Sleepwalk (32 page)

And yet, from the way he felt, it sure seemed like he’d been playing just now. The whole thing was clear in his mind, and his head even hurt, just as though someone had kicked him.

He lay back down and his breathing slowly returned to normal. He thought about the dream, even imagined he heard the crowd cheering him on again.

Fat chance of that ever happening. He’d never been any good at team sports—he’d always thought they were stupid. If you couldn’t do something your own way, he’d decided long ago, it probably wasn’t worth doing.

But now, as he remembered the dream once more and imagined what it would feel like to actually hear a crowd of people rooting for you, he wondered if maybe he’d been wrong.

He snickered softly as he thought about what his friends would say if tomorrow, instead of going down to the A&W to hang out after school, he tried out for the football team.

Maybe, he decided, he’d just do it.

A few minutes later, half hoping the dream would
come back so he could try the play again, Jeff drifted back to sleep.

Susan Paynter stood up and stretched. It had been a quiet night. The hospital was almost empty, and most of the patients were sleeping, except for old Mrs. Bosworth, who was lying in her bed staring up at the television on the wall of her room. Mrs. Bosworth barely slept at all, but it didn’t seem to bother her, and as long as Susan left the TV on, she didn’t complain about anything.

She wandered down the hall, glancing into each of the rooms as she went, then turned into the staff lounge at the end of the hall. The night orderly was sitting at the table leafing through a magazine. He glanced up, then went back to the magazine as Susan poured herself a cup of coffee. Wincing as she sipped at the stale and bitter brew, she reached for the sugar. But before she could pick it up, a scream shattered the quiet of the little hospital. Instantly, the orderly was on his feet.

“It’s Frank,” Susan said as they ran out of the lounge and headed down the hall. “Find Dr. Banning.”

But from the other end of the hall, Bob Banning was already racing toward them.

Susan reached the room first, flinging the door open and snapping on the lights. When she’d stopped in no more than five minutes before, Frank had been lying peacefully in the bed, his breathing slow and regular, all his vital signs strong. Indeed, except for the abnormal patterns of his brain waves, he would have appeared merely to be asleep.

But now his eyes were wide open and he was once
more struggling violently against the straps that held him to the bed. The veins on his neck and arms were standing out starkly against his flesh, and strangled sounds were bubbling from his throat.

“Jesus,” the orderly whispered, his eyes widening as he stared at Frank. “Is he awake again?”

Bob Banning quickly surveyed the monitors on the wall. Frank’s brain waves were going crazy now, forming a jagged line that bore no pattern at all. It was as if a storm were raging in his brain, sending stimuli to every muscle in his body at the same time.

Other monitors showed that his breathing and heartbeat had gone wild as well.

And then, as they watched, it stopped.

Frank went limp, his arms and legs dropping onto the bed, his head lolling on the pillow.

His eyes, staring up at the ceiling, remained open, but held a glassy, sightless look.

Susan Paynter gasped, her own heart pounding. She’d never seen anybody actually die before. Her eyes went to the monitors that tracked Frank’s vital signs, and she saw that although the man’s heartbeat had evened out, his breathing had all but stopped.

Though Frank Arnold wasn’t dead yet, in a few more minutes he would be.

Without waiting to be told, Susan raced to get a respirator. In less than a minute she was back, wheeling the machine through the door and into the space that had been cleared for it next to the bed.

Almost silently, each of them knowing his job so well that few words were necessary, the three of them set to work.

Fifteen minutes later, Frank’s condition had stabilized, and Bob Banning sighed heavily. “Get him into
X ray,” he told Susan. “Whatever happened in there must have been massive, and I want to see how bad it is.”

Susan nodded. “Shall I call Jed?” she asked.

Banning hesitated. By rights, he supposed, Frank’s son should be notified immediately of what had happened. But what good would it do, really? At the moment he could tell Jed nothing more than that his father had apparently suffered yet another stroke.

And what could he tell the boy when he asked about his father’s condition?

Only that although his body was still alive, his brain was now, to all intents and purposes, dead.

“Let him sleep,” he said. “There’s nothing he can do for Frank, and tomorrow he’s going to have to make the hardest decision of his life.” His eyes drifted to the inert form in the bed. “He’s going to have to decide whether to keep his father this way, or let his body die too.”

A few minutes later, as he prepared to take Frank, still in his bed, down to the X ray room, he wondered if it wouldn’t have been kinder for him to have ignored the respirator when Susan had brought it in, and simply let Frank go.

But that wasn’t his decision.

That was a decision only Jed Arnold could make.

Then again, Jed might not have to make it at all. For it was quite possible that Frank Arnold would have yet another stroke before the morning came, and his suffering would be over.

But it was not to be: midnight had come, and now was gone.

Jed stirred restlessly in his bed, then came abruptly awake. It wasn’t a lingering waking, the kind of quiet emergence from sleep he usually enjoyed, reluctant to leave the comfort of his bed. Instead it was a sudden sharpening of all his senses, a tensing of his body, as if some unseen danger lurked nearby. He sat up, pushing aside the single blanket he had slept under, then rubbed at the ache in his right shoulder where his muscles had knotted from lying too long in one position.

He hadn’t slept well. He’d gone to bed early, his mind confused with everything that had happened the day before. But as he’d lain awake, he’d remembered the strange sense of peace that had come over him the night he’d sat in the kiva with his grandfather. He’d begun to picture himself there, visualizing the glowing fire and the low roof, summoning from the depths of his memory every sensation he’d seen and heard and felt.

Slowly, as he lay in his bed, that strange trancelike state had come over him once more.

He still wasn’t certain if he’d actually slept at all, for
last night, in the end, had been another night spent with the spirits, and the memories of the things they had shown him were still fresh in his mind.

He had flown with Rakantoh again, soaring over the desert, seeing the world once more through the eyes of the spirit.

Everywhere, there had been evil. The earth below was scarred with the ravages of the white men, and from the sky he had been able to see them creeping through the darkness, feel the malevolence radiating from them.

For a time his vision had been filled with the brilliant yellow of flames, but after flaring up into a blinding radiance, they had quickly died away.

A little later—he had no idea how long, for time itself seemed to warp as he flew with the spirit—he had felt a strange vibration in the air and become disoriented. He’d felt himself tumbling through the sky, falling toward the earth, certain he was about to die. He had called out to Rakantoh, but the spirit was rolling and yawing in the air too, his enormous wings flapping uselessly. And then the curious vibrations suddenly stopped and he regained his bearings.

But from the earth below he felt a new sensation, a perception of pain such as he had never felt before. Rakantoh, screaming with rage, had wheeled on the wind, and they had soared away above the canyon, as the spirit searched in vain for his lost refuge beneath the lake.

Now, in the growing light of dawn, Jed lay motionless, his mind examining what he had seen in the visions of the night, trying to fathom the meaning of his strange fantasies.

* * *

It was nearly six-thirty when Judith emerged from Frank’s bedroom. Though Jed had insisted he didn’t need her to spend the night in the house with him, she’d stayed anyway, knowing that if she’d be able to sleep at all that night, it would be easier in Frank’s bed, where at least she would feel his presence. It had worked, for she had slept soundly, and when she awoke, felt herself oddly comforted by the faint smell of him that still clung to the sheet in which she was wrapped. Now she paused outside Jed’s room, his door ajar. She tapped lightly, then pushed it farther open. He was lying on the bed, and though he seemed to be looking right at her, he didn’t acknowledge her presence at all. “Jed?” she said. “Jed, are you all right?”

He stirred slightly, and then his eyes cleared. “I think we should call the hospital,” he said quietly. “I think something else happened to dad during the night.”

Judith felt a pang of fear pricking at her, but forced herself to reject it. What could Jed possibly know? If there had been a problem with Frank during the night, surely they would have called here. She said nothing, as she turned and walked through the small living room and into the kitchen, where she started a pot of coffee. But she kept eyeing the phone, the fear Jed had aroused in her growing by the minute. She remembered the other day, when he’d known it had been Randy Sparks who threw the rock through Rita’s window.

At last, as Jed came in and sat down silently at the table, she picked up the phone and punched in the hospital’s number.

As she listened to Dr. Banning’s brief description of what had happened during the night, her legs weakened beneath her. Then she hung up and faced Jed.

“You were right,” she said, her voice quavering.

Twenty minutes later, with Jed at her side, Judith entered the hospital. As soon as she saw the look on Bob Banning’s face, she knew it was even worse than she’d thought.

Banning led them into Frank’s room, standing quietly as Judith took Frank’s hand in her own, her eyes flooding with tears. She gazed down at him, trying to see the vital man she’d come to love so much. But the man in the bed seemed a stranger.

His face was expressionless, his jaw sagging Though his eyes were closed, he didn’t look as if he were sleeping.

Despite the motion of his chest as the respirator forced him to breathe, he looked dead.

Though she was absolutely certain he was totally unaware of his surroundings now, Judith leaned over and kissed his cheek. Still holding his hand in her own, she whispered aloud the thought that was in her mind. “Oh, Frank, what do you want us to do?”

They stayed with him a few minutes, then finally left his room, following Bob Banning into his office.

“He—He could still come out of it, couldn’t he?” Jed asked, his voice taking on a desperate tone. “I mean, people wake up from comas, don’t they?”

Banning was silent for a moment. It would have been easier, he knew, if Frank had died during the night. Indeed, without the respirator he would have. But the respirator had been there, and it had been
Banning’s duty to use it. So now he had to explain the reality of Frank Arnold’s condition to the two people who loved him most.

“I’m afraid he won’t,” he said, forcing himself to meet Jed’s eyes as he spoke the words. The boy flinched as if he’d been struck, and his jaw tightened; but he said nothing, and managed to control the tears that glistened in his eyes. “Without the respirator,” Banning went on, “I don’t think he’d survive more than a few minutes.”

He stood up and went to a light panel on the wall, where the latest X rays of Frank’s brain were displayed. As his fingers pointed out large dark masses within Frank’s skull, he resumed speaking. “The damage is very extensive. There are parts of his brain that are still functioning, but his mind is essentially dead. In fact, I don’t think it’s fair to say he’s either asleep or awake. He isn’t even in what I personally would call a coma. To me, a condition of coma implies that there is still a functioning mind within the brain, a mind that has a possibility, no matter how slim, of recovering.” He took a deep breath, then went on. “But unfortunately, for Frank that just isn’t true anymore. What he’s in is more like a state of suspended animation. Though his body is still alive, he has no control over it, let alone awareness of it. He’s conscious of nothing, and never will be.” He paused for a second, then forced himself to utter the words he knew he had to speak. “I’m very sorry, Jed, but I’m afraid your father is dead.”

Judith gasped, and reached out to clutch Jed’s hand. “But there must be something you can do,” she pleaded. “His heart is still beating, and he’s breathing—”

Banning spread his hands helplessly. “Only because of the respirator,” he replied. “Without it …” He left the sentence hanging, and Judith nodded numbly, forcing herself to accept the unacceptable. At last, taking a deep breath and unconsciously straightening herself on the sofa, she faced the doctor again.

“What can we do?” she asked, her voice almost eerily calm.

Banning chose his words carefully. “I’m afraid there isn’t much we
can
do. Here—at the hospital—it’s our policy to keep a … shall we say ‘keep a body viable’ as long as we can.”

Jed gazed uncertainly at the doctor, and Judith felt her eyes moisten. Steeling herself, she forced the translation of Banning’s words from her lips. “You mean you won’t let Frank die, even though he can no longer live on his own,” she said.

Banning nodded gratefully. It wasn’t a policy he totally agreed with, but he wasn’t at liberty to suggest that perhaps the best thing for Frank, and Jed too, was simply to turn off the respirator. But if one of them brought it up, he was more than willing to discuss it with them. Now, to his relief, Judith did just that.

“If we decided to move Frank,” she said. “Is there a place where they would allow us to turn off the respirator?”

An anguished wail erupted from Jed’s throat. “Jude, I could never do that—” he began, but Judith pressed his hand, silencing him.