Creative Writing From Senior Year

A Dream Come True

A creak of a hinge.

Click of a knob.

The beeping blue lines became vibrant blue mountains he could see through the windows.

“You’re all clear Mr. Fredericks,” Nurse Kelly beamed, her friendliness striking as both foreign and familiar for reasons he could not find. “Welcome back, your heart is fine.” All at once color blossomed and sun-beams illuminated the white-wash room with laminate tiles of blue and black and health posters of diagrams of blood cell terminologies that once came so easy to him, but now seemed so far away. Feeling especially radiant and youthful, however old he thought he might or might not be, he climbed frantically out of the hospital bed, bursting forth from his sensory and blood-letting shackles of black and red in a fit of inexplicable excitement. They left uneven marks on his sun-kissed skin. He looked at the marks on his arms and his calloused narrow feet on the cold floor in his thin mint green gown absentmindedly.

“I hate to over excite you, doctor, but your family is here!”

He hadn’t even noticed she’d stepped out of the room until the clicked shut once again, nor was he aware of whom she seemed to be talking to; something seemed off. But as he pulled on his Dockers and laced up his Oxford’s and adjusted his tie, he smoothed his clean, styled black hair off to the side, behind his ear but over his glasses as he always did, and marched his practiced but genuine smile out of room E109.

Picking his life up where his coma had left him, he left the room without questioning a thing and found himself sauntering through a garden. Plump with blossoms red and petals blue, stems green and suckles and shrubs, he gazed about. Soaking it all in. The sun not quite setting off in the summer sky. Or at least he figured that was the case, large colorful walls of tangle and flower blocking the celestial body from view… And everything else for that matter. Lowering his gaze as questions began to fill his mind, they came at him like that of the murmurs of a crowd, numerous and apparent but unclear, the way his thoughts always did. And as these questions formed, so too did small, teal orbs of light who seemed to whisper as they emerged from the flowers all around.  Each traveling paths of their own, calling to him in a voice that could not be heard, but felt. And he listened.

Stepping forth, Tom preyed on the nearest orb, cupping it gently in his hands, peering into it as a coldness swept through him from his palms to the back of his neck. In the orb he saw scenes of childbirth. A female with fair skin and blue eyes, much like his own, with thick, sweaty brown hair accompanied by a male of dark complexion and jet black hair, oddly young. A baby new to the world, crying, and a set of faceless hands receiving the dark skinned blue-eyed baby into the warmth of their home as snow fell…

And like that, the vision faded. The orb fizzling out with a slow shake and then a soft pop. Momentarily he ran the scenes over the palate of his mind and allowed himself time to digest the ordeal before quizzically harnessing another.. Memory? Thought? Vision? He didn’t know.

The child from before had some years on him now, carrying books quietly as he walked to class in clothes much too large for him. Weirdo, nerd, loser the kids would say as he passed. But he grew stronger and taller and through each door his appeal increased. His glasses fell away, his hair gained form, clean cut and his body grew stronger and his shoulders broader. The halls around him as his steps continued widened and became increasingly dense with faceless human life passing him by. All blurred but the face of one particular girl, oddly familiar and beautiful who met him at the front of his school as his former graduates passed him by with shoulder pats, hugs and smiles and the halls gave way to a stadium and stage full of shifting caps and gowns. There was a certain warmness to her smile. But then the black started to form again and the vision faded.

Feeding the hunger of his characteristic curiosity, as somebody used to always say he had though he wasn’t sure how or who or when that came about, he continued to indulge in the story unfolding before him. The youth became a man, his cap and gown much larger this time around, and the girl from before much closer to him than before, with the same warm smile as before. Tom could see that there was a ring on the man’s left hand. It left tan lines. How silly, he thought. The man in his white coat and with a stethoscope around his neck took his fiance and kissed her quite dramatically, obnoxiously, Tom thought, as he laughed at himself and saw the man saying and doing the very same thing as his significant other looked on him with nothing but smiles, caressing her protruding stomach Tom hadn’t before noticed.

Fully invested, in hot pursuit of the conclusion of this man’s life he was watching pan out, he did not notice just how quickly the population of vision-giving orbs was dwindling. And this didn’t make sense to Tom.

“How can these orbs be so few in number, when the years left in this man’s life are so numerous?”

Tom didn’t like when things didn’t make sense, but he carried on.

Next, before him ran around three children, in a, as he presumed, middle class home. Growing exponentially with each sighting in time lapse speeds. Words and exchanges buzzing all around while pictures of children and teenagers and adults and newly weds and parents cropped up on the walls and the wall paper began to peel. All fair skinned and dark haired and predominantly blue eyed much like Tom.

But suddenly, the world slowed, and before him the three children, two sons and one daughter, crowded over the man. Yes, over him, tears in their eyes. These trembling messes all he could see, holding his hands and caressing his shoulder. Kissing his cheeks and forehead, as he realised he had somehow ended up on his back, clutching his chest while Tom felt a sharp pain in his own...

Finally, he clasped his hands around the last precious orb, and delved into the complexities of it’s innards dying to know what comes of this man. Next, the garden around him swirled into the vortex that focused itself between his hands. Instantly he felt a familiar heaviness overtake his body, in the dark that enveloped him. Opening his eyes, feeling miles away from his former sanctuary, he found himself looking up at those same three children, or adults, from before. And he looked down to see the same clinical shackles as before latching onto him, as if he’d never taken them off. And the same mint green gown.

I love you, they said.

Please don’t go, they said, looking Tom square in his tired eyes. And from behind them emerged the same beautiful woman from before, smiling as she always did with an infectious warmth, grasping his hand. Squeezing it a little too tightly… Tom wasn’t quite sure what it all meant, or why he had taken the place of the man from the visions... But all too quickly he realised and understood, memory flushing back, and with a smile on his face, Tom met her gaze, mouthed I love you, and in total surrender sank into the depths of her warmth never to return. Content with the life he had relived.

And it was finally, rightfully then, that the blue mountains flattened and a silence befell hospital room E109.





( In case you didn't understand, he saw himself and his wife and what not in this dream he had during a coma, and when the dream ended, he saw them again, realized what had taken place, and died a content man )