Lucid Dreaming

July 15th, 2003

The pitter-patter sound of rain hitting the cobbled streets of a London back-alley underlay the dreary normalcy of this late afternoon. Emma's bike wheels clattered steadily on the cobblestone street. "I really ought to get shocks on this rickety thing, especially if I'm going to ride in the rain" she thought. She dreamt of getting home to Dexter, so much so that she felt like she could smell his scent through the odor-draining rain.

Her brow nonetheless furrowed, and her lips remained stiff as she chugged away on the short bike ride towards home. Just a few more corners and she would be there. Just...

*THWAACK*

Emma had little memory of what happened next, save mostly for bits and pieces. Though having seen the CCTV footage and heard accounts from Dexter and others she had filled in the gaps in a stitched-up pattern, such that she no longer really knew which of the occurrences that crept into her dreams were real. The first part, seen from above, was clearly not her own recollection. Her body crashed against the windshield of the car and shattered it; it didn't look so hard on the video, but it felt like a rip in space time itself blended with the way she experienced it. She watched her life in third person as she rolled off the front of the now stopped car; her back landed first and her head whacked down on to the ground with a muffled thwack to follow the first hit. She lay splayed out on her side, eyes stuck open.

Flashing back to first person, Emma's life flashed before her eyes, from childhood to the face of her husband. It felt overexposed in her whitening gaze, but somehow at that moment closest to death she could smell him that much better than in full consciousness moments before. He began fading, the light growing stronger. There were no thoughts, only perception.

Her memory flashed backed to a fuzzy scene as she saw the blinding lights were now those lining the ceiling of an NHS emergency ward. Some doctors yelled something, incomprehensibly. It felt like pure chaos, on the surface and being viewed from underwater. The voices were muffled; she wasn't sure how many there were and their voices echoed as well. She gasped for air; her lungs felt half full of liquid. Suddenly everything went dark again.

Her dreams now flashed to imaginations of a future, branded deeply into her memory to an un-extractable depth unlike everything else before it. In reality, she had actually recovered just a bit at this point. The doctors had drained the blood and liquid accumulating in her punctured lung and reinflated it, and had drained the subdural hematoma which had been exerting so much pressure on her brain. But she had fallen deeply into an anesthetic-induced trance. The doctor's had put her on IV ketamine as they operated on her; if this was at a party someone may have given the experience some fancy slang name, but retrospectively it didn't matter what it was called.

What did matter was that she was completely disassociated, in the initial drug induced dream and all the future sleep-induced ones where it resurfaced. And she was somewhere else entirely. She saw herself sitting next to Dexter, at his parents' house, narrating the idea from Tess that was so prominent in her mind. That is, the idea of a "Death Day, Sly and Unseen" that we pass each year of our lives unknowingly.

Perhaps this day, July 15th, was the day of her death, she later thought. Her heart had indeed stopped beating for a minute until paramedics arrived, her pupils partially dilated. Doesn't that count, or does it defeat the purpose? But none of these thoughts spooked her on the day that she lay under the knife in the hospital. Rather, she simply observed, a spirit floating in front of herself and her (then) nascent lover. No thoughts, again. No judgement. Just observation,

She flashed forward next to flashes of her now estranged husband. Drinking, passing out, raging in pity. Remorseful, laying in his own house, staring, just staring. Avoiding, and slowly re-entering the world. Taking care to free himself from this half-life once a fortnight for his daughter, and then instantly slipping back in. Finally, growing, smiling again, slowly. Reconnecting, first with friends and family, then slowly opening himself up to more.

But always something stood out. He looked at her directly, though she was a ghost. Or was he the ghost? She couldn't tell. It was like he knew that she was there. Or perhaps he just imagined her there, and she filled in the spot for her own theatrical experience. Regardless, he spoke to her, always, through grief, despair, bargaining, and eventually just as much when he had moved forward and began trying in earnest to build something else similarly nice with others.

"Even in death, he moves forward only with me. Always there, in his pocket" she thought. It was her first thought, and like everything else it felt like it was coming from outside of her, from the very universe itself. A kind of extreme connection with him re-emerged, but it felt like an earthquake. She wished the deepest sort of happiness for him, a type of pure empathy that nonetheless did not feel selfless.

Suddenly it barely mattered whether they had a kid; as far as she knew, she was a ghost. She wanted to see him love. She wanted to see him have a child with someone he loved. Her ego had melted from the plane that she lay in, and the earthquake grew so powerful she felt like she was losing her footing (she had never been standing in any meaningful sense anyway).

*CRACK**WHOOOOSH*

Suddenly she jumped up with a gasp. The hospital, the doctors….

No. This was just another night, somewhere between 3:00 and 4:00am. She quickly readjusted; this had become somewhat of a regular occurrence. However, the last part of the dream had never been so clear. The earthquake, and the associated thoughts and feelings… they were either new, or at least had previously been weak enough to be imperceptible. Why today?

She winced as she worked her way through the mud of her thoughts. Today… today was one year since the accident. Though how this related to anything she was experiencing, she hadn't a clue.

Dexter lay next to her sleeping, passed out cold, facing her but with his arms tucked around his own chest, snoring into his pillow while drooling slightly. He had woken up when her night terrors started day in and day out, but eventually he needed sleep as well. She knew his days were full of stress like never before, from taking care of her in her current uninspiring form, to managing the coffee shop alone, to his own PTSD arriving to the hospital as she was getting surgery and waiting in the lobby for what probably seemed like days wondering if she would live (though he didn't speak about that, she just knew). She didn't blame him one smidgen for not jumping after her this night. But he was at the moment the least of her concerns; the warm glow still flickering from her dream was gradually being dowsed by a cold and welling fear. Above all she felt nauseous.

Suddenly she lurched forward, clamoring to grab the bedpost as she lost balance. She stumbled into the bathroom; the lights were so bright. The days after she was discharged from the hospital (perhaps a few weeks after she was injured as her bruises faded and her fractured ribs and vertebrae began to heal) she hoped everything would go back to normal. Even her concussion had more or less subsided. But that's when post-concussion syndrome set in; the trouble concentrating, trouble remembering words (particularly awful as a writer). Sounds which felt a bit loud but more than anything seemed to merge together such that she couldn't pay attention if more than a single person spoke. But the bright lights were the worst. They reminded her of the moment she stepped closest to death…

Emma was no longer interested in feeling sorry for herself, however. Or for recollections 2 minutes after "the dream" had ended again. She was just stumbling, tripping into the bathroom and hovering her head above the toilet. She vomited suddenly, and then vomited some more. This… was also new. What was she even vomiting? She hadn't eaten since dinner. She wasn't sure…

Wait a minute, she thought. What if this is not… this. Not just her healing but struggling body. What if this is something else.

Given her struggles in life, one may expect that Em and Dex would not quickly start to make love again. But her life felt empty otherwise, most days, and it was such a wonderful escape. She felt little to no joy in life as of late. But love, certainly. And pleasure...it felt like an oasis in a desert, but yes it was there still. Perhaps that made it all the better. Granted, they weren't enthusiastically shagging like when she was healthy. But he was happy to do the work when he needed to, and she was certainly more than happy to take him into her...

Anyways, she wasn't feeling any of this now. Simply the logical conclusion from the sum of regular sex and early morning vomiting came to her. She felt a small spring of adrenaline collecting inside of her. A lightness. Joy perhaps? Again? But anticipation more than anything. Her heart raced, and her lips pursed in a smile as her eyes continued to hang heavy (as they generally did). Suddenly she gagged, her eyes bulged, and she threw her head over the toilet again.

She rifled through the closet where her old pregnancy tests lay. Wrestling herself into place, she positioned the strip correctly and add the sample. It was awkward, but she managed. She waited, twitching slightly. The emotions coming to her were indeed new, as in not entirely new but not felt since the accident. She felt a weird parallel sense of nostalgia to her main emotional track.

The strip was supposed to change color. She waited for it. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes.

Five minutes. Ten minutes. She began to sob coldly.

She wasn't pregnant. She was just sick. Nauseous, like every time she woke up from the dream, but worse, as it had been particularly intense this time.

Dexter came into the room, rubbing his eyes. In his half asleep state he looked even more like he was wearing mascara than normal. He squinted. "Em, baby, what exactly is it that you are doing? Not the normal way you jump up from one of these frights."

She wept inconsolably. "Dex, nothing is ever going to improve. We're not about to have a baby, I'm not about to get better, this bloody post-concussion bollocks is not going to let up until I start coming down with Alzheimer's disease. My god. S'even the point?"

His eyes cleared a bit and his face morphed into one of attempted clarity. "Listen, you're not going to wait for...whatever disease you just mentioned. That bloody truck did indeed make a right mess out of you. But, you're getting better."

"How Dex? Not only am I retching fruitlessly at 3:30AM, I'm also so bloody emotional! I mean, I was never quite the picture of stoicism, but now we can barely have a damn conversation. I'm neither here nor there!"

Dexter's eyes widened. The awareness that this night was different for Emma suddenly washed over him as well. "That's right, look in a mirror Em! You're joyous, you're sad, you're speaking fast. Yet you've been in proper snail-brain mode since the accident, speaking to me bleary eyed and barely even ragging on me. Or yourself even, for that matter. Something is different now. It's unnerving. But maybe it's good?"

She stared into him, and then through him, and tilted her head. "Wait...maybe you're right. I haven't vomited like this in quite awhile either. But what about the baby…it felt for a minute like maybe THAT was different also." She broke down into sobbing again. She had indeed gone from minimal expressive emotions to rapidly oscillating ones.

"Em, we're not really even trying now. I mean...we aren't exactly trying to prevent it, but it will be a fucking lot better if you're all put back together first. Come on, you know that."

"Urrggh...you're right Dex. I know you're right. I just want something transformative. And something to take my mind off of this bloody dream. I'm beginning to really think that was an alternate universe which I'm connected by a bridge to."

He ignored her. "That makes me think. I have an idea Em. Today is the one-year anniversary of your little death. Let's take a walk. Maybe a long walk, but let's just go sit on the Thames. You don't get a chance to go out much and maybe without the sun blasting into your eyes or the crowds crowing…maybe it will be nice."

She instantly clung to the thought. Partly to get out and be with Dexter, but partly just because of how badly she wanted to leave this apartment and this bed and this bathroom. She jumped up, but needed to catch her footing and steady herself.

As they stepped outside, a light mist hung in the air. Emma sucked the moisture deeply into her sinuses, it felt like it was cleaning out the accumulated staleness collecting over her long hours spent inside. "Perhaps when this bloody syndrome has passed on I'll take up running Dex. Never really got the allure behind it before, but God times have changed. Next time we stop back to university you'll be chasing after me up that hill, and that's even considering that you won't be hungover this time!"

He half-smiled, the kind of unconvincing and non-carefree version of his old boyish charm for which he was now prone to. "Sounds good to me. Just don't go picking up biking now Em."

She winced. "Wow, way to be a spoil sport. I was actually thinking of buying a Harley now but thanks for reminding me of my previously unforeseen limitations."

"Well whatever you fancy, just look both ways, alrighty?"

"Yes commander. If you would like, why don't you just buy us a scooter and be my chauffeur? Or better yet, you can bring one of those cute body leashes they put on the wee school children when walking them across the street? Would that be alright with you?"

He raised his eyebrow slightly. The passionate sarcasm had the old Emma energy. It was refreshing but he also felt the need to contain his hope.

"Since when did you become such a pessimistic wanker Dex? You were thinking something but then you just frown."

He twiddled his thumbs nervously and stared forward as they walked. She sighed but mostly was just immersed in the environment, looking at the orange glow of the lamps lining the narrow streets. He would be okay.

"I don't know Emma…"

"Emma? Since when do you call me Emma? God next thing you'll be using my middle name to address me. Will be useful when I've wandered too far from the bike. Make sure to grab your lady an ice cream, you know from experience she's easily won over by handsome yet promiscuous strangers offering her drinks and candy."

"Em you know that I'm not like that anymore! And why do you think this is so bloody funny? Your wit returns merely to chastise me."

"Of course! And oh, pardon me for having a good time for a moment. I forgot that I'm just s'posed to be locked up in the dark, minimizing my screen-time and writing by candlelight. Seriously Dex, what's wrong?"

"I don't want to talk about it Em. Bloody hell, what's the point?"

He was walling up. Thus, she took a moment to examine his drooping mug. He was breathing hard, his heart beating perhaps 100 beats a minute by her quick estimate. Sweat beaded his forehead lightly, and his hair looked worse than ever. A bit floppy from grease. And not to mention the hair above his temples had receded slightly. More pertinently, he seemed to not one bit be enjoying the renewed and entertaining banter. Unlike him indeed.

"Come on Dex, you're not entirely bereft of wit yourself. Explain it to me with some gusto. Otherwise wait too long and the moment and the adrenaline will pass."

Briefly, his gaze softened. That was the last thing he wanted. He hung his head as they continued forward. But suddenly, at that moment they turned a corner and saw it.

In the distance, perhaps 100 meters down the road, was the spot where Emma had gotten hit. She smiled "Maybe let's take the long stroll around, huh stud?" She looked over at Dex, but the smile began to drain from her face.

He was frozen. Indeed, unbeknownst to her he had been taking the long stroll around this intersection each day that he came this way for the last year, very intentionally. He could barely look at it plotted on MapQuest. He just stared, mouth slightly ajar, eyes unblinking. Emma knew of course that he had been struggling with what had happened as well, but nonetheless was slightly confused by the degree of his response. "Wow, I mean I was the one who died for 30 seconds here. What's wrong Dex?"

He stared for 5 more seconds, and fell to his knees. Emma was startled, but her playful mood suddenly changed into focus as she lunged towards him to make sure he sat straight. Consequently she wound up pitched behind him, sitting, hugging him from behind. Her muscles were weaker then they had ever been as an adult, and she struggled to hold his upper body which entirely rested backwards on to her. But she didn't show it, pushed her hips back a foot to balance, and she hugged him harder and kissed him on the ear.

Dexter burst into tears. They were similar to the tears that had streamed down his face when he called Emma after his cancer-ridden mother and disenchanted father had called him out for his partying roughly a decade ago. They were neither hopeful nor hopeless, just tinged in regret.

"Em, I… the moment I came to the ward and saw you so beaten up and bloodied, the hours I sat there in the lobby, by myself, and then with Tilly, and then with your parents and Marianne as well, but still...so alone. The doctor came out and I was sure he was going to say that I lost you. I had just been imagining life then. I don't know what you would do, you have been the cause indirectly for basically all my self-improvements over the years. I would…"

"You would be okay. You would go on with the ghost of me haunting your head. I know because I saw it, maybe it was just that I was bonkers off of anesthetic and pooled brain blood but by God it felt real. And you would be okay. The same Dexter I fully take credit for building would be there. And he would even love again, and the Emma in his head would love his love, because it's beautiful in its own right, so so beautiful to her. His love would always be a continuation of her story, so he would make sure to continue to write it."

He looked at her face and examined it in depth. She spoke these words fast, but she didn't look manic. It felt pre-cooked, but not written. She looked lucid, exceptionally so. So off-guard he was caught (with his thoughts already spinning) that he had not yet even processed the meaning of what she had said, mostly just the way she had said it.

She smiled, her mood untinged by regret. And yet stopped and stared at the spot. "Truth be told, it would still kind of suck though." She lowered her hand to around his heart. It was absolutely racing. A bead of sweat dripped of his neck and began collecting on the bridge of her nose pressed against it.

He now contemplated her words, ignoring her last sentence and focusing on her broader point. Everything about these words were unlike her, to some extent. He had never thought of it like that. Some part of him kept guard to the belief that he could turtle in sorrow and despair, and perhaps in drink, if he had been to lose her. But she had shut that part of his mind up somehow. "Wow, Em. You're supposed to be the concussed one here. And here I am unable to think, while here you are holding me up. Physically and emotionally. What the hell."

"What's new". She giggled, but then she straightened herself out and ran her hand along his cheek. "But don't be silly. You've been nothing but lovely to me since the moment we met again in that maze."

Despite the introspection stymied by her wisdom he continued to weep. "Your words are absolutely...disarming. But why suddenly so philosophical? And why all the 'love this' and 'love that'? It's not like you. Or us."

"Am I not philosophical Dex? I'm a writer, aren't I?"

"Yes, but… but you philosophize about social security." He suddenly burst out a laugh through the tears, the type of garbled cackle which could spawn only from the deepest and purest appreciation of irony. "Besides, I almost think I understood what you meant."

"Dex, this happened in my dream today. S'pose it was but a feeling then. I won't repeat it, s' unnecessary. But I s'pose more importantly that it's the nature of Dex and Em." She smiled and pressed held her mouth over his ear and whispered. "I won't write about this. It's just for you to know. Just the terms of me being stuck in your head, nothing else."

She tried to lift him back to his feet, pushing mostly in vain until he noticed what she was doing and stood on his feet again while making as if she had done the work.

"Wow, I guess I'm getting fat too Em."

"Well don't blame that one on me. In my absence you'd have wound up with a beer belly by now."

They both laughed and kept walking. In silence, for an amount of time neither perceived nor could remember. No one was on the road, save a car or two on the few larger streets they crossed. By the time they got to the river the smallest sliver of orange was coming up in the East. They sat on a small bench and looked out towards the river, still saying nothing for another solid 2 minutes.

Dexter's eyes still teared, and though now he was smiling as well and had less trouble speaking he still clearly showed tinges of remorse. "Em, did we take too long? To get together? If you died that day, like for good, your consciousness having floated off somewhere else in this realm entirely to lead an unrelated story… it would have been only 3 years. 3 years of Dex and Em together."

"Dex, do you know how many seconds are in 3 years?"

"Who the bloody hell knows that Em?"

"Well let's see." She pulled out a calculator from her bag.

"You have a purse calculator? Since when?"

"Since my brain started flying at half-mast and doing math slower than yours. Now quiet". She typed in 3600 (in an hour) x 24 x ((365 x 3) + 1 (leap year)) = 94,692,600. "Look, almost a hundred million seconds Dex."

"So? That's so arbitrary. What's a second?"

With no warning, she pulled his head towards hers and locked her lips on to his, and then pushed him away. "That is."

He smiled brightly again, suddenly without an undertone colored by perceived past failures. He pulled her towards himself this time and they passionately embraced, bodies interlocked for what was at least 37 seconds.

"Thanks for the long smooch, love" he giggled.

"Ewe Dex. Don't make me vomit some more. You know well we promised never to use that word." She rolled her eyes.

A tinge of his cocky stare even returned. He stuck out his tongue. "Well, Em, you're right. Wasn't the smartest bloke, nor would I wait so long again, but at least we got a story out of it." He looked at the now growing color band of emerging sunrise on the horizon.

"Also you got Jas!"

"Ya can't forget that. Wouldn't"

"And let's be honest. The other years count for something. You probably thought of me when you fell asleep at night with Sylvie. Haha. If that doesn't count for something…"

He said nothing.

"You know Em, I've been going to a therapist occasionally for the last few months."

"Oh Dex, why didn't you tell me? You know I would've supported it."

"It felt weird. You are the one that got walloped by a car." He snorted under his breath. "Besides, it's not like it's been directly helpful to be honest, I'm open to whatever will help out but sometimes it feels like a waste of money. But still it had at least been nice to be able to talk to someone separated from the whole situation about it. Occasionally I spoke with Tilly, but she's almost as caught up in it as I am."

He smiled widely, cheerfully. "But this… helped."

She kissed his cheek and held his face in her hands. And giggled. "What did you call it, my little death?"

"Yeah. Something funny?"

"Well, it's just… little death in French is "Le Petite Mort". Except it doesn't actually tend to mean a near-death experience. Rather, it's the brief escape from the world that happens after an orgasm."

He laughed, mostly out of his nose, in surprise. "Perhaps a different term then?"

"No Dex, I like that one. It's nice that you...gave it to me. Haha. But more importantly, I'm done with feeling bad about this all. It's in the past."

Just as she said that a throbbing started in her head and she clutched her brow and frowned. She felt tired, hunched over. Nothing new (alas). Dex grabbed her and leaned her body on his, and together they began walking back, again silently. He kissed her forehead. Morning had come.