Dancing in Dreamtime Read Free Page A

gauntlet of men. They would be her bosses, her colleagues, her students, her customers. Until her accidental beauty faded, they would value nothing else about her. With their rudimentary drives, men seemed to her a separate species, trapped in an evolutionary cul-de-sac, like plankton or horseshoe crabs, while women had evolved to higher levels of complexity.

    For the present, Veronica stuck with her midnight shift despite the stress and gore. After supper she changed into her navy blue scrubs and sturdy clogs. Although her jacket and pants were a couple of sizes too large, chosen to fit loosely, when she arrived at the hospital men would still gawk at her.
    She always arrived early and parked her car at the edge of the lot near a stand of big trees, mostly beeches and maples and oaks, the last survivors of an ancient forest that once covered the ridge now occupied by the hospital. From this vantage point, she could see skeins of streetlights stretching along the three rivers that converged at the heart of the city, the flashing red beacons atop bridges, the glare of blast furnaces, the jets of yellow flame above refineries, and steam drifting in luminous clouds above the mills. But her chief pleasure was to watch the dream creatures stir fromtheir roosts in the high branches and go gliding down to haunt the bedrooms of sleepers.
    Once she clocked in for work, time passed quickly in a siege of heart attacks, gunshot wounds, diabetic seizures, broken legs, collapsed lungs, third-degree burns, and sundry other afflictions, all accompanied by cries of pain. Among the few patients who lifted her spirits were the expectant mothers, too far along to reach the maternity ward, who staggered in and delivered their babies on a gurney, often into Veronica’s gloved hands.
    During the rare lulls between emergencies, she wrote lists in a small notebook she kept in her pocket—lists of proverbs, vegetables, rivers, constellations, titles of books, women scientists, famous painters, obscure actors, songs—lists of anything she could dredge up from her brain. While hoisting the bag for a blood transfusion or pressing defibrillator pads to a patient’s chest, she might recall burnt sienna or Baton Rouge, Louisiana; then at the next opportunity she would add those items to her lists of colors or state capitals. Noticing her habit, one of the gawkers might ask, “What are you scribbling, baby doll?” “Poetry,” she might answer, to discourage the man, or “Letters to a crazed world.” Indeed, as the world sank into disarray, she would have written poetry if she knew how, but at least she could make little havens of order by writing lists.
    Veronica’s favorite moment arrived after she clocked out at dawn. In cold weather she sat in her car and gazed down at the incandescent city. In mild weather she watched from a bench under the creamy branches of a giant sycamore. As alarm clocks rang and sleepers awoke, dream creatures slipped away from bedsides and came wafting up out of the valley to roost in the old trees beside the parking lot. They filled every branch, crammed together cheekby jowl. Judging by their gaudy outfits, they might have been a flock of parrots. Yet they made little noise, only a dry rustling, like wind in leaves. The sound enchanted Veronica, who imagined they were exchanging notes about the dreams they had performed for sleepers in the city.
    Of course dreams were also needed in daytime, though not so many, for napping babies and drowsy old folks and dozing workers home from the graveyard shift. On mornings when Veronica sat watching the flocks of characters returning to the ridge, a smaller number rose from the treetops where they had been roosting and swooped down into the city. Occasionally, she would meet in her dreams some dragon or soldier or crone whom she had seen gliding away on this daytime duty.
    Back in her childhood, when the ridge was still part of a state forest,