Lucy is haunted by her dreams. They were fleeting images of people and places at first, but as the months pass, images are replaced by increasingly more detailed and graphic scenes. It’s as if she is watching a film playing in her head. None of the things she sees are familiar and they scare her, she’s afraid to fall asleep. The psychiatrist isn’t unduly worried. It’s normal, she reassures. While the brain is building connections with the transplant it is bound to get some things wrong, but with time, things will sort themselves out. You just have to be patient, she says.
As Lucy sleeps, my memories emerge.
My sixth birthday and my small body is fizzing with excitement. There’s an enormous cake with pink frosting, just for me. One big puff and the candles are out. I can’t wait for a taste of its delicious sugariness. The apartment door slams open. Cussing and angry, my father, drunkenly stumbles in, demanding his dinner. Eyeing the cake, he flips and in a blind rage picks it up and throws it at the wall. I scream. My mother yells, then crumples to the floor crying, the red imprint of his hand on her cheek. Warm pee trickles down my legs. The baby’s pissed herself, he jeers. My birthday is forgotten. I hate him.
Sarah wakes with a start. Something has disturbed her sleep, something alien, a noise that shouldn’t be there.
“Richard, wake up” She whispers urgently, nudging her sleeping husband, “there’s someone downstairs. Listen!”
Groggily, Richard surfaces from his deep, comfortable sleep, taking a few minutes to shake off his drowsiness and focus. Sarah’s right, someone is moving about downstairs. Taking the lead, he gets out of bed as quietly as he can, crosses the landing and creeps down the stairs, Sarah following closely behind. A light is on in the living room, the door slightly ajar. He motions to Sarah to stay back as he edges towards the door and peers into the room, careful not to alert who’s there to his presence, who knows how such a situation could escalate.
“Lucy,” he exclaims, “what are you doing up at this time of night? You gave your mother and me such a shock. We thought we were being burgled. What on earth are you doing?”
Lucy sits on the living room floor surrounded by towers of photo albums in different shapes sizes and colours.
“I dreamt about my sixth birthday, and I need to see the photos,” she answers, her face pale and drawn, “I need to know what it was like.”
“For God’s sake Lucy, it’s the middle of the night, couldn’t it have waited until morning?”
“No, it couldn’t. You don’t understand, you don’t know what it’s like, I need to know now,” she replies exasperatedly.
“Go back to bed Richard, you’ve got work in the morning,” Sarah says calmly, trying to diffuse the tension in the room, “I’ll help her find what she’s looking for.”
Richard makes his way to bed bewildered. He reminds himself of how lucky he is that Lucy, against all the odds, is still alive and that a few changes due to the transplant were inevitable, weren’t they? The positives definitely outweigh the negatives, and they’ll get over the blips like tonight.
“I’ve found it,” Sarah says smiling, handing Lucy a dark blue photo album.
Lucy scans the photos, searching for one showing her birthday cake.
“I remember now,” Sarah says looking at the photos over Lucy’s shoulder, “your sixth birthday was the year you were obsessed with hamsters. I blame the pet hamster they had at school. It had a funny name, what was it?”
“Biscuit,” Lucy replies her face relaxing into a smile at the memory.
“That’s it. You pestered us for months about getting a hamster, but we didn’t want the mess and the smell of having a real one, so we got you an interactive one, all the rage that year, and you loved it. You even had a hamster birthday cake if I remember correctly. Yes, look, there it is,” Sarah points at a photo in front of them, Richard and Sarah on either side of Lucy smiling at the camera behind an outlandish chocolate and cream-coloured hamster-shaped cake with a pink nose.
Lucy laughs, “I remember now. Cookie, I loved him.”
Sarah watches as Lucy’s body relaxes.
“Happy now? she asks. “Can we get back to bed?”
Lucy nods.
As Lucy drifts off to sleep again, memories of her sixth birthday party and her cake flood back to her. The nightmare was just her imagination running wild.
Lucy is haunted by her dreams. They were fleeting images of people and places at first, but as the months pass, images are replaced by increasingly more detailed and graphic scenes. It’s as if she is watching a film playing in her head. None of the things she sees are familiar and they scare her, she’s afraid to fall asleep. The psychiatrist isn’t unduly worried. It’s normal, she reassures. While the brain is building connections with the transplant it is bound to get some things wrong, but with time, things will sort themselves out. You just have to be patient, she says.
As Lucy sleeps, my memories emerge.
My sixth birthday and my small body is fizzing with excitement. There’s an enormous cake with pink frosting, just for me. One big puff and the candles are out. I can’t wait for a taste of its delicious sugariness. The apartment door slams open. Cussing and angry, my father, drunkenly stumbles in, demanding his dinner. Eyeing the cake, he flips and in a blind rage picks it up and throws it at the wall. I scream. My mother yells, then crumples to the floor crying, the red imprint of his hand on her cheek. Warm pee trickles down my legs. The baby’s pissed herself, he jeers. My birthday is forgotten. I hate him.
Sarah wakes with a start. Something has disturbed her sleep, something alien, a noise that shouldn’t be there.
“Richard, wake up” She whispers urgently, nudging her sleeping husband, “there’s someone downstairs. Listen!”
Groggily, Richard surfaces from his deep, comfortable sleep, taking a few minutes to shake off his drowsiness and focus. Sarah’s right, someone is moving about downstairs. Taking the lead, he gets out of bed as quietly as he can, crosses the landing and creeps down the stairs, Sarah following closely behind. A light is on in the living room, the door slightly ajar. He motions to Sarah to stay back as he edges towards the door and peers into the room, careful not to alert who’s there to his presence, who knows how such a situation could escalate.
“Lucy,” he exclaims, “what are you doing up at this time of night? You gave your mother and me such a shock. We thought we were being burgled. What on earth are you doing?”
Lucy sits on the living room floor surrounded by towers of photo albums in different shapes sizes and colours.
“I dreamt about my sixth birthday, and I need to see the photos,” she answers, her face pale and drawn, “I need to know what it was like.”
“For God’s sake Lucy, it’s the middle of the night, couldn’t it have waited until morning?”
“No, it couldn’t. You don’t understand, you don’t know what it’s like, I need to know now,” she replies exasperatedly.
“Go back to bed Richard, you’ve got work in the morning,” Sarah says calmly, trying to diffuse the tension in the room, “I’ll help her find what she’s looking for.”
Richard makes his way to bed bewildered. He reminds himself of how lucky he is that Lucy, against all the odds, is still alive and that a few changes due to the transplant were inevitable, weren’t they? The positives definitely outweigh the negatives, and they’ll get over the blips like tonight.
“I’ve found it,” Sarah says smiling, handing Lucy a dark blue photo album.
Lucy scans the photos, searching for one showing her birthday cake.
“I remember now,” Sarah says looking at the photos over Lucy’s shoulder, “your sixth birthday was the year you were obsessed with hamsters. I blame the pet hamster they had at school. It had a funny name, what was it?”
“Biscuit,” Lucy replies her face relaxing into a smile at the memory.
“That’s it. You pestered us for months about getting a hamster, but we didn’t want the mess and the smell of having a real one, so we got you an interactive one, all the rage that year, and you loved it. You even had a hamster birthday cake if I remember correctly. Yes, look, there it is,” Sarah points at a photo in front of them, Richard and Sarah on either side of Lucy smiling at the camera behind an outlandish chocolate and cream-coloured hamster-shaped cake with a pink nose.
Lucy laughs, “I remember now. Cookie, I loved him.”
Sarah watches as Lucy’s body relaxes.
“Happy now? she asks. “Can we get back to bed?”
Lucy nods.
As Lucy drifts off to sleep again, memories of her sixth birthday party and her cake flood back to her. The nightmare was just her imagination running wild.
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