Fever Dream

Amanda suddenly becomes aware of herself in the clinic. She tells David she can see him on the bed and asks how long she’s been there. David replies that it has been two days, and Amanda wants to know where Nina is. She gets confused and thinks she is back in the grass with her daughter, watching the men unload the truck. David tells Amanda to focus; he wants to show her something. 

Amanda floats in and out of her memories as she walks down the hall with David, growing increasingly confused. David takes her to a room filled with what appear to be children’s drawings. It is a classroom, he says, although he thinks of it more as a “waiting room.” The names on the drawings are all written in the same handwriting, and David explains that the nurse does all the writing. Some of the artists cannot write, and others “have such thin skin that if they squeeze the markers too much their fingers end up bleeding” (122). Not all of them are children. He tells Amanda they have already gone over her story four times; they are running out of time, and he needs her to understand what happened.