Sleeping Beauty Read Free

disorder, you’re otherwise healthy? No smoking habit as a toddler that stunted your growth?”
    I laugh. “No, I’m just small. My grandmother was tiny too.”
    She nods. “I’m Wendy Pickering. You can just call me Wendy. Unlike Dr. Charmant, apparently, I spent the weekend looking over your records and I’ve come to the conclusion that you’ve got to be sick and tired of looking at us.”
    I don’t know what to say to this. “Who?”
    “Us,” she says as she clicks her pen and begins writing in my chart. “Doctors.”
    I imagine what she’s writing. Patient is sick...of looking at us. No evidence of any other illness found . “Well, it’s not that,” I say.
    She smiles. “Sure it is. You’ve been to four doctors in the last year and every one of them has punted to the next one without actually admitting to you that they’re not sure what the problem is. You’re frustrated. I can understand why.” She closes my chart and throws it onto the nearby countertop. “I want to start from scratch.”
    “You do?”
    She tilts her head and looks underneath me, amused that I’m sitting on an exam table that looks like a Dagwood sandwich. “Let’s move to my office. I think you outgrew this room twenty years ago. I blocked my schedule for the next hour. That should be enough time to get an accurate history.”
    I immediately slip off the table onto the floor.
    “You’re at the onset of an episode?” she says.
    “It’s like labor. The fainting spells–”
    “Your cataplexy?”
    I nod. “The cataplexy attacks get closer and closer together until I can’t wake up. I had one on the way to the hospital today, the second in two days. By the end of the week they’ll be a few hours apart, and then I just won’t wake up for the next few weeks.”
    “I want you in the sleep lab for observation the day after tomorrow so we can catch a few of the cataplexy attacks. Once they’re a few hours apart I want you to call me and I’ll clear the lab for an emergency overnight observation.”
    “But I already–”
    “You already did it, I know. The testing was poorly done and the results in my opinion are inconclusive.”
    I follow her down the hall past a row of exam rooms. I play “Guess the Décor” as we pass: outer space, sports, dogs, lollipops. I stop for half a second at the last to marvel at an umbrella stand just inside the door filled with gigantic Tootsie Pops. With Wendy ten steps ahead of me, I lean into the doorway, pick one up, and squeeze it. Another inflatable. Cool.
    I see a flash of white out of the corner of my eye and look up. Hands in the pockets of his white coat, Dr. Dismayed stops short at the sight of me fondling an oversized sucker. I chuck it back into the stand just as Wendy turns around.
    “Oh, there you are,” she says to Charmant. “Please schedule Claire for the sleep lab the morning after next for sleep latency testing. By Sunday night at the latest we’ll have her back in overnight.”
    “Absolutely,” he says, probably glad for something to do. “Who should I request for the sleep tech?”
    Wendy’s face lights up. “That’s the best part,” she says, turning away from him and continuing down the hallway. “Clear you calendar, Dr. Charmant. You have a date with the sleep lab in forty-eight hours.”
    I watch his expression turn from haughty to disbelieving. Well, I’m not exactly thrilled about spending the night with you either , I think. I look over my shoulder to make sure Wendy’s out of earshot.
    “Here,” I say, leaning into the room and plucking a real lollipop out of a glass jar. With a jerk of my wrist I toss it to him. For a second it looks like he’s going to try to catch it, then I hear it crack as it hits the tiles. “Isn’t this what you give to kids when it hurts?”
    “Come and join us, Brendan,” Doctor Pickering calls to him from down the hall. “You might as well do something today.”

Chapter Two
     
    Wendy ushers me into her office.