Sleep at Last
A short story
Today:
“He’s happy,” Mia said.
“He doesn’t look happy, dear. He looks…empty,” Charlotte, her best friend, replied.
Mia held the glass to Noah’s mouth, bent the straw at the accordion, and gently placed the plastic between his lips.
He puckered and drew the liquid in. Mia watched the man she loved more than anyone in the world mechanically draw at a straw, and wondered if she’d made the worst choice of her life.
“Chocolate milkshake, his favorite. It brightens his day more than anything else.”
“And that’s it? That’s the highlight of your husband’s life?”
Mia flinched and kissed his cheek.
Charlotte rummaged through her beige Chanel bag, found her lipstick and mirror, and touched up her lips. She adjusted her dress, pulling on the sides to remove any wrinkles.
The three of them sat at the square four-person tile table in Mia’s kitchen, with Mia and Charlotte facing each other and Noah in his wheelchair to his wife’s left. Mia insisted they sit in the kitchen because it was easier to feed Noah, as everything he might want was here.
After Noah’s final procedure, Mia thought she might have to enlarge the apartment’s kitchen door so Noah’s wheelchair would fit, but she bought a narrow, mechanical one rather than a larger, motorized wheelchair because he couldn’t operate the electrical controls.
The glass slurped as Noah emptied the last of the chocolate milkshake.
“Time for lunch,” Mia announced.
“Lunch after dessert?”
“Yes. Noah likes it this way.”
“How can you possibly know? He doesn’t write, talk, or communicate at all.” Charlotte surveyed Noah’s blank expression as Mia dabbed rivets of chocolate from his chin. “There’s no way to know.”
“I know.”
Before today:
“Didn’t work, Margie. Still can’t sleep.” Noah pouted and swiped beneath his eyes, even though he shed no tears.
“You need another surgery, hun.”
Mia didn’t correct Noah when he misspoke her name. He hadn’t gotten her name right since his third surgery three months ago. The surgeon had warned them that it might take multiple operations; more treatments spawned more side effects, serious and irreversible side effects. Could he guarantee sleep? Doctor Aman Reynolds said he could ensure somnolence, but he repeated his warning that if he operated more than once, the side effects would change Noah’s and Mia’s lives in ways they couldn’t comprehend.
The doctor’s corner office perched on the top floor of Boston’s new, 40-story Aspire Medical Center, overlooking the Charles River. Their first appointment was on October seventeenth, the apex of autumn, trees of gold and crimson extending to the horizon.
“Are you willing to trade autumn for sleep?” the doctor asked.
“What do you mean?” Mia squeezed her husband’s hand.
“If we surgically excise your worries and anxieties, we delete part of who you are and what you love.”
Mia nodded at Noah.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m desperate. I’m barely functional. I can fake it through the work day—for now—because my job mostly involves agreeing with the bosses above and signing reports by staff below, but I’m always on the verge of crashing. It’s like standing on tiptoes on a cliff edge, certain a breeze is going to blow you over, but you’re just not sure when. Every day is worse than the day before. I want to sleep, but my thoughts keep me awake.”
Dr. Reynolds explained the multiple steps he’d have to take before they considered surgery, a year of tests and non-invasive treatments to try to improve his sleep.
Noah wasn’t sure if he could wait, but Reynolds said he’d have to.
There was a sleep study in which two dozen wires connected Noah to various futuristic-looking machines for three nights, followed by MRI brain scans. Then came eliminating all caffeine, locking down their electronics after 8 p.m., a $15,000 mattress, soundproofing their room with triple-pane windows and four-inch padding on the floor, ceiling, and walls, lowering the air conditioner at night to sixty-one degrees, blackout curtains, sex every night before bed, a vegan diet, an all-fish diet, a no-sugar diet, no-fat, and high-fat diets, melatonin, valerian, exotic herbs from Tibet, and finally Lunesta, Ambien, Sonata, and other sleeping pills.
Nothing worked. Noah still couldn’t sleep more than three hours. Some nights it took him hours to fall asleep; others, he woke up ten or more times.
“Stress keeps me awake. Work, money, things I’ve said to people in the past—you know, regretful words from decades ago—my health, Mia’s health, my parents’ health. It used to be that the trash trucks only woke me on pickup days, but now I hear them even on mornings I know they’re not coming.”
“Agreed, troubling thoughts keep you awake. Your brain scans show multiple parts of your brain light up at night, like fireworks, when they should be quiet. It’s time for surgery; we’ve tried everything short of that. The targeting computer and gamma knife will vaporize the parts of your brain where worry lives. The gamma knife, a particle beam, passes directly through the skull, so there’s no cutting, no pain, no overnight hospital stay. It’s a simple procedure using one of the world’s most complex machines.”
Reynolds destroyed the part of Noah’s brain where work-related worry ran rampant. There were no side effects, no loss of memory, movement, cognition, or emotion after gamma knife surgery. Noah’s skills and business acumen remained intact, and he functioned perfectly as the vice president of Zeus Automotive.
On top of that, he even slept a little better. But that improved sleep was short-lived, so Reynolds performed a second surgery. Then a third. After the fourth surgery, Noah didn’t remember his wife’s name, had difficulty walking, and couldn’t dress himself. He woke each morning before five and never fell asleep before 1 a.m.
Reynolds said he needed another surgery aimed at the deepest parts of his brain to destroy the powerful anxieties from his childhood, invisible during the day, which invaded his mind at night.
During the fifth session, Reynolds razed all of Noah’s remaining worries, and Noah finally got a good night’s sleep.
Today:
Charlotte ate her pastrami sandwich while Mia sliced Noah’s sandwich into small pieces and fed him one forkful at a time. He seemed to smile with every bite, but that could have been Mia’s hopeful imagination.
“You’re not hungry?” Charlotte asked, the pastrami, cheese, and toast muffling her words. “You can eat, too.”
Mia traced the outline of her sandwich with her finger. She was about to pick it up, but took a sip of her iced tea instead, the cubes playing a wind chime melody as they bounced along the glass. “I’m tired, Char. Mind if we call it a night?”
“Sure, sure. Maybe some shopping therapy tomorrow at the mall?”
Mia nodded. “Yeah, good idea.” But what Mia wanted most was sleep. Anxiety, worry, and especially second-guessing about Noah troubled her mind, keeping her from a sound night’s sleep, or just about any sleep.
Was there a better plan for Noah? Did we try everything we could before surgery? Did we miss anything?
Mia longed to reassure herself that she’d done everything right, but those worries rattled around her head louder and louder.
From Lunesta to Ambien to loprazolam, nothing worked—the anxiety over Noah was unrelenting, penetrating, and permeating her dreams, like dynamite explosions that never stopped.
Who can sleep through that? Nobody can sleep through that.
She massaged her temples where an ache pulsed relentlessly.
If I don’t sleep, I’m not going to live.
“Would you excuse me for a minute?” Mia asked Charlotte. “I need to make a call.”
Right after Mia rose and headed to the bedroom for some privacy, she spun back toward her best friend and asked, “I have a huge favor to ask you. A lifetime-long favor.”
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If you enjoyed this tale, I think you’ll also like my short story, Opposites Attract.
Opposites Attract
“Are you sure, Stephanie? Because you’ve got to be one hundred percent sure.” Lilly wiped her eyes with a napkin. “There’s no coming home. This is a one-way ticket, and we’ll never see each other again. I want you to be happy, but I don’t know if I can live without you.”
Freaky story and way too real. Reminds me of a course of pills I took years and years ago to treat anxiety. That feeling of being empty? Yeah, I knew that ... told the Doc: nope, not doing this anymore. Saw a shrink instead who told me I needed a project, that I would always need a project. See where that got me?
This heavy handed surgery is akin to the frontal lobotomy performed on shell-shocked soldiers in early 1900’s. I had an uncle that had this done to him. It changed him from brilliant and thoughtful to a child-like condition. The post-surgery uncle was all that I knew. But my mother told me what he was like before he went off to war, before the lobotomy.
No sleep! That’s the spectre that haunts us folks as we get older… sometimes younger folks too. And then you lie awake worrying that you aren’t sleeping, and what your day will be like if you don’t sleep.
A very good story! Thank you!