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Liandra woke in a hospital room. She found her parents standing together to her left, with concerned and teary eyes. To her right was her doctor, some guy she didn’t recognize. He looked at her not as a person, but as something to inspect. His eyes searched her up and down, and seemed to rest on her hands, which were moving without her permission. She was trembling all over. She looked out the window and saw a gloomy, overcast city.
“Hello, everyone, nice weather, eh?” Liandra said weakly.
Even she knew her attempt at humor had failed. Her father smiled at her anyhow, probably out of pity. Her mother just looked gravely concerned. The quiet persisted so she tried again.
“This isn’t my bed.”
The doctor finally looked at her, the person, and spoke up.
“No, this is an uncomfortably hard contraption of plastic, metal, and probably newspaper clippings or cement blocks,” he said. “This is not the contraption you want to wake up on.”
She smiled at the doc. The gray-haired old timer had a pleasant manner about him, but a stern, stubbled face.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
She looked at him and tried to assess herself. She didn’t want to stay here, but she definitely didn’t feel healthy. Her body felt wrong in about ten different ways. She knew she had to stay.
“I feel dreadful and I can’t stop shaking,” she admitted.
He slowly nodded his head.
“Your parents told me that you’re having trouble sleeping.”
“Yes, I have nightly night terrors.”
“And they’re severe enough to wake you up regularly?”
Liandra nodded.
“How much sleep did you get yesterday?”
She opted for honesty.
“An hour and a half when I got home from school. None the previous night.”
The doctor leaned in closely and inspected her eyes, opening them wide one at a time with one of his gloved hands. No doubt what he found were the same dark rings she saw every morning. He then took her hand in his and held it for a while to seemingly take note of her trembling.
“Ninety minutes, eh? And none the previous night. What about the day before?”
“An hour and a half when I got home and none that night.”
“These ninety-minute intervals, are you purposely trying to avoid REM sleep?”
She thought to feign ignorance on the subject, but figured this doctor was too clever for it. She figured he’d already surmised his answer.
“Yes, to avoid the night terrors and the sickness that they bring.”
“You get sick every time?”
“Yes.”
“Well, avoiding sleep isn’t helping, since you’re sick now. Your body needs sleep to heal. Lack of sleep can seriously impair its function, and continuous deficiencies can lead to a complete bodily shutdown. You’re painfully close to that threshold, and these things aren’t helping any.”
He pulled a pill bottle from his coat pocket and shook it in front of her face. It looked like her dexies.
“You keep taking these like you are, and avoiding sleep, and you won’t live long, mark my words.”
Liandra blankly gazed at the thin bed sheet covering her and shivered.
“After I give you a proper examination, I want you to stay here a few hours on bed rest. You’ll eat something and catch up on all the sleep you’ve missed. We won’t keep you beyond that, but I want you to promise your parents that once you’re home you’ll take better care of yourself.”
Liandra looked at her parents.
“I will.”
The doctor’s expression briefly softened, then went right back to stern again when he shook the dexie pill bottle.
“And no more of these.”
He tossed the bottle in the trash.
******
She woke up to her father talking with the doctor. She heard the doctor trying to explain places that could help her deal with her night terrors, but her father repeatedly told him that it was a method they’d already tried. After a while the doctor gave up and her father looked defeated. She finally chimed in to ask her mother what time it was, and her mother replied that it was after 3pm. She’d slept for over eight straight hours, not counting the slumber she’d got when she first arrived. It was one of her few lucky slumbers when she had no dreams whatsoever, and although she was still very tired, she now felt a certain weightiness had been lifted from her.
The doctor checked her one more time and smiled when he noticed her trembling had subsided.
“See, a little sleep works wonderfully. Now you’re good to go. You need to drink plenty more fluids when you get home. Stay hydrated and well rested.”
“Okay, sir—er ... I never caught your name,” she said.
“I’m Dr. Echison.”
“Thank you for everything, Dr. Echison.”
“Alright, Liandra, it’s been a pleasure. Same to you, Mr. and Mrs. Keyrouz.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” her mother said.
“Thanks,” her dad said with a curt nod.
******
Mr. Keyrouz drove through the busy Bayswater streets with the patience of a surgeon. They were caught in the late afternoon bustle of parents picking up schoolchildren, and professionals commuting from work. Mrs. Keyrouz broke the long stretch of silence.
“You slept so peacefully today, my dove. Did you actually have a pleasant dream?”
“No, Mum, I didn’t dream of anything. It’s rare, but that sometimes happens. It’s good luck.”
She saw her father frown in the rearview mirror.
“I wish Dr. Echison had some better recommendations for us,” he said. “I’ve tapped all my contacts and we’re no closer to fixing this problem.”
There was undeniable frustration in her his voice.
“It’s okay, Dad. I think it’s time I learned to live with this. It’s just a part of me now.”
By his silence she figured he was unconvinced, but eventually he did speak up.
“An old colleague of mine—really a college buddy—recently told me of a man he knew that was treated for extreme hallucinations and the worst case of night terrors he had known. The man’s story sounded so similar to yours that I couldn’t help but pry. He was treated by some unknown dream interpreter, a guy with questionable methodology. I couldn’t find much on him, but from what I found out he’s an odd one for sure. He works out of hotel rooms and his apartment. The skills he’s listed seem more like mysticism than any modern practical science, but he claims his practice is purely of the mind. We psychologists have used dream interpretations for decades, but this guy doesn’t use the same methods.
“The man with the night terrors was reported to have returned to a normal life after a year of this dream reader’s unorthodox therapy. My buddy helped me track down some of the information detailing his progressive improvement. The man’s therapist reported an improvement in the length of his sleep cycles and his alertness during their daytime sessions. My buddy told me that his physical health had greatly improved as well.”
Mrs. Keyrouz’s brows knitted as she chimed in.
“This all sounds like conjecture to me,” she said. “Some big magnificent rumor.”
“I thought so too until I saw the data on this man,” her father said in a tone she’d never heard from him. “I have yet to meet him though. I got the reports through a student at the university who had written a detailed dissertation on this. I read through it all, even all her citations. All the data from this man’s treatment by this unknown dream interpreter points to a full gradual diminishment of his night terrors. It’s all highly fantastical, but very true.”
“I don’t know, honey. It still seems farfetched considering that none of these professionals have had the right solutions. I can’t see how a weird dream interpreter would know better than they would, or even you. You already know dream interpretation.”
“From all accounts, not like this man.”
“Mum’s right, Dad. It makes no sense to waste any more money on some crackpot. He’s not likely to get as far as any of the others. Let’s not waste any more money on this. I’ll just deal with it.”
Her father relented.
“Okay, you both win. We’ll just continue with the sleep therapy for now.”
The rest of the ride was quiet, but she could see the focused look in her father’s eyes.
