Bedtime Story (20 page)

But I stopped.

His eyes were open, but David didn’t look at me. He didn’t look at anything; his eyes were flat and dull, rolled partway back in his head, twitching from side to side.

“David?” I said quietly, trying to get his attention, to break the spell. And then more loudly, “David?”

He didn’t respond. A thin trail of saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth.

“David?”

Two and a half hours after taking David from the ER for an MRI and CT—with a promise to return him within the hour—the attendants brought him back. Jacqui and I tucked him under the covers. His body was heavy and slack and I couldn’t help but think of all the nights I had rolled and snugged him under his quilt after he had kicked it off.

His eyes were open, his pupils wide and darting from side to side. I leaned in close, trying to get his attention, hoping for a moment when his eyes would widen, when his face would set in a smile of recognition and he would say “Dad!” and throw his arms around my neck, but there was nothing: no recognition, no smile, no words.

Just an occasional blink, and that constant and oddly familiar flicker, back and forth.

“I’ll take the first shift,” Jacqui said quietly.

I glanced at her. I had been staring at David for a long time.

I didn’t want to leave, but I agreed with her, already thinking ahead to the night to come, building elements of routine out of what had been unimaginable just the day before.

I ruffled Davy’s hair.

Back at the house, I went into the kitchen to check the answering machine. I was bone-tired, but I knew there was no chance I’d fall asleep. My mind was whirling.

No messages.

I took the copy of
To the Four Directions
off the top of the fridge and let myself out the back door.

In my apartment, I ignored the bottle of vodka beckoning me from the freezer and ran myself a glass of tap water.

I wasn’t sure why I had brought David’s book up with me. I certainly wasn’t in the mood to read, and the book should have been a reminder of David being mad at me, his last words to me either sullen or laced with bile.

Last words
—what was I thinking?

Curiously, though, all I could think about was how excited David had been to read it, the warmth I felt when I saw the light under his door when he was supposed to be asleep.

I sat in my reading chair and turned the book over in my hands, started idly flipping through the pages. The book felt loose, worn-in, the result of him—and who knows how many other kids—carrying it around, reading it, loving it.

I found the bookmark, which David likely had tucked randomly near the back of the book as he was reading.

World’s Best Dad
.

Yeah, right.

Cupping the spine loosely in my hand, I let the pages fall open. It felt right to read the words that David had been reading. I had no way of knowing if this was where he had left off, but it looked like a good part. Something about Dafyd in a subterranean chamber, ghosts coming out of the walls. God, how I had eaten this stuff up.

I was shifting to cross my legs when I happened to catch sight of myself in the mirror across the room, a sudden glimpse of my face looking up from the book. A chill ran through me. I stood up, holding my place in the book with my forefinger, and walked slowly toward the mirror, never looking away from myself.

It couldn’t be …

I stopped almost against the mirror and gazed at my own eyes, watching the way they moved when I glanced to the right, then to the left.

I opened up the book and started to read a line, but I couldn’t read and look at my reflection at the same time. I shook my head—there had to be a way.

I turned the book around so the printed pages faced the mirror, and lifted it in front of my face until the top of the spine was across the bridge of my nose. In the mirror, I looked crazed, only my eyes visible above the book.

I ran my eyes along the reflected lines of text, not trying to decipher the words but trying to catch sight of myself reading, trying to see what my eyes looked like as they traversed the lines of the story.

I couldn’t do it—every time I tried to see what they looked like in the mirror, my eyes would stop and I’d be staring into my own pupils. Physicists have a term for it, the way observing something changes the thing being observed.

I pulled the book away from my face in frustration.

But it didn’t matter if I couldn’t prove it.

I considered the book in my hand with a mounting certainty: David’s eyes weren’t moving randomly. They were moving metronomically, from side to side, left to right.

He was reading.

W
ITH
D
AVID ADMITTED
, we saw a different specialist the next morning. It was just as well—every time I thought of Dr. Whatever-the-hell-his-name-was, the way he barely looked at David, a cold fury built in me that made me want to hit something.

On the other hand, Dr. Rutherford, a stately, middle-aged man with silvering hair and a plummy South African accent, spent a long time with David. He tested reflexes and flexibility, checked his eyes and his ears, all of the usual measurements that the nurses had been tracking in his chart, and then asked us to step out of the room.

“I’m going to test his reaction to noxious stimuli,” he explained. “It’s not something that parents usually like to see.”

I was still waiting for an explanation when Jacqui took my arm and directed us into the corridor. A few seconds later David let out a sharp exclamation of pain and surprise. It was the first time I had heard my son’s voice in days, and I turned around and threw back the curtain.

The doctor was leaning over him with a needle in his hand.

“That’s the test, Chris,” Jacqui said from behind me. “It measures a patient’s level of consciousness by checking their reaction to pain.”

I let Jacqui turn me away.

We spent the next half hour with Dr. Rutherford as he pored over the MRI and CT results. Finally, he held up his hands and said, in his warmest voice, “I’m very sorry that I don’t have any more concrete information for you.”

After the doctor was gone, I cleared my throat. “Can I ask you something?”

Jacqui regarded me suspiciously.

I probably should have mentioned it to the doctor, but I knew it didn’t make much sense. Still, the thought had been weighing on me.

“I think David might have been reading when the attack hit.”

“What makes you think that?”

I pulled the book out of the pocket of my jacket. “This was on the floor of his room, under the rest of the mess.”

It took Jacqui a moment to respond. “We put that on top of the fridge,” she said. “Did you—?”

I shook my head. “I think he snuck it off the fridge after you put him to bed.”

“It’s no wonder he didn’t put up a fight.”

I nodded. “I think he was reading—reading this—when he had the seizure.”

“But reading wouldn’t …”

“I know. I’m not saying that it caused the seizure, just that the two things happened at the same time.”

For few moments I watched the relentless movement of David’s hands, the constant flicker of his eyes.

“There’s one more thing,” I said slowly, not sure if I wanted to share this. She’d think I’d gone crazy.

“What?” she asked, looking at me.

I glanced at David’s eyes again.

“Look at this,” I said, opening up the book. “Watch my eyes.”

I started reading from the top of the page, exaggerating the reading movement somewhat, moving my eyes past both ends of each line, hoping it would be obvious to her.

When I stopped, Jacqui looked puzzled. “What?” she asked.

“Look at my eyes,” I stressed, repeating the whole pantomime.

“You’re reading,” she said. “I don’t …”

“Now look at David,” I said. “Look at
his
eyes.”

Jacqui looked down at David, then back at me. “His eyes are moving.”

I almost smiled. She saw what I was getting at.

“Chris, that’s called nystagmus. It’s involuntary.” Suddenly a nurse again. “It’s a symptom. We see it in patients with neurological problems,
head injuries, that sort of thing.”

“I think it’s more than that,” I said. “The movement, it’s so regular, so consistent. It’s like his eyes are actually focused on something.”

Jacqui shook her head. “It’s just the way he’s manifesting the symptom.”

“I think it’s more than that,” I repeated, trying not to get frustrated. “Look at how his eyes are moving. Doesn’t it look like he’s reading?”

“Chris.”

I stopped.

“I’m going to get a coffee and stop by the ER to check in with Marla,” Jacqui said slowly. “Do you want anything?”

I felt a rush of anger at the thought of her leaving, walking out when I was trying to explain, but then I recognized it for what it was: de-escalation. Cooling off.

“Just a coffee’ll be fine,” I answered, not looking at her. “Thanks.”

The curtain rattled as she left.

I turned back to David, smiling down at him, hoping he could at least sense my presence.

“Looks like it’s just the two of us again, sport,” I said. “So what should we do now?” I held the book up to him before I sat down. “A bit of a story?”

I imagined him smiling the way he always did when it came time for stories at home. Teeth brushed, face washed, jammies on, tucked warmly into bed.

I flipped through the pages. “It’s kind of tough,” I said, “not knowing where you left off. I don’t want to read you anything that you’ve already read—” Then louder, as I leaned back in the chair, “Well, how about this?” I settled on a page. “I think this is about where you finished. Looks like a good part, too.”

I looked up from the book. “Does that seem about right to you?”

He didn’t answer, save with the twitching of his eyes, and the clenching of his hands. I continued.

David’s body jerked on the bed. His back snapped upward, his hands flying uncontrollably. A gasp escaped his mouth and I stood up, dropping the book to the floor.

“What the hell?” David muttered, opening his eyes.

It was dark and cold. And it felt like he was lying on the ground. Not in his bed. When he tried to roll over, his whole body protested, and there wasn’t even a hint of give to the cold surface beneath him.

I thought it might be the beginning of another seizure, and I glanced at the curtain, wondering if I should call out for help, wishing that Jacqui was there. She always knew what to do.

I was reaching for the call button, and just as quickly as it had come on, David’s body relaxed back onto the bed.

I waited a moment. “Davy?” I whispered, touching his face, his arms, his hair, trying to soothe him. “David?” My mouth was dry, and I could hear the beating of my heart.

It was a long time before I could sit back down. I pulled away slowly, tentatively, reluctant to break the contact between us. “You gave me a scare there.”

I thought about calling a nurse, but he seemed back to normal. I’d let Jacqui know when she got back.

I picked the book up off the floor. “Should I continue?”

I would pause in my reading every so often to look at him. Something was different. It took me a couple of glances to determine what it was.

His hands were now absolutely still on the hospital blankets, no clutching, no grasping. And his eyes had stopped flickering: he seemed to be staring directly upwards, focused unwaveringly on a spot somewhere in the middle distance.