Tyler Stallings

The Watcher

Camila’s hands hovered over the pod’s oval door, the smooth plastic cool against her fingertips. Her pulse thudded in her wrists, in her gums. From somewhere behind her came the sounds of wet coughing and the shuffle of orthopedic sneakers on linoleum. She was supposed to be checking vitals. Helping Mr. Hargrove finish his pudding. Instead, she was here, staring into the hollowed-out sarcophagus where she spent her mandatory Rest Cycle.

The pod hummed faintly. The first time she’d used it, the vibration soothed her. Now it made her jaw ache. Inside, the cushioned cradle glowed a faint green, the color of mucus under fluorescent light. A screen pulsed on the interior wall: Rest Session Ready.

“Camila,” said the voice behind her. Nurse Patty. Gravel scraped across tile. “You’re late.”

“I know.”

“Just get in the damn thing. You know what happens if you miss a Cycle.”

Patty leaned in closer, menthol gum on her breath. “Thirty minutes,” she said. “Then I’m logging it.”

It didn’t matter if the pod was claustrophobic or if her patients were always worse off when she came back. What mattered was the state-mandated five Rest Cycles per twelve-hour shift. What mattered was that she worked for UtopiCare. And UtopiCare didn’t take excuses.

Camila slid into the pod, her spine meeting the contour of the seat like she was being swallowed whole. As the door shut, Patty’s sharp laugh echoed down the hall.

#

Inside, the pod smelled faintly of Lysol and burnt plastic. The interface blinked on, washing her face in blue light. Session Start.

First came the hiss. Air circulated through vents near her shoulders, sterilized and chemically balanced for optimum relaxation. A slight prick in her wrist. The pod drew blood to monitor cortisol levels, neurotransmitter activity, REM readiness. Welcome, Camila Gutierrez. Preparing for Enhanced Recovery Experience.

Her eyelids grew heavy.

This was supposed to be good for her. Every memo from corporate said so. Every quarterly training. Every poster in the break room. Rest Cycles increased productivity. Decreased turnover. Prevented burnout. Camila let her head fall back against the cushion. The humming turned deeper, rhythmic, the pulse of some mechanical lung.

As she drifted, her thoughts floated to the residents. Mr. Hargrove and his pudding. Mrs. Kwon with her empty stare, reaching for a face that wasn’t there. Mrs. Delgado, crying for her dead husband until her throat rattled. Camila hated leaving them. Hated how her absence left them stranded, like the world stopped turning without her there to prop it up.

She hated the guilt most of all. How it tasted metallic, like pennies at the back of her throat.

#

Dreams came fast in the pod. Too fast.

She was standing in a field. Grass whipped around her ankles like seaweed. In the distance, someone was crying. A child. Maybe an animal. The sound rose and fell, sharp as broken glass. She turned toward the noise, but her legs wouldn’t move.

“Camila,” a voice said, from nowhere. From everywhere.

She twisted around, and the figure was there. Tall and pale, the edges of it blurred like heat shimmer. Its face flickered through features: her mother, her supervisor, a patient she hadn’t seen since last winter.

“Why are you here?” the figure asked, its voice grinding like a garbage disposal. “You don’t belong here.”

“I—” Camila’s mouth moved, but nothing came out. The figure leaned in closer. She smelled something acrid, bitter, the stink of overcooked circuitry.

“They’re taking you,” it said, its face now hers, staring back at her, unblinking. “Piece by piece. Do you know what they’re doing to you?”

Her tongue felt thick, like gauze. “No one’s taking me,” she managed. “This is just rest. This is… good for me.”

The figure’s laugh was low and sour. It clamped a hand—her hand—around her wrist. The pressure was unbearable, like her bones might splinter. “They’re taking your dreams,” it said. “Every thought you have when you’re too weak to hide it. You’re just data. Little machines.
Little batteries. Just enough charge to keep going.”

“Stop—”

The figure was gone. The crying, the field, the grass. Gone.

#

Camila jolted awake.

The pod lights glared white, washing out her vision. Her breathing was fast and shallow. Her hands shook. The pod chimed. Enhanced Recovery Complete. Please Exit.

She shoved the door open and stumbled out, knees weak. Patty was at the nurses’ station, yelling at an orderly about spilled applesauce.

Camila didn’t look at her. She didn’t look at anyone. She headed straight for the maintenance closet.

#

Fifteen minutes later, Camila was on her knees in front of the pod, the control panel pried open with a screwdriver she’d stolen from a janitor’s cart. The tangle of wires inside looked like a nervous system. Red for power. Blue for cooling. Black for data.

Her hands hovered over the black wires, her stomach twisting.

“Gutierrez.”

She jumped. Patty. Patty’s shadow filled the doorway.

“What the hell are you doing?” Patty stepped into the room, sneakers squeaking against the tile. “You think you’re some kind of engineer now?”

Camila didn’t move. She didn’t let go of the screwdriver.

“I’m reporting this,” Patty said. “Messing with company property? That’s termination. You know how hard it is to get a job without a certificate of compliance? They’ll blacklist you. You’ll be screwed.”

Camila tightened her grip on the screwdriver. She stared into the guts of the pod. Somewhere inside was a hard drive. Somewhere inside was her data. Her blood, her dreams, her guilt, her shame.

“They’re taking us,” she said.

“What?”

“They’re taking everything,” she said, louder. “Every minute we’re not awake. They’re taking it.”

Patty snorted. “You need a nap.”

Camila rose slowly. The screwdriver felt heavier in her hand now. “Maybe I do,” she said. “Maybe I don’t.”

The pod hummed. It hummed and growled, deep and low, waiting.

She turned to face it. Her fingers brushed the door, tracing the curve of its surface. Rest Session Ready.

###

Night Nurse

Delilah wiped the sweat off her upper lip with the back of her hand. Her scrubs clung to her like a second skin. Somewhere down the hall, a monitor alarm screamed its mechanical panic. Nobody ran to silence it. Not anymore.

“Miss? Miss!” The man at bed 11 jabbed the call button. His sheets were kicked into a pile at his feet, his chest shiny with sweat. “I need water,” he croaked.

“Not now,” Delilah said, walking past him to the supply closet. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, flat and sharp at once.

“Miss, I said I need—”

The door to the closet clicked shut behind her.

Inside, the smell of bleach stung her nostrils, mixed with something else—mildew, maybe, or the faint stink of a mop long overdue for a rinse. She leaned against the door and sank to the floor. For two minutes—no one could find her. No one could ask her to reset a pump, or clean a bedpan, or explain for the tenth time that there wasn’t a doctor on this floor after midnight.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She ignored it.

Buzz.

Buzz.

Finally, she pulled it out. Omar’s name glowed on the screen. She swiped to open the message.

“Legs acting up again. Pain at an 8. Took the meds but no dice. Text when you can.”

Delilah’s stomach twisted. The meds meant hydrocodone, the last refill of his prescription. Pain at an 8 meant no sleep tonight. No sleep for either of them.

The phone slipped out of her hand and hit the floor with a clatter. She didn’t pick it up.

#

At the nurses’ station, a half-empty coffee cup sat abandoned next to the charting monitor. The coffee had turned the color of mud.

“Delilah.”

She didn’t look up.

“Delilah,” Laura repeated, louder this time. Laura was short and round, with a voice built for waking the dead. “Bed 6 coded thirty minutes ago. Nobody called it.”

Delilah stared at the monitor. A patient’s EKG pulsed weakly on the screen, each beat slower than the last.

“Did you hear me?” Laura said, dragging her chair closer.

“Yes,” Delilah said. “What do you want me to do about it?”

Laura laughed. The sound was ugly. “Hell if I know. I’m not a miracle worker.”

Neither was Delilah, but nobody told the patients that.

#

In Room 4, Mrs. Chang sat upright in her bed, her mouth slack, her eyes staring into the middle distance. Delilah ran through the motions: adjust the pillow, check the IV drip, listen to the rasp of labored breathing.

“You’re wasting your time,” the old woman said suddenly.

Delilah froze.

Mrs. Chang’s eyes flicked toward her, sharp and glassy, as though she were seeing something behind her. “You’ve got nothing left to give,” she said. Her voice was calm, almost gentle. “And they’ll keep taking it anyway.”

“Mrs. Chang,” Delilah started, but the words caught in her throat.

“I used to work like you,” Mrs. Chang continued. “Domestic worker. Six families at once. Scrubbed floors until my hands bled. Used to hide in closets just like you. Five minutes. Just long enough to stop shaking.”

Delilah’s hands clenched into fists. “You need to rest now,” she said, her voice clipped. “Let me get your vitals.”

Mrs. Chang’s lips curled into a thin smile. “I know what you dream about. Your husband in his wheelchair. That man in Bed 11 choking to death. Every time you close your eyes, it’s the same.”

Delilah stumbled back, chest tightening. “You’re confused,” she said.

“They’ll take everything,” Mrs. Chang interrupted. “And when you’re empty, they’ll toss you out like garbage.”

The monitor beeped weakly. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Delilah felt it before she saw it: the long flat tone of the EKG.

She turned and walked out of the room.

#

The empty room at the end of the hall was tucked behind a cart piled high with disposable bedpans. She slipped inside and shut the door.

The bed was unmade, the sheets wrinkled and lopsided. It was the most inviting thing Delilah had seen all day. She dropped into the chair by the window, her head falling forward onto her arms.

Just five minutes, she told herself. Just five.

She didn’t mean to fall asleep.

#

The dream came fast. Too fast.

Omar was at the kitchen table, his legs stretched stiffly in front of him. His hands were shaking, the tremor so violent the coffee in his mug sloshed over the rim. He looked up at her with wide, desperate eyes.

“I told you to help me,” he said. His voice was low, cracked. Not quite his own. “Why didn’t you help me?”

The kitchen dissolved into the hospital hallway. She was running. Running past Mrs. Chang and every other patient who ever looked at her with pleading eyes. They called out to her, but their words were drowned by the sound of alarms—monitors beeping, pagers vibrating, the dull roar of her own breath.

She turned a corner, and suddenly Omar was there again, sitting in his wheelchair. His head was tilted at an odd angle, his eyes cloudy, lifeless.

The wheelchair rolled forward on its own, faster and faster, until it collided with her legs and sent her tumbling backward—

#

Delilah woke up choking on her own breath.

The room was dim, the only light coming from a flickering bulb in the corner.

She staggered to her feet and stumbled into the hall. At the nurses’ station, Laura was bent over the charting monitor.

“Mrs. Chang,” Delilah said, her voice barely a whisper.

“What about her?” Laura didn’t look up.

“She—she died.”

Laura finally turned around. “That was hours ago,” she said.

Delilah felt the floor tilt under her feet.

“What’s wrong with you?” Laura asked.

Delilah didn’t answer. She turned and walked back to the supply closet.

###

The Last Nap

Amara had never seen so many people lying down in broad daylight. Arms folded over chests. Legs sprawled like crime scenes. Faces turned up to the sky. A few snored, their breath a slow rhythm under the chatter of cicadas.

It looked ridiculous, she thought. A mass nap in the middle of a park no one was supposed to use, right next to a “No Trespassing” sign spray-painted with the word gentrifier in dripping black letters.

“This is how we win?” Amara muttered. “Napping?”

“Not just napping,” Nia said. Nia, with her shaved head and hoop earrings. Nia, who had been texting her about this for weeks, wearing that bright yellow T-shirt with the words We nap, therefore we resist stamped across the front.

Amara wanted to leave. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to crawl under the nearest bush and sleep for five minutes.

Instead, she said, “You sure this is legal?”

“Legal’s not the point,” Nia said. She adjusted her yoga mat like she was about to start sun salutations. “It’s the pointlessness that’s the point.”

“That’s circular,” Amara said.

“That’s capitalism,” Nia replied, lying back and closing her eyes.

#

The park had been fenced off years ago, a patch of stolen green in the middle of a neighborhood where rents tripled overnight. Amara remembered coming here as a kid—swing sets, barbecue smoke, her dad timing her on the monkey bars. Then the fences went up, along with cameras on every corner and the luxury condos where the projects used to be.

Nia had explained it all in her usual evangelistic fervor. “Rest,” she’d said, “is the one thing they can’t privatize. Not yet, anyway. If we take up space without working, without buying, without producing anything, we break the machine.”

Nia loved her metaphors. Amara wasn’t so sure.

Still, she was here.

The Collective Nap had gathered in a tight clump at the park’s center, mats and blankets fanning out across the dead grass. Most of them were young, wearing thrifted jackets and cargo pants with too many pockets. Artists, students, organizers. The type of people Amara had stopped being when she graduated and got her teaching license.

She felt out of place. She always felt out of place lately.

#

“Lie down,” Nia said, patting the space next to her.

Amara didn’t move.

“C’mon. You need this.”

“I don’t—”

“You do.”

Amara sighed. She sank to the ground and stretched out on the grass. She kept her knees bent, her shoes on. She stared up at the sky, the blue so bright it made her eyes water.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now we rest,” Nia said.

Amara’s shoulders tightened. Rest. What a word. Her mind immediately started running through the to-do list she had abandoned to be here: lesson plans for next week, a stack of essays she hadn’t graded, the housing coalition meeting she was already late for. Omar from third period had punched another kid in the face yesterday—she still needed to call his mother.

“I don’t have time for this,” she said, sitting up.

“Then it’s exactly what you need,” Nia said, not bothering to open her eyes.

#

The sound of the nap was unnerving. No footsteps. No voices. Just breathing. People shifting slightly. The occasional rustle of wind.

Amara lay back down.

She felt the grass under her palms, dry and scratchy. A bug crawled over her wrist. She didn’t flick it off.

Her body ached. Always. Her shoulders, her back, her feet. She had been running on empty for years. Her principal called it “dedication.” Her students called it “Miss never sleeps.”

The park felt impossibly still. Amara let her head roll to the side. She could see Nia’s chest rising and falling, her mouth slightly open. She could hear the deep exhale of the man to her left.

The city sounded different from here. No sirens. No construction noise. Just the hum of distant traffic, the buzz of insects.

Amara’s eyelids grew heavy.

#

When the police arrived, they came in silence. No sirens. Just the crunch of boots on gravel and the low murmur of radios.

Amara opened her eyes to find two uniformed officers standing over her, blocking the sun. Their hands rested on their belts, their holsters. One of them had a clipboard.

“What’s this?” the officer asked.

“It’s a nap,” Nia said, sitting up beside her.

The officer didn’t laugh. “You can’t be here. This is private property.”

“This is a public park,” Nia said.

“It was a public park,” the officer corrected. “Now it’s owned by Beacon Development.”

Nia smiled, wide and toothy. “Then they should come join us.”

Amara’s heart started pounding. The air felt heavier. The circle was stirring now, people sitting up, murmuring to one another. A woman in a headscarf pulled out her phone and started filming.

“You need to leave,” the officer said.

Nobody moved.

“Final warning,” the officer barked. “If you don’t vacate the premises, we’ll arrest you for unlawful loitering.”

Nia lay back down. She folded her arms across her chest and closed her eyes.

“Guess I’m not moving,” she said.

Amara froze. She looked at Nia, then at the officers, then at the circle around her. The sun was hot on her face, her skin slick with sweat.

Her hands trembled. She clenched them into fists.

Slowly, she lay back down.

#

They arrested her last.

She felt their hands on her shoulders, lifting her to her feet. The officer’s grip was firm but not rough. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

As they walked her toward the squad car, she turned to look back at the park. The circle was gone, the mats and blankets scattered, but she could still see the faint outline of bodies pressed into the grass.

Nia waved at her from the backseat of the other squad car. Her grin was fierce, triumphant.

Amara smiled back.

For the first time in years, she felt light.

Rest, she thought, was resistance.

###