ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS

15. NEW HEART TALKS TO ME

★ Anjali ★

A few weeks after coming back from the hospital, I start to have scary, recurring nightmares. It is the same scene over and over, and it always starts like this.

I am in an expensive car that almost looks like a stretch limo. I sit alone in the back seat and talk to a girl about my age in the front seat. It seems like we are good friends, but I don't know her in real life. The driver is in uniform. It seems that I am delighted because everyone is laughing. The atmosphere in the car is very festive.

I am wearing a white dress. I think it is a long silk dress. Then all of a sudden, I hear a big bang, a horrendous noise. A huge truck hit the side of our car. I feel this enormous pressure from my right side. At that moment, my body flies and smashes through the windshield. I am thrown out of the car and hit the cement on the sidewalk.

My body bounces a few times on the pavement. My white dress slowly turns red with blood. Now, I am looking at the blue sky, a beautiful, sunny sky. My vision slowly blurs like a camera that is out of focus. Everything turns to darkness as if someone turned the TV off. Then my dream stops. It completely stops.

I always wake up afraid, as if I might be dead. I feel so fearful. After that, I can't go back to sleep and always stay awake until the window becomes lighter with the morning sun. It is so frightening.

There is another dream I see often. It is always about a boy. I am always playing with him. He is fair-skinned and has long chestnut blond hair. When I look into his eyes, they are as blue as the ocean in the summertime.

In some dreams, the situation is different. In one dream, I am holding his hand, and we are running through a field. It is so green! He keeps looking and smiling at me. The wind is blowing his curly hair. We keep running under the strong spring sun. I feel happy. I feel fulfilled. My heart is full of joy when I am with him.

I have never met this boy before. At least, he is not someone I recognize. The other day, he was in my dream again—a little older, yet he had the same recognizable blue eyes. He was on top of a horse, and I was right next to him. Yes, I was on a horse as well. We were racing in the field. Both of us were riding fast and heading toward a tall tree in the middle of the yellow field.

The sun was setting below the horizon right ahead of us. It was so big and orange. He kept looking at me as if he was making sure that I would not fall. My horse ran and ran. I felt so free and full of joy. I had this feeling that he was always there for me, no matter what happened. Always by my side.

When I wake up from these dreams, my heart is filled with love and longing, something I had never experienced before. Maybe I am falling in love with this dream boy. It is crazy because I don't know him. He only appears in my dreams, but my heart aches for him.

I can't tell anyone about what I am experiencing, not even Ananda, because nothing makes sense. She might think I have gone mad. So I keep everything to myself.

These are my recurring dreams since my heart surgery.

Today, I go back to the hospital for my monthly checkup. My heart is strong and steady. By now, I can walk normally and run once in a while, which I was never able to do before.

When I ran for the first time in my life, I was so ecstatic with happiness. Tremendous contentment filled me, and I was sobbing with joy. No one probably understood why I was crying on the street because Indian vendors looked at me as if they encountered a madwoman. I didn't care. I was so happy for my new life.

It is great to see Dr. Waxman again. She truly inspires me to do something meaningful for people, and I honestly admire her. When I walk into her office, she greets me with a warm smile.