After the Words

3: Wake Up!

I remember spinning... or maybe it was the ground spinning. The car was coming so fast, and I didn't have time to react. Now everything is dark-- are my eyes even open? The darkness fades to grey, then white, then a multitude of colors bleed into eachother. The colors focus, sharpen.

I am in the hospital... well... kind of. I'm on a hospital bed... but I'm also on the floor, lying on my back.

What the--, I think. What is going on?

I push myself up from the ground, looking around thinking, this has got to be a dream. No way is this real, I mean, how could it be?

My thoughts are stopped short by a nurse who walks into the room, her hand on the shoulder of a woman who tries to speak, but is unable to through her sobs.

My mother.

My sisters and brother trail behind her, looking confused and terrified, all the while trying to stay composed. Their eyes drift around the room slowly, taking everything in from the floor, to the me in the bed, to our mom, to the walls, and back to the floor.

Nope. Nope. Not gonna cry. Not. Going. To. Cry. This isn't real so there's no need to get all emotional. This is some wack dream, and any second now my alarm will go off, teasing me of another Monday. I think about this dream, and think that all I have to do is wake up.

"Wake up..." I whisper. "Wake up, wake up..." My voice is growing louder until it reaches a shout, "Wake up!" Then a scream. "WAKE UP!"

But I'm still here.

Confused.

Angry.

Frustrated.

I. Hate. Nightmares.

I stand and walk over to Syd, who is scared, and tell her, "this isn't real," but she doesn't hear me-- she can't hear me. No one can. Or see me.

Alone and confused and angry and frustrated and tired.

I'm tired so I think, maybe if I fall asleep in this dream, I'll actually wake up. Crazy logic but this is some crazy dream, and so I do. I lay down on the guest-couch they have in the room, rest my head on the pillow, and drift off into an ocean of slumber.