2 I woke up in a cold-as-tits sweat, even though I was wrapped up in Lux’s zero-degree sleeping bag and was right next to the woodstove. It was the middle of the night, and the twins were unconscious nearby. It was still dark outside, and it was dark as pig shit inside the abandoned elevated IRT station. The only light was from the dying embers of the fire. They were still giving off the heat of being chased by fifty cob rollers, but wouldn’t be for much longer. I got up out of my sleeping bag and walked to where we’d, months ago, stockpiled wood from construction sites along one of the walls of the station. The night was cold away from the fire, but it could have been worse. Years ago, we wouldn’t have been able to be out here at all. But I barely remember those years. I quickly took a couple of square scrap pieces, ran back, and threw them into the drum. I blew on the embers, the boards blackened then caught, and soon the fire was blazing harder than a neo-Nazi at a white supremacist rally again.

I had been having dreams that had made me toss and turn and sweat. We’d been back in the hospital. José and Sebastian had been nodding out on the Valium I’d given them and were in the wrecked waiting room, no goddamn use at all. The lights were out, and nurses and doctors were running from place to place. People were moaning on gurneys. Machines were running, on backup power, in the dark. I was trying to find Lux. Where the fuck could she be? I looked in rooms with dying people, dead people. I tore blankets off of corpses, looking to see if she was underneath. But I couldn’t find her. Finally a nurse grabbed me.

“Does your friend want to live?” she’d said. She said it flat, like a robot in an old sci-fi movie.

In the dream, my voice had frozen. I tried to say yes, but I couldn’t say anything. She waited there, and I struggled to make words, a voiceless animal. I couldn’t make any words come. I knew Lux’s life was dependent upon what I said, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not make any sound come out of my mouth.

That’s when I woke up.

Every other night or so I have these nightmares, sometimes less. Sometimes I fall asleep, wake up from a nightmare, fall back asleep and have another one. I wonder sometimes if they’ll ever go away. Trauma. It’s a motherfucker.

In the dark, I tried not to think about Lux. I tried not to think about the sleeping bag that I wrapped myself up in, which used to be hers. I tried not to think about if she was alive or dead. I tried not to think.