Before She Sleeps

by Bina Shah

  Now Julien asked himself: what else could he have done? The procedure he’d performed on Sabine was a complete success, medically speaking. But as he listened to Sabine talk in the dark, he recalled Bouthain’s work and wondered what he could do about the trauma of her experiences. Her mother’s suicide, her father’s indifference, her life in the Panah, the assault at the hands of an unknown monster. All stacked one on top of the other; if one were touched, all would fall and shatter the woman who contained them.

  During the night Sabine shifted and turned in the bed, away from him, toward him, pressing against him until he was squeezed to the edge, pulling away from him so that he felt cold when their bodies separated even by an inch. Julien told her a little bit about his childhood and family, his days in school. He couldn’t explain his intense loneliness, his furious drive to succeed. He couldn’t tell her that he was unable to trust the boys he’d grown up with. How there was always a wall between him and other people.

  She said very little, but she put her arms around him and squeezed, and he lay there, breathless and stunned. The points of pleasure electrified by her proximity weren’t located in his body, but in his mind, and by morning, he’d come to believe, in his heart.

  Alternating between waves of contentment and anxiety, Julien riffled through plans like a pack of cards, shuffling and turning up the same dog-eared ones in the same order and combination. He was risking his life, and others’ lives, in helping Sabine. Yet he couldn’t just abandon her the way the man who’d dumped her at the hospital had done. So now what: Hide her here for another few days until she was strong enough to walk out on her own? Send a message for her to the Panah for them to come and collect her? Or wait for the Agency to find out about them and arrest all of them for their crimes? By saving her, had he sentenced himself and his colleagues to certain death?

  Julien pressed his thumbs between his eyebrows to release the knot of tension in his forehead. Then he leaned back into her warmth again and tried to shut out all thought from his mind until the predawn light began to filter into the room. But his mind drifted back to earlier in the day, when Mañalac had caught him in the corridor as Julien was on his way to his rounds. “Wait, Doctor Julien, wait. That test you asked me for, I have the results.”

  “From toxicology? And?”

  “It came back positive. An experimental drug. Ebriatas. We don’t have it in the database. I had to check it with the Science Bureau. That’s why it took me so long to get the results.”

  “What does it do?”

  “Works like Midazolam used to, before they discontinued it,” whispered Mañalac. “Treats insomnia without as much disorientation or nausea. Anterograde amnesia is common. But one more thing: it causes all sorts of problems with pregnancies—miscarriages—especially in combination with all the fertility drugs the women are taking. That’s why they haven’t released it on the market as yet.”

  After Mañalac delivered this information, Julien had tried to understand how Sabine had gotten her hands on an experimental drug that even he, a doctor, hadn’t heard of. Could it have have caused the ectopic pregnancy? It certainly explained her amnesia. He’d have to bring it up delicately with her; she would be reluctant to confess to using illegal drugs. She must have been truly desperate, going to such lengths to find the sleep that eluded her.

  He’d tried giving Sabine a synthetic morphine to knock her out in the night, but it had no effect. That was when she told him how she’d lie quietly in her bed for hours, trying to fall asleep, her mind racing and becoming more and more anxious about the coming daylight. Only the anesthesia she’d had during the procedure had kept her under, and he couldn’t exactly dose her with it just to help her sleep. Julien wondered if Sabine might be suffering from a form of hypervigilance—a symptom Bouthain had said he’d seen in traumatized patients, especially the ones who had returned from war. Sabine hadn’t seen any heavy combat on the battlefield, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t fought her wars.

  Julien decided to try a simple relaxation exercise on her: he told her to count her breaths. “It’s a natural tranquilizer. It relaxes the whole nervous system. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.”

  At five in the morning, Sabine was finally lying silently beside him, breathing evenly. Julien’s device began to glow orange, rousing him in time for early morning rounds in the main ward. He raised his head from the bed, then levered his body into a sitting position, his long legs easily reaching the floor. He sat there for a few moments, blinking in the morning light. He was light-headed, but it didn’t matter. Having spent the night beside this woman, he felt rejuvenated, ready to face whatever the day would bring him.

  He turned to look at her over his shoulder. “Sabine?” There was a frisson when he said her name, a feeling of expansion in his chest.

  She stirred and opened her eyes, red and strained with dryness and lack of sleep. He wanted to give her drops to soothe the dryness; he wanted to stroke each eyelid with his fingertips to relieve her pain. “I have to go now. I’ll send someone with something to eat in an hour. His name is Ram: he’s a surgical assistant. He helped me during your procedure.”

  It would be better to protect everyone’s identities, so that later, when questioned—and that time would come, Julien knew Shifana and Green City too well to pretend it wouldn’t—they wouldn’t be able to incriminate themselves, or each other, to the Agency. Yet Sabine needed to know there was a family of a sort, a temporary one, that she could trust in, here in the hospital. Ram, and Mañalac and George, in those heated hours in the operating theater, had become her surrogate kin.

  “When will you be back?” Sabine’s voice was low and papery. The morning light was having the opposite effect on her that it did on Julien: she shrank into the bed, smaller and more gaunt than she had looked the day before.

  “On my break,” replied Julien. “Around eleven.” He was already worried how many times he could steal away from his duties and come to see her on this unfinished floor, worried that sooner or later someone was going to notice his absence.

  She raised herself up on one elbow, propping her head in her hand. “You should go. I’ll be fine.” The tired corners of her mouth lifted in a small smile that brought an unexpected calm into his heart. His nerves, tight as wires, suddenly relaxed. “Come back as soon as you can.”

  Walking down the corridor, Julien considered his next move. Sabine should be safe for at least today, but Green City Security made routine sweeps of the hospital every week. There were unannounced inspections during times of heightened conflict with the border insurgents, but the administrators refused to let Security just barge into sensitive areas and treatment rooms whenever they wanted. Because of this, tension always simmered between Security and the hospital administration. But Security might demand to inspect the unfinished floors, claiming that since there were no patients there, prior warning was unnecessary.

  “Hello, Julien.”

  Julien froze in the middle of the corridor. His heart kicked like a mule in his chest and a wave of cold sweat broke out across his back.

  The stranger’s voice was unknown, yet familiar. There were shadows on the man’s face, but Julien could still make out his size, his height, the well-developed muscles underneath his jacket. The faint smell of cigars and leather surrounded him like a mist.

  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Who are you?” said Julien.

  “My name is Reuben Faro. I don’t think you remember me.”

  It came back to him in an instant: the large fleshy man who bent down to put the medal around his neck. That man had been fatherly, jovial, offering a smile for the cameras that bathed everyone in protection and warmth. This was a different person looming in the shadows. Gone was the avuncular pride; menace emanated from every pore of his body.

  Then another piece of the puzzle suddenly dropped into place. “Reuben Faro?” Julien
gasped. “You’re married to Julia—I mean, Sabine?”

  Reuben Faro let out a short sharp laugh. “Not quite.”

  “I don’t understand. Your name was on her records.”

  “A placeholder of a sort. Nobody’s ever going to see those records once this is over.”

  “What do you mean, ‘over’?”

  “Oh, Julien. Dr. Asfour? No, I think Julien suits our relationship better. We aren’t doctor and patient, so I don’t have to go by hospital conventions. I’m sorry for keeping you in the dark. But this is a complicated situation.” Faro swept his arm around in a wide circle.

  Julien wondered if there were more of them coming: Agents, Officers, Security waiting with weapons, restraints, and chemicals. “I’m the one who decides what’s complicated here, Mr. Faro.”

  Faro’s hand landed on Julien’s arm in a tight grip just above the elbow. “You make the decisions between life and death for one person at a time, Julien. I’m in charge of who lives and dies on a much bigger scale. I don’t think you’d want my job.”

  Faro marched Julien to the elevator, then pushed him inside. He waved his hand against the display and brought up a colored administrative panel that Julien had never seen before. Faro tapped in a short code. The elevator moved up halfway between two floors, and stopped with a judder.

  Faro smiled at Julien. “Isn’t this better? We can talk privately now. Man-to-man.”

  Julien kept his voice calm and low. “Open these doors immediately and let me go.”

  Faro leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “I’ve actually been following you, Julien, since I came to your graduation all those years ago. When the time was right, maybe a year from now, maybe in five years, I would have come to you and asked if you’d wanted to join us. We’re always looking out for leaders, for people with potential. But it seems your chance has come sooner than expected. If you help me, I can make big things happen very quickly for you.”

  Faro’s presence was so imposing that Julien almost felt a lack of oxygen in the elevator; he didn’t want to look at the man but Faro’s eyes followed him everywhere, like an optical illusion. The wrinkles were cut deep into the older man’s forehead and cheeks.

  “Now listen to me carefully, Julien. I want you to answer my questions. It’ll go better for you, I promise. How is Sabine? Can she stand? Can she walk? Is she well enough to leave here?”

  “I’m not required to tell you anything about her.”

  Faro spun Julien around until he was pressed against the back wall of the elevator. Faro’s left arm, sturdy as a ship’s mast, pressed down between Julien’s shoulders and neck, his fist bunched against Julien’s lower spine, applying a subtle pressure that could turn into disabling pain with one short, sharp punch. Julien was younger and taller than Faro, but he possessed none of the oaken strength of Faro’s body, nor his edge of violence.

  “Look, you have Sabine. Nobody else is going to find out; I’ll make sure of that. But I want her ready to be moved in the next four hours, and then I’m taking her.”

  “Taking her where?” Julien gasped, twisting his head around to look at Faro out of the corner of his eyes. The pressure in his head made him feel his eyes might burst. Faro could easily snap his neck and leave him dead there in the elevator.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “You’ve made it my business! When you dumped her here and left her in my care, you made her my business!”

  Faro suddenly released Julien from the bind and took a step back. “You’re right. My apologies. But I still can’t tell you anything more than what you already know.”

  Julien turned around slowly, coughing. “Are you going to take her back to the Panah?” he managed, between wheezes. Faro did a double take, and it pleased Julien, beneath the pain, to wrong-foot the man.

  “She told you about the Panah, did she? Did she tell you about Lin Serfati?”

  Julien watched him warily, wondering why the man was bringing up Lin’s name. “I know about the Panah,” he said cautiously, not wanting to reveal anything to Faro. “It’s where she wants to go. Back home.”

  “She’ll be dealt with appropriately. You’ve done your job. Let me do mine.”

  “You’re willing to eliminate a woman?” Julien leapt to what seemed like the most logical conclusion.

  “I wouldn’t be, but the authorities would, if they found out about her. Now you know how serious this really is. I’m the only one who can protect her from them.”

  Julien knew that Sabine was of equal value to both of them, though for vastly different reasons. For both of them to fight over her went against every rule in Green City: women were to be valued, respected, shared, never the source of conflict between men. Men were, after all, the protectors and guardians of Green City’s most precious resource. They had been noble enough to make the sacrifice of sharing wives: they must not belittle themselves by letting their jealousy or competition come to the surface.

  Julien straightened himself with difficulty, tried to inject as much strength into his voice as he could. “You are the authorities.”

  Faro’s voice was low-pitched and urgent now. “You really don’t understand, do you? She’s not a bag of groceries that I can just lift and haul from one place to another.”

  The colorful panel started to flash a silent alarm. In a few minutes the main system would summon Security to investigate. Julien pointed silently at the panel. Faro turned around and glanced at it, puzzled.

  “Oh,” Faro said, “I forgot about that. You see? I can’t make everything go according to my wishes. Not all the time, anyway.”

  “Then you’re not as powerful as you’d like to think,” said Julien.

  “Power’s an illusion,” said Faro sadly, before he waved his hand in front of the panel. As the doors slid open, he turned back to Julien, his confidence and authority back in place, as if the mask had never cracked. “Four hours. Then I’m coming for her. A word of advice: don’t risk your career for her sake. She’s not worth it. Nobody is.” Faro brought his lips very close to Julien’s ear. “But if you try to stop me, you’ll share her fate. You’ll leave me no choice, Julien. As much as I like you, I’ll have to eliminate you as well.”

  Lin

  Was there news of a missing Wife on the Info Bulletin? Has any other Client mentioned Sabine? Has anyone acted strangely in any other way?”

  Lin’s eyes raked one woman’s face, then the next, looking for answers. They were all silent and frightened. Only Rupa had color in her cheeks, her bright eyes and the high pitch of her voice betraying her excitement at being the one to deliver the bad news.

  “Nothing at all? Fine.” Lin turned on her heel with the precision of a soldier and walked to her room in measured steps, calling out behind her, “I don’t want to be disturbed.” She was in no mood to stay and reassure them. She would not participate in a public show of fear, even if she was more terrified than the rest of them.

  She locked the door, then sat down at her desk and typed out a desperate message to Reuben: “Any news of bird?” They’d always made their messages as short and cryptic as possible, working out a mutual code that relied on innocuous symbols and images. She steeled herself, then sent the message.

  How could this catastrophe have happened? Lin paid exorbitant sums of money to certain Officers and Agents. She kept scrupulous tabs on Clients, tracking the details of their homes and offices, finding out about their finances, their vacations, their families. She’d vetted them all until her suspicions were allayed, because any link in the chain was an opportunity for betrayal. Whatever had happened to Sabine had to be because of an outside force, something entirely beyond her control. Every moment that passed by without word from Reuben felt like a noose tightening slowly around her neck. Her mind churned furiously, trying to imagine exactly what had happened to Sabine. Had she been captured? Kidnapped? Fal
len ill? Gotten lost?

  Then, the horrifying thought: had she betrayed them all by turning herself in? If Sabine had surrendered to the Agency, she would receive a lesser punishment if she surrendered information about the Panah.

  Lin thought back to the Info Bulletin they’d seen weeks ago, the Wife—Nurya Salem—found in a pool of her own blood. How had that slipped by the censors? The Bureau trotted out women regularly on the Networks: young, beautiful faces unlined with care or worry. Those winsome puppets testified to the happiness and success of their blended families, how well looked after they were, how they were treated like queens by their Husbands: breathless, saccharine testimonials to the perfection of life in Green City.

  Whoever had allowed the news of Nurya Salem’s suicide to go on air was sending a warning to every woman in Green City. The Agency must have instructed the censors to leave the news item uncut, so that everyone could see that there was no redress for anyone who resisted. Had Sabine been undone by their cunning?

  For hours Lin sat bathed in the eerie red-orange glow of the Moroccan lamp, the cutout designs on its four sides casting shadows like large flowers on the walls of her room, on the table and bed, moving and changing as the lamp turned above her head. The lamp etched tattoos of light on her skin and she looked down at them, wondering how it had all come to this.

  When Ilona died twenty years ago and Lin had taken over the Panah, she’d wanted to help the young women who were running away from horrible futures. They were brave; Lin met their courage with strength of her own. For twenty years she had performed her duties with a devotion bordering on obsession.