FALL (DIMENSION Series #1)

CHAPTER 11

I looked around the hospital room in a state of confusion. I had just seen flashbacks of my fall. Trees and rocks and snippets of sky had flashed by before I'd been returned to this white room where everything was calm and predictable. And still, I kept reliving moments of my fall. Right now I fixated on that flat image of Derek I had seen. The image that had resembled a magazine cutting. The strangeness of it came to me.

      Something is not right, I thought and felt my heart beating faster in my chest.

     Breathe, I instructed myself. I didn't need for my heart rate to get amped up to a point where the hospital staff would be alerted. So, I took deep breaths and I forced myself to think of the actual moments of my fall in very small chunks.

      I made a mental list of the things I remembered:

      1. I had fallen from a lookout spot I knew well.

      2. Right below that lookout spot, at the bottom of the mountain was a jagged-edged boulder. It was large enough to cover a fair amount of land. I hadn't actually seen that boulder as I was falling, but I'd seen it many times before.

      3. If I had fallen straight down, as gravity should have dictated, I would have landed on that boulder. I would have been smashed to pieces, and not in this hospital bed right now.

      4. Could it be possible that I hadn't fallen straight down? Could the impact of the dirt bike crashing into me somehow have sent me off in a different direction than the one I'd imagined?

      5. As I was falling, I had thought of Derek Nash. Not my parents. Not Jason. Not Nisha or Neal who had been there with me, minutes before my fall. But Derek Nash. A boy I hadn't even known had existed until recently. Who hadn't even acknowledged my existence in any notable way until right before the fall. And not only had I thought of Derek, but I had actually seen him in my mind's eye. And he'd presented himself to me in very strange images. And even though I'd spent hours daydreaming about him, he didn't appear to me in the images of my dreams. Instead, he had looked garbled in a way, and otherworldly. Why would those strange sci-fi images come to me during a moment of crisis?

      Again I felt my heart starting to speed up. I reached for my glass of water and took small sips from it. I also took some deep breaths. This exercise had a calming effect. After a couple of minutes, I was ready to resume making my mental list.

     6. Instead of landing on the craggy rock, I had landed on a bed of leaves that had presumably been close to it.

     7. Wasn't it strange that leaves would have been stacked up neatly into a kind of makeshift mattress? It certainly was convenient. I had, of course, seen stacks of leaves in the past. Fallen leaves were swept up from time to time by workers who came in and made things look pretty. But I hadn't seen any of those stacks around recently.

     8. While I was falling, I'd registered a change of direction. Initially it had felt like a strong wind stream. Something extreme enough to actually impact my fall. It had felt like my fall was being manipulated in the same way a car might be steered in a different direction. I'd also felt the actual speed at which I had been falling slowdown, as if some invisible brake had suddenly kicked in.

      I sighed and bit my lower lip. I knew how implausible my rendering sounded. There had to be a different explanation. It was all too strange to comprehend. Even my parents had a sense of the overall bizarreness of it. Especially my dad. I'd seen it in his eyes.

      And of course the dirt bike rider hadn't been quite as lucky as I'd been. Not lucky enough, apparently, to make it onto a bed of leaves. Not lucky enough to be in a regular hospital room. But in the ICU, instead. I, on the other hand, had managed to come out with all my bones still intact. How was that possible?

      Neal and Nisha hadn't seen my fall. They'd seen me disappearing off the mountain and the next time they'd seen me I'd been unconscious on a pile of leaves. Therefore, they couldn't be counted on to help me sort out the facts. From what I could gather nobody had seen my actual fall. I had been the only witness to it. And since I'd been a part of it, my brain had likely been altered by the rush of adrenaline, and my perception of things might have been skewed. But despite all this, I didn't think my perception had been that severely impacted. And I was pretty sure that the strange things I had felt had been legit, but I had no explanation for them.

      I remembered one last thing. The way I'd felt before my fall. Like something was off. And I'd felt it strongly. What was that all about? I wondered. I didn't really believe in a sixth sense, but it was odd that I'd felt something ominous. And that too in the woods—a place that had previously been a refuge. Where I'd never felt the slightest hint of anything threatening before.

      Can you tell me what happened? I whispered. As soon as I'd uttered the question, I realized that it had been directed at him. At Derek Nash of all people! Even though he was nowhere near me and very unlikely to even know about my fall.

      Do I have a concussion? I thought. I was starting to think it likely. Why was Derek crowding my mind at this point? I had just experienced a traumatic fall. Shouldn't I at least be free from my obsession for some time?

      But there was something else. And I could sense it now for the first time. I suddenly had another strong feeling. Like that wave of gloom that had washed over me in the forest. This feeling wasn't related to something ominous, but it was equally strong. It was related to Derek Nash. I could feel his presence in my hospital room.

      I couldn't understand it. I didn't even know him very well. And I had interacted with him only minimally, yet I was sure that I could somehow sense his presence. And now it came to me: I had sensed it during my fall as well. It wasn't just images of Derek that I kept seeing. There had also been the sense that he was alongside me as I was falling.

      I wondered if it could be related to the way in which I'd observed him. I'd stared at him at school. I'd listened to his conversations. When I looked into his eyes they sometimes seemed to see all the way into my soul. Maybe he existed for me in this complete way even though I hadn't interacted with him much. Maybe all the watching I had done from the sidelines had tied him to me in a more long-lasting way.

      My mother didn't give any value to teenage love. She thought it was fleeting and insubstantial. And she thought this because teenagers hadn't yet experienced the world. Our landscapes were limited. I was willing to concede that there were many things I still wanted to experience in life. I wanted to travel the world, too. But I knew what I knew. What I felt was love. Even if I was young and inexperienced. And even if I didn't know Derek Nash very well, I knew enough to know that I loved him. And my fall and the feeling of his presence during it and even now, convinced me of it.

     I shivered and felt unsettled in the white hospital bed. I closed my eyes again. I wanted to keep thinking. To solve the events that had taken place in the past few hours, but I was tired. My brain seemed to be slowing down, like it was in the process of powering off. Another wave of exhaustion washed over me and seconds later, sleep came for me.

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NEXT NEW CHAPTER ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29 (featuring the RETURN of DEREK!)

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