I wake up with my heart pounding, and the sheets twisted and sweaty beneath me. I can barely remember the dream that woke me. The details I do remember are surreal, memories perverted and amplified by imaginary fears: a white emptiness, a faceless interrogator, a cold examination table, sharp dissection knives.

It was a dream, I tell myself; go back to sleep.

But I can’t sleep. I never can after one of these dreams.

I still have nightmares about the white room. Although Liz and I talk openly about practically everything in our lives, we don’t talk about my dreams. Usually it is enough when I wake up this way that she just hold me and tell me everything is fine.

She knows me well enough to know that I don’t want to talk about the dreams.

I’m not sure how she knows my fears better than I do, but she does. That’s why there isn’t a single white wall in our entire house.

I hate white. It is an absence of color, a nothingness that rips up my insides, leaving my stomach clenched and my heart beating triple-time and my lungs devoid of air. Not that I would ever tell anyone about those feelings. Liz understands without needing to be told, and Michael and Isabel wouldn’t understand even if I had the courage to tell them. My sister and my best friend expect me to be the strong one, the leader. An irrational fear of a non-color doesn’t fit that role. If I gave into it, it would be another liability, something else that could trip me up and endanger the ones I need to protect.

Besides, Michael and Isabel probably wouldn’t believe me.

They wouldn’t believe me because I’m a doctor. I wear a white lab coat every day. The irony of that combination of words -- white and lab -- hit me about halfway through medical school. For about sixty seconds when I realized that irony, I thought about quitting med school and becoming an accountant instead. Then I reminded myself that quitting at that point would be irrational, and I am nothing if not rational.

I have always been the rational one, the strong and responsible one. It is a façade I built for myself, as tall as Michael’s mud walls, as prickly as Izzy’s proud popularity, a façade ultimately as weak and fragile as all of our defenses have proved to be over the years.

Lying awake in bed, still shivering from my stupid nightmare, I am grateful that my defenses crumbled. I am also grateful that for once I haven’t woken her up with my nightmare.

I don’t want to wake her. She is six months pregnant with our second child, and so far this pregnancy hasn’t been an easy one. She needs her rest. But as much as she needs her rest, I need to hold her for a little while. Just to reassure myself that my dream wasn’t real.

So very gently I wrap my arms around my wife. The love of my life. The other half of my soul. My forever.

A tiny smile lifts the corners of her mouth as she curls into my embrace. With her in my arms, I feel strong enough to shove the dream to the back of my mind, to forget my fears while I watch her sleep.

I like watching her sleep. It’s something I don’t think I’ll ever take for granted or tire of doing. Maria once told me that Liz was a messy sleeper as a child, that she had gotten more than one black eye from sleepovers with Liz. As I tighten my arms around my wife, it occurs to me that in all the years we’ve shared a bed, Liz has never been a messy sleeper. I like to think that it’s because she’s at peace in my arms. But it could be just because she grew out of it.

It’s funny what you wonder about in the dark, what fears grab you....

I shake my head, determined not to pursue that train of thought. Instead I refocus on enjoying the feel of her in my arms while I watch her sleep.

To get my mind off my fears, I concentrate on memorizing her features. As I stroke her hair away from her face, I remember my reaction when she came home earlier this week with her beautiful hair cut to just below her chin. I was devastated. All I could think about was how I’ve spent some of the best moments of my life wrapped up in her soft, rose-scented hair. But I have to admit her haircut is growing on me. I like how her hair seems to shine twice as much now, how it swings clear of her shoulders, how its shorter length shows off the sparkle in her eyes and the sweet definition of her jaw, how its new length allows me easier access to her neck and shoulders.

It occurs to me as I stroke Liz’s newly cut hair that it’s funny how you can miss something when it’s gone and love what has replaced it all at once.

And that thought reminds me of something Liz told me when we first found out she was pregnant again. She told me that in every ending, there is a new beginning, and that facing the endings and the beginnings together is how we are each other’s forever.

As I run a hand lightly over her burgeoning belly, I think that this pregnancy is the best kind of new beginning. And that maybe it’s long overdue that I wrestle with an old ending, one cobwebbed in imagined fears and painful memories of a white emptiness, a faceless interrogator, a cold examination table, and sharp dissection knives.

I can’t control the shudder that wracks my body at the slightest thought of my nightmare. And because I’m holding Liz, my shudder is enough to wake her.

"Max?" Her voice sounds drowsy and soft.

"I’m sorry I woke you, baby," I whisper. "Go back to sleep."

She nods and snuggles closer. With her eyes still closed, she asks, "Did you have a bad dream?"

She knows me too well.

"I’m okay," I assure her. "Go back to sleep."

"You should tell them sometime," she murmurs. Her eyes are still closed, but I can tell -- because I know her well too -- that she is feeling less sleepy and more alert. "They would understand."

I stroke her hair and try to control the irrational fear tightening itself into a ball in my chest. I want her to go back to sleep. I can’t deal with this conversation right now. "Shhh. We can talk about it in the morning."

"Max." Hoisting herself out of my arms and up on one elbow, she stares at me. "Max. We never talk about your dreams. It won’t be different in the morning."

"Liz, please...."

"Max, sooner or later, we’ll need to talk about them. Maybe if you talked about them with me, or with Isabel and Michael, they wouldn’t be so bad."

"I can’t, Liz. Please. Can we just go back to sleep?"

She reaches over and snaps on the bedside lamp. In its pool of light, I feel exposed. The fear in my chest winds itself into a tighter and tighter ball as she studies my face. "Max, look at yourself. You’re shaking. You’re terrified of something that exists only in your head. This isn’t healthy. You need to talk about it."

All I can do is shake my head. For a brief instant, I consider getting up from our bed and going downstairs, "doing a Max" as Isabel would call it. But the expression in her eyes stops me. So I stay, even though the fear in my chest is making breathing difficult. Even though I really can’t deal with this conversation right now, not when the nightmare is so fresh in my mind.

"Please, Liz," I say, and even I can hear the pleading note in my voice; "please don’t push me. I can’t...."

She nods, then clicks off the lamp and slides back down into my arms. After a minute, she says, "I know you can’t, Max. I won’t push you. But when you’re ready, I’ll listen." To comfort me, she rubs her hands up and down my back, and her voice softens into the tone she used to use with Claudia when our daughter was very small. "Don’t worry, Max. You’re safe, and everything’s fine."

I know she’s right. In the safety of her arms, the fear in my chest begins to unwind itself in time with her breathing, which is slowing and deepening as she falls back to sleep.

She is right about a lot of things, my wise, sweet wife. I don’t need to be afraid a nightmare that is nothing more than a remnant of something that happened a long time ago. What am I still so afraid of?

As I stare at the ceiling of our bedroom, I realize that I am afraid of the usual things. For example, as a male, I am deathly afraid of being asked to tell the difference between cream and white and ecru. I thought ecru was a kind of bird until Liz took pity on me and explained the difference between emus and off-whites.

I shudder as I remember too late why thinking about white is a bad idea. It reminds me of my dream.

I need to focus on something else, anything else, so I try to think about what else I’m afraid of. Staring at the ceiling, I decide that it can be my version of counting sheep. Let me count the ways I’m afraid.

So I continue my earlier thought: I am afraid of the usual things, but I am also afraid of less usual things, things peculiarly specific to my peculiar, specific situation. I am afraid of being wrong. Of being right. Of screwing up. Of being out of control. Of being exposed. Of being dissected. Of white rooms. Of being alone. Of dying. Of not being able to protect my family. Of being without Liz.

In the end, I suppose, the last ones are the ones that I am most afraid of.

The last ones are why my disjointed nightmare memories of the white room terrify me. In my dreams, my fears break down piece-by-piece whatever courage I have to resist the faceless interrogator. Partly, there is my fear for Isabel and Michael, that they might be in pain or trapped in similar white rooms somewhere that I can’t help them. Mostly, though, there is my fear that Liz is hurt or trapped somewhere, that I can’t help her, that I’ll never see her again.

Underneath this last fear is another worse fear. That Liz will come to her senses while I’m trapped in that white emptiness and realize that she can’t feel anything for me but some deep-down horror. Because of what I am. Because she’ll realize that something about who I am -- what I am -- deserves to be locked up. Because I’m not normal.

In the light of day, I know that there is no horror anywhere in what Liz feels for me. I feel her love for me in her every touch, her every glance. But in the pitch-black darkness after one of my nightmares, it’s easy to give into my oldest fear. Even though I know that that fear isn’t rational. And even though I know that in the light of day, I am nothing if not a rational person.

But that’s my fear right there. I’m not really a person at all. At least not a human one.

Beside me, Liz shifts a little then sighs in her sleep. As I drop a butterfly kiss on the top of her head, I finally understand what Liz was trying to tell me earlier. My nightmares can’t hurt me while I’m lying in our bed at night with her in my arms, but they might go away completely if I can find the strength to force them into the light of day.

I laugh quietly at myself. This is hardly a light-bulb-shattering revelation, I know; but in the darkness left by my nightmares, it is literally a light at the end of the tunnel.

As I begin to drift off to sleep, I remember what Liz told me about endings -- that in every ending, there is a new beginning, and that facing the endings and the beginnings together is how we are each other’s forever.

Liz has always been my forever. She has always been strong when I have been weak. She has always been rational when I have been irrational. And the reverse has been true too, in so many ways. We complement each other because we are each other’s forever.

Right now, Liz needs me to be strong for her and Claudia and our new baby. She needs me to put to rest this old ending with its imagined fears and painful memories of a white emptiness, a faceless interrogator, a cold examination table, and sharp dissection knives.

Because to embrace any new beginning properly, you need to let go of something. You need to let go of the part of the ending that holds you back from embracing the beginning. To keep the circle of beginnings and endings unbroken, something must be lost or left behind for something else to be gained. Because in every beginning, there is a piece of an ending that needs to be let go. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

In my case, it’s a good thing because what I need to lose is an old fear. That’s all.

So I guess I need to talk with Liz in the morning. And if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll catch Isabel and Michael before the end of the day.

And then maybe these nightmares will stop.

Back to Area 51 (Section I)