Nathaniel's Mom Versus the Nightmare

PART 4 -The Dreamscape

By the time Nathaniel was back asleep, so was his mother. The shaman directed her consciousness to Nathaniel's dream somehow. All she knew was that she was standing in a hospital room that looked familiar. Then she realized—it was at the children's hospital where Nathaniel had spent so much time.

A glowing gold cord extended from her body out into the nothingness at the edge of the dream: the shaman had explained that she and Nathaniel would be bound together by a golden cord, reminiscent of their linked souls. She could follow it to find Nathaniel and thus find the shadow entity, who no doubt would be lingering near her son.

Nathaniel's mother looked at the hospital room, remembering the biggest hospital stay for her son: his heart surgery. With atrioventricular canal defect, Nathaniel's heart didn't have four chambers. The blood in the heart didn't stay divided the way it should, so extra blood could cross over to the lung arteries. This would make the heart and lungs work harder and lead to lung congestion, so a repair was typically done at around four months of age. It still astounded her that her baby had had heart surgery so young. While the surgery had been a success, an unforeseen complication had kept them in the hospital for an extra three weeks.

Apparently, chylothorax is so uncommon a side effect from heart surgery that no one had warned them about it or even considered it a possibility. But it meant another surgery to place a more permanent IV line in a different location (the first one couldn't remain in as long as he would then be hospitalized). It also meant the end of breast milk for him.

She had taken that personally. She already couldn't breastfeed her son, so she had been pumping milk around the clock to ensure she would produce enough for his bottles. It was a small enough sacrifice for what he had to endure. She couldn't fix his heart problem herself, so she had offered him up to the doctors to cure. Yet their "cure" almost felt like a betrayal, since now she was being told he couldn't drink her milk anymore— his body wasn't able to handle fats due to the reaction his body had to heart surgery.

Though the chylothorax did clear up completely a few months after the heart surgery, she had always secretly wondered if it was to blame for his lack of growth.

But what did she know? She was just his mother.

She looked around the empty hospital room, the different beeps and alarms echoing in her memory, then she turned and followed the golden cord, letting darkness settle back on the dreamscape's hospital setting.

***

The next area that materialized around her was a playground. It was the playground they used to frequent the most, as it was designed specifically for young kids (thus, everything was smaller and easier for Nathaniel to manage). It was also an inclusive playground, so it was designed specifically to allow special needs children to be able to play. Nathaniel had gone to early education/preschool at the school the playground belonged to, so he played on it regularly during the school year.

Here were the swings Nathaniel loved...and at seven years old, he still fit in a baby swing. But he would also use the supportive swing, where he could sit without hanging on because there was a tall, supportive back and a safety bar. Nathaniel could swing as long as you had the patience to push him. He would say the name of a song and then "Mommy do it" to get her to sing to him. If he had to sing himself, he would say a few lines, and then stop, repeating the "Mommy do it" to try to wheedle his way into getting sung to.

She and her husband had many memories at this playground, including the time they had driven to pick Nathaniel up from preschool (usually he rode the bus) to see him crying in the swing. The teachers had many children to attend to, so some children would inevitably have to wait, but still...seeing their son crying surrounded by oblivious children and busy teachers did not make a good impression.

Nathaniel's mom remembered another time she had shown up to pick up Nathaniel early for some doctor's appointment (he had so many she couldn't remember which specialty it was), and Nathaniel was sitting on the teacher's lap. Every time they saw him, he was being carried or sitting on someone's lap.

Whenever he came home from school, he smelled like one of the teachers or aides—he didn't smell like their own son anymore. And while it should have been comforting to know that he was cuddling and socializing with the adults around him, there was a melancholy note to it as well. It meant he was not playing with his peers or had cajoled his way into someone's arms instead of walking himself.

Or even that it explained why he might seem more like a toy doll to his peers than a friend.

***

She was wasting too much time in her reflections. She focused back on the golden cord and followed it toward the dark edges of the dreamscape. Every time she walked, however, the setting would coalesce around her. It was like trying to reach the water mirage on the pavement of a hot day—every time she got closer to the darkness, it would move farther away.

Where was Nathaniel? Could the entity already be stalking him at a different point in his dreams?

When Nathaniel's mother reached a verdant field, she was slightly taken aback. It seemed too perfect. Everything about the place was pristine: flowers blooming, birds singing, water trickling in the background, colors so lush and rich it was as though the landscape had been personally saturated in different Crayola hues.

And then, she spotted him: Nathaniel, bounding through the grass. But his gait and movements were not the son she knew—they were unhindered, smooth, the leaps and ease of movement that her other two children displayed, never Nathaniel. With Nathaniel, every movement was a coordinated effort, and you could see the strength and dexterity needed for the simplest of steps—things those without low muscle tone never needed to think about or teach themselves how to do.

When Nathaniel was an infant, they had in-home therapists teaching them how to help their son so that he could learn how to balance on his hands from a sit, and from there, go up on his knees so that he was poised to crawl. But the crawling wouldn't come for months. Everything Nathaniel learned took a focus and effort that typical children mastered on their own in days or weeks. For Nathaniel, it took months and years. When he took his first independent steps at nearly two years old, he just barely beat his younger brother, who was walking before he turned one.

So this figure before her, joyfully cavorting in the field, looked like Nathaniel, and yet, couldn't be Nathaniel. And when he raced by her with a huge smile on his face, she was shocked: the hallmark Down syndrome traits that were present on her son were now absent (smaller ears, flattened nose, skin folds on the corners of his eyes).

Was this how Nathaniel would appear if he did not have Down syndrome?

She sat down, mesmerized.

And thus did not see the figure sneaking up on her from behind.

***

When the shaman had explained the dreamscape to her in the limited time they had, he had mentioned that it would shift and change at every turn. And right before he had hypnotized her to sleep, he had added that the shadow entity may try to trick her or trap her. She had been alarmed, but experiencing Nathaniel's dream world and all the memories it stirred in her had left little room for things like constant vigilance.

So she was wholly unprepared for a sneak attack right at the moment she had tears in her eyes of such awe. Maybe if she hadn't had the tears in her eyes, she would have noticed that the golden cord that came from her did not attach to this Nathaniel in the green field.

Hands from behind suddenly seized her throat, and she startled at the sudden violence. As she forced her head and body back to see who had her, a dark shadow loomed over her, contrasting against the amazing blue sky. Green eyes blazed as the shadow entity sneered down at her upside down.

In the dream world, she didn't immediately feel suffocated or panicked. Instead, she found herself staring at the shadow entity. And as she stared, the shadowy mask of the figure began to dissipate.

Glowing green eyes lost their glow, becoming regular green eyes. And the figure gained color and form, materializing into a figure she knew very well. The only difference, one that that didn't suit the figure at all, was the evil sneer adorning the face; otherwise, it was a perfect reflection of when she looked in the mirror.

Nathaniel's mom stared at herself.