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Tuesday December 3, 2019 - Dreams

They let me come home today. Sam said that I am recovering surprisingly well, but I’m not surprised at all. I know the reason I am doing so well is Max’s enhanced blood. It’s the only explanation I have. Max shared her blood with me and she saved my life.

Max and I had our dance after all, even though it was only in my dreams. For a beautiful moment, I was standing with her in my arms. The chair, and all the barriers that keep us apart, just faded away. We danced our sad waltz, but she didn’t pull me away from life, she pulled me towards it. She was there, making me promise not to let go, asking me not to leave her. And I kept my promise. I held onto life. I didn’t leave her.

Then for a brief moment after I regained consciousness, when Max hummed Valse Triste, I thought that she remembered our dream. I thought that she had shared much more than her blood with me. I forgot that she had heard the music in the car. But beautiful as it was, it was not her dream. It was my dream. So I am not disappointed. I know reality is not a hazy dream world. I can understand the desperation Max felt when she kissed me goodbye because I felt it as well. We kissed each other with all the desperation of our souls. How else could we express the loss we were about to face? Now in the light of day Max has asked me to set that kiss aside. I can do that for her. I am not surprised that Max does not have a romantic interest in me. In spite of our closeness, our relationship has never been like that. I am just grateful that she is still in my life.

The last four days have had an unreal quality. I woke up to see Sam and Bling grinning at me like idiots. Sam was telling me an incoherent story about some girl he remembered from last time and blood shortages and makeshift transfusions. Then, with that idiot grin still on his face, Bling mouthed the one word that made it all clear. Max. Max came back for me. She transfused her own blood into me and saved my life. She was willing to risk her life and her freedom for me. But she didn’t lose her freedom. She was still here. It was a dream come true.

I woke up again, a few hours later and Max was eating my lunch, flaunting her usual irreverent attitude. She brought an instant smile to my face and kept it there every day. She was there every morning when I woke up, eating my breakfast, of course, and she returned every evening for our game of chess. She even smuggled in pizza and burgers, and in return she polished off my dinner trays. I can’t believe that she can eat hospital food without gagging. That appetite of hers is insatiable.

Max made staying in that god-forsaken hospital endurable. Even though I hate everything about hospitals, and my previous stay still haunts me, I let Sam keep me there for four days. In the past, I would have checked myself out the moment I had enough strength to sign the release forms. I would have left whether I was ready or not. In this case, I could easily have come home the day after the surgery and it would not have been premature. With Max’s blood inside me, I healed that rapidly. But Sam doesn’t know about genetically engineered prototypes and enhanced blood. So I humored him and stayed as long as he asked me to.

Everything is different when Max is around. She brings a brightness into my life that I can’t find elsewhere. Despite the hardship she has had to face, she brings hope with her. She has great hope that her life will change, that she will find her brothers and sisters, and she gives me hope that somehow my life will change as well. I feel an intense gratitude for her and for the closeness that we share.

Now, I’m reviewing the backlog of reports that accumulated on the informant net in the last four days. I am back in reality. The moment I wheeled back into my apartment, I left the dream world behind. Yet, even though I am in the real world, I have so many dreams. I dream that I can walk again. I dream that I have someone to care for. I dream that someone cares for me. I dream that I can change this world. I dream that somehow, someday, my dreams may become reality.