Find Me Read Online Free

who—like everything else in the world—is unreachable through the distance and the glass.
    *   *   *
    Lights Out is at ten o’clock and to our room it brings the darkest night I’ve ever seen. It’s not like city darkness, softened by streetlights and headlights, but thick and black as tar. Louis isn’t in bed for Lights Out—typical ever since he took up with Paige; her roommate was among the first to go to the tenth floor, so she can be counted on for privacy—but he returns not long after, in the mood to talk.
    If your roommate dies, you remain in your room. There is no switching, no matter how lonely you get.
    Tonight he’s complaining about the food. In the Hospital, we have eaten lumps of breaded chicken drenched in a mysterious red sauce and partially defrosted peas and hard, stale dinner rolls, which Louis thinks taste like ash. At dinner, we pick up these rolls and make like we’re going to clunk each other in the head.
    â€œAt least we’re alive,” I say. “When you’re dead, you don’t get to eat at all.”
    â€œLike ash ,” says Louis.
    I stretch my legs underneath the sheets, into the cool space at the bottom of the bed. Our room smells like rubbing alcohol and Vaseline. Louis can talk about whatever he likes. I just want to keep hearing his voice.
    In the beginning, I would climb into his bed and feel his hands move down my waist. The whole time, I told myself we just needed something that felt familiar, needed to prove that a part of ourselves still belonged to the outside world. But during our second month the routine changed. After Lights Out, I burrowed next to him, started kissing his chest. He sat up and shrugged me away. At first, I thought this was a symptom: the prions were attacking his brain, he was losing his memory, he no longer knew who I was. Quick , I remember saying to myself, as though there was something for me to do.
    In the dark, he started talking about his wife. He told me about the tangles of hair he would find in the bathroom, like tumbleweeds, or the way she used to unroll maps on the floor of their travel bookstore and trace the blue lines of rivers with her pinkie finger. He was remembering perfectly well.
    His wife died in the third week of July, at five in the morning, at the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia.
    They lived in Philadelphia, Louis and his wife, in an apartment above their travel bookstore. I lived in a basement apartment on a dead-end street, on the eastern edge of Somerville. I want to believe I can have a fresh start here, in the Hospital.
    That night, after Louis stops talking, I concentrate on where I am, in a safe place, in the care of medical experts, but the truth is our Hospital is in middle-of-nowhere Kansas and it is very dark. There aren’t even shadows on the walls.
    When he starts to snore, I crouch beside his bed and watch him sleep. A hand rests over his heart. His eyelids flutter, and I wonder if he’s dreaming.
    In the Hospital, I can’t get away from the idea that sleep is preparation for death.
    I slip out of our room and down the hall. The arched window looks beautiful and foreboding in the night. The floodlights illuminate the ground outside and it’s a relief to be away from the deep dark of our room. I look for the barefoot woman, but don’t see anything except falling snow, the flakes fat and drifting sideways. I’ve been told that in this part of the country, once the snow begins, the cold will be endless.
    I remember the perfect cartwheel the pilgrim did before he wandered out into the plains. I lose my slippers and run down the hallway with my hands over my head. Step, reach, kick. Soon I’m dizzy. My brain rocks back and forth inside my skull.
    Here is a dream I keep having about my mother: We are sitting at a round table, a glass of water between us. She is faceless, but I know it’s her. We are both