The Anatomy of Dreams: A Novel

by Chloe Benjamin

  “You passed,” I said. “You were great. Now let’s get you under the covers.”

  With the setup complete, Gabe returned from the other room, which meant Keller had taken his place. Jamie lay on top of the bed’s white sheets and blanket, his limbs spread, as we tried to ease the covers over them.

  “I don’t want to,” he said.

  “Don’t want to?” asked Gabe. “Who ever heard of that? Not sleeping under the covers.”

  “I don’t want to do it,” Jamie said, more forcefully. His eyes shifted from Gabe to me.

  “You’ll get cold,” I said.

  “I won’t.”

  “It’s a cold building,” said Gabe. “Very cold down here in this building.”

  “I’m not cold.”

  Gabe glanced at me, then at the window separating Room 76 from Room 74.

  “All right,” he said. “Your choice. We’ll just have to put your belt on this way.”

  We started at the end of the bed. I eased the first strap from my side of the bed to Gabe’s, and he buckled it in.

  “What are those?” asked Jamie, moving his ankles beneath the lowest strap.

  “Seat belts,” said Gabe. “For the rocket ship.”

  “The rocket ship?”

  “Didn’t anybody tell you this bed is a rocket ship? That’s why it’s so big. And when you fall asleep, it blasts off.”

  Gabe was pushing it here, I thought. Even Jamie seemed dubious. But he was silent as we buckled each row of straps.

  “And here’s the last thing you need,” I said. “It’s a mask, with special lights inside so you can see the stars. Do you remember what to do, when you fall asleep and see stars?”

  “I move my eyes,” said Jamie.

  “Exactly,” I said. “Can you show me how?”

  He moved his eyes four times, horizontally: left-right, left-right.

  “Aren’t you good,” said Gabe.

  “When I see my hand in my dream,” mumbled Jamie, “I know I am dreaming.”

  He was sleepy now, his left hand unguarded. Up close, the skin was thick and marbled, pink-and-white fingers curling toward his palm. The hand looked so tender, so damaged, that I had the sudden urge to hold it in my own.

  “That’s right,” said Gabe. “But they feel real to you, don’t they?”

  The boy stared at Gabe, unmoving. I looked sharply across the bed at Gabe, then at the window between the rooms.

  “They’re dreams, though,” Gabe added. “Just dreams.”

  When I left the room and walked into 74, Keller was sitting stiffly before the window.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, closing the door behind me.

  “Likes to push the envelope, that one,” said Keller grimly, picking up a Styrofoam cup. “Coffee?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, taking a seat beside him. “Well—what kind?”

  “Half-caf. Here.”

  He took a thermos from the floor and poured its contents into another Styrofoam cup.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Keller nodded. He was in his fifties now, nine years older than he had been when I first arrived at Mills, but he didn’t look much different—he had the same pale skin, the same substantial nose and dark, full eyebrows. I had never seen him with any other facial hair, but he didn’t look gaunt. His features were robust and muscular, his skin lined with idle expressions: two permanent grooves between his brows, crow’s-feet raying out from each eye. His pupils were a striking, aquatic blue, almost cerulean, the irises lined in black. Our patients probably felt he looked severe, but I thought his dynamism also made him handsome.

  It wasn’t long before Jamie was asleep, Gabe sitting in the chair beside his bed. He flipped through the Isthmus, our local paper.

  “Must have been tuckered out,” said Keller, inching his chair closer to the window.

  We allowed Jamie to sleep through the first REM cycle. Eight minutes after the next cycle began, Gabe put the newspaper on the floor and gave us a thumbs-up. I triggered the light stimulus—eight flashes in two seconds, transmitted through the LEDs in Jamie’s sleep mask.

  We waited, Keller and I in Room 74 and Gabe in Room 76, still as he could make himself.

  There was no response. Keller tapped his Styrofoam cup on the table.

  “I’ll try again in two minutes,” I said.

  Gabe relaxed, though he leaned forward again when two minutes had passed. I triggered the light flashes again. Jamie stirred slightly, shaking his head, though he didn’t move his eyes.

  “He’s not lucid,” muttered Keller, leaning back in his chair.

  There was a brief murmur in the EEG. Jamie had moved his eyes to the left, then to the right.

  “Wait,” I said. “He might be.”

  Keller craned over the machine.

  “Only happened once,” he said. “It could be random. We can’t count it as an LR2 unless we get both movements.”

  “We’ll try at the next cycle,” I said. Gabe looked at the window and raised his eyebrows; then he left the room and came into 74.

  “How long do I have?” he asked.

  “About an hour, if his last cycle was any indication,” I said.

  “Right. I’ll be back in fifty minutes.”

  He left to retrieve his dinner from Keller’s office. Keller and I sat alone at the desk. In the other room, Jamie was serene, his chest filling and deflating. Keller and I sank into a comfortable silence, watching him as if in meditation. After a long stretch, Keller shifted in his chair and stretched backward, his back cracking.

  “Liking the new place?” he asked.

  “It’s not bad,” I said. “Sort of an empty neighborhood, but at least it’s quiet.”

  “Don’t you have a dog park around there?”

  “Brittingham. It’s pretty. Would be better if I had a dog.”

  “But you do,” said Keller. “That’s where you take Gabriel. Let him run around.”

  He laughed, and so did I.

  “What about you?” I asked. “Cottage Grove, right?”

  It was its own small village, close to the Dane County airport and Blackhawk Airfield. Keller had had us over for dinner when we joined him in Madison, back in August, but we hadn’t been back since; we saw him so frequently that sometimes it felt like we all lived together, here in the basement of the neuroscience building.

  “Oh, I can’t complain,” he said. “I have more space than I did in Fort Bragg. Almost as much space as there was in Snake Hollow.”

  “Gabe told me you sold it,” I said, though I hoped it wasn’t true.

  Keller nodded.

  “Lot of money to keep up a place like that.”

  “It must have been an ordeal to pack it all away.”

  “Mostly papers. I was lucky. Much easier to bring everything with you when your most precious possessions are two-dimensional.”

  “I suppose so.”

  My stomach gurgled. Unlike Gabe, I usually ate before we left for the lab, which had its disadvantages.

  “I never thought you’d sell that place,” I said.

  “I know.” Keller exhaled, cocking his head. “But we couldn’t have stayed there forever. And who would have lived in the house while we were here?”

  “Guests,” I said. “Guests could have lived there.”

  “Guests,” said Keller. “Nosing around in my library.”

  I shook my head, grinning. “Should I get Gabe?”

  “He’s back,” said Keller, nodding toward the window, as Gabe entered Room 76 and took his seat by Jamie’s bed.

  I watched the polysomnograph closely as Jamie entered his next REM cycle. After eight minutes, I triggered the LEDs.

  Keller leaned forward with his elbows on the desk. Ano
ther LR signal appeared on the EEG—just one movement again, left-right; we still needed a second one to count it as a sign of lucidity.

  “I’m telling you, he’s not lucid,” said Keller.

  “Hold on,” I said. “He’s trying.”

  There, in the next room, Jamie’s head was slowly rotating from left to right, as if charting the progress of a plane. He turned fully to one side, setting his ear down on the pillow, before going the other way again.

  “Well, it’s some kind of left-right signal,” I said.

  “Just not the one we’re looking for,” said Keller.

  “Wait a little longer. I think we may have something.”

  Jamie’s movements were speeding up. He turned his head from left to right more quickly now, and I stood over the EEG, convinced he was working up to an eye signal. But then he began to move faster, so fast his head was slapping at the pillow before bucking the other way, and his legs began to shake.

  “Adrian,” I said, “I think he’s seizing.”

  Such a lot of movement for a little body—Jamie’s legs strained at the straps, then his hips and arms, his breath rising in shallow bursts. Gabe was out of his chair now, standing next to the bed. Jamie had wriggled his burned arm out of the straps, and he scratched at Gabe’s face. The last two fingers barely grazed him, but Jamie’s pointer finger scraped Gabe’s eyelid.

  “He isn’t seizing,” said Keller, pushing back from the desk. “He’s trying to get out of the bed. Stay here. ”

  Keller strode out of the room and reemerged in Room 76, where he ran to the bed and took hold of Jamie’s head. I put on the headphones that hooked up to 76’s audio system just as a voice came through.

  “He said he sees her,” said Gabe to Keller. I could see his mouth moving, but the sound came through with a second’s delay.

  “I’m sure he does.” Keller was facing away from me, but I knew his voice. “Get ahold of his limbs.”

  “Some help would be nice,” Gabe said as Jamie snuck his left leg out from under the strap and sent a flexed-footed kick at Gabe’s neck.

  “I have to keep his head steady,” said Keller.

  I took the headphones off, ready to join them, but Keller looked at the window as if he could see through it.

  “Sylvie,” he said, “I need you there.”

  “Why?” I asked, though I knew it was pointless—he couldn’t hear me in the other room. I felt useless and sick, watching through the window as Jamie writhed and hollered—he was strong in the committed way that children are strong, using every muscle he could. But I stayed where I was, afraid to go against orders.

  “Ma!” yelled Jamie.

  The mask was still on his face; he reached for it with his left hand, but Gabe was too quick. He grabbed the arm and held it back down to the bed.

  “Sylvie, send the light stimulus,” said Keller, one hand at the top of Jamie’s head, the other at his chin. “Respond to him, Gabe. Try to calm him.”

  I triggered the LEDs, and Jamie’s body paused in notice.

  “Where?” asked Gabe. “Where do you see her?”

  “There are so many stars,” said Jamie, his body tensing.

  “That’s right,” said Gabe. “Do you remember what to do when you see stars?”

  “At the window,” said Jamie. “I see her.”

  Gabe looked at the window in Room 76, closed and barred as usual.

  “What’s she doing?” asked Gabe.

  “Climbing out,” said Jamie. “I lost her at the—supermarket.”

  The mask had fallen halfway off his face, dangling over one eye. The exposed eye was still closed.

  “At the supermarket?” Gabe asked, looking at Keller.

  “No,” said Jamie. “We were—riding—on the train—”

  The shaking began again, more violently than before, and Jamie screamed. His heart rate had skyrocketed, and the underarms of his pajamas were soaked in sweat. Keller strained to keep the boy’s head steady. He looked at the window between our rooms.

  “Sylvie,” he said, “we need a current. Send it through F3 and F4.”

  These were the electrodes attached to Jamie’s frontal lobe. I shook my head, though I knew he couldn’t see me. A current to the frontal lobe—this was an electrical shock, which would result in a real seizure, brief but shocking enough to wake Jamie up. I had been taught how to do it, but I’d never tried it on a patient.

  “Sylvie,” Keller barked, his teeth gritted. I stood over the machines. The paper from the analog polysomnograph moved to the left as the pen made delicate markings, writing the story of Jamie’s brain.

  “We need you to do it, Sylve,” said Gabe. He was holding Jamie’s ankles and looking at me in the way he so often did—with appeal so earnest it looked almost like love.

  When I sent the shock, Jamie stiffened in Gabe and Keller’s hands as if suspended. Then, almost imperceptibly, he tucked into himself: his shoulders rose as his stomach dropped, his back rounding beneath it. Keller took off the mask, and the boy’s body went limp. He was facing away from me, but on the video camera, I could see his eyes begin to open.

  It was barely ten. We called Rosemarie to take him home; the study had ended, so we couldn’t keep Jamie in the lab. While I put away the equipment in Room 74, Keller met them in the hall. It was impossible to tell how much Jamie remembered: he was woozy and confused, but he seemed to stare at the three of us with new distrust. He flinched, moving behind his grandmother, when Gabe tried to give him a pat on the head. Keller told Rosemarie we had been slightly premature: Jamie wasn’t ready; his lucidity skills would have to be worked on at home, and we could try again if he made progress. It wasn’t far from the truth—in fact, perhaps it was the truth exactly—but I still felt a long-dormant anger build inside me.

  “You’re welcome to come back in six months,” Keller said, his voice muffled by the door. Through the sliver at the bottom, I could see Rosemarie’s orthopedic shoes and Jamie’s Velcro sneakers, the red bars on his heels that lit up as he walked away.

  When I couldn’t hear their voices anymore, I rolled the cart into Room 76 to collect the electrodes. As I peeled off the white tape that had attached one of them to Jamie’s head, the electrode fell, hitting the floor with a metallic click.

  When I tried again, the same thing happened. I looked down at my hands. They shuddered in a way I had never seen before, my fingers stiff and bony as twigs. I closed and opened them, but the quavering didn’t stop—not until I leaned against the wall with my eyes closed, arms limp at my sides, and breathed as slowly as I could.

  By the time I walked into Keller’s office, half an hour had passed. I expected them to ask what had taken me so long, but Keller sat at his desk, finishing the summary report as usual. Gabe was on the floor, eating the last of his sandwich.

  “Come back in six months?” I asked.

  My voice was quiet, but I’d gotten their attention. Keller turned around in his chair, the wheels squealing on the floor.

  “Is that a problem?” he asked.

  “We just saw how damaged he is,” I said. “We watched him try to claw his way out of bed, we shocked him—and now we’re just going to send him home?”

  I felt short of breath; I had never spoken to Keller this way before. I suppose I was worried he’d fire me. But a part of me knew that would be impossible for him, and that’s where I found my nerve.

  “Sylvie,” said Keller, “the procedure tonight was no different than it is on any other night.”

  “But on the other nights we were using adults. Teenagers, even.”

  “We don’t use them,” said Keller. “We accept them as participants.”

  I inhaled sharply, sucking in my mistake.

  “We were accepting adults,” I said. “Not children. Jamie’s so vulnerable—his dreams are horrific. And we’re going to le
ave him like that?”

  Keller looked at me closely, his hands crossed in his lap.

  “Lucidity is the most basic demand of this study,” he said. “We make it very clear that every patient must meet the same requirement: if they aren’t dreaming lucidly within eight weeks, they can’t continue. No exceptions. Jamie didn’t qualify.”

  “But that means we just lance the wound and leave it open. We help our patients remember what they’re dreaming, we intensify their experience of those dreams, and then we just leave them behind if they don’t make the cut?”

  “I don’t understand why you find this so disturbing.” Keller spoke clinically, his hands crossed in his lap. “You’ve watched me release a number of patients early. You weren’t bothered by them.”

  “Maybe it’s because Jamie’s a kid.” I felt checked and defensive. “He’s so impressionable, and he’s experienced more trauma than most adults. Besides, he’s in danger—if we hadn’t been here, he would have gotten out of bed and followed his parents right out of the window. He could have hurt himself.”

  “No, he couldn’t have,” said Gabe. “The window is barred.”

  I stared at him, wounded; I’d expected him to be on my side.

  “Here it is,” I said. “Not at home.”

  Keller eyed us briefly. Then he picked up the notepad on his desk and began to read aloud, Gabe transcribing the notes on his laptop.

  “Patient three oh four, age seven, fifty inches tall, forty-eight pounds, came to the lab for his lucidity assessment following a diagnosis of night terrors and/or somnambulism. In one single-night study, patient three oh four exhibited a characteristic lack of paralysis, but he did not meet standards for lucidity. While claiming the presence of a female intruder, patient three oh four exhibited violent behavior—”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “—exhibited violent behavior,” Keller said, continuing, “which included talking, yelling, punching, kicking, turning the head rapidly from side to side, attempting to escape his constraints—”

  “Do you really think we have no obligation to help him?” My body was shot through with heat. “Who knows what’ll happen in the next six months?”