The nightmare rocked me. So much so that I sat up in the dark of night, finding it nearly impossible to determine what hour it really was. And as I tried to catch my breath, I realized that the time didn’t even matter at all. All that mattered was the uncertainty of whether the horror of the dream was true. So I walked to my daughter’s room to see for myself.
Relief flowed through me when I saw her peacefully asleep in her bed. Before I could bring myself to leave, I knelt down at her side to give her forehead a kiss. She stirred from my movement and I instantly went still, holding my breath as I tried to avoid waking her. After a few moments the threat seemed to pass. Her face relaxed, she laid flat, and just as I started to back away she opened her eyes.
“Hi Daddy,” she said.
“Hi baby,” I said back to her.
She batted her lips together as she sat up and looked around. Her bedroom looked strange in such darkness. She usually went to sleep with a light left on all through the night. The only light we had now was the moonlight sifting through the slits of the window blinds.
“I’m thirsty,” she said.
“You want some water? Maybe some milk?” I asked.
“Milk please,” she said.
“Okay. I’ll be right back,” I said, and as I headed down the hallway for the stairs, I soon heard the patter of little feet behind me. I stopped and turned around and she ran into my knee. She giggled as she rubbed at her eyes.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked her.
“I wanted to come with you is all. Is that okay?” she asked. I thought to resist, knowing it would make going back to sleep that much more difficult. But she was already out of bed, and besides, I’ve always been virtually incapable of telling my little girl no.
“All right, let’s go,” I said and reached out for her hand as we stepped carefully down the stairs together.
I sat her up at the dining room table, and then went to the kitchen to pour a glass of milk. I heated it up in the microwave for a few seconds, hoping that the warmth of it would help make her transition back to sleep a little easier. When the milk was ready I sat across from her then slid over the glass. She thanked me, took a long drink, then let out a sigh with a milky mustache painted on her upper lip. She smiled as she wiped it away with the back of her hand.
“You want some?” she asked, offering me a drink from her glass. I shook my head.
“I’m fine for now. Drink up though so we can go back to bed,” I said. I looked up at the clock and saw that it was almost three in the morning. I sat there for a few moments like that, focused on the clock, as the house got so quiet the tick was almost deafening.
“Why were you watching me sleep earlier Daddy?” she asked, her voice snapping through the silence like a flick to my ear. “Oh, I had a bad dream is all,” I said. “What was it about?” she asked. I forced a smile, but it had been too horrible to describe. Besides, like most dreams, the exact details of it began to disintegrate from my mind.
“Something scary,” I simply said, but her raised brow told me I’d have to do better than that. “It’s just—I dreamt I lost you sweetie. I dreamed that you were gone forever, and when I woke up, I was so sad that I had to come see you to make me feel better.”
“Oh,” she said, and then continued drinking from her glass until the milk was all gone. “Well, I think I’m ready to go back now,” she said, then slid the empty cup back to me. I nodded, went to the kitchen to rinse out the glass, and then I heard my wife’s footsteps coming from upstairs. She called out my name before turning on the dining room light.
“You’re not sleep walking again, are you?” my wife asked, standing there in her nightgown with concern in her tired eyes. I looked at her confused for a moment then turned my attention to the table, to my daughter’s unoccupied chair. When I finally looked down at the glass in my hand I saw it was still filled with milk, still a bit warm even, but starting to turn cool while I kept a tight hold.
“No,” I said as I poured the milk down into the sink. “I’m awake now.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ryan Voelker is an aspiring fiction writer and occasional journalist living in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and two children. He works in the field of clinical research at Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute, and has facilitated a weekly writing group for men with cancer since 2012.