Deprivation

by Roy Freirich

  Sure, but who cares now? Sam remembers the man’s prissy, patronizing moue, his shifty eye contact, the cheesy titles of his lectures. A vain spinner of his own image, adept at the intrigue of departmental politics.

  Sam tries for a measured cadence, as if to casually steer the conversation back: “Kids around here have made a game of it. Maybe elsewhere, too, I don’t know. Whoever tweets every quarter hour the longest wins.” It sounds so utterly harmless, from a bygone, innocent time of short-sheeting and prank phone calls.

  “Symptomatic, I’d say, of the same ongoing hyper-arousal. Too many choices, distractions, self-images defined by the constant mirror of connectivity . . .”

  Sam tries to steer them away from what sounds like Hale’s next pop-psych magazine pitch. “Sure, but, so, in terms of the acute situation here, and treating the increase in patients presenting with insomnia?”

  Hale refuses to understand, and grunts, exasperated. “Well, certainly you prescribe on an individual case by case basis—”

  “—Understood, yes, I have been, and sleeping medications have been efficacious—” Should he tell him he’s run out, and is now treating with placebos? No, Hale might find it too questionable, and possibly alert someone, and once word got out, they’d have no chance to work. The old joke comes to him, naturally enough: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re wrong. “But I’m not sure that’s getting ahead of the problem.”

  Hale circles back. Or is this the first time he’s asked? “But—epidemiology, environmental toxicology?”

  “No, tests came back negative for pathogens or toxins. That’s why I’m certain this is some form of hysteria.”

  “Have you tried CDC? They’ve investigated those situations in the past, albeit reluctantly.”

  Sam sighs inaudibly. “Sure, they need a little more to be convinced that it’s not EPA’s problem.”

  “Way of the world. So it shall ever be. And absent any other sign of somatic illness or proven connections to these murder-suicides you describe, horrific as they sound, neither agency would consider it their purview.”

  It’s true, but also a convenient way for Hale to ingratiate himself and encourage confidences—by suggesting CDC and EPA or any other medical authority wouldn’t first rebuff Sam over his spotty history, which now, slyly, predictably, becomes subtext: “But how are you feeling, Sam? To have discovered these deaths . . . first on scene—”

  “I see plenty of connection between them. These people were just desperate for unconsciousness. The oven mitts and eye masks, the blacked-out windows, all crude attempts at sensory deprivation, until they had no other way—”

  “It’s a theory, certainly . . .”

  A pause here, a masterfully timed caesura, and then Hale’s tone modulates into one almost kind, even concerned, as he gently presses, “But, Sam, forgive me? How long since you’ve slept?”

  Sam lets out a long, slow breath. It’s a tightrope—too forceful a reply can sound defensive, but he needs to pre-empt Hale’s suspicions firmly and quickly. “Of course, you’re right to ask. I’m not trying to be argumentative or resistant, okay? But—”

  “—you’ve had sleep problems of your own, since you lost that client and became one of mine. You know the list with extreme deprivation: from impaired judgment to waking dreams, nobody’s immune . . . issues can surface. I’m hearing some of yours—guilt, Sam—over the student, and now this family—”

  “Right, but having said all that, I’ve had plenty of sleep.” The truth won’t serve anybody here.

  Sam rubs his temple, widening his eyes, feeling the onset of a deeper headache. He sees again the grainy, jerky haggard face of the Boy’s mom, and imagines the last walk to the deserted beach, hand in hand. Night’s last hour, probably, darkness just beginning to pale.

  “Sam?” Hale’s voice yanks him back, oddly melodious. “How many prescriptions would you say you’ve written?”

  Sam shakes his head, gripping the phone, torn. Will it help to hear it? “Maybe forty, a little more.” Obviously, it’s a fraction of the number of people experiencing symptoms.

  “Forty . . .” Hale has to repeat it, of course, like a slow student moving their lips when they read. “You have professional nursing staff there with you? In the clinic?”

  That prick. No way to persuade him now. Blundering on: “I’m going to have to ask you. I am asking you. You have more touch with CDC. Call them and corroborate what’s happening here?”

  For a moment there’s nothing but the sound of the rain, the edge of a squall lashing the boat, the frantic beating on the deck over his head. And then Sam hears it, faintly, but unmistakably over the line: the faint clickety click of rapid typing.

  “Well, here’s what I suggest, Sam.” Hale adopts a soothing tone. “It’s late, and no one can get out there tonight in this weather to investigate. If things haven’t improved by tomorrow, I’ll come myself for a look. But meanwhile, why don’t you try and get some rest?”

  Sam stands, turns left, right, trapped into begging. “Why not make the choice now? Support me in this?”

  Hale feigns a good-humored chuckle. “Support you? You want a life coach, Sam. A motivational quack. With better hair and teeth.”

  Wary, Sam listens for another beat, to nothing.

  Hale clinches it: “How many did you say, again? Prescriptions?”

  Sam shakes his head in disbelief and disgust, at himself, at Hale. It’s the job, too, that turns professionals into bad listeners, often weighing affect over intention, context over content, subtext over statement. The denotational undervalued. How infuriating for a patient, finally.

  But the idea blooms, beautiful. How easy will this be, after all? Just go along to get along: “They’re in on it. You, too. Listening now, every thought, everyone’s. Please, no, it’s okay.” He pauses, dropping his voice to a vicious whisper of accusation. “You. You let this happen,” he adds for good measure, hopefully just enough to present a credible imitation of spiraling, paranoid ideation. It could work, given Hale’s ego and a showy opportunity to play the hero.

  “Sam?”

  Sam clicks off, exhaling.

  A thought makes him almost laugh: he’s not sleepless at all, but dreaming, even now, of sleeplessness. Why not, since his dreams too often have brought him the bloodstained, torn face of Gabriel? He turns in place in the dim cabin of his boat, as if turning away from it all now, again, but still he sees the dark narrow hallway to that open doorway, the massive blue shoulders of the cop, his eyes black and glaring with gleeful fury, stepping aside and gesturing like a maître d’: “this way, Doctor.” It’s the money, always, they hate his money and his degree, and why shouldn’t they? In that room, beyond the half-open door, lay the end result of it all.

  14

  Chief has pulled the Jeep over down the beach from his house, lights off, buffeted by the storm, to slouch in his seat while his little cell screen gives him the everyday world he needs so badly to see—multi-colored, peppy web pages of scandals and sports scores, celebrities and Washington gridlock. His eyes leak fat treacly tears at it all, so blithely innocent and utterly normal, and suddenly he imagines Linda’s voice, almost hears it, jaded as only a twenty-year-old’s can be, melodic, wry.

  He wipes the wetness from his face and FaceTimes her, adding a little distance to the screen, taking a slow breath to steady his hand.

  “Dad?” Her voice crackles through, the screen bursts into light, a tilted jerking image, shadowy legs and feet, a crowd of them, glimpsed before the rectangle rights itself into a window on a Manhattan street. Linda’s face fills the little frame suddenly, with the sound of hooting, cars honking, the blazing trail of a streetlight or headlight. Behind her, other faces crowd in, indistinct, bobbing, turning one way and then the other, awed as if surrounded by a world never before seen and wondrous to behold, though all Chief can see is more of the s
ame. A shout goes up, indecipherable, with shrieks of delight, incredulous laughter.

  He wipes his face again and puts up an absurd, ghastly smile, his voice a croak: “Baby?”

  “Can’t see you, Dad, too dark! Too hot to sleep! ’s crazy! Everybody’s out! Whoa—what?” Her face drops from the frame and returns again, as if she has bent and straightened, the broad planes of her face working, her eyes gleaming slits as laughter bursts from her.

  “What’s—” The image blasts into gushing black and white pixilated picture static, like a TV tuned to nothing, and then Linda flickers back on again, time-sliced, stop-motion-style, turning sideways with a hand half-lifted as if to point. But the snow appears again, hissing now, oddly high-pitched, shrill as feedback.

  “Hello?” He grips the cell in both hands now, shouting into it, inches from his face. He yanks it away, speed dials again, frantically shoving his index finger into the screen, again, again, to hear only the sad triple tone of a dropped network signal. He lets out a sob of frustration and shoulders out of the Jeep to stand facing seaward, unseeing, lost.

  A wave leaps and spills, spray windblown in the rain. Chief shuts his eyes and lifts his face to the maelstrom, as if when he opens them again, it will be on the brightest, most ordinary day imaginable.

  The tumult of darkness shifts, scrims of white shallows roiling over his soaked shoes. Yards out, just beyond the head-high walls of waves, a dark oval bobs, a thinner shape lifted above, waving—a hand?

  “Chief! Hey—!” The sound of this voice is a weakness behind his knees, a prickly chill crawling up his arms and neck. He leans forward, into the wind, eyes straining to see no one now, even as a second cry sounds from the pall off to his left, another voice, unforgotten after all:

  “Chief, don’t leave us!”

  Another calls out, half-sobbing with fear, from off to his right, “Hey, no!”

  He moves into the wash, thigh-high, the force of it rocking him, peering out into the empty violence of the storm. At the dark shapes of drowning men, too many to be saved, too many to be drowning, too many to be there at all.

  Another arm swings upward from the maelstrom, in heavy soaked white cloth flapping, a uniform.

  Another voice rises and fails, from farther out, unreachable, unreal: “Please! You can’t! Don’t! Don’t shut it!” Stolen by the din of another wave.

  What voice now, what cry, what glimpsed faces from another life hover fleetingly in the blustery chop to disappear? Andy, ensign from Chicago. Doug, a warrant. Dan, Pete, Steve, engine room guys, heavy ordinance spec. Heroes as surely as if they chose it. Gone then, irretrievably, irrevocably, gone now.

  Chief presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, fingers clutching his forehead as he sinks to his knees on the wet sand. A blast of rain turns his face sideways; a shrill wail like a child’s rises from his throat, hovering, tremulous, before it subsides.

  −−−

  He enters the house quietly, leaving his soaked shoes by the door, dreading the kindly, trusting eyes of his wife, the undeserved welcoming warmth of home, the late dinner prepped and waiting, table still set. If only it were so.

  But every house light is on, and in the center of the living room, Jan is on all fours—sponges duct taped to her knees for padding, scrubbing the hardwood planks where she has rolled back the big faux-Turkish rug from Ikea. Bottles of bleach and cleaning supplies surround her; when she lifts her gaze to his, her look is glazed, and then oddly defiant, half-hidden beneath a thin veil of listless hair.

  “Mildew somewhere. I can smell it. I’ve already gone over the kitchen floor, but now I wonder if it isn’t the coat closet, though maybe the baseboards along the other wall, or the sub-floor, even though I’m not sure it makes sense to pull up the floor until things dry out a bit, when we can really track it down, like we did last time with that mold starting up in the laundry room—we don’t want that again—how awful was that?”

  He nods as if it’s all completely understandable, as if they haven’t drifted on this tide of unendurable wakefulness to utterly separate, foreign shores. He blinks away the sudden wetness in his eyes as he moves to her and gently urges her up.

  “It’s okay.”

  She smiles curiously, in dim surprise as he brings her close, swaying a little.

  “It’s okay,” he repeats, lamely. Why did he not ask Sam for a dose for her? Self-loathing hollows his stomach, tightens his throat. Is he up to the task? Any task?

  “I’ll be right up.” She pulls back, and he nods again, as if all were well.

  He moves on, and all he has strength for are these careful silent steps to the worn sofa and plaid throw in his study, to lower himself down, turn his face to the wall, and find a spot of painted drywall to stare at with unblinking eyes while the echoes of this endless day and dread of the next assail him.

  15

  There is nowhere else for Cort to lie to face this darkness, to listen to the rain pouring as if it will never stop, but in her bed in her little room, alone. Even the dimness hurts her eyes, which she can’t close, not without seeing the face of the sad, manic woman on that little TV screen, not without wondering if she could have saved her from herself—played a game with her boy in their bungalow while she took an hour’s beach walk and maybe found a better way to look at her life.

  Tay doesn’t text, hasn’t texted, which means what she’s most afraid of is true, of course, and always was, that he only wanted what all boys want, only her stupid lameness wouldn’t let her admit it, like all the slut girls, and Cort’s sorry now that she ever judged them, ever smirked or rolled her eyes at a story in the hallway or lunchroom—though now there is a lady who is gone, not just a boy bragging to his idiot posse.

  There is a lady gone. Did her choices disappear, until she did too? Did she have no husband or boyfriend or mother of her own? Did she trick herself, going out too far past the break, pretending not to know she would never make it back?

  In her hand, her cell’s screen brightens with more game tweets, her notification center updating more and more often. She scrolls idly, with a sharp little inhalation to find “Tayser10003” among the players, like clockwork, his tweets now just punctuation marks, as if brevity has become part of the contest, too.

  She should send him a funny text to let him know she’s cool anyway, no biggie. A wink smilicon, dumb, or a link to a Funny Or Die. But which girl is that, anyway, prideless, chasing? The one okay with getting used and laughed at?

  A blast of rain spatters her window, and she looks up at the drops running, edged in yellow from the porchlight. She finds her own face reflected there, loveless and unloved—the face of a girl she doesn’t want to be—cheekbones too broad and flat, eyes too close together, hair dull and limp from a crooked hairline she hates—tiny coarse hairs she has tried to trim with cuticle scissors.

  But what can save her from her deeper ugliness, which maybe killed a woman and made a little boy an orphan, which he probably is, or where was his dad anyway? Missing dads are dead dads, to anyone that cares—dead in any way that matters.

  The world’s hold on her loosens. Mom’s voice, always angry or filled with her own sadness, and Tay’s voice rough and laughing, sleepy-sexy, fading now; her ex-friends’ voices also are memories, but of shrill accusing. Fainter.

  Loosening. Rain farther away, the room slowly turns as if she’s spun in place and flopped down on this bed that softens as she settles more deeply, as the night itself seems to loosen beneath her and let her through.

  Downward now, floating pleasantly, while in the dark vague drifting blotches of color begin to form, behind her eyes almost becoming identifiable shapes, when dreams begin.

  Finally free, slowly falling.

  Wait—the fear finds her and already her hand has reached out so she won’t fall alone into more aloneness, and her eyes snap open again and she’s gripping her cell.

>   She thumbs it awake, bringing it to her face, her own small light in the darkness, to bring up her feed. She swipes away sweaty hair to read the last #sleepless43 tweet from usernames she knows. Another of the other girls out at the swank end of the island, in borrowed beachfronts, Cami Melvine’s already complaining:

  I quit yesterday so why am I still here. so sick of it. dreaming awake did I write this already or think just about it or am I doing it now

  Kimi Gardner, too, staying near Pine Haven:

  I give up but it won’t give me up. Ha ha. im crying.

  Chris Kasten urges everyone on with smug enthusiasm:

  48 sucks – but 52!!! can fly - xray vision - immune to pain

  New usernames appear, at first it seems like a few, friends of friends discovering the game and tweeting with the hashtag, but when Cort presses “more” at the bottom an entire page comes up, and she scrolls that downward, too, revealing what must be hundreds now, from everywhere, it must be:

  !!!I’m so in!!!!!

  brought to you by Jolt

  36!

  Yaaaay

  From Madison, whose only talent is snarky whining:

  I don’t feel good I need to stop

  Cort stares at these flat, witless words, dimly alarmed; she tucks hair behind an ear, bends closer, sniffling. She flicks to Messaging and types quickly:

  Mad you ok???

  The light of the little rectangle of her screen seems to dim and brighten, dim and brighten, like something alive and breathing the darkness of her room, but there’s no reply from Madison, who would not ever have signed out or turned off or even left her cell for a second.