Dream? Beth thought. Hadn’t he been wide awake?
At three a.m. Beth was startled awake. What? A noise, a motion?
She looked over at Robert’s side of the bed. He wasn’t there.
Alarmed, thinking about his odd behavior, she rose, pulled on her bathrobe and walked into the hallway. There she paused and listened. A faint humming was coming from downstairs. She continued to the first floor and there she found her husband, in the living room, staring out the window. There wasn’t much to see, just the neighbors’ house, the Altman’s place, fifty feet away. They were the neighbors from hell; Robert and Fred had been feuding for years over petty but irritating things. Beth tried to remain above it, but she joined the fray occasionally. Sandra could be an utter bitch.
Robert was staring at the glaring yellow clapboard (the color being one of the sources of dispute; Robert was sure they’d picked the hue just to spite the Tollners). Robert was humming. The sound was very quiet. Four notes over and over again. If they were from a tune, she didn’t know what it might be.
Was he asleep?
What was that rule? Never wake somebody up when they are sleepwalking?
But she was alarmed. “Robert? Honey?”
No response.
“Honey? Is that a song? What is it?”
Maybe from an ad? From a movie? If so, and she could learn the name, maybe she could get through to him.
She got her phone and ran her name-that-tune app. It returned no titles, other than the pitch of the notes: A-D-D-E.
“Robert?”
Eventually the humming stopped but he kept staring out the window. She walked up to him and put her arm around his shoulder. His muscles were hard as a bag of concrete, his skin still chill. She pulled her hand away, alarmed.
The humming resumed.
At six a.m. she called the ambulance.
“He’s responsive now. Vitals are good. MRI and CT are normal. To be honest, we have no diagnosis at this point.” The psychiatrist told her this as he sat across from Beth in the Westfield Hospital waiting room.
A slow-speaking man, with a faintly Southern accent, he continued, “Robert was in some kind of a fugue state. Like he was hypnotized.” The lean doctor, in a well-worn light blue jacket, consulted a chart. “I was just speaking to him earlier and he said he hasn’t been taking any drugs. Nothing showed up in the preliminary bloodwork but we’ve sent samples to New Haven for some other tests. I wanted to ask you.”
“No, nothing,” she said, her voice ragged — from exhaustion.
“Has he ever taken any psychedelics?”
“Lord, no.” Neither of them had done anything more than smoke a little pot and not for a year or so.
He jotted a note then looked up. “Anything unusual happen last night, prior to the event? Traumatic?”
“We went to a concert.” She told the doctor about the drive home. How he “zoned out.”
Another look at the chart. “And no occurrences in the past like this?”
She shook her head.
“Has he ever seen a psychiatrist before?”
Her pause got the man’s attention and he cocked his head.
“We’ve been to a counselor, the two of us. He has... Robert has some anger issues. We worked it out. But, no, he’s never seen a doctor for anything like this.”
She thought he’d leap on that fact but he wasn’t interested. Anger was boring maybe, compared with Robert’s bizarre fugue state.
“Do you have any idea what the humming was about?” he asked.
“No.”
Since Robert was not considered a danger to himself or anyone else and seemed fully cognizant, the doctor said he could go home. If anything troubling was revealed in the new bloodwork someone would call.
To her relief, Robert recognized her instantly; she wasn’t sure he would. He rose from the wheelchair and hugged her hard.
He said, “Hey... Don’t know what happened. Just... too much crap at work. Too long hours.”
The partners worked the younger lawyers half to death, especially those like Robert, who represented some massive hedge funds based in the state.
They walked to the car. On the drive home he pulled down the visor to examine his face and finger-brushed his mussed, brown hair.
The radio was on, music softly playing. Robert shut it off. An awkward silence descended.
“Nice place, the hospital,” he said.
“It is. Staff’s friendly.”
“Décor’s good.”
“Landscaping’s nice. Are you hungry?”
He thought for a moment. “No.”
There followed a dozen other deflecting questions and answers.
“I don’t think you should go in to work today.”
“No. I shouldn’t.”
Beth was relieved; she’d been worried that he’d insist.
“You don’t remember last night?”
“Well, the first part of the concert. Not the last. And not driving home.” A frown. “Did I drive?”
“I did.” She didn’t want to mention the near accident.
He took this in and fell silent.
Soon, they arrived and pulled into the driveway. She climbed out and stepped around the car to open the door for him.
But he lifted a hand, gave a laugh and said, “I’m good, m’lady,” in a bizarre British accent.
He got out and hugged her. Robert was back. This was confirmed when he shot a scowl at the Altman’s house. The color was the gaudiest shade of yellow you could imagine. “Bile,” he called it. “I’m writing another letter.”
The last letter of complaint to the homeowners’ association had infuriated the Altmans, and shortly afterward the Tollners found dog crap dotting their front yard. Their neighbors owned a pit-bull mix that was as obnoxious as its owners.
Inside, he went to the bedroom and changed into jeans and a gray UConn sweatshirt.
Robert had apparently changed his mind about his appetite and decided to eat something.
“I’m totally famished.” He devoured half of the tuna salad sandwich she made, then the other. Sipped coffee.
She said, “I should get to the school for about an hour. Are you...?”
“Oh, sure, honey. I’ll be fine. Give me a chance to catch up on my games.”
He certainly did love video games. He’d had to give them up almost entirely, though, because of the long hours at work.
She hugged him again, and he kissed the top of her head. She could smell his sweat; it was strong. He didn’t seem to notice his own odor. She thought about telling him a shower might make him feel better but wasn’t sure what his reaction would be.
Beth drove to her office at the private college where she was a professor of sociology. She finished a departmental report and graded a dozen papers. These tasks took longer than they should have because her mind kept jumping back to last night: Seeing her husband’s glazed face. Feeling his taut muscles and cold skin.
Zoned out...
It was then that the doctor’s question about drugs came back to her. No, he didn’t do recreational drugs and, at the moment, no prescription ones.
But what if he had ingested something that affected him? After all, the final blood workup wasn’t in yet. Food? They’d had the same casserole at dinner and Beth was fine, but at the intermission of the concert, he’d had that coffee with milk. He’d eaten something too. Cookies, she believed. And they were homemade, baked by the friends of the chamber group or of the performing arts venue. Could the milk or the pastry have been tainted?
Beth pulled her laptop closer, went online and looked up the local newspaper, to see if anyone else had gotten sick after the venue.
No, no one had been. Or, if so, the malady hadn’t made the news.
Her search had also turned up a review of the concert. It was favorable and, as she expected, the notice centered on the Midnight Sonatina, the mesmerizing violin solo.