“Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty,” says a bald, doughy man with a seventies porno ’stache.
“What’s shaking, Ralphie?” I ask. “Other than your belly.”
“Hey,” he replies, feigning offense. “I’ll have you know I’ve lost five pounds in the last four months, Sarah. ’Course, I’d gained twenty since you were in the clinic last.” Ralphie howls with laughter, and I giggle along with him; his joy is always infectious.
I met Ralphie at my first overnight observation at the Leigh-Erickson Center for Sleep Medicine when I was ten. Four months earlier, I had begun to exhibit strange nocturnal habits: screaming out in the middle of the night; kicking and punching anything near me (stuffed animal, concerned parent); falling out of bed at least three times a week; and even sleepwalking to another room and wreaking havoc on it.
My pediatrician and parents were clueless. My mother later confessed they were actually considering an exorcism when she came across an ad that spared me. A nearby university had just opened a sleep clinic and was looking for patients to study. My mother believed this to be the answer to our prayers. But when I entered the sterile room with cold white tiles and a springy cot in the corner, I knew it was the beginning of a nightmare.
“I’m going to fill out some paperwork just down the hall while Mr. Berger here gets you set up,” Mom had said that first night. “Everything will be fine.” Then she left me alone with a large, strange man whose thin, upturned mustache suggested I was about to be tied to a train track. He wheeled in a big computer with what looked like a million little wires connected to tiny suction cups. I opened my mouth to scream.
“Wait, wait,” said the mustachioed technician as he popped a few onto his own head and switched on the computer. “See? They don’t hurt a bit.” I watched closely as he adjusted knobs and fiddled with the keyboard. Then he sat on the bed next to me.
“I’m Ralphie,” he said and held out his hand to shake mine. I didn’t move. He smiled and asked, “How’s about I make you a deal, Miss Reyes? If I can’t keep you entertained with a story while I place these harmless little electrodes on you, you can scream as loud and as long as you want. Heck, I’ll even join you.”
I thought about this. “Tell me one for free, and then I’ll decide.”
“Ah, a smart customer,” Ralphie said. He agreed to my terms and began the most magical version of Sleeping Beauty I had ever heard. There were silly songs, limericks, and cameos by characters from other fairy tales, while animals and inanimate objects each spoke with a unique accent. By the time he finished, I was so enchanted that I agreed to the electrodes just so I could hear another story.
That night, hooked up to a collection of machines monitoring my brain, heart, muscles, eyes, and breath, I dreamt I was being chased down a beanstalk by one of Ralphie’s German-accented giants. I had stolen a silver-plated shield, and escape was a matter of life and death. The video monitoring my room recorded me as I stood up and unsheathed an imaginary sword. I hacked away at the corner of my bed as if it was the base of the beanstalk. The next day, I had sore knuckles and a diagnosis: REM sleep behavior disorder, or RBD as us cool kids call it.
As the doctor explained my diagnosis to my mother, Ralphie laid it out for me in a way that I could understand. “Most people’s bodies stay still when they’re sleeping,” he’d said. “They get a kind of paralysis when they dream. Not you. You can always move, and move you sure do, little lady. So whatever’s going on in your dream, you act out with your arms and legs, your whole body, even though you’re completely asleep. That’s why you were a slayer last night,” he added, trying to lighten the mood. Unfortunately, my mood was already way dark.
As Ralphie tells it, I was really quiet for a long time. Finally, I spoke. “I’d rather be Sleeping Beauty. Can we fix that?”
Though I roll my eyes whenever he tells the story, I’m always glad when Ralphie’s assigned as my tech.
“So they got you doing this Dexid trial?” he asks. He parts my hair and applies clear, goopy gel to my scalp before placing the electrodes on top. “Thought you just said no to drugs.”
“Let’s say it’s not a voluntary enrollment,” I offer diplomatically.
As Ralphie well knows, I’ve had a couple of bad experiences on prescribed medication, and my mother put the kibosh on anything that messed with my blood chemistry, to the disappointment of my doctors. For the past year, it’s been holistic therapies and nighttime restraints only.
“Who’d you try to kill?” Ralphie asks.
“Captain of my lacrosse team,” I reply.
Ralphie stops what he’s doing. I can’t tell if he’s more surprised by my answer or by the fact that his joke turned out to be right.
“Of course, in my dream, she was a wounded deer who I was trying to put out of its misery,” I add, as if this will lighten the moment.
A look of pitying empathy shoots across Ralphie’s face, but the pity is gone as quickly as it appears, and his jolly smile is once again restored. He snorts. “Bambi or Barbie—doesn’t make much difference. You’re still the villain.”
The door to my room swings open, and an orderly named Barry drops off a tray with a small pitcher of water and a pill in a paper cup. An older man, a patient I remember from past clinic visits, waits in the hall. When he sees me, he points and raises his eyebrows, as if to say, “You too?” I shrug and nod.
When the door closes and Ralphie and I are once again alone, I ask, “Mr. Houston’s in this trial? Isn’t he a sleepwalker?”
“They’re trying this drug on a bunch of different parasomnias,” Ralphie explains. “Sleepwalking, night terrors. Not just what you got. Though RBD is the mother lode.”
“Isn’t it always.” I sigh, allowing myself a nice self-indulgent exhale.
RBD is such a head trip. I’ve met grown men whose wives had left them because there was only so much of literally being kicked out of their beds these women could take. One guy I knew from an earlier clinic stay had to sleep with a helmet and babyproof the corners of every object in his apartment because he was prone to middle of the night ragers where he thrashed about like he was in a mosh pit. Another, who had a recurring dream about being a lion hunting with his pack, said he would circle his bed on all fours for over an hour before he’d finally pounce and tear the sheets with his hands and teeth. Not only was he completely worn out when he woke up, but there was little chance of getting past a first date with that.
Which is one of the most annoying things about my disorder. The disruption isn’t just nocturnal. It affects all the waking parts of your life too. Especially relationships.
As if reading my mind, Ralphie says, “Hey, how’s Prince Charming? You given him another chance yet?”
“He’s great,” I say, a bit too cheerily. Ralphie side-eyes me. I’m not getting let off the hook that easily. “Fine,” I concede. “Jamie and I are still just friends, but he’s mad at me. Thinks I’m being too hard on said Barbie for being an unforgiving shrew. Which is annoying, because he’s probably right. I am the one who tried to kill her after all.” I frown and look at my phone. “I should probably text him.”
Ralphie hands me the paper cup with a raisin-size pill in it.
“This is the Dexid?” I ask.
He nods. Dexidnipam is the latest non-FDA-approved drug the clinic is testing. In truth, I’ve been bugging my mother to let me try medication again for the past few months. Though she’s been adamantly against it, I guess when faced with either juvie or a patent-pending prescription, the latter doesn’t look quite so terrible anymore.
Still, I have butterflies in my stomach. As eager as I am to move beyond the hypnosis and chanting and Mom’s other homeopathic alternatives, I’m not a fool. There are always side effects, always risks. I stare at the little gold pill in the little white cup. Now or never.
“Down the rabbit hole,” I say, and I knock it back with a glass of water. “Anything I should expect?”
“With the Dexid?” Ralphie pets his moustache. “Just a really deep sleep. One patient mentioned vivid dreams. He’s having a recurring one about Grand Central. But that’s all I’ve heard.”
“So nothing to be worried about?” I ask with what I hope is cool nonchalance.
My tech smiles. “Want me to tell you a story before bed?”
I nod enthusiastically. Sure, I’m too old for stories, but even big girls sometimes need their security blankets. I snuggle onto the squeaky observation-room cot and pull the fraying, clinic-issued blanket over my chest. Ralphie fluffs the edges, keeping the blanket loose enough not to interfere with all the wires running off me. He sits beside me, and for a moment, I feel safe.
“Once upon a time,” he begins, “There was a girl named Sarah. And she had a magic cell phone. One day, the magic cell phone said Oy, mate—”
“The phone is Australian?” I interrupt.
“What if it is?” he asks.
“Nothing. I just don’t think of cell phones as Australian. American or Japanese, maybe. How about Norwegian? That could be—”
“Hey, who’s telling this story?”
I smile apologetically.
He waves me away but goes on. “If it makes you feel better, the phone was adopted by a nice Australian family. Just be quiet and let me do the accent, okay?”
I zip my lips closed and throw away the key.
“As I was saying, one day, the magic Australian cell phone said, Oy, mate. Text your prince g’day before he decides to put a shrimp on the Barbie.” Ralphie wiggles his eyebrows saucily, jack-hammering the dirty punch line of his awful joke. When I say nothing, he adds, “The end.”
“Seriously?” I ask. “That’s it?”
He nods.
“Ralphie, that was the worst story you’ve ever told,” I say with a huff.
“Sometimes, bad stories have good lessons,” he says. “At least the accent was all right. Besides, I gotta keep it brief. You’ll be amazed at how quickly the Dexid kicks in.” He does a final check of the machines and adds, “Just text the heartthrob. You’ll feel better once you do.”
Ralphie retreats from my room to the adjacent observation center where he’ll monitor me all night long. It’s a comfort knowing he’s there, even when I’m annoyed with him for giving me good advice that I don’t want to take. I stare at my phone, debating my next move.
“Trust me, kid,” Ralphie’s voice booms through an intercom. “The Dexid takes effect fast.”
“But I don’t feel remotely tired,” I reply to the air.
“You will. So text him now or don’t, but I’m making you turn off the phone in a minute.”
“Okay, okay,” I say as I give in.
Going to sleep now. Sorry about today, I text Jamie.
Good to hear from u, he replies immediately. Good luck and good dreams S. Sorry too.
I stare at his text, tears wetting my eyelashes. What’s wrong with me? Despite all the crap in my life, I know I’m lucky to have someone as kind and solid as Jamie to care about me, especially after I’ve broken his heart and am being a total ass. I’m not sure if I deserve him, even as a friend, but I know I’m thankful for him.
I lift my finger to text him back, but my hand suddenly feels too heavy. My eyelids droop, and my breathing slows. I try to say something to Ralphie, but my jaw melts into goo. I hear a distant, echoing thud as my cell phone slips from my hand, landing somewhere beside me on the bed. I fight to push my eyelids open, but my eyes are already rolling into the back of my head.
Everything
goes
black
…
and quiet
…
am I even breathing?
…
Then…
StingingWindFaceOnFire
FlutFlutFlutterExplodingEardrums
DryMouthCottonMouthSalivalessMouthChokingOnTheTasteOfNothingness
UNTIL
blink—A marble concourse.
blink—Gold lights.
blink—Stars in a green night sky.
blink—My eyes pop open, and I spring to my feet. I shake my body all over, relieved to have control of my limbs once more. I open my mouth to call for Ralphie but stop when my brain catches up to my eyes.
I am not in Kansas anymore.
Standing at the top of a huge marble staircase, I see an enormous concourse with people passing through it below me. Arched windows, at least sixty feet high, surround me. A mural on the ceiling, bedazzled with stars from the night sky, hovers above. Below is a four-sided clock atop a circular information booth, and everywhere I look is another shining gold chandelier.
Grand Central Terminal. I’ve been here before, but not like this. Everything has a warm, honey glow to it. Veins of buttery bronze snake through the white marble, which stretches well beyond the staircase, covering the entire terminal floor. The tiny crystals that make up the acorn-shaped chandeliers shimmer softly, and the whole scene has a timeless, sepia tone to it. The lines of the staircase, the clock, the windows, even the people, are soft without being dull, subtly blurred, like a picture shot through gauze.
A parade of commuters glides across the floor in a grid-like formation, too choreographed to be real. “This is a dream,” I say, and my body releases. My head grows heavy in my hand. Is it possible to fall asleep in a dream? Is this what the Dexid can offer? I breathe in, ready, finally, to rest. My eyelids are closing when I notice him.
He’s running fast, a figure moving against the wave of commuters. He pushes through the people with little regard, but they’re unfazed by the disruption and quickly resume course. The closer he gets, the more sharply he comes into focus. A jolt of energy surges through my body like a hit of caffeine, and I bolt upright.
Wes Nolan is coming right at me.
Bounding up the staircase, he leaps over a railing and lands at my feet. His green eyes are electric, sharp, awake. He is a techno beat raging against the three-quarter time of a waltz.
“Come with me,” he says, and he holds out his hand.
I take it, and we run.