Dream Smashers (21 page)

A familiar hand strokes mine. Strong,
masculine, but loving. I know this hand.

Evan.

“Wake up, Autumn,” he says in a calming
voice. He should be a counselor or preacher or yoga teacher or
something like that, because he has the calmest voice I’ve ever
heard. “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

I do.

“Good, good.” He lets out a relieved laugh
and I imagine seeing it. Daisies and trees and sunshine and
chocolate. His clear blue eyes light up the entire room. His giant
gleaming smile always makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
“Now, can you open your eyes?” He sounds hopeful.

I open them.

Blurry world. The dimmed lights cause a
glowing illumination from the far side of the room. It takes
several seconds and blinks for the world to focus. When it does,
Evan’s face beams just as I imagined—beautiful and warm.

“Good morning, sleepy head.”

“Hi.” I clear my dry, sore throat.

“Here.” Evan holds a salmon-colored plastic
mug with a bendy straw close to my face.

I sip from the fountain of arctic waters,
putting the fire out, sizzling and popping, filling the deepest
crevices of my stomach. Harder I suck and slurp. My brain turns to
ice and pricks the backs of my eyes and bites the inner most
workings of my ears. But my throat sure feels better.

“Whoa.” He pulls the mug away and I’d say he
finds my thirst amusing.

“What?” My voice scratches over
sandpaper.

“Nothing.” He smiles. “It’s just…well, you
were drinking so fast I thought you might drown or something.”

I laugh. It hurts my tonsils and my head, but
I don’t mind. It’s not nearly as bad as when the bugs ate my
brains. I touch my head now, remembering what happened. But the
memories aren’t entirely there. Just that it hurt and Evan was
there, and the rain. Evan takes my hand.

“Wait. I’ll get you a mirror.” He stands,
walks across the room, and brings back a small mirror from the
counter. “The doctors took the bandages off, so you shouldn’t touch
it.”

Bandages? I hesitate. Maybe I don’t want to
see it.

As if reading my thoughts, Evan says, “Don’t
worry. You’re still beautiful.” Like it is a fact of life or
something.

Even now, my face gets hot and I can’t help
but smile.

In the reflection I see my eyes first. They
are the same ugly brown. Then lips and nose—all normal—right cheek
has abrasions on it, and then the gruesome part. It isn’t my head.
It must be someone else’s—a zombie’s head from one of those haunted
houses or scary movies. My hair is still long on the left side, but
the right side is shaved. I turn with trepidation, trying to
comprehend the entire scene.

“It’s not that bad. The doctors say it will
heal and your hair will grow back. No one will even see a scar
because it will be under your hair.” His eyes plead with me to be
okay.

But I’m not okay.

I look like Frankenstein’s bride. A giant
gash tore from my right temple to the back of my head, sewn closed
with stitches. “What happened?” I try to sound like it’s no big
deal, but it sounds more like someone died.

“You were hit by a car.” He pauses as if
waiting for me to remember. I just remember the dark forest and
then a bright light. No car. “I found you in the street next to the
school, just outside of the forest. The car and driver were nowhere
to be found though.”

I try to sit up. A clamp squeezes down on my
right leg, crushing it. A scream scrapes from my mouth.

Evan presses on my shoulder. “You need to
rest and you can’t be moving around just yet. Please, please stay
still.”

“What the fuck! Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” I
squirm and try to get away from the pain and stay still at the same
time. But a hot knife stabs my leg and it isn’t easy to just not
freak out.

“Shhh….it’s okay. Breathe…breathe…” Calming
words, calming sounds.

I concentrate on his voice. Push the pain
away, breathe.

“Lord, please help Autumn through this tough
time. Help her stay still and heal. And help her deal with the
pain. Amen.”

His words are even more uncomfortable than my
leg, but, hell, whatever—anything to take the pain away. Sleep. I
need to sleep. Drift, please let me drift. Closing my eyes, I
listen to Evan’s mumbling, “Good. Rest now, beautiful girl.” He
strokes my hand and then raises it to his lips.

Drifting, drifting, in a boat on the calm
sea, with Evan protecting me, so I don’t capsize and drown. He
holds me safe in his hands.

Please take the pain away, dear God. And
thank you for my warm sweet Evan.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Thursday, November 19th

Evan watches her rest peacefully. A beautiful
pearl nestled into an ugly oyster.

Dusty rose, mauve, pink, no matter the names,
some psychotic interior designer of hospital rooms decorated with
these awful colors. They must not have been thinking clearly in the
1980’s. Barbie exploded into a million pieces in this room.

Night darkens most of it. The last nurse
turned off all but one single florescent light beneath the cupboard
above the sink. The muted television creates a blue glow about the
room.

Evan’s salvation from pink countertops,
walls, cupboards, and window dressings comes by way of white
ceiling and floor tiles. Ninety-two ceiling tiles and exactly
two-hundred and four floor tiles make up Autumn’s hospital room. He
knows because, unlike Grams, he’s not able to fall asleep in this
sterile, noisy place, and counting tiles should put most people to
sleep—not Evan.

With carts banging and people talking in the
halls, beeping machines, and nasal snoring, who could sleep? Not to
mention that people die here every single day. Probably hundreds of
dead bodies lie in the basement right now, stored in plastic
zip-lock bags in cold refrigerators until the people from the
morgue, or wherever dead bodies go, come to collect them. Their
souls, he has faith, have gone where they need to be and are not
presently in the building.

The door creaks open, allowing a stream of
light to saturate the room. A giant woman wearing aqua scrubs and a
short haircut enters, pushing a small cart. She winks at Evan, then
goes about her business of plugging and unplugging tubes into
machines, injecting fluid into IV’s, changing the urine bag,
cleaning the counter tops, and all the other things that nurses
have been doing every two hours for the last couple of days.

When the nurse exits, she leaves the door
ajar. The stream of light points to Autumn’s backpack that Evan
found in the forest and brought back for her. A leather bound book
hangs out of the half-zippered pack.

Out of instinct, he looks around the room,
not sure what he’s looking for. Maybe he just wants to make sure no
one will see him snoop through the book—into Autumn’s world, her
backpack. It’s not snooping though. He’s bored. A good book will
help alleviate the boredom. No doubt Autumn has great taste in
books.

He pulls it out of the bag. Loose pages
feather from behind the worn and frayed brown leather cover and a
large rubber band wraps around the entire thing, keeping the pages
safe from falling out. It’s larger than a regular book—about the
size of a three-ring binder without the rings.

Grams snorts, smacks her lips, and murmurs
something unrecognizable in a phlegm-deep-voice. She coughs.

Evan drops the book, sits back down, closes
his eyes and pretends to sleep. Like he did something wrong, like
he broke into a secret treasure vault which now lays sprawled out
on the floor, with a broken rubber band and pages spilled upon the
cold hard tiles.

His ears flush.

Grams snores again.

Evan snakes down to one knee, scanning the
pages, not touching them. They aren’t just regular pages. They are
Evan, they are Grams, they are Jacinda, they are Rainy, they are an
old man, they are James and Angel, they are strangers and homeless
people, they are workers from the Share Home—they are Autumn. They
are perfect pencil drawings.

Of course they are perfect. Autumn drew them.
She sees, she knows, she must have faith.

There she sleeps peacefully, impeccably
broken in every way—as is everyone. They have crossed paths for a
reason. At this very moment, Evan feels that their journey together
might last a very long time.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Friday, November 20th

Day three of really bad hair and absolute
boredom. Re-runs of Oprah Winfrey wore thin about five minutes
after they started. I mean, how many topics can Oprah really talk
about? She makes Grams happy, though, and that’s all that
matters.

Grams sits in the far corner with her
knitting needles in hands and remote control placed meticulously on
the table next to her. Little invisible thieves often steal the
remote from Grams if she doesn’t keep a close eye on it. We spend
many hours at home turning up couch cushions seeking a stolen
remote. There is no better place for the thieves to hide a remote
than under the couch cushions. She watches it like a hawk out of
habit now, every few moments glancing away from her knitting to
assure its safe. At home she glued Velcro to the table and the
remote. The only way—really—to keep the invisible thieves away.
They aren’t strong enough to rip it off Velcro.

“Well.” Grams puts her knitting down. “I’m
going to wander downstairs and get some coffee. You hungry?” She
stands and stretches the kinks out of her frail body. I don’t
remember her being so thin, so tired.

“Nah. I’m sure if I eat anything, it will
spoil the magnificent feast the hospital is cooking up for me now.
I think roast beef is in store tonight.” I smile. Contrary to the
rumors I’ve heard in the past, hospital food is rather rad. Not as
good as Grams’ cooking, of course, but better than school food.

Grams shrugs. “You really are a strange bird,
you know that?” She coughs and moves out the door in a torpid
fashion, which reminds me that I should take better care of her.
She’s not going to live forever, albeit that would be
super-dee-duperly splendid. Even if we discover a fountain of youth
that would sustain Grams to the end of eternity, nothing could
fight off the sludge living in her lungs. That would take a miracle
or a lung transplant.

My eyes droop.

The door creaks, waking me from my chimera. A
breath of fresh air enters and when it does, a ray of sunshine
points it out for me from the gap in the top rails of the broken
mini-blinds on the far side of the room. She shimmers in the light
and smiles a sad smile down at me. “Hi you,” she says and sits in a
faux pas of interior design chair next to the bed.

“Rainy?” I fumble for the bed controller.
Damn remote thieves. She finds it hanging off the side and hands it
to me. “Oh my God. I can’t believe you came here. I’m totally so,
so, so, so, so sorry for how retarded and stupid I was the other
day.” I push the button that raises the bed to a seated position.
The mechanical hydraulic thingies rumble before it jerks to a stop.
“I’m even more sorry about James…” My voice trails off.

Her eyes glimmer moist and pink. “Shhh.” Her
lips turn punch red and quiver. She opens her arms and crushes me
with her weight.

But I don’t care.

I don’t care that the side railing of the
bed, the remote and her body squishes my right hand. I sure as hell
don’t care that the needle in my arm burns, as if being ripped out
or pushed in further—I can’t tell. I don’t care because Rainy is
here and she is crying and hugging me. She doesn’t ever cry. She
doesn’t ever hug for that matter. I’m the one who always hugs her
stone cold body. But she’s no longer cold, she’s warm and soft.

With my left hand, I brush her blond hair off
her shoulder and try to hug her back. Even if I want to say
something, I don’t know what words to say. So I cry instead.

She pulls away and laughs. “You always were a
fucking crybaby.”

“Shut up!” I laugh and wipe the tears
away.

She flops back down in the most uncomfortable
chair in the world. Or, at least, it looks uncomfortable, and ugly,
too.

Blood seeps from my arm—cherry and vibrant
against the white gown and sheets. Before we can say or do anything
about it, a nurse comes strolling in to check on the broken patient
lying helplessly in her bed. She fixes my arm by taking the
gigantic needle out for good, saying I probably won’t need it
anymore and that we messed up that vein anyway.

Rainy laughs and points her finger at me,
enjoying my pain. My beautiful friend came back, but she’s
different. Her laugh isn’t her normal loud, obnoxious snort. It’s
soft, as if she laughed across the street and a breeze carried it
to my ears.

“Does it hurt?” she asks.

“Sort of.” I touch the prickly side of my
head—tender and probably still very ugly. “Looking like
Frankenstein’s Bride, huh?”

“Nah.” She doesn’t laugh. “You look
worse.”

“Gee, thanks! Give me that mirror over
there.” I gesture toward the mirror that Evan left on the counter.
She hands it to me so that I can inspect the destruction left by
the pedestrian killer. All shades of purple, red, and blue surround
the wound and tiny hairs sprout from their pores. Life pushing
through the horrors that dream smashers put it through. I’m
thankful for my hair growing back.

“You know you’re gonna look as good as new in
a few weeks. Maybe you should shave the rest of your hair off.
Looks kinda freakish right now.” Rainy stares at my head. “You
could dye the long side pink. If you did that, you would be the
most awesomest person I know.”

“I already am. Besides, how do you know I’ll
be fine? What if it doesn’t grow back?”

“Dude! Don’t try to bullshit me. I saw
Jesus-Freak in the hall by the snack machines and he told me that
you would be just dandy.”