The Things That Keep Us Awake

Claire had been awake long enough to recognize the different sounds a hospital made at night. The soft squeak of rubber soles against polished linoleum. The rattle of a medication cart. A woman’s voice calling repeatedly for someone named Arthur. There were no clocks in her room, which she found particularly cruel.

She sat on the edge of the narrow bed, rubbing her thumb against the rough seam of the hospital blanket. That was when she noticed the blood. A thin, dark crescent beneath the nail of her left thumb. She held it closer to the light, examining the dried residue tucked between nail and skin. She tried scraping it out with her other thumbnail, but it wouldn’t budge. She couldn’t remember cutting herself.

The window opened only a few inches, and the bathroom door wouldn’t lock. Someone had taken the drawstring from her sweatpants. She’d been told these were precautions. Claire had spent most of her adult life being careful. She had raised two children, managed a business with forty employees, and once negotiated a six-figure insurance settlement while suffering from pneumonia. Now a woman young enough to be her daughter was explaining why she couldn’t have a belt.

“I can’t sleep,” she told the nurse.

“We’ll speak to the doctor about that.”

Claire almost laughed. Everyone had been speaking to doctors about her sleep. Nobody seemed particularly interested in why she was afraid to close her eyes.

“Is my husband all right?” she asked.

The nurse hesitated. “Hasn’t anyone spoken with you?”

Claire shook her head.

“I’ll see if someone can come talk to you.”

After she left, Claire examined her thumb again. She remembered the bedroom, the lamp, and Ben reaching toward her in the darkness.

Or had that been Viktor?

She pressed her thumbnail into the dried blood until it hurt. She couldn’t remember which one of them had screamed.

⸻

Nineteen days earlier, Claire had vaulted over her husband in a single athletic movement that would have impressed her high school gymnastics coach, had she ever had one.

In her dream, spiders were pouring from the ceiling vent. Hundreds of them, their legs clicking against the plaster. One enormous specimen had lowered itself toward her face, its abdomen swollen and glistening. Claire had attempted to retreat, discovered that the mattress was covered with smaller spiders, and launched herself toward the only available exit.

Unfortunately, Ben occupied that exit.

He woke beneath the combined weight of his wife and their king-size comforter, making a sound remarkably similar to a goose being strangled.

“Jesus Christ, Claire!”

“Spiders!”

“Where?”

“Everywhere!”

Ben switched on the lamp. Claire was standing beside the bed, barefoot and trembling, with the comforter wrapped around one ankle.

He surveyed the room. “Well, they’re gone now. You scared the shit out of them.”

Under ordinary circumstances, Claire would have laughed. Instead, she began to cry.

Ben climbed out of bed and pulled her against him. He was a large, warm man who smelled faintly of the cedar soap he insisted was the only brand that didn’t irritate his skin. She pressed her face against his chest and tried to slow her breathing.

“Another nightmare?” he asked.

She nodded.

“About him?”

“Spiders this time.”

“That’s a refreshing change.”

She managed a weak smile, but when Ben reached for the lamp, she caught his wrist.

“Leave it on. Please.”

He did.

By morning, Claire had slept perhaps another forty minutes. She stood in the kitchen watching coffee drip into the glass carafe while cold October rain tapped against the windows. The maple outside had begun shedding its leaves, and several were plastered against the sliding door like small, exhausted hands.

Her phone vibrated. It was Maya. “Dad says I need six more driving lessons,” her daughter announced without greeting.

Claire closed her eyes. Viktor had purchased Maya a beautiful new car two weeks earlier, presenting the keys at dinner with the expansive generosity of a man unveiling a monument to himself. Now he wanted to approve where she drove, whom she visited, and how frequently she practiced parallel parking.

“You’re twenty-four,” Claire said. “You have a license.”

“He says I’m not confident enough.”

“Then he shouldn’t have bought you a car.”

“Mom, that’s not helpful.”

Claire rubbed her forehead. “Honey, I’m not criticizing you. I’m saying a gift shouldn’t come with conditions.”

Maya was silent for a moment. “He says you always make everything into a fight.”

Of course he did.

By the time Claire hung up, her coffee was cold. A message from Nathan appeared almost immediately.

Dad and I talked last night. I think I understand why I’ve always struggled with relationships.

Claire felt the familiar tightening beneath her ribs.

What do you mean? she typed.

His reply came quickly.

He says you made me feel like I was never good enough. That if I’d had a different kind of mother, I’d probably be a more confident, lovable person.

Claire stared at the screen. Nathan had been a sensitive child who cried when injured birds appeared in the yard and once refused to eat chicken for months after visiting a farm. She had loved that tenderness in him, though his father called it weakness.

She began typing a response, deleted it, and tried again.

I love you, Nathan. I have always loved you.

Three dots appeared, vanished, and did not return.

Across the kitchen, the coffee maker clicked itself off.

⸻

Viktor had arrived in America at twenty-three with two suitcases, a degree no one recognized, and an almost religious belief in his own exceptionalism. He was handsome then, with thick dark hair and the kind of confidence that made ordinary conversations feel like negotiations he intended to win.

Claire had mistaken ambition for character.

Together they built a security company from a rented garage into a regional business employing forty people. Claire managed operations and staffing while Viktor courted wealthy clients, negotiated contracts, posed for photographs beside company vehicles, and took credit for the empire they’d built together.

In the beginning, he called it their business. By the time they divorced, he called it his empire. “You were always good with the little things,” he’d told her during the settlement negotiations.

She remembered looking at the stacks of financial statements spread across the conference table and thinking that forty employees, three warehouses, and millions in annual revenue constituted a remarkable collection of little things.

Viktor had kept the company. More importantly, he’d kept the conviction that Claire belonged somewhere beneath him.

He rarely contacted her directly anymore. He didn’t need to.

⸻

By the ninth night, Claire was afraid of bedtime.

She had developed an elaborate routine involving chamomile tea, a warm shower, two pillows arranged at precise angles, and a meditation narrated by a woman whose tranquility Claire had come to resent.

The nightmares persisted.

In one, Viktor stood in the hallway of their old house wearing the charcoal overcoat he’d owned when they separated. His shoes made a familiar hard clicking sound against the marble floor. He opened drawers, examined photographs, and spoke in the calm, authoritative voice he used when explaining to employees why their mistakes were personal disappointments. “Everything here belongs to me.”

Claire tried to reach the front door, but its handle was missing.

She woke gasping, her nightshirt damp with sweat.

Ben held her until the shaking stopped. At four in the morning, she was still awake, listening to the refrigerator compressor cycle on and off downstairs.

During the day, the children continued calling. Maya needed advice about another argument over the car. Nathan wanted to discuss things he believed Claire had done wrong when he was eleven. Every conversation left her shaken, and every attempt to defend herself seemed to confirm Viktor’s assessment that she was defensive and controlling.

One afternoon, Claire found her car keys inside the refrigerator beside a carton of milk. She stood holding them, trying to remember how they’d gotten there.

That evening, she left a saucepan heating on the stove until Ben smelled something burning.

“You’re exhausted,” he said, opening the kitchen window.

“I know.”

“You need to stop answering every call.”

“They’re my children.”

“They’re adults.”

“And he’s their father.”

Ben turned off the burner. “Claire, you can’t control what Viktor says.”

She looked at him. “That’s exactly the problem.”

⸻

On the thirteenth day, Nathan called to tell her he needed some distance. “I think Dad’s right about a lot of things,” he said.

Claire was sitting in her parked car outside the grocery store. A shopping cart rolled across the asphalt and struck a concrete divider with a hollow clang.

“Your father wasn’t there when you were sick,” she said. “He wasn’t there for the school meetings or the nights you couldn’t sleep because you were worried about everything. He doesn’t get to rewrite your childhood.”

“See? You always do this.”

“Do what?”

“Make everything about you.”

She heard Viktor in the words, in the weary superiority of their delivery. Something inside her snapped.

“Then perhaps you should ask your father to explain why he spent most of your childhood at work while I raised you.”

Nathan hung up.

Claire called back twice, then sent a message she immediately regretted.

You’re starting to sound just like him.

She sat in the car for nearly an hour, watching people push carts through the drizzle. She knew she’d hurt Nathan. She also knew that apologizing would somehow become another piece of evidence against her.

That night, she drove to Viktor’s office.

His building stood behind a row of ornamental pear trees, its glass entrance illuminated against the darkening sky. Through the windows, she could see employees gathering their belongings.

Viktor appeared in the lobby wearing a pale blue shirt with the sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms.

“Claire.” He smiled as though greeting an unexpected but welcome guest. “What a surprise.”

“Stop talking to Nathan about me.”

His expression shifted into practiced concern. “He’s a grown man. He asks questions.”

“You’re telling him I made him unlovable.”

“I told him he deserves to feel good about himself.”

“You know exactly what you’re doing.”

A receptionist glanced up from her desk.

Viktor lowered his voice. “Look at yourself, Claire. You’re shaking.”

She was. Her hands trembled so badly that she clasped them together.

“You need help,” he said gently.

“Stay away from my children.”

“Our children.”

She raised her voice. He didn’t.

By the time she left, two employees had witnessed the confrontation. One had recorded part of it on a phone.

The video reached Maya before Claire got home.

Mom, please tell me you’re getting help.

⸻

Sleep became a country Claire could see but never enter.

She drifted off in brief, treacherous intervals, only to wake with her heart racing. Sometimes she heard Viktor’s footsteps in the hallway. Once she smelled his cologne, a sharp woody fragrance he had worn for decades, and searched the house until dawn.

Ben began sleeping badly too. He woke whenever she moved, followed her downstairs when she checked the locks, and once found her standing in the garage at three in the morning, staring at the closed door.

“You’re frightening me,” he admitted.

Claire looked at the tired lines around his eyes. She wanted to apologize, to explain that she was frightened too, but resentment rose before tenderness could find its way out.

“I can’t sleep,” she said. “And neither can you.”

Ben stared at her.

She heard how it sounded and hated herself for saying it.

The next morning, he suggested they speak to her doctor together. Claire agreed, then canceled the appointment after Maya called in tears because Viktor had threatened to take back the car.

That evening, Nathan sent a message.

Dad says you’re not doing well. I think you need to leave us alone until you get yourself together.

Claire read it three times.

She didn’t answer.

⸻

On the nineteenth night, she dreamed Viktor was inside the house.

Not their old house. This one.

She could hear his shoes against the hardwood floor downstairs. He moved slowly, pausing in the kitchen before climbing the stairs. Claire tried to call for Ben, but her throat wouldn’t produce a sound.

The bedroom door opened.

Viktor stood in the doorway, his face obscured by darkness. In his hand was something long and metallic. “You really thought I would let you go?”

She reached for the lamp.

Someone touched her shoulder.

Claire swung with both hands.

There was a sickening impact, a cry, and the sound of glass breaking.

Then Ben was on the floor, blood spreading across the side of his face.

The lamp lay beside him.

Claire stood over her husband, unable to understand what she’d done.

⸻

In the hospital, the psychiatrist was a woman named Dr. Shah, with silver-framed glasses and a habit of allowing silences to remain unfilled.

Ben had required stitches and treatment for a concussion. He was recovering at home, but he wasn’t ready to visit.

Claire listened without speaking.

“Severe sleep deprivation can affect perception, memory, and emotional regulation,” Dr. Shah explained. “You’ve been under considerable stress. We need to address your sleep and make sure you’re safe.”

Claire nodded. She understood all of that.

What she couldn’t explain was why the dreams had felt so real.

During the family meeting, Maya cried and Nathan sat with his arms crossed.

“Dad says you’ve been struggling for a long time,” Maya said. Claire felt her stomach tighten.

“He thinks you never really recovered from the divorce,” Nathan added.

“Your father doesn’t know anything about my life.”

Nathan looked at Dr. Shah. “See what I mean?”

Claire opened her mouth, then closed it. For the first time, she understood how thoroughly Viktor had prepared them to doubt her.

Later that afternoon, a nurse told her she had a visitor.

Viktor entered carrying white flowers wrapped in brown paper. His charcoal coat was immaculate, and his silvering hair had been combed precisely into place.

He surveyed the room with mild distaste. “Not exactly your usual accommodations.”

Claire said nothing.

He placed the flowers on the windowsill. “The children are worried. Ben, too. Such a shame about the lamp.”

Claire looked up.

“How do you know about the lamp?”

Viktor smiled. “Claire, everyone knows.”

But she knew they didn’t. The details of the injury hadn’t been shared with the children, and Ben had told her he wasn’t speaking to Viktor.

He pulled a chair beside the bed. “You know, Nathan’s finally beginning to understand himself. And Maya is learning responsibility. They’re growing up.”

“You’re hurting them.”

His expression softened into something almost paternal. “You’re still blaming everyone else.”

She watched him smooth an invisible crease from his trousers. It was a gesture she’d seen thousands of times, usually before he delivered some devastating criticism in a perfectly reasonable voice.

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

Viktor leaned back. “Doing what?”

For a moment, Claire considered telling him everything. About the nightmares, the sleepless nights, the terror of hearing his voice in her children’s words. But he already knew. She could see it in his face, in the small satisfaction he made no effort to conceal.

He stood, adjusted his coat, and moved toward the door. “You should rest,” he said. “I’ll take care of the children.”

After he left, Claire sat motionless for a long time.

She remembered Maya crying about the car, Nathan accusing her of ruining his confidence, the video from Viktor’s office, and Ben bleeding on the bedroom floor. Each event had seemed separate, another small crisis demanding her attention.

Now she could see the pattern.

Viktor had spent years telling her that without him she would fall apart. When she hadn’t, he’d found a way to make it happen.

A nurse entered with her evening medication and a paper cup of water.

“Your daughter called,” she said. “She wanted to make sure you were taking your medicine.”

Claire looked toward the flowers on the windowsill.

“Was her father with her?”

“I don’t know, honey.”

The nurse waited while Claire swallowed the tablets, then switched off the overhead light.

For the first time in weeks, Claire felt the heavy, unfamiliar pull of sleep.

She lay back against the pillow.

Somewhere down the corridor, a woman laughed at something on television. A cart rattled past the door. Rain tapped softly against the window.

Claire closed her eyes.

Then she heard Nathan’s voice. “Mom?”

She opened them. The room was empty. She waited, listening.

“Mom, why did you do this to me?”

Claire gripped the blanket. She knew Nathan wasn’t there. She knew it as certainly as she knew the room was empty and the flowers were real.

But the voice came again, closer this time.

And beneath it, almost too faint to hear, was Viktor’s familiar, patient laugh.

Claire turned toward the wall and pressed her hands over her ears.

Across town, Viktor sat in his study with a glass of mineral water, reviewing a message from Maya. She wanted to know whether her mother would be home for Thanksgiving.

We’ll have to see how she’s doing, he replied.

He placed the phone beside his computer and opened a window on the screen. The image was grainy, its colors washed into pale greens and grays. A narrow bed occupied most of the frame. Beside it stood a plastic cup of water and a pair of hospital slippers.

Claire lay facing the wall, her hands pressed over her ears.

Viktor leaned forward, watching as her shoulders began to tremble. He adjusted the volume, but there was little to hear beyond the faint hum of the ventilation system.

After a while, she turned onto her back. Her eyes were open.

He watched for another minute, then closed the window.

Upstairs, his bedroom was warm, the sheets freshly laundered by Luzia, his live-in maid. He set his alarm for seven, turned out the light, and was asleep within minutes.