Wake Page 0,8

of a cliff streams by at a dizzying speed. Tanya looks at Janie and screams. Janie closes her eyes and feels sick. They startle at the same time. The fourth graders all laugh.

Janie decides not to hand out her precious birthday treat, after all.

That was after the train ride and the man in the underwear.

Janie’s had only a few close calls in school before high school. But the older she gets, the more often her classmates sleep in school. And the more kids sleep, the more of a mess it makes for Janie. She has to get away, wake them up, or risk the consequences.

A year and a half to go.

And then.

College. A roommate.

Janie puts her head in her hands.

She leaves the bathroom after lunch and goes to her next class, grabbing a Snickers bar on her way.

For two weeks afterward, Melinda Jeffers and her rich friends make puking noises when they pass Janie in the hall.

June 15, 2005

Janie is seventeen. She’s working her ass off, taking as many shifts as she can.

Old Mr. Reed is dying at the nursing home.

His dreams grow constant and terrible.

He doesn’t wake easily.

As his body fades, the pull of his dreams grows eerily stronger. Now, if his door is open, Janie can’t enter that wing.

She hadn’t planned for this.

She makes an odd request on every shift. “If you cover the east wing, I’ll take the rest.”

The other aides think she’s afraid to see Mr. Reed die.

Janie doesn’t have a problem with that.

June 21, 2005, 9:39 p.m.

Heather Home is short-staffed. It’s summer. Three patients on the cusp of death. Two have Alzheimer’s. One dreams, screams, and cries.

Someone has to empty bedpans. Hand out the night meds. Straighten up the rooms for the day.

Janie approaches with caution. She stands in the west wing, looking into the east wing, and memorizes it. The right-hand wall has five doorways and six sets of handrails. The last door on the right is Mr. Reed. Ten steps farther is a wall, and the emergency exit door.

Some days, a cart stands between doorways three and four. Some days, wheelchairs collect anonymously between doorways one and two. A stretcher often rests in the east wing, but usually it’s on the left side. Janie would have to get a glimpse before entering the hallway, no matter the day. Because some days, most days, people travel up and down the hallway without pattern. And Janie doesn’t want to run into anyone in case she goes blind.

Tonight, the hallway is clear. Janie noted earlier that the Silva family came for a visit in the fourth room. She checks the record book and sees that they signed out. There are no other visitors recorded. It grows late. For Janie, it’s either get the work done, or get fired.

She enters the east wing, grabs the hall bar, and nearly doubles over.

9:41 p.m.

The noise of the battle is overpowering. She hides with old Mr. Reed in a foxhole on a beach that is littered with bodies and watered with blood. The scene is so familiar, Janie could recite the conversation—even the beat of the bullets—by heart. And it always ends the same way, with arms and legs scattered, bones crunching underfoot, and Mr. Reed’s body breaking into tiny bits, crumbling off his trunk like cheese being grated from a slab, or like a leper, unraveling.

Janie tries walking normally down the hallway, gripping the handrail. She cannot concentrate enough to remember her count of doorways, the dream is so intense. She keeps walking, reaching, walking, until she hits the wall. She’s losing the feeling in her fingers and feet. Wants to make it stop. She backs up eight, ten, maybe twelve steps, and falls to the ground outside Mr. Reed’s door. Her head pounds now as she follows Mr. Reed into battle.

She tries to find his door so she can close it. She tries, and she can’t feel anything. She doesn’t know if she’s touching something, or nothing. She is paralyzed. Numb. Desperate.

On the bloody beach, Mr. Reed looks at her and beckons her to come with him. “Behind here. We’ll be safe behind here,” he says.

“No!” she tries to scream, but no sound comes out. She can’t get his attention. Not behind there! She knows what will happen.

Mr. Reed’s fingers drop off first.

Then his nose and ears.

He looks at Janie.

Like always.

Like she’s betrayed him.

“Why didn’t you tell me,” he whispers.

Janie can’t speak, can’t move. Again and again, she fights, her head feeling like it might explode any moment.