Detour from Normal (21 page)

Beth's journal, May 23, 2011 (continued):

Ken was increasingly intent on the idea that I needed help today. He also kept stating that he just wanted to get some sleep (and rightly so).
At one point he admitted that he might sleep better in his own bed than in a hotel bed, so I agreed to leave the house. I was afraid to be alone with him anyway because he seemed so agitated. His behavior was very strange and unfamiliar—I didn't know what to expect from moment to moment. Dana took him out for a little while to go back and check out of the hotel, and Kim helped me pack bags for the girls and myself. I had made arrangements for Kaitlin to stay at a neighbor's house and for Hailey to go to a friend's. I didn't want the girls to see their father in such a compromised state. I think Ken thought I was going to the neighbor's house as well, but I went to a hotel instead. I didn't tell anyone where I was. I was afraid that Ken would find me. It was a terrible night. I had never been afraid of anyone before in my life, and to be afraid of my own husband broke my heart. I spent most of the night awake—the slightest noise frightened me.

After a time I returned home and tried to sleep but only tossed and turned as memories of the wonders I'd seen replayed in my mind. After an hour or so, I went back downstairs and logged onto my computer to investigate how the Internet might have changed. I couldn't help but notice that it had become blazing fast: videos streamed without progress bars, and downloads were instantaneous. As I navigated from site to site, I was amazed at how uncluttered and intuitive everything had become and the extraordinary quality of images, video, and sound. It was as if everything had been upgraded to HD. The Internet itself appeared to learn about me with each mouse click or search, catering to and even
anticipating my desires as time passed. There seemed to be an underlying intelligence trying its best to please me.

I spent hours on the Internet until my head ached from media overload. I finally stood and stretched, then noticed some tufts of dog hair on the tile from Washington. The downstairs of our home is nearly all tiled, and Washington's white hair readily stood out against the earthy colored flooring. I reached down and collected some. Not surprisingly, each hair was a tiny work of art. I felt compelled to clean the hair up, but not wanting to wake my brother by using a vacuum cleaner, I thought to use a broom to sweep it up and retrieved one from the back patio. The broom bristles caught my attention as I walked back into the house. They weren't split, bent, and dirty as they had been previously. I paused and examined them more closely. Each black plastic bristle was the optimum length and straight as an arrow, and shined as if it had just been extruded. I turned the broom admiringly at arm's length. I couldn't remember ever seeing a more beautiful broom.

As I swept the tile, expecting the hair to accumulate into a pile, I was astonished by a completely different action—the hair vanished. Puzzled, I swept a small amount of hair more slowly to try to discover what was happening to it. By the third sweep, all the hair had disappeared. The broom bristles had somehow absorbed it. I loved it. I beamed as I swept the entire downstairs.

I finished up in the laundry room. Not wishing to end the fun, I opened the door to the garage, intending to experiment on some dirt, twigs, bolts, or other things that might be on the garage floor. It was fast becoming morning, and when I opened the door to the garage, light from the garage door windows shone on the tile and turned it ordinary. I swung the door open and closed and could literally see the difference:
when the door was closed, the perfection of the tile was everywhere. As I opened it, the perfection retreated from the light.

About that time my brother came down the stairs. I turned and watched the perfection recede from him as if it were trying to escape his view. It flowed like liquid across the wall and down the banister leaving plainness in its wake. Dana was too busy texting on his BlackBerry to notice. Everywhere he walked in the house, he banished perfection. It was a marvelous effect. Soon all the perfection was gone, never to be seen again.

When you are extremely sleep deprived or under high stress, you can have what are called hypnagogic dreams. Essentially you can dream while you are awake. These dreams can be interactive, like the broom absorbing the dog hair or the wonders I saw as I walked. In these dreams you can have real objects and dream objects or even people combined and interacting.

As the morning of May 24 began, I was filled with a feeling of dread and could think of nothing but Beth. I didn't know if I needed her or she needed me, but I wanted more than anything to be with her. Dana interrupted my troubled thoughts and asked if we could get some breakfast. I suggested we go to IHOP, and he offered to drive. He drove us there in
a white Camry he had borrowed from my brother Cole, and I directed him. It was fortunate that Dana drove; I'd just had my third strike—three days without sleep. I didn't realize it, but my hours were numbered.

We had a nice breakfast at IHOP, but my mind was on Beth the entire time. There had to be a reason. Did I need her protection? I asked Dana if I could see Beth.

"We'll see," he said. He had no intention of letting me see her, but as usual I trusted him fully. I ate my breakfast and tried to ignore my troubled thoughts. When we finally left, I asked again if I could see her. "In a while" was his response. When we got home, we took Washington out back and I threw the wood in the pool for him. While doing so, I asked Dana once more if I could see Beth. "I'll find out," he replied as he hammered away on his BlackBerry After playing with Washington, we went for a walk through the neighborhood. It was unusually quiet. I didn't feel right, and I was more anxious than ever. Something was wrong—I could sense it.

Something was indeed wrong, but I no longer knew how to interpret the cues my intuition was sending me. My new level of mania had changed me. It had taken away parts of my mind that knew fear. It had taken away important, useful memories: memories of the monster. The monster was stalking me now, taking two steps for each of my one as my brother and I walked down the edge of the street. I sniffed the air like a wild dog and glanced nervously behind me.
What is it?
There was something—I was certain.

I started to ask Dana once more if I could see Beth when something grabbed me around the throat and choked off my words, at first slurring them and then stopping them completely. The monster had surprised me from behind, leaping heavily onto my back, snarling and hissing as
it silenced me. My sleep-deprived body was no match for his immense mass. I stumbled forward and then crumpled like a drunk as he took from me what he wanted without resistance.

As I collapsed, Dana reached out and caught me by my shirt collar, saving my head from striking the pavement. He shouted to me. I saw and heard him but could do nothing to respond. He reached under my arms and dragged me like a sack of potatoes from the street and across the sidewalk to some grass. He laid me down gently and disappeared. I watched the sky for a long while; I just lay there and looked at one solitary patch of the endless blue. Then I felt it: the bees, the bees stinging my arms and legs—a thousand bees.

My voice started to return and I cried out, but it was weak like a puppy's whimper. I remembered then. I remembered that pain. It was the only thing I could remember about what was happening. I started to regain strength and turned my head to the side to see Dana screech to a halt in the white Camry. He jumped out, ran around the car, opened the passenger door, and rushed back to me. He reached under my armpits and dragged me toward the car. I tried to help, but I was still too weak to even hold my head up. We somehow made it to the car. He shoehorned me into the passenger seat and shut the door.

We drove after that. It seemed a pointless drive. I knew all the mountain views and road signs that I was seeing from my vantage point, and it was clear we were going nowhere—we were just killing time. The bees were gone, and I felt stronger by the minute, but I was also feeling sick or disoriented or—what? I couldn't put my finger on it. I was beyond anywhere I'd ever been before, and I wasn't sure what anything meant.

I felt hot and needed fresh air. I struggled up in the seat and reached for the window button. I powered the window down and rested my
chin on the windowsill like a dog. I watched lethargically as we passed Foothills Drive. Shortly after that we turned around, driving back toward my home. I took deep breaths of the warm air as the white lane lines on the road and the street signs ticked past, but it did nothing to make me feel better. It wasn't long before we were back in my neighborhood.

I closed my eyes and lost memory for a time. The next thing I remember was being on a gurney in an ambulance. I braced myself up with my elbows just in time to catch a glimpse of my neighborhood racing away through the two small windows of the back doors. Each time I braced myself, I'd see another familiar landmark disappearing behind us. The distance from my home grew rapidly: ten miles...fifteen miles...twenty miles. I moaned in despair with every new view.

I wanted to go toward my home, not away from it. I wanted Beth, but Beth was already beside me. She was right next to me and I didn't even know. I have no recollection of her or anyone being there with me, just everything I knew shrinking to a pinpoint, to nothing, so far away.

Chapter 19

PHOENIX MERCY

We arrived at Phoenix Mercy hospital, and I was helped out of the ambulance. I could walk but not for long. They decided to put me back on the gurney It's a good thing they did because the monster was only resting. He'd be back for me very soon. Beth was there, but when I looked at her, it was as if I was looking at a cutout of her with a sad, pasted-on frown—not the real her. When I held her hand, it was a lifeless prop hand made of cardboard. My real wife was gone, frightened away by the stranger who now inhabited her husband's body. She was going through the motions to save his body, in hopes that the man she really loved would return to it.

Before I knew it, the monster was upon me again and his attacks were vicious. That day is still the most unclear of my life as we struggled together in a strange hospital: Beth, Dana, the monster, and I, from seizure to seizure, between reality and dream, from pain to suffering to pain once again. I cannot say for certain what was real and what was not. In the end, when I had nothing left with which to fight, I felt a prick. I looked and there was a bubble swelling up on my arm where they had injected me with something. "Don't worry, it's just Ativan. It will help you to sleep," I heard a nurse say. "It's thick and gooey. That's why it
made an anthill like that on your arm. I'll massage it a bit to work it in." Then it was over. The seizures were finished, and I was at peace. The monster was gone.