HUM by Dan Hawley (chromebook ebook reader TXT) 📕

CHAPTER 21

“I think he likes you.”

“Of course he does,” the nurse replied. “Who?”

“The guy in 2D. Let’s just say he was at full attention when you were strapping him in.”

“Don’t be vile, Jerry.”

Jerry spun around in his chair and began clicking away on his keyboard. In front of him were eight large monitors showing video feeds of rooms inside the sleep clinic.

“I’m not even kidding Amanda; this guy likes you!” Jerry hooted with the maturity of a schoolyard bully. “Here, let me back up the recording so you can see for yourself.”

He clicked a button and spun a dial, and the bottom left monitor’s video began moving backward.

“Whatever, I don’t care,” Amanda said as she walked over to her station. Her desk was a copy of Jerry’s. Eight monitors lit up her face as she sat down. She looked at each screen, carefully studying their feeds to make sure everything, and everyone, was in order. Satisfied, she began working on her end-of-shift notes. Nothing out of the ordinary tonight, she thought, just the usual tired-looking people desperately searching for help.

The men were the easiest to handle. Sure, sometimes they leered uncomfortably long and talked to her like she was a dumb blonde, but she would just give them a cute look and flavor her words with sugar, and they would be easily malleable. Malleable. That’s a word she knew because she was decidedly not a dumb blonde. She was working on her masters, and soon she would have her Ph.D.

Beauty and brains, a lethal combo, as Jerry would say. But the men were the easiest—even the old, lecherous ones. None had been so bold as to fully grab her, but sometimes she would get a waft of gold bond and mothballs as a frail, boney hand ‘accidentally’ brushed her breasts on its way to adjust a shirt or glasses.

The first time it happened, Amanda had recoiled in surprise and disgust, but the feeble old man looking up at her from the bed had a playful smile and glint in his eyes that made her relax. It wasn’t like one of the frat boys at her college; this was an old man. Death wasn’t far off, and he just wanted to feel the warm skin and firm fat of a young woman’s chest. Hard to blame him, really.

The women were more difficult. Usually, they were ok, more self-absorbed in whatever was troubling their sleep, but Amanda noticed the looks. The look from these tired, usually middle-aged housewives was a mix between jealousy and hate. Maybe not hate. Amanda didn’t feel hate from these women as much as resentment. As if it was beautiful, young, thin, pretty Amanda’s fault that their husbands would rather jerk off on the internet than fuck their aging wives.

It wasn’t conceit; people had been telling her that she was beautiful her whole life. As a child, she was told she was “going to be a heartbreaker,” and as a teen, they said to her father, “I bet you have to beat the boys off with a stick.”

Now, as a young adult, the boys she wanted to talk to her were too shy, and the boys who did only seemed to want one thing.

Still, Amanda didn’t blame these ladies for the way they looked her up and down when she entered the room with the sleep device—she pitied them and swore she would never end up that way.

The children who came to the clinic were her favorites, but they were often the most difficult for her emotionally. Amanda had little sympathy for the adults. She cared; she really did want them to feel better, but she could turn off any emotion or attachment to the outcome. After a few years in this field, she had realized that most of the issues, the things causing sleep problems with people, seemed to be of their own making. The specter of their own guilt and pain and regret disturbing their sleep like a menacing ghost that could be simply banished if they would just let go of those feelings. Often, all the patients needed were some tests and a good talk or two with Dr. Luu—more psychologist than somnologist. They learned stress management and relaxation techniques. They discovered the correlation between the health of the body and the health of the mind. It was amazing what a little exercise and a proper diet could do to improve the quality of your sleep.

Sometimes this worked for the children as well. They might just need some exercise and to augment their diet. Sometimes they could be taught relaxation techniques as well and how to deal with negative self-talk.

But if the ghosts that haunted them weren’t of their own making, then what could be done?

Amanda loved walking in and finding a child in the room that she could make smile and laugh. A child with an open heart, fully accepting of love, laughter, and joy. But when she opened the door and walked into a room occupied by a truly sad and depressed child, a child that would not laugh and would force themself to crack the faintest of smiles at a joke, it almost made her want to quit. To get into a field that won’t put that sadness on her. Selfish, Amanda thought, and impossible.

She could never drag herself away. She loved the success stories too much. She loved seeing that same depressed child a month later, looking well rested and alive. That is why she did this work: to help people. And to crack those incredibly fascinating and strange cases.

Cases like the boy in 2B.

Amanda’s eyes floated from the screen where she had just finished her nightly report to the monitor showing the boy in 2B. There he lay with the covers pulled tight up to his chest. His blue and white pinstriped pajamas covered his shoulders. His shaggy brown hair stood out like winter wheat against the white pillowcase. He lay completely still, quietly and unblinkingly staring