Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

A few minutes ? “Shit.”

The blur in the corner of her eye was Monica nodding.

“Have you seen that happen before?”

“You mean in a patient or in your dad?”

“Both. Either.”

Monica rolled a pocket of smoke around her mouth. “Sure, if someone is delusional. If he has, say, post-traumatic stress disorder or is taking hallucinogens or something.”

“You think he has PTSD?”

“Honestly, Amina, I don’t know what to think. There could have been any number of things that factored in. Did he eat enough that day? Had he slept well? Were there other things we didn’t know about?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. You know, something like this happens, you revisit a lot of things, wonder if you should have seen … I mean, but even that is not particularly useful. I have my theories, but they’re just that — a bunch of thoughts, not a medical diagnosis.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, Amina, I don’t think we should get into—”

“Like what?”

“I think he had a psychotic break.”

Amina looked down at her lap feeling like she had once when she was swimming in the ocean and something large had brushed against her leg. “What’s that?”

“It’s a loss of contact with reality.”

Heat flared between Amina’s fingertips, and she looked down to a solid inch of ash. She lifted the cigarette carefully to the window, tipping the spent end over and watching the ashes scatter through the glass. “He’s psychotic?”

“No, he’s not fucking psychotic, God.”

“Well, I don’t know!”

Monica glared at the steering wheel for a few moments before sighing, “Sorry. I just mean people can have psychotic breaks without harming themselves or anyone else, okay? He wouldn’t have hurt anyone. I’ve told them that.”

“Them?”

“The board.”

Amina’s mouth fell open. “They know?”

“They heard about it, obviously.”

“From who?”

Monica smiled sadly. “Amina, it’s a small hospital. I’m sure they heard it from a few people.”

Amina’s mind went to the white hospital corridors, the pools of light, the nurses’ faces as she and Thomas walked past. Did they know? Had the ICU nurse known? Had Dr. George? She flipped the air vents on the dash open and shut. “And was there, I don’t know, disciplinary action?”

“He was talked to. He’s knows he’s being watched.”

“Does my mom know?”

“I tried to tell her.”

“And?”

“She hung up before I could get it out.”

“Great.”

“I know, but what did I expect? No love lost there. And anyway, I’m not sure what we need to do at this point, besides get him to talk to someone.”

“Like a shrink?”

“Well, that would be great, but barring that, I mean, anyone.” Monica looked at her. “Someone he’d be honest with. You.”

Amina thought of her father on the porch, the tumbler in his hands. Your mother has always been afraid of anything she can’t control .

“Are you okay?” Monica asked, and Amina realized she was gripping her knees, her breath light and shallow.

She gave a quick, reassuring nod. It seemed important to be okay, suddenly. To be a part of Team Okay. “Yes, of course. It’s just a lot.”

“Yeah. That’s why I was trying tell you earlier in the week.”

They sat in silence, the sun settling on them like a hot, heavy sheet. The car seemed to grow smaller, the space between them suddenly filled with a thousand twitching anxieties.

“So now what?”

Monica shrugged, dropped her butt out the window. “I don’t know. I guess we just have to take what we know and go from there.”

“And what do we know?” Amina’s voice sounded small.

“We know that your dad had a delusional episode of some sort. We know that this isn’t typical behavior for him, and could even be an isolated incident. We know that typically, late spring is a hard time for him emotionally, and that the kid who died was the same age as, you know”—she took a short, sharp breath—“your brother.”

“You think this is about Akhil ?”

“Honey, I have no idea what this is about.” Monica paused. “Why did you ask me if he was okay the other day?”

“What?”

“At the ICU. You asked me if something was wrong.”

“Oh, I … just thought he seemed off or something.” It wasn’t that Amina wanted to lie to Monica so much as she wanted to buy time, to think through things, to sit somewhere alone until she could put all the pieces together and come up with a plan. “I mean, has he seemed fine to you? Other than this?”

“It’s hard to tell. Mainly he just seems really exhausted. A little withdrawn. He sure doesn’t laugh as much.”

“Has he had any more episodes?”

“Not as far as I know.” Monica leaned back and ran her thumb under the seat belt still strapped over her chest. “I mean, look, thirty years with the same hospital, no one wants this to be a lasting mark against him. But he’s not there to fix bunions, you know?”

Amina nodded, wanting to get out of the car, to walk around the parking lot until her head came back together.

“Okay,” Monica said after a moment, like they had come to some kind of resolution. “Well, so, you hungry?”

“Huh?”

Monica tipped her chin at the restaurant. “I mean, I know it’s no Garduño’s, but if you want some pancakes or something, we have the time.”

Amina shook her head. “I think you’d better just take me home.”

Shortly after almost driving himself and Amina into untimely deaths, Akhil went to sleep for three months. It wasn’t a straight sleep of course, but a persistent one, a sudden fever of exhaustion that lasted from December through February and found him sprawled over chairs and couches and rugs the minute he came home from school, eyes spinning under the silk of his eyelids. Gone was the constant barrage of words, replaced by an infantile drowsiness, eyes that barely focused, a mouth that opened only to eat or snore. He was too tired to think, he said when asked any question, and it was obvious.

The first week, neither Amina nor Kamala had any idea what to make of it. While Akhil’s wordy tirades had been exhausting, his sudden silence was eerie.

“He’s like this in school?” Kamala asked, her hand pressed to his forehead.

“I have no idea.” Amina tightened her ponytail, crossed her arms. It was paid misinformation. The day after “the car incident,” as she and Akhil referred to it, they had come to an agreement of sorts. Amina now woke him after his lunchtime nap, made sure his eyes didn’t flutter while he drove, and said nothing about it to anyone. Akhil paid her $4.50 a week. Still, unlike the other brief nod-outs, this kind of sleeping was new. And worrisome. Amina looked at her brother, the stinky cavern of his mouth, his twitching nose.

“Must be the flu,” Kamala said, and Amina nodded just so she wouldn’t have to say anything incriminating.

During the second week of the Big Sleep, they found themselves conducting strange experiments. On Tuesday, Amina repeatedly kicked her brother’s ankles until he opened his eyes and pushed her away. At the Thursday dinner table, Kamala shouted out, “How about this trickling-down theory?” in a desperate attempt to engage him in a conversation. On Friday, they took turns shaking him hard until he woke up.

“What the fuck?” Akhil croaked through a dry throat, eyes goopy with sleep.

“What’s happening?” Kamala asked, but the question came out wrong, too full of cheer that did not match her anxious face.