shrieking. Brigid met me in the hallway, and she hesitated, letting me take the lead.
Eoin was thrashing in his bed, his arms flailing, his face wet with tears.
“Eoin!” I said, sitting beside him. “Wake up! You’re having a bad dream.” He was stiff and hard to hold, his small body pressed and stretched between sleep and reality, and I shook him, saying his name, patting his icy cheeks. His whole body was cold. I began rubbing my hands briskly up his shivering limbs, trying to warm and wake him.
“He used to do this when he was very small,” Brigid fretted. “Most of the time, we couldn’t wake him. He would toss about, and Dr. Smith would just hold him until he settled.”
Eoin let out another blood-curdling cry, and Brigid stepped back, her hands over her ears.
“Eoin,” I urged. “Eoin, where are you? Can you hear me?”
His eyes fluttered open. “It’s dark,” he wailed.
“Turn on the lamp, Brigid. Please.”
She rushed to do as I asked.
“Doc!” Eoin cried, his blue eyes searching the room for Thomas. “Doc, where are you?”
“Shh, Eoin,” I soothed. “Thomas isn’t back yet.”
“Where’s Doc?” he wept. He wasn’t whimpering. He was crying, the raw wails making my own eyes fill and spill over.
“He’ll be home soon, Eoin. Nana is here. I’m here. Everything is all right.”
“He’s in the water,” he moaned. “He’s in the water!”
“No, Eoin. No,” I said, even as my heart grew cold and heavy in my chest. I was to blame for Eoin’s nightmare this time. He hadn’t just seen me disappear; he’d seen Thomas disappear too.
After several minutes, Eoin’s body grew more pliant, but his tears continued as he sobbed with brokenhearted conviction.
I held him close, rubbing his back and stroking his hair.
“Would you like a story, Eoin?” I whispered, trying to coax him back from the edges of the nightmare and into the comfort of waking.
“I want Doc,” he cried. Brigid sat down on Eoin’s bed. She wore a ruffled nightcap that made her look like Mrs. Claus, and her face was creased and careworn in the meager light. She didn’t reach for Eoin but clasped her hands together as if she wished someone would hold her too.
“What if you tell me what Doc does to make you feel better when you have a bad dream?” I suggested.
Eoin continued to cry as if Thomas were never coming back.
“He sings to you, Eoin,” Brigid murmured. “Should I sing to you?”
Eoin shook his head, turning his face into my chest.
“He tamed the waters, tamed the wind, He saved a dying world from sin, they can’t forget, they never will, the wind and waves remember Him still,” Brigid warbled tentatively.
“He healed the sick, the blind, the lame, the poor in heart cry out His name. We can’t forget, we never will, the wind and waves remember Him still,” she continued.
“I don’t like that song, Nana,” Eoin said, his voice hitching with the sobs that still shuddered through him.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because it’s about Jesus, and Jesus died.”
Brigid looked a little shocked, and I felt inappropriate laughter bubbling in my chest.
“It’s not a sad song, though. It’s a song about remembering,” she protested.
“I don’t like remembering that Jesus died,” Eoin insisted, his voice rising. Brigid’s shoulders fell, and I patted her hand. She was trying, and Eoin wasn’t being especially receptive.
“Remember Him, remember when, remember that He’ll come again, when all the hope and love is lost, remember that He paid the cost,” Thomas sang softly from the doorway. “They can’t forget, they never will, the wind and waves remember Him still.”
Thomas’s pale eyes had dark circles, and his clothes were rumpled, but he walked forward and lifted Eoin from my arms. Eoin clung to him, burrowing his face in Thomas’s neck. His sobs rose again, gut-wrenching and unrelenting.
“What’s wrong, little man?” Thomas sighed. I stood, vacating my spot so Thomas could tuck Eoin back in his bed. Brigid stood as well, and with a soft good night, she walked quickly from the room. I followed, leaving Eoin in Thomas’s capable hands.
“Brigid?”
She turned toward me, her face tragic, her mouth tight.
“Are you all right?” I asked. She nodded briskly, but I could see that she was struggling for her composure.
“When my children were small, sometimes they would cry in their sleep like that,” she said. She paused, tangled in a memory. “My husband—Declan’s father—he wasn’t gentle the way Thomas is. He was bitter and tired. Anger was the only thing that kept him going. He worked himself