{"id":899,"date":"2014-01-15T17:28:11","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T22:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stephaniesilberwordsworks.com\/?p=899"},"modified":"2014-03-09T13:56:37","modified_gmt":"2014-03-09T17:56:37","slug":"a-dream-within-a-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hometeamproductions.tv\/wordsworks\/a-dream-within-a-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hospital<\/a>“Sleep is the doorway to death,” the night orderly tells me, in her lilting West Indian patois.\u00a0 Her name is Sabon, and she is from Kingston, Jamaica.<\/p>\n

I am in the hospital my father died in.\u00a0 I had been visiting him with my six year old son during an early evening in a budding spring, and Dad coded as we arrived.<\/p>\n

But that was a long time ago, and now I find myself in hospital for the first time since my son arrived, trailing clouds of glory, 30 years ago; a drastically different experience from this one.<\/p>\n

I’ve got a nasty autoimmune disease, which will not kill me, but I’ll have it for life.\u00a0 It has proven over the two years since diagnosis to test my endurance almost daily.\u00a0 I am here for what is called a “flare-up,” and it feels as though the whole damn house is burning down.<\/p>\n

A hospital is a restless place, full of noise and intrusions and constant loudspeaker calls for \"hospital<\/a>Rapid Response, Code Blue.\u00a0 “Sleep is the doorway to death,” I think, my father’s pallid drawn face so indelible in memory it almost seems as if he is in the very room I toss and turn in sweatily.<\/p>\n

Sabon works away with little effort to hush the attendant clanks and slams and chatter on her headset.\u00a0 She sees she has startled me awake.\u00a0 I am desperately nauseated, stricken by the kind of dizzy sick that makes the peace of death seem almost attractive.<\/p>\n

I try to gather myself, as sleep has fled so far as to seem impossible to attain again, ever.\u00a0 I ask Sabon why she left her sunny palm-fringed country for a gritty city with long grim winters.<\/p>\n

“You do what you have to do,” she answers.\u00a0 She is very young to know such things.\u00a0 She has a round, child-like face.\u00a0 She does not smile.\u00a0 “Things are hard where I come from.\u00a0 I have kids to feed.”\u00a0 She notices the flat coke I am sipping with visible disapproval.\u00a0 “You have to drink hot water for the belly sickness,” she tells me.<\/p>\n

Then she softens, and digs in her pockets for a moment, pulls out a wrapped candy, proffers it.\u00a0 “It’s ginger,” she informs me.\u00a0 “Ginger candy.\u00a0 Try it.\u00a0 It’s from my country.\u00a0 It helped me when I was sick with my babies.”<\/p>\n

I take it from her, touched, unwrap it, pop it in my mouth.\u00a0 Its flavor is exotic and I can see how it might yield relief were I not past the point where only heavy pharmaceuticals via IV will do: the explosive flavor is too much for me, and I quickly slip it back into its wrapper, swallowing back the bittersweet taste.<\/p>\n

“Thank you,” I tell her.\u00a0 “I will finish it tomorrow.”\u00a0 She smiles then for the first time, and her dark-complected face lights up like a lamp.<\/p>\n

\"hospital<\/a>“Feel better,” she says.\u00a0 Soon I am asleep again, a miracle it seems, adrift in dreams and slow motion fractured memories.\u00a0 Then from the darkness my father emerges, whole again, young and handsome, and though I cannot clearly see him in the vaporous shadows, I know this to be true.\u00a0 “Are you OK?” he asks.<\/p>\n

“Yes,” I say, and he is real as real can be.\u00a0 “Are you<\/em> OK?”<\/p>\n

“Yes,” he answers simply.\u00a0 “OK.”<\/p>\n

And then he is gone, dissolved back into memory, to dreamtime.\u00a0 A great peace fills me and if I dream more this night, I cannot recall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Sleep is the doorway to death,” the night orderly tells me, in her lilting West Indian patois.\u00a0 Her name is Sabon, and she is from Kingston, Jamaica. I am in the hospital my father died in.\u00a0 I had been visiting … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n