“No.”
“Did you see the road?”
“No road.”
His gaze drifted toward me.
“There was a green light.”
“A traffic light?”
He shook his head. “Small. Moving.”
“Like someone carrying it?”
“Maybe.”
He pressed his lips together.
“It never gets close.”
“Does the dream always end there?”
“No.”
“What happens?”
His hand tightened again.
“I think the ceiling comes down.”
The quiet in the room changed.
I forced my voice to remain level.
“That sounds terrifying.”
“It feels real.”
“Dreams often do.”
“No.” He looked at me. “Not dream real. Memory real.”
I did not tell him it could be.
The trauma team believed Noah had been conscious intermittently while rescue crews worked to reach him. He might have heard metal being cut. He might have seen a responder’s lamp through the crushed windshield. He might have felt the van shifting beneath the weight of the pipes.
Or his injured brain might have assembled fear from sensations it could not name.
“Do you want me to ask Dr. Whitcomb about it?”
“Not yet.”
“All right.”
“I have another one.”
I waited.
