Sleep Donation

Donor Y

The Tuesday following my strange dawning with Mr. Harkonnen, an alert calls every staffer into the trailer. We fish-gape around Rudy’s computer. Headquarters does a live broadcast from the D.C. offices, so that we learn about the Chinese orexins and electives fractionally faster than the rest of America.

Breaking news: several dozen patients suffering from the orexin-disruption have sought treatment at the Sanya Hospital in Hainan Province, China. This medical milestone delivers a quiet shock to all of us in the Mobi-Van. Naively, we now realize, we believed the dysfunction was bounded by our hemisphere, peculiar to American sleepers. But here is proof that nobody is quarantined by geography—that anybody, anywhere, might become an orexin.

It gets worse.

Fourteen Chinese insomniacs in Hainan Province have also tested positive for the Donor Y nightmare. These people received sleep transfusions from an unknown source. The Corps was unaware of the existence of Chinese sleep clinics offering REM-transfusions for cash. Initial reports suggest that the fourteen Chinese men and women infected with the Donor Y — prion now exhibit an “extreme sleep aversion” similar to what we’ve seen with American elective insomniacs.

Presently, our doctors know so little about how the nightmare is spreading that they can only describe symptoms, guess at causes. But it’s clear that my assurances were wrong. His dream is unchained, hopping bodies. The nightmare contagion is uncontained.

Jim calls me into his office.

“Are you avoiding me, Trish?”

“Ha-ha. That would be a ninja-feat, wouldn’t it, Jim? Avoiding you in this trailer.”

“We barely speak.”

I touch my throat, as if to suggest I have a common cold. At the same time, I feel this to be an accusatory gesture; Jim must know, of course, that his secret is the obstruction.

“Who are you talking to these days? I wonder.”

But then the door comes unhinged; Rudy steps in.

In the narrow trailer window, I watch our faces darken like loaves in an oven.

“Huh,” he says mildly. “Am I interrupting something?”

“I’m talking to Trish. As per our discussion.”

“Oh. Right. We don’t think it’s a good idea for you to spend quite so much time with Baby A’s family.”

“It’s just not professional…”

“Or it’s too professional. They don’t need that much from you, Edgewater.”

“Your talents are now needed elsewhere.”

“With the insomnia appearing on every continent…”

“With the nightmare-infection spreading…”

“Globally, we’re going to have new initiatives, new responsibilities…”

The happiness comes on me like a sickness I can’t stop. I feel myself go fully automatic. A smile swarms onto my face, and somehow I am nodding at the brothers, taking notes. For a second it feels like old times to me, to stand under the headlamps of the brothers’ concern. Not just for me, but for the entire planet; listening to them rant about the world in peril has always given me the most unlikely sense of security, made me feel like I am safely in the center of a rapidly enlarging family. And I think back to the night three weeks ago when I stood between Justine and Felix Harkonnen, staring through the glass into Ward Seven.

“I feel responsible for them,” I say, staring from Jim to Rudy. “The Harkonnens.”

“You’d better get over that,” Rudy snarls. “You’re not.”