Night Differential

Esme works nights.

Three or four shifts a week, she catches the 8:53 out of Berwyn, rides forty minutes west to a sleep clinic in Aurora, and sits behind a one-way glass watching strangers sleep. She reads their brainwaves. She listens to their breathing. She scores their data and writes up reports and catches the 4:48 back home before her kids wake up.

The eleven percent night differential is what keeps the mortgage paid with a little room left over. That room is why she took the shift. The math was simple. Her husband did it on the back of one of their daughter's drawings.

Tonight there's one patient. A sleepwalker. His wife is afraid he's going to burn the house down.

Esme hooks up the monitors. She turns up the audio. She watches him fall asleep.

Then he starts talking.

And the things he says are not about his house.

"A story about the distance between where you work and where your children sleep — and what can happen inside that distance."