by A B Plum
Stone, the biggest complainer of all, demanding that Ryn fix any problem, handle all snafus, leave him free to perform for his fans.
“Your first sleep difficulties arose after your father died.”
The muscles around Ryn’s eyes tightened. Comfrey hadn’t asked a question, so she didn’t reply.
“What about your mother? Did she have any problems sleeping at night?”
Ryn’s heart lurched and her stomach rolled. She licked her lips. “No. None.”
Comfrey scanned the questionnaire again. “Hmm. That’s most unusual.”
He didn’t say what that referred to, and Ryn didn’t ask him to clarify. Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth, hoping Comfrey would let the issue of her mother’s sleeping habits go.
Behind her, Beau sneezed three loud explosions in succession. Reaching for the box of tissues Comfrey held out to her, Ryn handed them to Beau and glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes and she’d be safe.
When Beau blew his nose, he sounded like an elephant with an acute sinusitis. Comfrey’s lips disappeared in a thin line, but he leaned back in his chair and stayed cool. “I’d like to spend some time talking about what you should expect tonight when you enter the clinic.”
“You aren’t doing drugs, are you, Ryn?” The tissue Beau mashed against his nose muffled his voice.
She twisted away from Comfrey and faced Beau. “Of course not.”
“Why do you have to go to a clinic, then?”
“I’m going to a sleep clinic—not a drug clinic.” Ryn slipped out of her chair and joined Beau on the sofa. He was staring at a picture of two Siamese kittens with a ball of red twine. He refused to look at her. Tears rolled down his apple cheeks, merging at the tip of his chin in a huge drop.
“I’m not lying to you, Beau.” She touched his bare arm, dimpled at the elbow. Under the downy, golden peach fuzz, his pink skin was warm, covered with a thin layer of sweat.”
“Okay, but Stone said—” Beau snuffled.
“What did Stone say?” Ryn patted his shoulder, the layer of fat under her hand as soft as lard. The chanting in the background faded under Beau’s whimpers.
“What did Stone—”
“He said he thought you acted like a cokehead,” Beau blurted and trumpeted into a clean tissue. “Stone said it was the only way to explain why you acted so crazy half the time.” He clutched Ryn’s hand. “Stone said he thought you should enter a clinic.”
Heart thundering, Ryn stared at Comfrey. Was he now reconsidering his diagnosis about her sanity?
He smiled and she felt like crying. He should smile more often. His mouth turned up and his eyes sparkled, transforming his homely features. He spoke to Beau.
“Would you like to hear about the sleep clinic, Beau?”
“Can I ask questions if I don’t understand?”
Comfrey nodded. “As many as you want. Whatever you want. Whenever you want.”
For whatever reason, Comfrey began his description of the sleep clinic by droning on about REM sleep, circadian rhythms, biological clocks, the stages of sleep, primary and secondary sleep disorders, and a review of current sleep research. When Ryn thought her eyes, like her numbed-out mind, must have glazed over, Comfrey stopped talking. He asked if Beau had any questions.
Beau shook his head as if he’d grasped every syllable that had fallen out of Comfrey’s mouth. Thankfully, Comfrey didn’t subject her to recite a summary of her understanding. By the time she left the office with Beau five minutes later, she barely had straight in her mind that an EEG (electroencephalogram) measured her brain waves. An EMG (electromyogram) measured her muscle tone. An EOG (electrooculogram) measured eye movement.
In the elevator, she concluded, He hypnotized us.
Chapter 29
Comfrey’s meticulous description of what to expect at the sleep clinic turned out to be so precise that Ryn had the dèjá vu sense of having previously visited. She stepped through the door of The California Sleep Disorder Institute, and the faint smells of eucalyptus and violets greeted her. According to Comfrey, aromatherapy had long been used in treating insomnia and other sleep disorders by helping calm frazzled nerves.
A remodeled Victorian in a residential Palo Alto neighborhood, the clinic in no way resembled a medical facility. Forest green walls, subdued lighting, honey-colored oak woodwork, and leaded glass door panels presented a soothing contrast of shapes and textures. Faint, barely audible Tibetan chimes tolled, adding to the other worldliness enfolding Ryn.
A tiny, smiling blonde appeared in a floor-length, heavy satin gray robe and slippers that matched Comfrey’s description and introduced herself. She led Ryn down a wide corridor that stretched endlessly. Behind the third door on the right—exactly as Comfrey had explained—a king-sized bed, already turned down, waited. A flat bronze bowl of white orchids sat on the antique desk. Flames in the tiled fireplace flickered and jumped, throwing off long shadows on the polished hardwood floor. Half a dozen books topped the marble mantle. The smell of violets permeated the serenity.
Nurse Nightingale suggested Ryn change her clothes, brush her teeth, and get ready for bed as if it were eleven instead of eight o’clock. Trisha would monitor Ryn’s blood pressure, check her pulse, and take her temperature every half hour until Comfrey arrived at eleven.
During that interval, she could watch TV—nothing violent or stimulating—or read a book with the same caveat. She could take a long soak in the Jacuzzi if a bath helped her relax. The tests Comfrey would administer usually went better if she neither drank nor ate after her arrival. Warm, herbal teas were the exception.
Undressing in the spacious and very warm bathroom, Ryn tried to recall which test did what, experiencing a frisson of anxiety about her short-term memory. Technically, she’d told Comfrey the truth about recurring dreams. Hers fell in the category of recurring nightmares. On really bad nights, such as the first two or three after Stone’s murder, the nightmares escalated into night terrors. She pulled her silk pajamas over her head and shivered. Sometimes, she wished she’d never done research on sleep disorders. Her bare skin prickled from the pajamas on her bare skin.
Trisha was waiting in the bedroom and popped a thermometer in Ryn’s mouth. The crackling fire and Trisha’s lilting voice chased away the willies. Every bit as obsessive as Comfrey, the nurse explained in detail every procedure. Ryn’s chin dropped forward. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear Trisha had slipped her a sedative. She turned toward the fireplace and closed her eyes. The door snicked shut. In the ear pressed against the pillow, Ryn’s heart beat like a drum—slowly, regularly—not loudly enough to bother her.
“Ryn?” The whisper sent her heart crashing against the wall of her chest. “I need to take your temp …”
No reason to be scared. Wide awake, Ryn pressed her thumb against her mouth. The puppies … Her pulse gyrated, and she fought the impulse to shake off Trisha’s help to sit up in the bed. Whatever she mumbled satisfied Trisha.
Ten minutes later, alone again, Ryn got out of bed. No more napping. Nurse Nightingale would return in another half hour. A book would help pass the time—if she could find a title that didn’t put her to sleep standing up. Of the dozen titles on the mantel, she pulled out the tallest and thinnest book—black with gold lettering—and laughed. To Sleep, Perchance to Dream by Dr. Colin C. Comfrey.
She opened the book, skipped the lengthy acknowledgment, and read three pages of the first chapter. Comfrey’s prose consisted of long, complex sentences filled with enough polysyllabic jargon to impress a Mensa convention. She yawned. Dull, not stimulating. Exactly what the doctor ordered.
She crawled back in bed, punched the pillows, and started with the introduction:
Historically, dreams have long been controversial, dating back as far as 2000 B.C. Archaeologists have uncovered Egyptian papyri documenting, at length and in great detail, dreams and their interpretations. Most of the conclusions drawn point to a belief that the dreamer entered another level
of consciousness—a state believed by some to be as valid as being awake.
The Romans, of course, even had a god of sleep …
By the time Trisha reentered the room, Ryn had finished the forty-page historical overview through Freud and Jung. Reading Comfrey’s words, she’d managed to repress her earlier panic attack.
“Doctor says he should have entitled his book The Insomniac’s Panacea.” Trisha slipped the thermometer under Ryn’s tongue. “He claims he and his mother are the only two people in the Western world who have read the entire thing. He says it’s sedated more people than Valium and morphine combined. You’re a prime example. I recorded your last resting heart rate at a hundred sixty.”
“What is it now?” Ryn felt as energetic as a wet towel.
Trisha place her middle and index fingers over Ryn’s carotid. “Forty.”
“I jog regularly.” Ryn yawned.
“I read that in your chart.” Trisha wound the blood pressure cuff around Ryn’s arm, pumped the bulb, and listened through the stethoscope she’d placed in the crook of Ryn’s elbow. “Ninety-five over fifty-eight,” she said before Ryn could ask for the results. “Need anything before I leave for a while?”
Speech took too much effort, but Ryn shook her head. A little knowledge was a dangerous thing. Knowing how low her pulse and blood pressure were made her feel whipped—the way she’d so often felt on tour with Stone and the band.
In retrospect, she was positive she’d slept with her eyes open on many occasion. In those first couple of years with Stone, she’d had only half a dozen recurrences of nightmares. In those wonderful years, she’d felt so safe. Stone and she had loved each other …
Comfrey arrived an hour early, coming in with Trisha, rousing Ryn from the edge of sleep. Perchance to Dream slid off the bed and hit the floor with a quiet thud. Dressed in a beautifully cut, charcoal pin-striped suit with a crisp white shirt and geometric, silk burgundy tie, Comfrey projected surprising youthfulness. No scarf. Without it, his resemblance to Freud diminished.
Comfrey picked up the book and explained his dinner engagement had ended sooner than expected. “Which left me with time on my hands.”
He held out his hands and wiggled his long, piano-player fingers in front of him. Diamond cufflinks twinkled at his wrists. “What else was I going to do until eleven?”
“You sure you didn’t show up because Trisha called and told you I’m half-dead?”
He chuckled and shook his head. A dark curl fell in the middle of his forehead, but he didn’t seem to notice. “If we had you scheduled for surgery in the morning, I might have some concern about your blood pressure and pulse.”
Ryn’s heart skipped a beat. Comfrey doing something unscheduled or unrehearsed made her a little nervous. She’d met bowls of oatmeal that displayed more spontaneity and impetuosity than Comfrey. This smiling, cheery guy knocked her off balance.
“Did Danny call you?” She worked her thumbs like a demented lemur.
“Not since last week.” Comfrey’s icy fingers closed over the pulse jumping in her wrist. “Any reason he should call?”
“No. No.” None except Danny wanted Comfrey—his old boyhood chum—to pick her brain, find out her deep, dark secrets, and share them with Danny. Didn’t matter that she’d sworn her innocence. Danny wanted a legitimate authority figure to lend veracity to her statement. She willed her hands to lie quietly on top of the sheet.
Comfrey glanced at the chart Trisha handed him. “Ready to get wired?”
“Do I have a choice?” Whiny—like a four-year-old.
Comfrey rocked back on his heels. “You have a choice.”
With her hand on the doorknob, Trisha stopped, turned, and gazed at Comfrey as if expecting pearls to drop from his mouth.
“Would you rather wait?” Comfrey sounded reasonable. Accommodating.
“Sorry. I don’t know why I’m grouchy as a bear. I left Beau …” She shrugged. Not the time to go into that story. “Can you cut me a break?”
“You apparently didn’t get to page …” He looked inside his book. “… page fifty-five. I catalogued the most common symptoms of sleep deprivation. See? Irritability at the top.”
“Low mental concentration. Decreased creativity. Difficulty adding columns of figures. Performing repetitive tasks—” Ryn stopped reading aloud. “Must be a hundred symptoms here, and I'm the poster girl for every one.”
Comfrey laughed. “A slight exaggeration.”
Trisha slipped out the door. I’m surprised I’m alert enough to notice.
Thirty minutes later—at least that’s how long Comfrey said it took him to wire Ryn—she stated she felt empathy for Frankenstein’s monster. Electrodes pasted on each eyebrow would measure her eye movements. Another electrode stuck under her chin recorded muscle tension while one on her thigh picked up leg movement. Last, but not least, an EKG—in case she woke up, forgot where she was, freaked with all the wires and buttons and went into cardiac arrest.
Comfrey pushed open a screen behind her bed and clipped a tiny microphone to the collar of her pajamas. “Trisha and I monitor your sleep via close-circuit TV. This little gadget transmits your sleep sounds.”
She clapped a hand over her heart. “Will I learn once and for all if I really snore?”
“In living, stereophonic sound.”
Ryn swallowed around the dry, cottony feeling in her throat and tried to laugh. So what? Monitor every tic, twitch, quiver, and spasm. Pick up every neuron her brain fired—as long as nothing picked up the content of her dreams or worse, her nightmares. They would confirm to the world she was wacko.
Comfrey’s lips were moving again. The man morphed into a veritable parrot with his yakkity yak, yakkity yak. Ryn forced her mind to focus on his discourse.
“… around three a. m. our temperature falls to its lowest point in twenty-four hours—anywhere from ninety-six to ninety-five. Yours is already down to ninety-five point five.”
“Meaning?” Ryn resisted the urge to scream.
“Meaning, I’m not sure.” Like the TV docs, he reviewed her chart, his finger going up and down the first page. He flipped to the next page, keeping his eyes on the recordings Trisha had made earlier. He closed her file. “As I’ve already told you, I think you’re definitely sleep deprived. After tonight, we should know more.”
Ryn’s jaw cracked. She bit her bottom lip. Comfrey would try the patience of half the saints in heaven. After tonight, we should know more. What kind of scientific response was that?
Comfrey tucked her chart under his arm. “You won’t see me or Trisha again until in the morning—unless you need something. In which case, use the mike. G’night.”
“What? Don’t you wish me pleasant dreams?” Ryn called as the door shut, remembering too late that somewhere out there—in rooms she hadn’t seen—a computer scrupulously recorded her smart-ass responses and involuntary reflexes.
Chapter 30
No sighs, beeps, or whispers hummed through the wires and tubes of Comfrey’s high-tech equipment. Like watchful eyes in the dark, a few red lights blinked now and then. But Ryn couldn’t figure out the pattern. Not that calculating the frequency gave the pattern any meaning, but using the mental energy might keep her alert all night. Staying awake provided her only insurance against Comfrey releasing the skeletons in her closet.
“Space Cadet to Control Center. Space Cadet to Control Center. Can you hear me?” Ryn tapped the mic with her fingernail.
“Perfectly, Ryn.” The butter in Trisha’s voice carried an overtone of ice. “What can I do for you?”
Only kids—and Beau—ask for a fifth drink of water in an hour. Blushing, she mumbled, “Nothing. Just testing.”
Trisha let the opportunity to snipe slide. Ryn punched the stack of pillows and pushed herself higher in the bed. Too damned soft. Nothing like the bed she’d slept in as a kid. Her mother—Ryn slammed that window into her mind.
Mama. Daddy. Black Beauty. Stone. All off-limits tonight—
on the off chance she did fall asleep. Whether or not it was true that you dreamed about things or people on your mind before falling asleep, she couldn’t take the risk.
Doctors like Comfrey had figured out blind people dreamed. So why take chances of feeding repressed memories into these damned machines?
She slid lower in the bed. Think about Esperanza House and what to do with the money she’d inherit from Stone. Her mind—a bouncing ball—ricocheted off a sudden snapshot of Stone in private concert at the halfway house.
For her fortieth birthday, she’d asked Stone to do the concert—free for all the clients, volunteers, staff, and their families. Not only did he agree, he gave one of the best performances of his career. His fans at Esperanza House went crazy. They hooted. Screamed. Clapped. Stamped their feet.
Afterwards, Stone autographed—with a personal inscription—each of the three hundred T-shirts Ryn gave her guests. Every band member—including Amber—hung around and talked with the kids, signing CDs, programs, and posters. All donated by Stone as part of his birthday gift. In addition, he provided soft drinks, ice cream, and a cake the size of Idaho—ablaze with forty candles that warmed Ryn’s wet cheeks as she leaned over the miniature flames.
Four years later, in a softly lit, quiet bedroom in the California Sleep Institute, Ryn scrubbed the hot tears running down her cheeks. She sniffed, but stopped and cleared her throat. Comfrey was listening. She reached for her water glass, gulped it dry, stretched for the bedside table, and felt her fingers slip.
Worried she’d tear out some of her electronic tentacles, she froze. The glass hit the floor. “Dammit.”
“Stay in bed,” Trisha thundered. “Did it break?”
Ryn leaned over the side of the bed. “Huh-uh. It rolled under the bed.”
“I’ll get it.” Comfrey appeared in the door and then strode across the room. He dropped to one knee in a single, fluid motion. He held up the bed skirt and lowered his head to the carpet.