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He stood, swaying a little on his feet, staring at her but not seeing her. Was he having a fit? A seizure? He’d never had one before. Helplessly, she stood there trying to figure out what to do. Touching him only made it worse.
“Po!” she repeated, but even the sound of his own name made him scream and thrash, knocking over his big stuffed bear from a chair and crayons from the table. They clattered to the ground with the spilled blocks.
“Water!” he shrieked, and cried. “Sharks!”
She glanced all around the room, but of course there was no water. Nothing but his toys and books and small dresser filled with clothes. The only water was the huge frothy wave on the poster he had of Kai Brady hanging in his room, mass-produced and signed with his big looping K. He must be having a nightmare, and yet his eyes were wide-open. She took a deep breath, trying to remain calm, all the while her mother brain firing off intense messages of panic: What’s wrong with him? Do I need to call 911?
“Sweetie,” she whispered, voice low. “Let’s settle down.”
The soft sound of her voice seemed to steady him a little, or at least, he didn’t scream, so she started talking some more, careful to avoid his name. “Let’s just calm down. You’re in your room. You’re not in the ocean. Nothing to be afraid of. You’re just having a dream...” Jun tried to clear a path, moving toys and crayons away from his feet so he wouldn’t trip. He sobbed, tears rolling down his small cheeks, breaking her heart because she so badly wanted to wipe them away and hug her son but feared that touching him would set him off again. She kept talking, keeping her voice soft, and he slowly started to calm down. After what seemed like an eternity, he eventually stopped crying.
His hands flopped to his sides as he took deep breaths. Po’s head began to lull forward. She crept to his side and saw his eyelids growing heavy. Cautiously, with her pulse thrumming in her temples, she took a step forward and gently put her hand on his back. He didn’t scream or twist away from her. “Let’s get back to bed now,” she said, ever so gently pushing him toward his single twin bed. She pulled back his Spider-Man sheets and he climbed peacefully into them, lying his head down on the pillow and snuggling into his comforter.
She sat by his bedside for another twenty minutes, watching as he slept, with a deep nagging feeling that something was wrong with her boy. Her gut told her it had everything to do with the tsunami and had been triggered, probably by that teacher who’d tried to force him to swim. But she didn’t know that for certain. All she knew was that her son had gotten up in the middle of the night screaming and knocking things over in his room and shrieking whenever she even touched him. They’d made so much progress in the past year, but his nightmares were back, and now...this. Would Po ever get better?
CHAPTER TEN
PO WOKE UP fine the next morning, full of energy and acting as if nothing had happened the night before. He didn’t even remember waking up in the night screaming or knocking over his toys in a panic. Looking at him now as he happily ate Cheerios—no milk—from a bowl, Jun almost thought she’d imagined the whole episode. And yet she knew she hadn’t. She should make an appointment to take him to see the pediatrician, she decided, a nagging fear telling her something was wrong, and it wasn’t something a dose of ibuprofen could fix.
And then what about her job?
Tim wouldn’t be at the gym today, but she could probably text or call him. She’d need to get on with finding a new day care, and her to-do list seemed unbearably overwhelming. She glanced down at her own uneaten bowl of cereal, which had grown soggy as she worried, and pushed it away.
Gotta just do it, she thought, gritting her teeth. No point in complaining. Her mother once told her that the trade-off for having a purpose and being meaningful was stress. Worry is just the price you pay for being needed, she’d often say. Memories of her mother always brought her a sharp pain of regret. She’d died before they’d had a chance to reconcile, before she’d had a chance to prove to her mother that Po was no mistake, that he was the best thing to happen in her life.
