The Poppy Fields

It begins to rain heavily. Ava is sure that they are headed for disaster, and even Sasha becomes nervous. Ray would rather keep driving and momentarily wishes that he hadn’t agreed to take the two women, but when Sasha suggests that they stop at a nearby motel, he agrees.

The motel is filthy, and Ava decides that the bathroom is probably too dirty to take a shower in. Even PJ seems nervous. Ava wishes that she were home in Kansas. The three sit talking, and Sasha wonders if she can open up to them about why she’s not getting married.

Dean, Sasha’s fiancé, was her next-door neighbor. A children’s piano teacher who also performed his own show, he was instantly appealing to Sasha. Their romance bloomed, they got engaged, and the future seemed set.

Then, Sasha got cold feet—she wasn’t sure if Dean was “the one.” She wondered if she should feel more in love. Ultimately, she decided that she couldn’t hurt Dean or disappoint her traditional Korean family, so she did not call off the wedding. Something else happened to prevent it.

In an interview transcript, an unnamed man explains that he would like the Poppy Fields treatment to help him manage the grief of losing his wife of 51 years.

Ellis and several members of her team, including Flynn and Yasmin, discuss a new applicant. He would like to undergo treatment to ease the pain of his wife’s recent death. His children do not know about his application, but one grandchild does. Although he does not have family support and would be their oldest patient, they approve his application. He is healthy, and his vitals are strong.

Next on the meeting agenda is project expansion. Ellis does not want to expand, and she is nervous during this portion of the conversation. Flynn is not only in favor of expansion but also wants to change the Poppy Fields’ model: He would like to charge a fee in order to earn profits.

Ellis opposes this idea, as she has been adamant that the service be free for the public good. She worries that charging people would muddy the ethics of treatment: What if parents could send their children or cheating spouses could purchase treatments for their husbands and wives? They decide that whatever form the next phase will take, the first step is securing a new location. The original location will still operate, and the plan is for the new one to be larger.

Sasha tells Ava and Ray the rest of her story. Dean didn’t want a wild bachelor party, but he did go out for a few beers with friends. On his way out of the bar, he was fatally struck by a drunk driver. Sasha feels responsible for his death, and she feels guilty for having wanted to call off the wedding. She does not feel deserving of the sympathy that’s been heaped upon her since Dean died.

After his death, she moved back in with her parents and has been in a state of deep melancholy ever since. Her parents did not support the idea of sleep treatment, and the Poppy Fields actually rejected her application. She hopes to convince them to change their minds in person.

Ava and Ray are momentarily silent. Ray brings up the side effects but doesn’t seem to judge Sasha for wanting the treatment. Ava isn’t sure if it will alleviate Sasha’s guilt, but she tells Sasha that she does understand why she wants to try.

Ellis has always been interested in science and excelled in school. In college, she was unsure if she wanted to pursue a career on the business or research side of things, but the more work she did in labs, the more drawn she became to research. She developed her sleep treatment while working in a lab with a group of other scientists, but they were wary of what she was doing and did not want to join her startup. Only one, Yasmin, agreed to go with her. She was able to easily secure funding even though she remained adamant that the treatment was not to be administered for profit. She wants to help people and does not agree with the ethics of charging them for it.

On the bus, Sky sits next to a woman traveling to Albuquerque to visit her son, who is a pilot. He takes Sky up in a hot-air-balloon ride, and she finds it exhilarating. From so high up, the world looks tiny. She feels like the smallest component piece of a much larger whole. Because she is so small in relation to the world, she reasons that her problems must actually be minuscule. This realization fills her with happiness.

The next morning, Ava and Sasha wake up to find Ray gone. As they search for him, he returns, shirtless and panting from a run. Ava is surprised that she is attracted to him and reflects that although he is grieving, she cannot tell. Grief like hers, she has noticed, induces pity, while people tend to respect the kind of stoicism that Ray projects.

As Ava thinks about Ray, Ray thinks about Johnny. He misses his brother desperately but has always seen little point in tears and emotions. Instead of feeling sadness, he runs. When he runs, he tries to remember his brother, but he knows that as time passes, those memories will fade.

A group calling itself “Stop the Sleep” plans to begin protesting at the Poppy Fields. They are fearful that sleep treatment will turn society into “zombies,” and they are particularly worried about the emotional side effect that some sleepers experience post-treatment.

Ellis, Yasmin, and Flynn discuss the Golden State Times article. Yasmin easily dismisses the Stop the Sleep movement, noting that success often creates enemies. Ellis, though, worries. She is much more concerned than anyone else about the emotional moderation that happens to some patients, and the group’s criticism of her project stings. Still, she believes that she is doing the world a service and wants to continue.

Several outlets have asked for interviews. Ellis is not in the habit of speaking to the press and does not want to grant them permission. Amid the turmoil she feels about Stop the Sleep, she agrees to move on to the second phase of the project, expanding the Poppy Fields into a new facility. The question of moving to a for-profit model remains undecided.

Ava, Sasha, and Ray cross the border into New Mexico, and the landscape reddens. Sasha asks to see Ava’s drawings and is stunned by how well done they are. She notices one of Ray and wonders if Ava might be nursing a crush. The thought thrills her, and she hopes that the two will become an unlikely couple. Sasha shows a drawing of PJ to Ray, and he agrees that they are beautiful.

They stop for gas, and Ava nervously looks at a trucker whom she deems suspicious. She notes that Ray has also noticed him and feels calmer. Ray recalls a time when he and his brother took their father’s Mustang out joyriding and got caught. They had done everything together, he thinks, but he ultimately let Johnny down.

The narrative turns to an interview transcript from a longtime fireman and medic. He is used to difficult situations and even trauma, but one recent call has stayed with him. A young boy was killed by a stray bullet while playing basketball in his driveway. He was a good kid who helped his mother with the dishes and listened to his parents. The interviewee is sure that this is the exact kind of son he would like to have someday, and he cannot comprehend a world in which such a child would die. He is sure that his coworkers and family would think that the treatment isn’t a “manly” way to deal with grief, but he wants it anyway.

Grief looks different for everyone. For Ray, it is tinged with guilt. Johnny came to him about his grief over the young boy’s death, and Ray dismissed the idea of the Poppy Fields as weakness. He was unknowingly perpetuating their father’s fraught ideas on what it means to be “manly,” and he dismissed Johnny’s feelings when he should have helped him to manage them.

Neither brother wanted to grow up to be their father, and in this interaction, Ray had failed in that regard. However, he recalls that he also felt attacked. Johnny’s insistence that asking for help showed more self-awareness than bottling up feelings felt like a slap in the face—Johnny knew that this was exactly how Ray handled the stress of their job. Their argument had escalated, and Johnny had said, “Fuck you, Ray” (126), before storming out. He went to the Poppy Fields before Ray could apologize and died of an aneurysm right after he returned. Ray was out of town and never got a chance to say he was sorry.

Ava and Sasha silently listen to Ray’s story. Sasha understands the impact that regret and guilt have on grief, and Ava understands the sibling bond. Emmy had been her older sister and always took the lead, but Ava loved her. As Emmy got older, the two spent less time together. Their grandmother had encouraged each of them to make use of her talents, and Emmy had big dreams.

Ava does not want to reveal her own story to Sasha and Ray, and she wonders if omission counts as lying. She does not want to tell them that her sister has been at the Poppy Fields for much longer than a month (the standard length of treatment) or that she has been awake the entire time.

It is Ellis’s birthday. She has told no one because she prefers not to celebrate. When she was a child, her grandmother Mae and sister, Ava, had insisted on small celebrations, but once she left home, she stopped. She and Ava had been close as young children, but there was an age gap, and once Ellis hit puberty, they grew apart. Now, she recalls her childhood nickname “Emmy” with a twinge, but she feels that she is no longer that person. Ava had tried to stay in touch for a while, sending handmade cards on holidays, but three years ago, they stopped.

Ellis’s reverie is interrupted by an email. A documentarian is making a film about sleep that features several of the Poppy Fields sleepers. Ellis would welcome a documentary, but not now. It feels too soon.

Ava, Sasha, and Ray stop near Albuquerque for food. PJ darts away from them, running through a crowded area and causing a woman to lose her footing. Ray runs over to her shockingly quickly and catches her before she falls. Everyone is impressed.

PJ had been running toward a young woman with a large duffel bag. Ava goes over to retrieve him and recognizes the woman from the airport. She introduces herself as Sky and says that she was at the Topeka airport, which is why PJ recognized her too. She explains that she is 18, is traveling, and has been hitchhiking. Ray asks where she is headed, and when she says Sedona, Arizona, he offers her a ride. Although other people look at Sky and see an ethereally beautiful woman, Ray sees what she actually still is: “[J]ust a kid” (145).

The narrative introduces an interview transcript from the Poppy Fields. In it, the applicant talks about how he wants to sleep to forget the way that his father lost strength at the end of his life. He prefers to remember him as young and capable. His only concern with the treatment is leaving his brother alone for a month.