. I would wait for Mrs. Barrett to step out, for the doctor to disappear, and I would sneak in to stand beside Sherilyn’s bed. I knew I had watched another child sleeping, but I couldn’t remember who. A brother, maybe? Did I have a brother? I didn’t know anymore. Everything from my life before the accident had disappeared. Nothing seemed to exist for me before I watched Sherilyn float away, before that night on the cliff.

  I kept walking. It was like I was looking for something, but I wasn’t sure what it was, or how I would know when I found it.

  SIMON

  The shower turned off on the other side of the bedroom wall. Even with my eyes closed, I knew that the curtains were open, the room bright with morning. I nestled deeper under the covers.

  Half-asleep, I was only vaguely aware of the bathroom door opening. Then there was a new weight on the bed, the shifting of covers, a radiating warmth alongside me.

  I groaned a little and rolled onto my back.

  “Are you awake?”

  She slid her leg over mine, damp and hot.

  I moaned this time, as she ran her fingers over my bare chest, across my stomach, gently wrapping them around my penis, which thickened at her touch.

  “You’re awake,” she whispered.

  “You’re awake too.”

  “Here,” she said breathily, sliding atop me. “Here.” Using her hand she guided me inside herself, hot and wet. Raised herself up, settled herself atop me.

  Any last remnants of sleep were burned away. “Oh God, Mary. You’re gonna kill me.” And I opened my eyes to this vision in the sunlight, her head thrown back as her body moved on top of me, the Inner Harbour behind her through the tall glass.

  RUTH PAGE

  Mrs. Barrett always had a pot of tea waiting for me when I arrived at the house in the morning.

  I would let myself in with my key, hang up my coat in the hall closet and then check on Sherry. I noted her temperature, pulse and blood pressure—anything significant—on her chart before joining Mrs. Barrett in the kitchen.

  The first few days she had offered me coffee, and seemed quite puzzled when I said no, thank you. Then I explained about my ulcer. The next day she had a cup of tea ready for me, the bag dropped directly into a coffee mug. The tea was almost as black as the coffee she was drinking herself.

  I thanked her, keeping a smile on my face.

  The next day when I got there, she had set a proper teacup and teapot on the kitchen table, with the tea bag on the edge of the saucer and the kettle on the boil.

  She wasn’t sleeping very much after they brought Sherry home from the hospital, and it was worse after her husband left. When she had coffee with me each morning, I couldn’t help but notice the dark circles bruiselike around her eyes. Already slim, she’d lost weight, and her hair had turned brittle and dry. Her hands shook as she cradled the mug.

  “Are you all right?” I asked her one morning. “Are you sleeping enough?”

  She
shrugged ungracefully and took a sip from her coffee. “It’s hard. I know she’s fine through the night, but I still wake up every two hours. I have to check on her.”

  “Would it be better if we arranged for a night nurse? It’s not helping Sherry for you not to sleep.”

  She set her mug on the table, then sat for quite a long time just staring at it.

  The friend in me wanted to reach out to take her hand, while the nurse in me knew I should sit back and let her work through what she needed to work through.

  “No. No, it’s not that. It’s…I keep seeing the accident,” she said quietly. “I lie awake and it just…plays. Like a song you can’t get out of your head.”

  I nodded.

  “Simon was like that with cases. Even when he’d win a big one, he’d spend weeks afterward focusing on what he should have said, the things he missed”—she took a sip—“It doesn’t help that all of a sudden I’m alone with all this.”

  Leaning forward, I curled my fingers around her hand, meeting her eyes and holding them with my own.

  HENRY

  I got to know the city in a way that most people never get a chance to. Some mornings I would hang out at the Inner Harbour, watching tourists as they stepped off the ferries or floatplanes. I’d see some of them again over the next day or two, shopping downtown or walking through Beacon Hill Park or along the waterfront, taking the whale-watching tours out to the San Juan Islands.

  I got to know people without ever meeting them. The businessmen and the people who worked in the stores all had their own routines. They went to the bank at this time, had lunch at that time, at this table. The students up at the university, the bankers on Douglas, the homeless people under the Johnson Street Bridge—I saw all of them, and none of them saw me.

  I started going to the library every morning to check the paper, to see if there was any news about Sherry. I would sit at the same table every day, reading that morning’s Sentinel.

  A few days after the accident, there had been an update. Sherry’s condition was “stable,” but they said she was in a coma. There was a picture of Sherry and her parents in front of a Christmas tree, dressed up, smiling and happy. For a while, there were updates on the search for the driver of the truck that had hit Sherry, who seemed to have just disappeared.