Dreamjumper

Chapter Nine

The next morning, I couldn't stop smiling.

Most normal people would have dismissed what had happened the night before as a dream, a slight overdose on hospital drugs. But I wasn't about to let go of something this amazing – I needed to hold on to this, have faith in this.

In fact, I couldn't stop smiling the entire month. Three weeks into my hospital stay, the oxygen tank had disappeared, and my lungs healed completely – but I was still bedridden, and couldn't move my legs at all. It was a surprise to the nurses and to my visitors how happy I seemed, considering I was still paralyzed. Nobody said anything out loud, but their expressions gave them away.

During those weeks, I thought a lot about what had happened that night, and my new reality. It was difficult to believe that anything had happened that night. I had been given so much new information, and I had no idea what a lot of it even meant. Alistair had told me that there was another world ... that didn't seem so hard to believe, really. The concept of there being one had been around forever, and it wasn't a totally foreign idea.

And I supposed that it made sense that some of its inhabitants found their way into our own world ... we probably made our way into theirs occasionally.

But what I didn't really understand was the fact that my bloodline descended from this other realm, making me what they called a "dreamjumper". Shouldn't I have seen this coming? Something so big, so life changing – and I had just found out about this now?

The idea of the Esotericans confused me, too. I didn't know exactly what joining them meant for me. I knew I'd have to get rid of some of the otherworldly beings that were causing trouble ... but what about my home life? Would I have to move out, and live somewhere else with the organization? And what about school – I wouldn't have time to hunt down supernatural creatures while I had exams and classes to attend.

Not only that, but how the hell was I going to learn how to harness my "powers"? The people who worked at the Esotericans had probably spent their whole lives mastering theirs - and I had no clue how I was even going to start.

Though I thought about these things almost every day, I also had to focus on the present; I was more concerned with how I was healing right now than what was going to happen in the future.

On Wednesday afternoon, during my third week at the hospital, my mother opened the window overlooking the sprawling green courtyard. As she did, a gust of wind blew through, ruffling the curtains and cooling my face. It danced over the blankets, and then over my toes – and to my surprise, I could feel it. I barely remembered to breathe as I stared down at my feet, wiggling my toes back and forth slowly, tentatively.

"Mom ... Mom, look at my toes!" I laughed, pointing at them excitedly.

She glanced over her shoulder as she adjusted the curtains; when she noticed what I was talking about, she stopped, and turned around completely. Her eyes went wide with amazement, and for a moment she just looked shocked. Then she broke into a huge smile, and started to laugh with me.

"Hannah! Hannah, come see this!" My mother waved in one of the nurses from the hallway.

Within a few minutes, several nurses were crowded around my bedside to watch me wiggle my toes. Some of them were laughing with us, and some of them were peering out the door, looking for Dr. Johnson.

"Didn't they said you'd never walk again?" asked Ariel, a nurse with a deep smokers' voice and fading blond hair.

"They did – but just look at her. After just three weeks, she's moving her toes. That ain't normal," her best friend, Sara, whispered back. She was feeling around in her pocket for a pack of cigarettes.