"Up so early?" she asked through her smile. "Come on, I'll make you breakfast."
"I should probably call my father."
"There'll be time for that after you eat. Why disturb his sleep if you don't have to?"
Doreen flitted around the kitchen as she cooked eggs and sausage and pancakes, all the while apologizing for her sister. "Eloise can be a handful sometimes, but I have to watch out for her, especially considering her state. Ever since the accident she's been moody. I guess it's hard to watch the person you love most in the world die while you're trapped helplessly beside him. Still, it's no excuse for refusing to see someone off! I suspect she's embarrassed by her behavior last night. What foolishness!"
Claire smiled and pretended she understood.
"What happened? If you don't mind my asking."
Doreen glanced at her. "What do you mean?"
"The accident."
"Oh," she said, returning to the stove. Claire worried her question had been impolite. "You know how these things are. One minute you're driving, the next you wake up in the hospital. The police said it was a hit and run but Eloise doesn't remember a thing. That's probably for the best, I'd imagine. Sometimes I think it would be better for her if she painted. It's amazing how therapeutic it is."
"I still can’t believe you've managed to paint so many."
"Well, only most of them. Father did a few."
"Regardless, they're really quite well done."
Doreen tittered and looked up at the wall. There, a farm landscape, a small car on the road in the foreground, looked back at her.
"Honestly, I wish I could take them all down. Sometimes I can't stand looking at them. They aren't good for anything but bad memories, but Father loved them so much Eloise insists we leave them up."
"Really? Eloise?" Claire could not contain her surprise.
"The funny thing is --" she started, and was interrupted by the sound of honking from outside. "Well, look at that," Doreen said, peering through the window above the sink, wiping her hands on her apron. "The tow truck is right on time. You should go before your father starts to worry."
Claire said good-bye to Doreen on the front porch. In the daylight the house took on normal proportions, no longer seeming to swell and encompass the entire landscape. The tow truck awaited her on the driveway with its engine running, the remains of her car already winched in place and dressed with lights. When Claire stepped inside the cab the driver asked her where she needed to go. She looked back and forth, trying to remember the direction she'd arrived from.
"You know," she said; "I'm not sure."
They pulled out of the driveway, and Claire turned to watch the house shrink away. She saw the window whose light she had followed the night before, and in it was Eloise, looking out like a prisoner in a castle. Beneath the window there was a large shadow, but before Claire could make sense of it the truck jarred and turned a corner. When Claire looked again the house was gone.
"Do you think I could borrow your phone?" Claire asked. "I'd like to call my father and tell him I'm on my way."
The driver handed it to her. "If he's anything like me, he's probably worried."
"Probably," she said with a shrug.
THE DEAFENING SOUND OF SLUMBER
"People are no longer sleeping well," Doctor Wy opined late one Thursday night during his regular telephone call to the sleep lab. Fisher yawned as he listened. "As a rule, they like things that are neither difficult nor bad and right now the state of the world couldn't be worse. The stock market, wars, crime; it all adds up to an existence that seems increasingly horrible and without end. What follows is worry, and with more worry comes less sleep. It's provable, and it's the basis for all my research."
But research was not Fisher's concern; he was just happy to be employed in such a downward economy. Doctor Wy spent little time at the lab, preferring to continue his work back at the university where he could see patients and evaluate their continuing candidacy for the program. Fisher had not seen the doctor in weeks -- which in some ways was a small relief. Though he found the end-goal fascinating, and was thrilled to play a small part in its hoped-for success, Fisher knew that without Doctor Wy's watchful presence he would be free to slip his headphones on and enjoy the sound of white noise rustling in his ears. It was the only sound he found soothing, and it helped block out those that he didn't.
Fisher had been lucky to find a lab located in a quiet part of the city, but he'd always been lucky at finding new jobs or places to stay. Even when far from home it was the case. He didn't know why it came so easily for him, but he imagined it was because he refused to worry about things he couldn't change. What was the point? Rather, he preferred to hope for the best, and more often than not the best found him ... though not always right away. The sleep lab, for instance, despite being far from the hubbub and the noise of the major thoroughfares, was in a rundown district full of boarded-over buildings. Across the street from it an urban renewal project promised changes in the near future, but until then it was merely another construction site from which the grating noise of work emanated -- noise that Fisher, due to his condition, could not tolerate. Why, he wondered, did the work have to be done so late in the day, every day, and why had it been going on for so long? At times, the progress seemed so slow as to be nonexistent. Perhaps it was a manpower issue. After all, he never saw more than two people on the site at any time, though they made enough noise for twenty. It did nothing but add to Fisher's anxieties. At least Doctor Wy's lab was soundproofed, and the din of the outside world did not carry through its brick walls. The promised quiet was the biggest motivation to accept Doctor Wy's offer. As the doctor said, "Though your level of auditory anxiety is low, what better place is there to work than with the sleeping, overnight when the world is at its quietest? The night shift requires someone with a positive attitude, and from what I've seen you should not have any problems adapting." There was no arguing with that logic, Fisher thought, and willingly signed on. A position that kept the noise he encountered to a minimum was ideal, though he found it strange that he was asked to keep the door locked at all times. "It's a private laboratory, after all," Doctor Wy said. "And the patients at their most vulnerable."
Fisher was ostensibly in charge of the sleep lab, but recognized he was little more than another technician, hardly different from his partner Rose. She was the younger of the two by at least a decade, not to mention four stone heavier, yet she was also the parent of a daughter already in that netherworld between child and teenager. She showed him photographs one after the other the first time they'd met, all the while telling stories of her daughter's exploits. He did his best to listen and appreciate them if only because of the joy it obviously brought her.
The lab was devoted to research, more specifically Doctor Wy's research, and as such was smaller than most buildings of its kind. Doctor Wy's lab consisted of merely three rooms, and even then he wanted no more than one occupied at a time. His testing had entered a new phase and he feared the reactions patients might experience were they introduced to one another. "Once a patient is exposed to information, even erroneous information, about his or her treatment, it's inevitable that the patient will suddenly believe they too are experiencing similar results. Again, this behavior is well documented." Doctor Wy thus normally ran his tests with only three patients on a regular basis, and each was given a different day to come in. Great pains were taken to schedule them in such a way that no trace of one remained before the next arrived.
"I have to admit, it's a bit sad; we speak to them only long enough to put them to sleep, then stare at them all night long. At the end of it all, they wake up puffy-faced and then disappear without a word. I'm not even sure sometimes Doctor Wy's treatment is helping."
"Does it look like it's helping to you?" Rose asked. Fisher crossed his arms and leaned back from the console.
"I don't know. He assures me everything is normal and that the tests are producing the expected results, but
I can't deny that no one seems any better. At least, not to me."
"If anything," Rose said; "I'd say they're worse. We've already lost one of the sleepers, and the rest don't look like they'll make it much longer. Especially Sanderson."
Eric Sanderson was the first patient included in Doctor Wy's trials. He suffered from a form of central apnoea that kept him from sleeping more than a few hours at a time. Since Fisher and Rose had met him, his appearance had deteriorated considerably. His once ruddy skin had turned grey, his complexion sallow. He was thinner, yet softer, so much so that Fisher had trouble keeping him in focus.
"What's Wy hoping to find?" Rose asked. "Sanderson is a walking corpse. Though, I suppose they all are, aren't they?"
"Apparently, the doctor is closer than ever to a breakthrough. He expects it at any time."
Rose snorted.
"Do you wonder sometimes if it's worth it? Look at everything that's going on. Recessions, Depressions... What's the point in dealing with people who can't sleep when all of that is happening?"
"You know what Doctor Wy would say: it's specifically because that's going on that they're being kept awake. He dreams of finding some way to ease people's minds about it."
Air hissed through Rose's teeth.
"Let me tell you a story about the way things are," she said. "My daughter is a good girl. Quiet, maybe a bit too shy, but she goes to school every day and works hard. There are two girls in her class who for no reason want to make her life hell. They push her around and taunt her and the teachers just turn a blind eye to it. It's like they don't care. So you tell me, Fish: how much sleep does everyone need before that sort of thing goes away? How much, because I'd like to know."
"Please, not so loud." Fisher could feel his heart racing, pounding to get out of his chest. "Can't we talk about something else?" Rose though didn't seem sympathetic to his plight.
"Sometimes I wonder if you can't hear this stuff or you won't," she said.
Fisher wasn't sure what she meant; he suspected it was the blood rushing to his head that made things so cloudy.
Before leaving for home the next morning, Fisher bid goodbye to the patient from Room Three. Martin Breem had been coming to the lab for a few weeks, but he already looked as though he'd been there longer. His thin beard had become patchy, and he complained about ulcers since taking his medication. The polysomnograph reported an increased level of brain activity, something that Doctor Wy was quite interested in. "The patient reports night terrors, yet I see no mention of them on your reports, Fisher."
"The polysomnograph is still a bit glitchy, Doctor Wy, and I wasn't sure about the results. I did a visual inspection at the time to confirm things but he looked fine. He was sleeping soundly and barely moved. Is that odd?"
"Nothing is odd in a trial, only statistically relevant or not. We'll know soon enough, I hope."
Yet Rose remained concerned.
"I don’t think he'll make it to the end of the experiment, Fish. Have you taken a look at him? Those bruises don't look like the result of Wy's testing."
"I'm sure it will be all right. He's still getting used to things. They can't all be like Sanderson, can they?"
"No, thankfully. Still, he looks like he's falling apart right in front of us. I've tried to ask him about it but he won't say a word, and I’m pretty sure he wasn't entirely sober when he came in last week. Seriously, I don't have a clue where Wy picked him up."
Fisher looked at his watch. If he didn’t go, he'd be stuck in the morning rush hour. The noisy morning rush hour.
"I wouldn’t worry about it," he said.
"No, you wouldn't, would you?"
Two evenings later, while Fisher was running a repair sequence on the polysomnograph, looking for the glitch he knew was there, he heard Rose unlock the front door. He looked up to see Eric Sanderson wander into the lab with a pained look on his face. His eyes were blank and wide, as though he was unfamiliar with the surroundings. Fisher stood, brushed off his hands, and approached the older man, but Sanderson shrank away. Rose shrugged her shoulders in bafflement.
"Mister Sanderson, are you all right?"
It was as though Fisher's voice had blown the cobwebs from Sanderson's mind; the older man turned around and Fisher could see recognition in those bloodshot eyes.
"I'm sorry. I don't know where my head was. I haven't been feeling myself."
"It's possible it's a reaction to the dose. Have you mentioned it yet to Doctor Wy?"
Sanderson smiled sheepishly. "I figured it would sort itself out."
"These are drug trials, Mister Sanderson. Things don't sort themselves out. I'm going to have Rose make a note on your report, but you should talk to Doctor Wy during your next session."
He smiled again and nodded and Rose's words started to replay in his mind: when would Doctor Wy's trials be over? His subjects were looking exponentially worse with each passing day. It was true Sanderson was sleeping longer, but the graphs were reporting more unusual activity than a simple glitch could account for, and Sanderson's appearance had taken an impossible turn for the worse. Fisher knew intellectually that the trials needed to be completed, and he had every faith Doctor Wy's research would prove beneficial, but Rose continued to question it. He wished there were some way to stop her, but the only thing he could think to do was put on his headphones and pipe more white noise into his skull. At least it quieted the repairs that had resumed across the street.
Rose led Sanderson away to Room One for prep while Fisher finished the maintenance on the polysomnograph. It had never functioned properly and he had yet to determine why. He'd reinstalled the software numerous times without effect, and at one point the system was crashing so often that an entire week's worth of data was lost. Yet Doctor Wy was strangely unconcerned when Fisher reported it. "There's nothing to worry about," the doctor said. "It's early enough that we can sacrifice some data. Still, let me send someone to have a look." A few days later, Fisher was surprised to find at the lab's door two thuggish men with shrill East European accents claiming Doctor Wy had sent them. The men remained in the office for hours while Fisher and Rose prepared Room Three for Martin Breem's next session. Fisher began to feel concerned as the time for Breem's session drew closer and he still had no access to the control room. It wasn't until the patient arrived that he and Rose discovered the men had already gone without saying a word. "I'm sure there was a good reason," Fisher found himself trying to explain to a disbelieving Rose, but he too had difficulty with it, especially once the polysonograph began to spit lines of black code across the console. A reboot of the entire network restored functionality, but only temporarily. Still, Fisher would rather have dealt with the code than the crashing. At least with the former they could continue to work in some fashion.
After attaching the sensor wires to Sanderson's head and body, Rose closed the door to the room and then looked through its tiny window to make sure everything was in place. She then returned to the control room to join Fisher.
"He's ready to go," she said. "How are things on this end?"
Fisher entered data into the central console and tested the microphone. He walked Sanderson through a short series of exercises to test and calibrate the sensors. Then Fisher called up Room One's video camera. It had been outfitted with a light-gathering lens to boost the signal and give them a better understanding of how well the patient slept and what he or she did during surges in the graphed activity. What it showed was Sanderson lying on the bed covered in circular sensors, his sagging arms behind the back of his neck. He was looking straight up and was caught by the camera with his mouth stretched wide in mid-yawn. The lens gave the black and white image an otherworldly look, overly-heightened and enhanced, but when Fisher looked closer he saw a dark cloud over Sanderson's head, obscuring it like some dark halo.
"Is there dirt on the camera?" Rose asked, squinting at the obstruction. It was as though her words caused it to wriggle across the screen. Fisher hoped Rose had not noticed how star
tled he'd been by the movement.
"It's probably a fly trapped in the room."
"Should we do something?"
Fisher considered for a moment.
"Doctor Wy says we shouldn't stress the patients out once they've taken their medication. If it's still there once he falls asleep, maybe you can go in and shoo it off the lens."
Rose nodded and then looked back at the monitor.
"Hey," she said. "It's gone already."
Fisher wondered how long it would take to return. They always returned eventually.
Sleep labs are funny things, Fisher mused, sitting behind the console filling out his daily reports. One would imagine no place quieter, and yet it still was not enough. Needles scratched across paper, computer consoles beeped when processes were complete, telephones rang to ensure the work was progressing normally; each cast a ripple of noise that barely registered on its own, but en mass they caused tempestuous waves in his calm. If he could, Fisher would have worn his noise-cancelling headphones throughout his shift to block out all but the direst sounds and communications, but it was impossible. Instead, he had to suffer the tumult and recognized that as far as jobs went it was the one most suited to him. He'd grown used to most of the noises, and he had managed to suppress the amount of anxiety they inflicted on him to a background level that, if not ideal, was at least manageable. Rose, on the other hand, was far more disruptive, and there was little he could do to quiet her. He liked Rose as much as he could, and he kept hoping she'd eventually come to understand his affliction, but nothing stopped her from taking any opportunity to speak to him. Her words were like flying insects that buzzed in his ear until he paid them attention.
"Did I ever tell you what I did?" she asked him. The sentence seemed to have started much sooner in her head.
"What do you mean?"
"About my daughter? About those bullies? I don't think you'd approve," she said, impishly. "Normally, I wouldn't have done anything in case I caused more problems for her, you understand, but it was clear that none of the teachers cared that those bullying girls were stepping up their attacks. Something needed to be done. So I did it."
Nightingale Songs Page 5