Before I Wake (7 page)

But when it comes down to it, it doesn't make sense. You haven't really accepted anything. I mean, how can you let your child die? How can you make that make sense?

He added his notes to her file, all without saying a word.

“Well?” Simon finally asked.

Dr. McKinley took a deep breath. His face was ashen, and there were dark circles around his eyes too. “There's very little change from earlier this evening. Her temperature is dangerously high. She's non-responsive. And I'm hearing a lot of fluid in her lungs. I've ordered an increase in her IV antibiotics, but—”

“All right,” I said, not lifting my eyes from my daughter.

“The trouble is that, with the pneumonia—”

“I think that we should disconnect the life support,” I said.

“Are you—”

I looked up at Dr. McKinley. “I want you to disconnect my daughter from the life support.”

“Well, usually we—”

“You what?” I asked. “You treat her? You bring her temperature down, clear up all the symptoms, keep feeding her antibiotics, knowing that she's not going to wake up?”

“Can we discuss—”

I shook my head. “I can't. I'm sorry, but the idea of organ donation, right now, it's more than I can bear.”

The doctor nodded. “I understand,” he said. “It's just that you'd be helping so many people.”

“I know. I know we would. I know we should, but I just can't.”

“We both have organ donor cards in our wallets,” Simon said, as if that might make up for this selfishness.

The doctor was silent for a moment. “Do you need more time?”

“We know this isn't a decision that you can make, or that you can counsel us to make,” Simon said, looking down at our daughter. “You'll want us to sign a waiver,” he added.

I don't know how I had spoken the words, how I was able to keep from screaming, let alone crying, as we stood around her bed, knowing that Sherry was going to die. Was dead already.

Our miracle.

HENRY

Off Dallas Road, the wind whipped from the ocean, and the trees leaned away from the cold. The air was thick and damp with spray, and the moon and stars were bright and full over my head. It smelled of salt and rotting seaweed.

I walked the concrete path toward the cliff's edge with my hands in my pockets, shivering but focused on the lights of Port Angeles across the strait. There were a few other people out, bundled against the cold, but I brushed past them and nobody seemed to notice me.

We used to bring the kids here for the afternoon to play catch on the lawn. Arlene always warned them away from the drop down to the rocks and the beach below. The boys and I would tease her—see how close we could get to the edge before she'd yell at us. Then we'd take one of the narrow paths down to the beach and walk along the water. Connor would shriek when his legs got drenched by a wave, and we would all laugh.

I would never be able to tell Connor what I had done. How do you tell your son that his father is a murderer, that he had killed a little girl the very same age as him?

How could I ever look Dylan in the eye?

And Arlene.

When I reached the end of the sidewalk, I stood facing the black water at the edge of the grass. The beacon down the shore turned and flashed, but the light was cold and far away. The surf boomed against the rocks and sand.

I didn't deserve to have a family—not when I had stolen one away.

I didn't deserve a normal life.

The lights across the strait shimmered orange on the dark water. I stood on the edge of the world, in the black and the cold, and even the stars seemed to have gone out.

I had been trying to get home as fast as I could after my shift.

I had only looked away for a moment, but that was enough. When I turned back I saw her fly into the air. I didn't even have time to touch the brakes.

I killed that little girl. Sherry. She would never wake up. She would always be with me.

I'm sorry,
I said to her.
It was a mistake. I didn't mean to…

A gust of wind buffeted me, and I nearly lost my footing on the edge of the cliff. My heart raced with the fear of falling.

It was so ridiculous I almost laughed.

I couldn't think of anything else to do, anywhere else to turn. And if I was going to do it, it was important to do it right,
to hit the rocks headfirst, to end it quickly. Not to struggle as the water dragged me away from the shore. What a coward, worrying about suffering while that little girl was dying.

Drawing a breath, I raised my arms above my head. Leaning over, I bent my knees—

I'm sorry, Arlene.

—and pushed off into the night sky.

I love you, Dylan.

My feet left the ground.

I love you, Connor.

I angled down, headfirst, toward the surf and rocks below me.

I'm sorry, Sherry.

The black water looked like asphalt after rain.

I'm sorry…

Without warning, I was wrenched backward. The wind caught in my shirt, my hair. It felt as if a hand had grasped my shoulder and pulled me back toward the cliff. I landed heavily on my side on the wet grass. The force of the impact left me breathless, and I struggled to sit up.

“What the hell…?”

The beacon light flashed, and the shadows of the trees danced in the wind, but there was no one else there. No one else who could have pulled me to safety.

I was completely alone.

But I could feel the pressure of the hand, of the fingers, on my shoulder. By morning I'd be bruised, the handprint clearly visible on my pale skin.

SIMON

Dr. McKinley summoned a night nurse from the station down the corridor to witness Sherry's death. Once she was in the room, he closed the door. The sound of the medical equipment was overwhelming.

“Mr. Barrett, could you please make your request one more time?”

I cleared my throat. “Knowing that the damage to her…Knowing that there is no chance that my daughter will ever wake up, I would like you to remove her from the life support equipment.”

The doctor glanced at the nurse to make sure that she had heard. When she nodded, he turned to Karen. “Mrs. Barrett?”

She had moved to the head of the bed and was tracing her fingers along Sherry's face. Tears were running steadily down her cheeks, and she was biting her lower lip.

“Mrs. Barrett?” he asked again.

She nodded, unable to speak.

“I'm very sorry,” he said, stepping forward and reaching for the control panel.

His fingers had just touched it when Karen whispered, “Wait.”

Everyone in the room turned to her.

“I can't do this. I can't just watch this.” There was no longer any pretense of control: her face was flushed bright red, eyes swollen almost shut with tears.

“Do you mean you don't want to—”

“Help me,” she said to me. “Help me turn her over.”

I moved to help her clear away the tubes and wires so she could reach under them to roll Sherry onto her right side. “She always sleeps on her side,” she explained tearfully.

“I know,” I answered, shaking as I held the wires and tubes away from my daughter's body like a veil.

Karen slipped her hands under Sherry's neck and hips and turned her on her side. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the doctor lay a restraining hand on the nurse's arm as she started forward.

Karen carefully arranged Sherry's legs, drawing them upward slightly, curling her like a comma, smoothing back her hair again and whispering, “I love you, baby,” into her ear.

I hoped she could hear.

I hoped she couldn't.

I was about to lower the weight of tubes and wires, the weight of my daughter's life, when Karen touched my arm. She had kicked off her shoes. Instead I raised them a little higher as she lowered the rail and slipped into the narrow bed with our daughter.

I draped my burden over both of them. Karen nestled herself around Sherry's tiny, still body, cradling her, and buried her face in the soft, bed-pressed hair below the edge of the bandages. Her body was racked with silent sobs.

I rested my hand on Karen's shoulder more for my own good than hers and looked across the bed at the doctor.

Our eyes met, and I nodded just once.

He stepped to the machine and, with the touch of one finger, turned it off.

KAREN

She was so small, so light, it was like she wasn't even there. Like I was holding, trying to hold, a handful of rain.

I could feel her breath, the steady rise and fall of it under my hand, the steady warmth of her…

Thou shalt not grow cold

The smell of her, her shampoo…

May God bless and keep you always

Her breath…

I whispered in her ear, where only she could hear me…

Now I lay me down to sleep

A breath.

And then nothing.

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

I heard her saying it along with me, felt her arms around my neck as I kissed her good night, pulling the covers up to her chin.

Felt her chest stop rising in mid-breath.

And if I die before I wake

Felt the soft rain of her heartbeat under my hand stop, like a passing summer storm.

I pray the Lord my soul to take

Nothing.

It was as if I could actually feel the life pass out of her, a motion of breath, of wings, an actual physical presence I wanted to catch.

If only…

Was she cold? Already?

It seemed so soon…

Too soon…

I tightened my arms around her, pulling her to me, trying to pull her back inside me, where I could protect her, where I could keep her warm and safe.

I would not let her go.

I would not let her go.

I would like to start again.

I wanted that moment back, the moment that the truck pulled her away from me, the moment that I let her go…

In my arms, her chest fell, and I could hear the breath, her last breath, escaping from her.

Could I catch it?

No.

Just let it go.

May angels guide you

And then her chest rose. There was a wheeze as she breathed against the pressure of the machine, against the tubes in her mouth and nose.

I could feel her heart.

Beating.

Beating again?

Another breath.

And then choking…

Choking…

SIMON

The silence of the room was broken as Karen arched upright on the bed, screaming, “She's choking! She's choking!”

I leaned in, whispering, “It's all right. Just let her go—”

“She's choking!”

And from the corner of my eye I could see motion on the heart rate monitor. “Holy…”

The doctor had seen it too. “She's got a pulse. Janet, we have a pulse. Let's get those tubes out.”

I pulled Karen off the bed as the nurse and the doctor stepped in, turning Sherry onto her back, swiftly removing the tubes from her mouth and nose.

As her airway cleared, she coughed and sputtered. “Let's turn her back onto her side,” the doctor said. “In case she vomits.”

As they turned her, she coughed again, a small pool forming on the pillow under her mouth and nose. The nurse cleared it away.

The heart rate monitor was still beeping out its rhythm. The doctor hastily pulled on his stethoscope and pressed it between her shoulder blades where her back was exposed. He listened for several seconds, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. He changed position and listened again.

As he straightened up, the nurse asked, “Doctor, what?” She couldn't even form the question.

He waved her silent, glancing at us across the bed, huddled together, shocked and confused, unable to take our eyes from our daughter.

Using the digital thermometer, he took Sherry's temperature from her inner ear. He shook his head as he stared at the readout. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, but everyone in the room could hear him.

“What is it?” I asked. “What's going on?”

“I don't know.” He was too shaken to be anything but completely honest. “Spontaneous respiration has resumed. And when I listen to her breathing, I don't hear any fluid in
her lungs. It's like the pneumonia is…gone. I'll schedule some tests.”

For a moment, we looked at one another. Then all our eyes turned to rest on the small form on the bed, curled into the fetal position, looking for all the world as if she were only sleeping.

 

Halfway down the corridor, the stranger watched as nurses ran into the little girl's room. Seconds later, the elevator doors slid open, disgorging more doctors and nurses, all rushing into the room. Then in twos and threes they came out into the hall. Most of them were half-smiling, half-confused, not sure about what they had just witnessed.

The stranger knew.

One nurse, young, pious, the chain of her crucifix visible at the neck of her uniform, was in tears.

As he drew on his coat, he heard her say, “It's a miracle.”

A miracle. Yes.

The stranger turned away.

It had begun.

 

November 1996

 

KAREN

Some mornings everything seemed normal.

I would lie in bed, letting myself wake slowly from dreams I could not remember, the house silent around me, the bed warm. I would pull on comfortable clothes—jogging pants or Simon's flannel pajama bottoms. I'd splash cool water on my face. In the hallway, I would pause outside the closed door to Sherry's room, straining to hear any sign of waking within.

It was only as I walked past the doorway to the living room that reality would reassert itself. Where once Simon and I had sat with friends, laughing and drinking wine, now the furniture was pushed against the walls, the couch and coffee table crammed into the corner, Simon's chair tucked almost into the closet. The room where we used to sit around the Christmas tree was dominated by a hospital bed and the mixed smells of antiseptic cleanliness and the thick, cloying cut flowers that failed to conceal it.

Sherry lay motionless on the bed, the covers tight around her.

Seeing her lying there, on those mornings when I had been fortunate enough to forget, would almost kill me. I had to force myself to breathe.

I wanted to mess up the bed, to make it seem as if she had stirred during the night, to hold on to the hope that she was only sleeping, that at any moment she might open her eyes, sit up and wonder why I was crying.

But she hadn't moved the night before, or the night before that. She hadn't moved since Simon and I brought her home from the hospital.

And she didn't stir as I touched her forehead with the cool back of my hand, checking her temperature.

“Hello, Princess,” I said. “It looks like it's going to be a beautiful day outside. A little cold though. Mr. Squirrel will be putting on his winter coat…”

On the windowsill I had placed the three stones she had asked me to carry on our walk to the shopping center that morning.

“No more than three,” I said.

“Four?” she asked, smiling at me, testing her limits.

“How about none?”

She stuck her tongue out, then spent several minutes carefully choosing three stones from a gravel driveway.

For a moment, as I pulled back the curtains, spilling sunlight into the room, I almost expected to turn around and see her looking up at me, shifting groggily and burrowing more deeply into her blankets.

I knew she wouldn't, but that moment, as the light fell across her, that second of possibility, was the last vestige of a normal life that remained.

HENRY

At first I tried to take care of myself. I looked for somewhere to sleep and to eat, somewhere warm where I could rest. I tried the Mustard Seed, the Salvation Army, the Upper Room, anywhere with a crowd of men gathered on the sidewalk outside—the sort of men who are used to looking up at people as they walk past without making eye contact.

Everywhere I went it was the same: I would line up for a bed and no one would see me. The man behind me would get a bunk as the volunteer passed me by. When I lined up for food, the servers in their hairnets didn't offer me anything.

I tried to speak, but nobody heard me. Even screaming got no reaction.

Those first few days, I screamed a lot.

So I stopped going to the shelters, and soon I made another discovery. Even when I found a place to lie down, in an alley or a park, I didn't sleep. I would close my eyes, feeling the tiredness in my muscles and the coldness in my bones, but I couldn't drift off. I ached with hunger, but I couldn't eat. Any food I scavenged from the Dumpsters behind restaurants or corner grocery stores sat like cardboard on my tongue. Eventually the hunger disappeared, and I stopped noticing that I was tired.

And I discovered soon enough that I wasn't being ignored: I really wasn't seen. I could stand directly in someone's path, and they would only veer around me, no recognition in their eyes.

It was like I had disappeared.

Not eating, not sleeping, not seen, I had nothing to do but walk. Along the shoreline, on the cliffs high above the surf, the cold wind in my hair, blowing through my thin clothes. I barely felt it. Along crowded downtown sidewalks, through shopping malls, bars, churches. I could feel people as they brushed against me, hear their voices, smell their perfume, their breath, their hair, their skin. They shuddered sometimes when I passed, like a chill had come over them, but they never saw me.

For the first few weeks, I kept coming back to the hospital. I would wait for Mrs. Barrett to step out, for the doctor to disappear, and I would sneak in to stand beside Sherilyn's bed. I knew I had watched another child sleeping, but I couldn't remember who. A brother, maybe? Did I have a brother? I didn't know anymore. Everything from my life before the accident had disappeared. Nothing seemed to exist for me before I watched Sherilyn float away, before that night on the cliff.

I kept walking. It was like I was looking for something, but I wasn't sure what it was, or how I would know when I found it.

SIMON

The shower turned off on the other side of the bedroom wall. Even with my eyes closed, I knew that the curtains were open, the room bright with morning. I nestled deeper under the covers.

Half-asleep, I was only vaguely aware of the bathroom door opening. Then there was a new weight on the bed, the shifting of covers, a radiating warmth alongside me.

I groaned a little and rolled onto my back.

“Are you awake?”

She slid her leg over mine, damp and hot.

I moaned this time, as she ran her fingers over my bare chest, across my stomach, gently wrapping them around my penis, which thickened at her touch.

“
You're
awake,” she whispered.

“You're awake too.”

“Here,” she said breathily, sliding atop me. “Here.” Using her hand she guided me inside herself, hot and wet. Raised herself up, settled herself atop me.

Any last remnants of sleep were burned away. “Oh God, Mary. You're gonna kill me.” And I opened my eyes to this vision in the sunlight, her head thrown back as her body moved on top of me, the Inner Harbour behind her through the tall glass.

RUTH PAGE

Mrs. Barrett always had a pot of tea waiting for me when I arrived at the house in the morning.

I would let myself in with my key, hang up my coat in the hall closet and then check on Sherry. I noted her temperature, pulse and blood pressure—anything significant—on her chart before joining Mrs. Barrett in the kitchen.

The first few days she had offered me coffee, and seemed quite puzzled when I said no, thank you. Then I explained about
my ulcer. The next day she had a cup of tea ready for me, the bag dropped directly into a coffee mug. The tea was almost as black as the coffee she was drinking herself.

I thanked her, keeping a smile on my face.

The next day when I got there, she had set a proper teacup and teapot on the kitchen table, with the tea bag on the edge of the saucer and the kettle on the boil.

She wasn't sleeping very much after they brought Sherry home from the hospital, and it was worse after her husband left. When she had coffee with me each morning, I couldn't help but notice the dark circles bruiselike around her eyes. Already slim, she'd lost weight, and her hair had turned brittle and dry. Her hands shook as she cradled the mug.

“Are you all right?” I asked her one morning. “Are you sleeping enough?”

She shrugged ungracefully and took a sip from her coffee. “It's hard. I know she's fine through the night, but I still wake up every two hours. I have to check on her.”

“Would it be better if we arranged for a night nurse? It's not helping Sherry for you not to sleep.”

She set her mug on the table, then sat for quite a long time just staring at it.

The friend in me wanted to reach out to take her hand, while the nurse in me knew I should sit back and let her work through what she needed to work through.

“No. No, it's not that. It's…I keep seeing the accident,” she said quietly. “I lie awake and it just…plays. Like a song you can't get out of your head.”

I nodded.

“Simon was like that with cases. Even when he'd win a big one, he'd spend weeks afterward focusing on what he
should
have said, the things he missed”—she took a sip—“It doesn't help that all of a sudden I'm alone with all this.”

Leaning forward, I curled my fingers around her hand, meeting her eyes and holding them with my own.

HENRY

I got to know the city in a way that most people never get a chance to. Some mornings I would hang out at the Inner Harbour, watching tourists as they stepped off the ferries or floatplanes. I'd see some of them again over the next day or two, shopping downtown or walking through Beacon Hill Park or along the waterfront, taking the whale-watching tours out to the San Juan Islands.

I got to know people without ever meeting them. The businessmen and the people who worked in the stores all had their own routines. They went to the bank at this time, had lunch at that time, at this table. The students up at the university, the bankers on Douglas, the homeless people under the Johnson Street Bridge—I saw all of them, and none of them saw me.

I started going to the library every morning to check the paper, to see if there was any news about Sherry. I would sit at the same table every day, reading that morning's
Sentinel.

A few days after the accident, there had been an update. Sherry's condition was “stable,” but they said she was in a coma. There was a picture of Sherry and her parents in front of a Christmas tree, dressed up, smiling and happy. For a while, there were updates on the search for the driver of the truck that had hit Sherry, who seemed to have just disappeared.

The first time I read that, I sank a little lower in my chair, peering carefully around to see if anyone was watching me. Nobody even knew I was there.

The newspaper had talked with a woman named Arlene, and showed a picture of her in her apartment, not quite looking at the camera. I recognized her, but it was like I had once dreamt about her. The newspaper said that she lived with me, that we had two children. Sons. The same article mentioned that the police had contacted my parents, and asked for people to please keep their eyes open for me.

Parents, children, a girlfriend. Why couldn't I remember them?

There wasn't very much news for a while, just little things that I really had to look for. My insurance had agreed to pay out for the accident. Sherry went home with her parents. A picture of them at home, a nurse standing next to the family. Occasional updates on Sherry's condition. A brief mention of marriage difficulties, then the news that Mr. Barrett had moved out in a “trial separation.” A short article about Sherry's fourth birthday, with no change in her condition.

After that, news about Sherry just faded away, replaced by the latest drug bust, the most recent pit-bull attack, a crackdown on panhandlers downtown.

But I still went to the library every day and read the paper.

SIMON

I took the bus across the bridge to the house every morning.

Mary drove me the first few times, letting me off down the block, kissing me good-bye and taking my briefcase with her to the office. But when she saw that my visits were going to be routine, she shook her head. “I can't keep driving you there,” she said. “I know you need to see your daughter, but I can't.”

I made a point of arriving on the 7:56 bus, which dropped me across the street from the mall, near the crosswalk where the accident had happened. I used the few minutes' walk to steel myself before going up our steps and ringing the doorbell. I had learned not to just let myself in; this was no longer my home.

“Good morning, Ruth,” I said as the nurse opened the door.

“Hello, Mr. Barrett.” She always smiled. I knew that I was likely not her favorite person in the world, but she never let it show. Always professional.

“Your payments coming through on time? No problems there?” I asked about the insurance every so often, letting her
know that I wasn't the complete bastard that Karen and her friends believed I was.

“Oh, yes. No problem. No problem at all.” She always made a point of leading me to the living room, as if I didn't know my way or couldn't be trusted on my own in the house.

“How's Sherry this morning?”

“She's doing well. We're listening to some Mozart.”

The curtains were open, the blinds up.
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
played at a dominating volume.

I leaned over the bed and kissed Sherry on the forehead, surprised to feel how warm she was under my lips.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” I whispered. “Listening to Mozart this morning? Good for the brain.” I glanced up at Ruth as I settled myself into the chair next to the bed.

“I'll leave you be for a little while,” she said with something approaching a smile.