Phobia (12 page)

~ 23 ~

I opened the front door, this time with confidence. I could endure anything if I knew Colin would be waiting for me.

I hesitated, then took a breath and stepped over the threshold. Warm summer sun shone, transforming the wasteland of my neighborhood into a golden desert.

As I slowly made my way down the stairs, the sunlight grew brighter and brighter, making me wish I’d thought to wear a pair of sunglasses.

As I walked into the light, the hum of voices reached my ears.

“She’s waking up!”

“Go tell the front! Page Dr Ross!”

“Paging Doctor Ross. Room 114, Stat!”

I squinted while my eyes adjusted to the intensity of… wherever this was.

I blinked, straining to focus. White walls. I was in a bed. Steel railings on either side of the bed.

In bed? Wha…?

I was no longer standing on my front walkway. The brilliant sunlit wasteland was gone, replaced by cool white walls lit by fluorescent bulbs. A pale green curtain drawn across one side of the bed obscured my view of the rest of the room.

HISS. SUCK.

HISS. SUCK.

No.  NO! Not this again!

I thought I’d escaped from my home and all that I’d experienced there. But now I seemed to have stepped into yet another realistic dream, set in some sort of institution, possibly a hospital. I shuddered, remembering the nightmare with the needle-wielding doctor. I prayed he wasn’t going to return to terrorize me again.

A nurse came in and leaned over my bed with a friendly smile.

“Hello. It’s nice to see you’ve joined us. How do you feel?”

“Thirsty,” was all I managed to say.

“Be right back,” she said, then left the room.

She returned with a plastic carafe filled with ice water and poured a cup for me. She raised the head of the bed up slightly so I could drink the water.

I felt weak and tired, but that water was the best thing I’d tasted in a long time. My mouth felt pasty, like I hadn’t brushed my teeth in weeks.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“You’re in the hospital. You’ve been asleep for a while.”

“There was an accident…” I began, remembering.

“Yes, but you’re ok. You’ve just been out for a few weeks. All you need to do now is take it easy. The doctor will be in to talk to you in a while.”

“Hey!”

Before leaving the room, the nurse turned to face me. “Yes?”

“What’s that hissing noise?”

HISS. SUCK.

HISS. SUCK.

The nurse frowned for a moment as if she didn’t quite understand what I meant, then she got it. “Oh!” she laughed, “It’s nothing, just your roommate, Ethel. She’s on a ventilator.”

“No hissing monster?”

She laughed again, patting my hand. “No, there is no hissing monster here.”

I slumped back onto my pillows, processing all that the nurse had told me.

I had been asleep.

In a coma.

What about all the things I’d just experienced? Were they just vivid dreams – side effects of a head injury?

The hissing monster was nothing more than a respirator on the patient in the next bed. The beeping microwave was undoubtedly an ECG or some other bleeping hospital machine I’d heard in my dreams.

Suddenly I sat up.

Colin!

What about Colin?

If the snakes, the wasteland, the earthquake and all the other things were nothing but dreams, then what about Colin?

My eyes stung with brimming tears at the realization that Colin had also been a dream. I should have known – men like him didn’t exist. He was just a figment of my imagination.

I closed my eyes to rest. I didn’t want to be awake in a world with no Colin. Maybe if I was lucky I’d slip back into the coma, where he waited.

Try as I might, I couldn’t fall asleep again, so I buried my face in the pillow and sobbed. Hours passed, or at least it felt like hours. I still didn’t trust my perception of time.

The clatter of metal on metal in the hallway woke me some time later. It seemed I had managed to fall asleep after all.  I’d heard the sound before, but this time I knew it wasn’t an earthquake rattling pipes on an alien world. It was merely the meal cart approaching, laden with whatever culinary hospital horrors awaited me. You’d think someone who hadn’t eaten in weeks would be salivating at the prospect of a hot meal, but I had no appetite. My meal sat untouched long after it had gone cold.

Soft footsteps entered the room. It was a nurse.

“Hi, I’m Ruth. Nice to finally meet you.”

“Hi.” I barely lifted my face from the pillow to acknowledge her. I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Hey, why so sad? I know this must be very disorienting for you, but you’re going to be just fine.”

“I know.” I sniffled, reaching for a tissue. ‘It’s not that. I’m just – I’m alone. So alone.”

“Well, I’m sure you won’t be alone for long. He should be in to visit you this evening, like always.

He?

“Who? Who is coming to visit me?”

“Why Colin, of course. That young man has kept vigil beside your bed day and night, except when he’s in school. We’ve gotten to know him very well around here. He seems quite taken with you.” She sighed. “It’s so romantic. Just like a fairy tale.”

“I don't understand. How? How did he find me?”

“Pretty hard for him to miss you, on account of he's the one who hit you.”

“He hit me?”

“He felt so awful. Even though the accident wasn't his fault, he felt responsible for you being here. He even paid to have your car fixed good as new.”

My mind flashed back to the day of the accident. The rain-soaked roads; the blinding spray on my windshield; the pickup flipping over on the road ahead; the SUV with a man behind the wheel. I strained to see his face-Colin's face- but all I could remember was a mouth open in shock seconds before impact.

“When does he usually visit?”

“Like I said, he's always here, except when he has class – evenings, weekends, sometimes early in the morning before school. He brings his homework here and does it right beside you. Sometimes he reads, sometimes he writes and sometimes we hear him reading his work out loud. I guess you're a good listener. He sometimes listens to recordings of group therapy sessions and writes notes while he listens. Some kind of research stuff, I guess.”

“The group sessions.” I whispered.

“Beg your pardon?”

“I heard them. The group sessions. I heard
HIM!
”

“Really?”

“Yes! He talked to me and I heard him! Is that possible?”

“Yes, of course it is. A coma is like a deep sleep. Some sleep deeper than others. If you heard him, that's a very good sign. It means you may not have suffered any brain damage. I'm no doctor, sweetie, but I have a feeling you're going to make a full recovery. You'll be good as new in no time.” She patted my hand and then left the room.

Good as new, I thought
. No, she was wrong. I was not as good as new. I was better. For the first time in years I felt free. Free of the shackles of my fears and insecurities. I didn't know what my future looked like, but from where I sat it looked pretty bright.

I wrapped my arms around the thin hospital pillow, pretending it was Colin, and drifted off to sleep.

~*~

~ 24 ~

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” a soft voice said. “Dana? Can you hear me?” Colin sounded anxious but hopeful.

I sighed with relief. I was back in the dream world with Colin. I didn’t care if I spent the rest of my life in a coma, as long as I could hear his voice.

“Please come back to me,” he begged. The desperation in his voice brought a lump to my throat.

I felt a hand in mine and smelled the delicious aroma of his cologne.
Colin’s
cologne.

“I love you,” he whispered.

Do I dare?

My eyelids flickered, betraying my uncertainty. Then my eyes opened fully.

The man at my bedside was about my age; tall; slim but muscular. Dark brown hair fell over the palest blue eyes I’d ever seen on a man.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi,” was all I could think to say.

“I thought you were never going to wake up. Pleased to finally meet you. I’m Colin.”

“I know,” I said.

“What? How?”

“You’ve been with me.”

“Yes, of course I have. I’ve been with you ever since…” He paused to take a shaky breath. “Since the accident,” he finished.

“Why?” I asked.

“What happened to you was my fault. I’ll never forgive myself for what I did to you. I only hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

“Forgive you?”
Great. I sound like a goddamn parrot.

“I’m the one who hit your car. I nearly killed you. I’m so sorry…” Tears rolled down his cheeks. “I’m the reason you’re here.”

“Don’t cry,” I reached over to touch his hand. “I kicked the Devil in the nuts and walked on by, just like you told me to.”

Colin’s cheeks flushed. “You heard that?”

“I guess I did.”

“I’ve been here with you every single day, except when I had class. I even did my homework in here so I could spend time with you. My sister has been nagging me to leave you alone and focus on my studies.”

“Is her name Carly?”

“Yes. I guess I must have mentioned her at some point.”

“Carly’s a bitch,” I muttered, remembering the dog-woman who had stood between us in my dream. Realizing what I had just said, I gasped and clapped a hand over my mouth. “Colin, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that. I think my brain’s a little mushy. Please forgive me.”

Colin laughed. “No, you’re right. I told her to mind her own business. My sister
can
be a real bitch sometimes.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” I stifled a giggle at the memory of Carly with fangs and a tail.

“I’ve managed to do both. I’ve kept up with my studies and tried to spend time with you every day. Sorry, but I missed a few days during exams week. I’ve talked to you, told you my life story, I’ve even read some of my homework assignments to you. Pretty boring stuff. I hope I didn’t put you deeper into a coma.” Colin sniffled, then smiled through his tears. “You’re a great listener, by the way.”

“It wasn’t boring at all. I learned a lot. You’re the best therapist a girl like me could hope for.” I frowned, thinking. “What about the group sessions?”

“You mean this?” He held up his cell phone and clicked a button. It was a sound recording. I heard him begin the session by introducing the members, then the first one began to speak.

“Of course,” I said. “You recorded your sessions…”

“And I listened to the recordings while I was here, to review the sessions.”

“I thought I was part of it. I even thought I had a fake name, until someone else started using it.”

“Really? What was your fake name?”

“Amona.”

He smiled. “You were close. One of the group members
did
use the name Ramona. Didn’t say much at first, but eventually she opened up.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you heard all of that.”

“I was so afraid, Colin. But you were always there for me. I always answered you, even when you didn’t hear me.”

“Like I said, I’ve been here, by your side every single day, just to be near you. I’ve been talking to you, staring at you, watching you sleep.” He leaned forward to caress my cheek. I lost myself in his incredible blue eyes. “They kept telling me not to get my hopes up; that you might not wake up, but I knew they were wrong. I never doubted for a minute that you were in there. My biggest fear was that you would wake up and then hate me when you learned it was me who caused you to crash.”

“I could never hate you, Colin.” I placed my hand over his. “You were right, I was in there. And boy, do I have a story to tell you!”

I began to laugh, recalling the eerie dream world I had experienced. All the while I had been here in the hospital. I’d heard the sounds around me and my brain had interpreted them as other things. None of it had been real.

Or had it? I couldn’t deny the breakthroughs I had made in my ‘therapy’, even if I’d only done it in my mind.

I remembered the phobia list I had developed and what I’d learned in the process. Understanding the roots of my fears made them less frightening and even manageable.

I had found the courage to face the snakes, and that strength still felt alive inside me. I had jumped off the cliff and survived, and even swam underwater. I still believed I had the courage to swim in real life, even to dive.

Somehow, without even meaning to, Colin had helped me find that strength.

Call it real or imaginary – what mattered was the reality of my experience from my perspective and its profound effect on my life, on my future.

One thing I knew was legitimate – the way I felt about Colin. My feelings for him were as real as he was. For so long I’d yearned to see him, and now I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

“Dana, I know it sounds completely crazy, but I’ve been falling in love with you.”

“Colin?”

“Yes?”

“Hold me. I’ve been waiting all this time for you to hold me.”

As Colin took me in his arms and our lips met, I felt confident that for the first time in my life I had nothing to fear.

~*~

THE END

~*~