A glimpse into The Dream Year

The Visitor

There is a car moving slowly east past a car moving slowly west. And people walking hurriedly from the dark parking lot through circles cast down from yellow lights above. Fogged by the cool drizzle of a mid-November night, the street lights offer each solitary figure a dramatic anonymous walk-on as they make their way to the building across the way. A distant fading siren sound is drowned by the louder thrashing whir of a helicopter dropping carefully down onto the rooftop.

In the lobby, the conversations are hushed, yet anxious. People seem huddled in small worried circles. The hallway smells of linoleum wax laid down over an antiseptic wash. The door to the room makes a sharp metallic click each time it opens - crisp, like the cocking of a rifle in the stillness. Flowers on the window sill smell funereal, and the water stained cards beneath the vase spell out best wishes unread. The solitary breath in the air is sweet with medications that overpower even the flowers.

Behind the eyes that can't see out but only in, there is a certain kind of blackness, a blackness blacker than any black a conscious mind might describe. A panorama of nothingness wherein the mind can only whisper to itself. So Billy lies there and blabbers on to ears that cannot hear him. Not even the nurse, standing at his side calibrating the plastic narcotic drip could hear such murmurs at that great distance.

The doctor's report is delivered in a low spoken monotone into the telephone at the nurse's station.
"...is stable...no response to stimuli along any modality...comatose with sporadic autonomic reactions...." He speaks the data into the system one elbow down on the nurse's desk, massaging his forehead with a thumb and forefinger as though to coax out all possible observations just made. He pauses to look down the long hallway as the elevator bell sounds. It was Billy's girlfriend, Sandy. He puts down the phone and turns with a soft smile as she approaches.

Billy Wakes Up To Nothing

"I don't know if this is good or not. I am awake! But, to what? My tongue seems buried in a tar pit. Tar entombs my ears as well, and my sinuses. I have a hazy image of Sandy. Is it her, or just some picture I am holding?
"Sandy?!" Am I dead? I don't think so. There is some kind of steady drumming. There is some humming buzz running through me. It is as though my body is going on without me. Talking to itself. I think I am in some kind of trouble. If I am wondering anything then surely I'm not dead. But then, where are my hands? This is pretty fucking weird. Why am I never hungry? I don't even want a beer. I remember Sandy's fingernails digging into my stomach. But, I can't remember why."

Far away where he cannot see or hear her, Sandy sits close to Billy's bedside and doodles in her sketch book. It had been three months now since it happened.