Eighty
ONE THING FRIENDS and family have always said about Silas Tucker, from the time I was a little boy, is what a world-class sleeper I am.
Until now.
Until Taylor McCarter Webb, still without her eyesight three days after she first realized she’d lost it, is sleeping in the bedroom next to mine.
My buddy Vince loves to go on and on about wearing one of those rings that keeps track of his sleeping and just about everything else except maybe his credit rating. He’s also always bragging about his sleep score, like he’s still getting a good grade in school.
But if I’d been wearing one of those rings the past few nights, there’s no doubt in my mind that I’d be flunking that particular class.
I keep worrying that Tay is going to wake up in the dark and forget where she is, maybe even trip and fall down the stairs that are just a few feet from her door and mine.
Not that I’ve mentioned any of that to her.
After that first night at her house, she went back to Dr. Frazier for a CT scan and an EEG. But he made it clear he was just going through his doctor motions, that he didn’t expect to find anything wrong with that amazing brain of hers, or structurally wrong with her eyes.
They just continue to not work.
Something else I’d never admit to Taylor?
I like taking care of her, despite my lack of sleep.
I take her along with me when I walk Bumper, and when I do, she allows me to hold her hand as a way of guiding her.
She’s accepting of that, the way she’s accepting of either EJ or me cutting up her food for her.
But she’s Taylor. She doesn’t complain, even now.
In the afternoons she likes to sit on the porch by herself and listen to audiobooks.
When it’s time to go to bed, EJ helps her upstairs, and then into her pajamas.
When she is finally tucked in, I go in and say good night.
Tonight, there’s even a flash of her normal sense of humor when I do.
“See you in the morning,” she says. Then she smiles and adds, “Well, in my best-case scenario.”
Then I go into my own room and try to sleep and only occasionally do. It’s funny, I keep telling myself. After the way I’d dreaded the quiet in my hospital room in the night, now I want that quiet to last all night in the room next to me.
I’m somehow asleep again, not even knowing what time it is, when I hear her call out.
“Silas!”
I’m instantly wide awake and out of bed and nearly tripping over Bumper on my way to her room.
Taylor is sitting up in bed, back against the headboard. There’s just enough light from the moon coming through her window that I can clearly see her face.
“Tay,” I say from the doorway. “I’m here.”
She turns just slightly.
“I know,” she says. “I can see you.”
She smiles now.
“Nice T-shirt,” she says.