Page 196 of In Somnis

Her face settles, shifting from assessing to smiling softly as she steps back to let me in. “Aren’t we all.”

I step inside, and she closes the door behind me. From somewhere above us comes the quiet sound of movement.

“We just finished getting Tessa ready for the day.” Nora looks up toward the ceiling. “She’s still in her room. I was going to have her moved to the sunroom if you⁠—”

“No, thank you. We can work in her room,” I assure her quickly before I pause. “I should have called ahead. I’m sorry.”

“You have never once needed to call ahead. You know that.”

“I know.”

“Then stop apologizing for it.”

We go upstairs together, and at the top of the landing, the door to Tessa’s room opens, and a nurse comes out in scrubs, pulling the door softly closed behind her. She’s short and blonde, smiling at me, blue eyes catching the hallway light.

I smile back on autopilot.

She murmurs to Nora about the morning routine and vitals. I hear it all and register none of it because the blue of her eyes is the wrong blue entirely. Not even close.

Nora thanks her, and the nurse heads downstairs. Then she opens Tessa’s door, and I follow her in, noticing Tessa sitting in one of the reading chairs in front of the window, like last time.

Nora straightens the curtain, then picks up a water glass from the nightstand to take back down. At the door, she pauses, one hand on the frame. “I’ll leave you to it,” she says, before she pulls it closed behind her.

The room settles. The door click is small but final, and outside, Nora’s footsteps fade down the hallway. The curtain she straightened shifts slightly in the draft from the door closing, then stills.

I take the few steps to the window and sit in the chair next to Tessa, before I put my bag down in front of me. The morning light comes through the curtains and bathes her face in soft light.

“Good morning.” I settle back in the chair. “I’m sorry for visiting this early. I needed some company today.”

The curtain moves in the draft from the heating vent as I open my notebook and look at the blank page.

Five years ago, I tried to go to her. Not calling her back, not working from the outside in, but going to where she was, entering her frame rather than asking her to enter mine. It was the most promising thing I’d tried, the thread that felt, for the first time, like it might actually lead somewhere.

And then This Man noticed me, and I had to stop the inside approach because I couldn’t separate it from the consequences of attempting it. Couldn’t know whether the nightmares were punishment or coincidence, warning or noise. And after long enough, the question stopped mattering, because I couldn’t do it anymore. My nights were already spoken for. There was nothing left to risk in a method that may have drawn his attention in the first place.

Then I found Lennon and had a couple of nights of sleep back. Ordinary mornings, waking up with my heart at a normal rate and the room exactly as I’d left it. I did think about it, about whether the window had reopened, whether the outside approach had simply run its course, and the inside one was available again, or whether I could try once more now that my nights were finally my own again.

If I could try to reach Tessa in dreams again.

If the outside approach hasn’t worked in five years—if calling her back, waiting, observing, documenting has produced nothing but incremental and inconclusive results—then it may be that it isn’t the method.

Maybe the method that might work is the one he doesn’t want me to use. Which means it would have worked.

Which means it might still.

“I think,” I say quietly. “That someone has been working very hard to keep me from finding you. I don’t intend to let that continue.”

Tessa’s breathing changes. Not dramatically. It’s a subtle shift in the rhythm of it, a slight irregularity, as if something interrupted the pattern from the inside. Her chest rises and then doesn’t fall quite on schedule, holds for a beat too long, and then the next breath comes shallow, labored, as if the air is thicker than it should be.

Then another. And another, each one a little more effortful than the last.

I’m already standing.

“Nora.” I go to the door, my voice carrying without being loud, because loud causes panic, and panic doesn’t help anyone. “Nora, I need you in here, please.”

I go back to the chair, two fingers to her wrist, and I count, waiting for her breathing to slow again.

“I’m here, Tessa,” I say quietly, while I wait for the door. “You’re doing good. Breathe.”