Before I Wake by Robert J. Wiersema Page B

near the magazine section, settling myself in and starting to read. From the first line, it was like the writer was speaking directlyto me. I followed the words with my finger as I read, laughing out loud in some places.
    The next time I looked up, the lights were dim. I set the book on the chair and walked toward the main desk. There was no one there.
    The library was closed. I had read the day away, and I was locked inside.
    RUTH
    It is always a delicate balance to work with families in crisis. I knew I had to be ever so careful not to become personally involved with the Barretts.
    Oh, who was I kidding?
    I had been personally involved from the moment I saw Sherry in that hospital bed. She looked just like she was sleeping, dressed in her pink nightshirt, head turned slightly to one side. I kept expecting her to give a little sigh and turn onto her side, suck her thumb or kick off the covers. But in the six months I had been coming, she had only moved when I moved her, for her exercises and her baths.
    Her world had changed around her, and she didn’t even realize it. Her father had left, moved in with his young girlfriend. Her mother cried in the kitchen when she was washing the dishes.
    Karen was a good woman. I really admired her. The way she cared for her daughter, read to her, changed her. Even something as small as my cup of tea every morning was a remarkable achievement under the circumstances. If Sherry had been my daughter, I don’t know what I would have done. Probably curled into a tiny ball and died.
    But Karen carried on. She didn’t have many friends, but she talked to her mother on the telephone regularly, and Jamie Keller from the newspaper came to the house to visit. Karen dealt with the newspaper and the television reporters well—she was never terse, but never too open when answering their questions either. Her life revolved around her daughter.
    There were times, though, when I would speak to her and she wouldn’t hear. I knew exactly where she had gone. She was reliving the accident, or the night in the hospital when Sherry should have died, but didn’t.
    I had heard that story from several people. A number of nurses I knew claimed to have been in the room when it happened. And Dr. McKinley himself told me he still didn’t honestly know why Sherry had survived.
    â€œI could show you the file,” he said. “I could show you the records from the machines. She was gone. There was no heartbeat, no respiration…” He shook his head.
    When he spoke about Sherry’s mother, his tone changed. “I couldn’t believe her, crawling into the bed like that. It broke my heart, her holding her daughter as she died. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”
    We have to be so careful to keep our distance.
    I have never hated anyone, but I imagine it would be easy to hate Mr. Barrett if you didn’t know him.
    But who among us can really understand why anyone else does the things they do? If we can’t understand, then how on earth can we judge them? “Walk a mile in their shoes,” as my mother used to say.
    I was working at the house the day Karen found out about Mary. There was no screaming, no hysterics. Instead, she seemed to shut down, to shut Simon out.
    He was apologizing, stuttering, trying to explain. She didn’t seem to hear a word he was saying. Finally, she asked him to leave. She was calm and cold. He packed some clothes into a suitcase and a garment bag, and he carried his computer under his arm out the door to wait for his girlfriend to pick him up in her little white Volkswagen convertible.
    He said good-bye to Sherry before he left. And he said good-bye to me.
    I didn’t expect to see him any too soon, but the following Monday, he made the first of his morning visits to the house.
    I worked with Sherry Monday through Friday, but there wasn’t really that much for me to do. When she first came home from the