Before I Wake by Kathryn Smith

sleep lab later.
    She waggled her fingers in a wave. “You two have fun.”
    Noah said good-bye to her, and Bonnie waited till his back was turned to give me an openmouthed wink. I rolled my eyes.
    It was a nice night, so we walked. I figured this would give me a chance to find out more about Noah, but I ended up doing most of the talking. It wasn’t that Noah was curt, he just didn’t waste words on himself. Maybe if I’d asked him about painting, he would have yakked my ear off, but I stupidly asked him about his family—about him. Obviously, he wasn’t much of an egotist because he kept his responses as short and uninteresting as possible.
    It made me wonder what he was hiding. Made me want to play doctor and not in a sexual way, because I was fairly certain he hid something that needed facing.
    Luckily, we only had to walk a few blocks. The restaurant was a great little family-owned Indian place just off Sixth. I felt a little tingly as I remembered his assumption that I liked food with a lot of flavor. Sensuous he had called me.
    We ordered drinks, appetizers, and main courses. I waited until the waiter had brought our drinks and appetizers before daring to open my mouth.
    “Okay, so explain to me why you think your dreams are trying to harm you.”
    Noah took a bite of spicy potato and chickpeas. I can never remember the names of this stuff, only that it tastes pretty freaking good. He chewed and swallowed. “Not so much my dreams, but what’s in them.”
    I loaded my fork as well. “And what do you think that is exactly?”
    I looked up to see him staring at me—hard. “Are you mocking me?”

    I stopped midchew and swallowed. If he only knew. “No.” No, I was hoping he was imagining it all. Praying, actually.
    He sighed. “Look, can you stop talking like you think I’m making this up?”
    Yes, I could. I just didn’t want to. “I don’t think you’re making it up.”
    “But you don’t believe it really happened.”
    If I told him I did, would he think I was nuts?
    “I don’t even know what ‘it’ pertains to.” I sighed. “Noah, my job is the human psyche—uncovering what inside you makes you feel this way and helping you make sense of it.” I wasn’t trying to aggravate the guy, but as someone trained in a scientific field, I wasn’t supposed to believe that something in Noah’s subconscious manifested itself and tried to kill him.
    That scientific part of me didn’t want to believe in dreams trying to kill people. But the nonhuman part of me believed and was afraid.
    I tried again. “Why don’t you tell me about it, so I can better understand what happened to you?”
    He set down his fork. In the glow from the table lamp, the fatigue on his face was deepened. It didn’t matter what I believed; it was obvious that something was keeping Noah from sleeping.
    Regardless, this was my job. And Noah was more than a patient. I liked him, and I wanted good things for him. In a weird way I guess I looked at him as something of a friend.
    Who was I trying to kid? This guy was on my top-five list of crushes, right after Johnny Depp and right before Jensen Ackles.
    “It started a few weeks ago.” He was looking at his plate, not me. “I tried to change a dream and couldn’t.”
    It was unusual for him, but nothing surprising. Sometimes the subconscious was a little stronger. Or sometimes the dream dug its heels in. “That’s happened before, hasn’t it?”
    He nodded and raised his gaze to mine. Leaning his forearms on the table, he closed much of the distance between us, closing in to what felt like our own little corner of the world. “That’s why I shrugged it off. But it started getting worse.”
    “Worse, how?”
    “There’s this guy.” His brow wrinkled, and I wanted to reach out and smooth it with my fingers. “I don’t know who he is, but he started showing up in my dreams. At first he simply talked. I ignored him, then he started getting physical.”
    This was sounding