Before I Wake

by Robert J. Wiersema

  The first time I read that, I sank a little lower in my chair, peering carefully around to see if anyone was watching me. Nobody even knew I was there.

  The newspaper had talked with a woman named Arlene, and showed a picture of her in her apartment, not quite looking at the camera. I recognized her, but it was like I had once dreamt about her. The newspaper said that she lived with me, that we had two children. Sons. The same article mentioned that the police had contacted my parents, and asked for people to please keep their eyes open for me.

  Parents, children, a girlfriend. Why couldn’t I remember them?

  There wasn’t very much news for a while, just little things that I really had to look for. My insurance had agreed to pay out for the accident. Sherry went home with her parents. A picture of them at home, a nurse standing next to the family. Occasional updates on Sherry’s condition. A brief mention of marriage difficulties, then the news that Mr. Barrett had moved out in a “trial separation.” A short article about Sherry’s fourth birthday, with no change in her condition.

  After that, news about Sherry just faded away, replaced by the latest drug bust, the most recent pit-bull attack, a crackdown on panhandlers downtown.

  But I still went to the library every day and read the paper.

  SIMON

  I took the bus across the bridge to the house every morning.

  Mary drove me the first few times, letting me off down the block, kissing me good-bye and taking my briefcase with her to the office. But when she saw that my visits were going to be routine, she shook her head. “I can’t keep driving you there,” she said. “I know you need to see your daughter, but I can’t.”

  I made a point of arriving on the 7:56 bus, which dropped me across the street from the mall, near the crosswalk where the accident had happened. I used the few minutes’ walk to steel myself before going up our steps and ringing the doorbell. I had learned not to just let myself in; this was no longer my home.

  “Good morning, Ruth,” I said as the nurse opened the door.

  “Hello, Mr. Barrett.” She always smiled. I knew that I was likely not her favorite person in the world, but she never let it show. Always professional.

  “Your payments coming through on time? No problems there?” I asked about the insurance every so often, letting her know that I wasn’t the complete bastard that Karen and her friends believed I was.

  “Oh, yes. No problem. No problem at all.” She always made a point of leading me to the living room, as if I didn’t know my way or couldn’t be trusted on my own in the house.

  “How’s Sherry this morning?”

  “She’s doing well. We’re listening to some Mozart.”

  The curtains were open, the blinds up. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik played at a dominating volume.

  I leaned over the bed and kissed Sherry on the forehead, surprised to feel how warm she was under my lips.

  “Good morning, sweetheart,” I whispered. “Listening to Mozart this morning? Good for the brain.” I glanced up at Ruth as I settled myself into the chair next to the bed.

  “I’ll leave you be for a little while,” she said with something approaching a smile.

  Some mornings I would talk to Sherry about the weather or something from TV, or I’d tell her a story she used to like. If there wasn’t any music playing I would sing to her from my limited selection of lullabies and kids’ songs or the folk songs I used to play in university. Eventually, I would find myself just sitting, not saying a word, listening to the gentle in and out of her breath, unconsciously counting, only later noticing that I was doing so. I would listen to the familiar noises of the house around me, the sound of water in the pipes, the furnace, footsteps and distant voices.

  I would stroke her soft hair.

  KAREN

  After he had had a little private time with Sherry, I brought Simon coffee.

  I would probably have been better off to ignore him, to stay in the kitchen or my bedroom until he went off to work. But I wanted to be the bigger person.

  So I put on a happy face, stood ramrod straight in the kitchen and prepared myself for the meaningless pleasantries that should never come between a husband and wife.

  When I came in he was sitting in the chair alongside the bed, his hand resting on Sherry’s arm, just staring into the distance.

  “Coffee?” I asked, walking around the end of the bed so I wasn’t reaching across Sherry as I extended the mug toward him.

  He smiled a little. “Thanks.” He took the mug and held it on his lap. In the light from the window I would see that his hair was thinning. I wondered if that had started recently, or if I had just never noticed before.

  “How’s work?” I asked, sitting down on the couch, maintaining my distance.

  “It’s fine. Busy.”

  I nodded, wondering if he was still working as late as often as he used to, or if having Mary at home had solved that particular problem.

  “How’s Mary?” In my mind, the question was dripping with venom, but he only shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe I was asking.

  “She’s fine.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  He touched the side of the mug with the back of his hand to check its temperature and blew across the surface to keep from burning his mouth. He took a sip. “Do you need anything?” he asked, somehow managing to be flat and earnest in the same breath.

  My daughter.

  My husband.

  My family back.

  My life the way it was.

  I shook my head. “Nothing I can think of.”

  “You’ll—”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  He smiled. “Good. And Sherry’s…”

  In a coma.

  Gone.

  “No change.”

  “She seems a little warm to me.”

  “She always seems a little warm to you. The chart’s here if you want to check it.” I handed him the folder.

  He looked at the top sheet. “She seemed warmer,” he muttered.

  Setting the file down on the table, he glanced at his watch, took another swallow of coffee and stood up. “I should go,” he said, sweeping the front of his suit for imaginary crumbs.

  “Okay. Do you want me to call you a cab?”

  Wouldn’t you rather stay?

  He shook his head as he crossed the floor. “That’s all right. I’ll walk. I didn’t get a chance for a run this morning.”

  I tried unsuccessfully to stifle the picture that rose in my mind. “Say hello to Mary for me.” Bitchy, bitchy, bitchy.

  He looked at me for a long moment, then shook his head. “You’ve got a very strange sense of humor. I’ll be by after work.” He closed the door behind him.

  At the clicking of the lock, my strength left me in a great rush. If he knew how difficult his visits were I could accuse him of being incredibly cruel. As it stood, all I could accuse him of being was incredibly dense.

  SIMON

  Leaving the house—closing the door behind me, walking down the path and through the gate to the street—was the hardest thing I had ever done, and I did it twice every day, once before work and once after. I never looked back, worried I would see Karen watching me through one of the front windows, or maybe worried I wouldn’t.

  On the days I walked to work, I cut through Fernwood, taking the crow’s path downtown. The twenty-minute walk gave me time to consider things without interruption. And invariably, I found myself thinking about the same things.

  I had become a cliché—the older man who left his wife for a younger woman—but I certainly wasn’t going to use a midlife crisis as an excuse. I didn’t feel old, and Mary was certainly no ditzy trophy.

  I was keenly aware of how other people viewed the situation. My secretary, Sheila, no longer spoke to me—to either of us—with anything other than deliberately exaggerated professionalism. The associates never mentioned it, but I’m sure they spoke of it.

  Mary and I.

  S
trange how a single phrase could signal so many changes. A few months before I had been part of “Simon and Karen,” almost a single proper name. Husband, wife, father, mother, family.

  Mary brought me more joy than I had felt in a very long time. I felt young again, open to possibility, in a way I’d lost. No. In a way I hadn’t even noticed I had lost.

  It’s not like I just walked away from my family. I wanted to be there for Sherry. I needed to be there with her, and twice a day wasn’t really enough.

  I had called Karen the first Sunday night after I left, asking if I could visit Sherry on my way to work the next morning. I was careful to keep my voice as detached as I could manage. For a long time Karen didn’t say anything, then she answered, “I suppose I can’t stop you.”

  I hadn’t missed a day since.

  And Mary understood.

  HENRY

  I spent whole days in the library. After I finished reading the morning paper, I would check out other parts of the building. The library was two full floors. Large windows on one side looked out over a glass-covered courtyard. Inside, the carpet was a dark orange-brown, worn thin in places by foot traffic. The ceiling was low, with all the ventilation and heat pipes exposed and painted brown. I was amazed by how many books and magazines and files there were, the dusty, dry smell, the billions and billions of words. I couldn’t remember ever reading a book. I had no idea there were so many.

  What really amazed me, though, was all the people who came in, finding books and leaving, or finding a place to sit at one of the tables and lingering, reading for hours if they wanted. Kids did their homework, people looked things up, or planned trips, notebooks open, stacks of reference books on the tables in front of them.

  And then there were the others.

  At first I only noticed them because they seemed so out of place. Their clothes were ratty, their beards grown in, with dirty, untrimmed hair and skin the color of concrete on a sunny day. They would take a newspaper or magazine and sit at one of the tables, slowly reading their way through from front to back. They couldn’t have missed a single word. Their eyes were haunted.

  It got so I recognized some of them from day to day. They always sat in the same places, and slipped away when they were finished. They never disturbed anyone and no one ever disturbed them. No one even seemed to notice them.

  Just like me.

  One day I was standing beside someone at one of the paperback racks, watching him choose things to read. One of the covers caught my eye. The book was dark red, and seemed familiar somehow. I pulled it from the rack to look at it. The front and back cover both said The Catcher in the Rye in bright yellow letters.

  I held on to the book and wandered back to the chairs near the magazine section, settling myself in and starting to read. From the first line, it was like the writer was speaking directly to me. I followed the words with my finger as I read, laughing out loud in some places.

  The next time I looked up, the lights were dim. I set the book on the chair and walked toward the main desk. There was no one there.

  The library was closed. I had read the day away, and I was locked inside.

  RUTH

  It is always a delicate balance to work with families in crisis. I knew I had to be ever so careful not to become personally involved with the Barretts.

  Oh, who was I kidding?

  I had been personally involved from the moment I saw Sherry in that hospital bed. She looked just like she was sleeping, dressed in her pink nightshirt, head turned slightly to one side. I kept expecting her to give a little sigh and turn onto her side, suck her thumb or kick off the covers. But in the six months I had been coming, she had only moved when I moved her, for her exercises and her baths.

  Her world had changed around her, and she didn’t even realize it. Her father had left, moved in with his young girlfriend. Her mother cried in the kitchen when she was washing the dishes.

  Karen was a good woman. I really admired her. The way she cared for her daughter, read to her, changed her. Even something as small as my cup of tea every morning was a remarkable achievement under the circumstances. If Sherry had been my daughter, I don’t know what I would have done. Probably curled into a tiny ball and died.

  But Karen carried on. She didn’t have many friends, but she talked to her mother on the telephone regularly, and Jamie Keller from the newspaper came to the house to visit. Karen dealt with the newspaper and the television reporters well—she was never terse, but never too open when answering their questions either. Her life revolved around her daughter.

  There were times, though, when I would speak to her and she wouldn’t hear. I knew exactly where she had gone. She was reliving the accident, or the night in the hospital when Sherry should have died, but didn’t.

  I had heard that story from several people. A number of nurses I knew claimed to have been in the room when it happened. And Dr. McKinley himself told me he still didn’t honestly know why Sherry had survived.

  “I could show you the file,” he said. “I could show you the records from the machines. She was gone. There was no heartbeat, no respiration…” He shook his head.

  When he spoke about Sherry’s mother, his tone changed. “I couldn’t believe her, crawling into the bed like that. It broke my heart, her holding her daughter as she died. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”

  We have to be so careful to keep our distance.

  I have never hated anyone, but I imagine it would be easy to hate Mr. Barrett if you didn’t know him.

  But who among us can really understand why anyone else does the things they do? If we can’t understand, then how on earth can we judge them? “Walk a mile in their shoes,” as my mother used to say.

  I was working at the house the day Karen found out about Mary. There was no screaming, no hysterics. Instead, she seemed to shut down, to shut Simon out.

  He was apologizing, stuttering, trying to explain. She didn’t seem to hear a word he was saying. Finally, she asked him to leave. She was calm and cold. He packed some clothes into a suitcase and a garment bag, and he carried his computer under his arm out the door to wait for his girlfriend to pick him up in her little white Volkswagen convertible.

  He said good-bye to Sherry before he left. And he said good-bye to me.

  I didn’t expect to see him any too soon, but the following Monday, he made the first of his morning visits to the house.

  I worked with Sherry Monday through Friday, but there wasn’t really that much for me to do. When she first came home from the hospital, she had full-time care. I worked twelve hours each day, and other nurses came in at night and on the weekends. There was a physiotherapist every afternoon, and Dr. McKinley visited every couple of days.

  I think the idea was that the insurance on the driver of the truck would pay us, and then Karen would be able to go back to work at the paper when she was ready. But Karen wasn’t ready, and with Mr. Barrett and the insurance money taking care of the expenses she didn’t have to work.

  And then we realized that Sherry didn’t require that level of care. No one could explain why, but her condition didn’t deteriorate. The physiotherapist cut back his hours, to three times a week, then one, then not at all. None of the things we would normally be on the lookout for—from bedsores to muscle atrophy to infections—ever manifested. When Karen expressed an interest in taking a greater role in her daughter’s care, the night and weekend nurses were let go.

  I still performed my job scrupulously. I made sure that Sherry was turned regularly to prevent bedsores. I took her through her physiotherapy every day, bending her arms and legs, flexing her knees and elbows, rotating her wrists and shoulders to prevent her large muscle groups from atrophying. Every second day I gave her a full bath, carrying her into the tub and using the specially designed rack to immerse her. It was probably more often than was necessary, but the water all around her likely acted as a stimulant to her. It couldn’t hurt.

  On the other days, I
gave her a sponge bath, carefully washing between all ten toes and all ten fingers. Every day she got a clean nightie, and every second day I changed her bedding.

  I checked her thoroughly, monitoring the color of her urine and smell of her breath. I checked the feeding tube that snaked under the blankets and into her abdomen throughout the day. Karen usually took care of Sherry’s feeding, but I still checked.

  She was such a sweet little thing. You could tell, just by looking at her, that Sherry had been a happy one, the sort of child that lit up a room just by toddling into it. Even her motionless face spoke volumes about her—the way her lips naturally fell into a half-smile, as if she had a secret she was refusing to share.

  If I claimed to be uninvolved, I wouldn’t be fooling anyone.

  I had retired from hospital work because it was too easy for me to get swept up into people’s stories, caught up by the raw force of life and death struggling all around me. I had worked in pediatrics and it was always so difficult for me when it came time for the children to go home. Some of the parents wrote or called, usually only once, to say thank you and to give me a bit of an update. I needed more than that.

  Foolish old woman. I needed to be a part of their lives, needed to know that I had made a difference to a child, to the life of a family. And that couldn’t happen.

  I had forced myself to take early retirement. I did have legitimate medical grounds, and all my benefits came through without any problem. The arthritis that had messed up my hips had settled into my fingers so badly that it was becoming difficult for me to keep up with the demands of the ward.

  My fingers…

  “Barrett.”

  “Simon. John Richards.”

  “How are you, sergeant?”

  “Same as I ever was. Just older. You?”

  “Weathering the storm.”

  “Like an old sailor or an old building?”

  “Depends on who you ask. Do you have anything?”

  “I’m sorry, Simon—”

  “Come on, John. People don’t just disappear.”