Chloe Benjamin - The Anatomy of Dreams

“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. Another 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.