Lee Walker

Sandman's Ghost: the Antithesis of Sleep Lee Walker

It's a medical mystery that has the doctors in Grand Mont, New York, stumped. Patients they've known for a lifetime, healthy people who have never had a problem before, are unable to sleep and ultimately start to feel like zombies. And not just for a night or two-their sleeplessness lasts for weeks. When the weeks turn into months, the patients steadily decline, becoming restless and agitated, losing their ability to function normally, and finally lapse into a coma-a final sleep from which there will be no waking up. Death follows soon after. It is a scientific puzzle difficult for even the brightest of physicians and scientists to understand. Paxton McDonald is called upon to evaluate the situation, bringing her problem-solving talents and skills in discovering the cause of the illness. It was as if the proverbial Sandman had died; in fact he had not just died, but his ghost had come back with a vengeance. She dubs it Sandman's Ghost: The Antithesis of Sleep. What do these patients have in common? Where did the illness begin? And why are the patients' routine workups, blood work, MRIs, and CT scans showing nothing out of the ordinary? As Paxton and the doctors rule out one diagnosis after another, the mystery deepens, while the ranks of ill and dying patients increase. Meghan Magee, chief medical examiner for the county, autopsies the patients who've died from the illness and makes a shocking discovery. Their brains have changed in a way she could never have predicted, and she recognizes it immediately. It isn't what anyone thought or imagined; it's something far more sinister, something that should be impossible. And it's spreading.