Dream of Me

November 28

I woke up a few hours later to a somewhat normal perception of the real world; shapes and sounds and colours all fit together like they had for the few decades prior to this strange occurrence. I say strange because there's really no other word to describe it. I woke up from a dream with a huge gash on my head and a minor concussion. That was infinitely harder to come up with an explanation for than a small scratch or a black eye. Things were escalating. My dreams were becoming more violent, and more determined to infiltrate my reality. And what's even worse is that it was Irene the whole time, but my stupid brain thought it would be a fun trick to play on me to blur her face out until she almost killed me. Sure, it was probably an accident, but who's to say for sure? The ghost of my ex-girlfriend that lived in my subconscious heard that I was finally over her and got upset. What else could she do but drop down an ice chunk to break my skull? Dreams are weird as shit and I'm not even interested in logging them in my journal any more. They will never make sense. Nothing will ever create a pattern. There is no predictability, no sense, no laws of earth, no remorse.

I woke up with a bandage on my head, laying in a hospital bed that they had wheeled in beside my father. It was adorable, really, as I imagined us lying in pale blue paper robes side by side, both suffering different ailments but suffering together. Adorable in a morbid, this-is-not-how-life-should-be way. He thought the same thing, I could tell, because when I woke up and looked over at him, we both tried to hold back our laughter but to no avail. The nurses outside our room seemed confused about the sound of balloons loosing air coming from inside, but they continued with whatever they were doing. Our family had been quite the mystery to the hospital for the past week. First a dad with an unexplainable (for a while, at least) illness, then a son getting a concussion from sleeping. Quite the fiasco, in my opinion.

Addison was sitting on the cot, working on the homework that had piled up for her. I had previously emailed my professors about my absence and I was still hoping and crossing my fingers that I'd be able to catch up with the work and still graduate. I realized a follow-up email was necessary now.

"You guys are losers," Addison looked up at us, trying to mask her relief of hearing laughter again with annoyance. "What's funny? You guys both end up in the hospital and leave me to sit here and worry about both of you? What's next? Maybe I'll slip in the hallway and break my wrist and then the nurses can wheel in a third bed and we can all be a happily health-challenged family." This only caused us to laugh more, and her feigned frown slowly lifted as she began to laugh with us.

"We really are a site to see right now," my father agreed.

"I think Addy is feeling left out. Poor baby" I teased.

"You're both losers." Before we could formulate a comeback, a nurse, Shelby we had learned by this point, came in to check on us.

"Hello August, hello Richard."

"Hello," we responded in unison wearing big, cheesy smiles, which, yes, was extremely inappropriate for the setting and the situation, but sometimes you just have to laugh at the crap life throws at you.

"How are we doing this afternoon?"

"Well, I feel a lot better now that I have company," my father smiled, "and I think August is quite regretting going to bed last night."

"Yes," she said, a bit uneasy, "August, we've been trying to figure out what happened. Do you remember anything?"

"Not exactly," I said, lying, trying to scramble for an excuse or a reason that would make at least a little bit of sense, "maybe I tripped in the dark and hit my head on the table, then pulled myself onto the bed?" Yeah, that makes sense. You would pull yourself onto the bed after opening your scalp on a table corner. Idiot.