By Caroline S., 1998/9
The dream fades in, clearer, and a voice shouts from somewhere behind you, “Robby! Alison! Dinner time!” A seven-year-old boy now, you instinctively step back as you hear your name called, and let the girl you were pushing on the swing reach the zenith of her flight before gently helping her slow down. The girl, who is about five, jumps down and reaches for the hand you spread out toward her. Crossing the road, she hurries to keep up to your pace, then starts limping. You look down, surprised, and see that she has cut her foot on a wayward pebble sticking out from the otherwise uniform gravel. With a reassuring brotherly smile, you wipe the verging tears from her eyes and pick her up to carry her home. In your backyard, you mutter a rhyme to yourself, and, forming an “L” with your left hand, turn the rusty tap counterclockwise. Alison cautiously sticks her foot into the stream of water rushing from the hose and immediately jerks away from it, sniffing softly. Remembering your own misadventures at five, you cup water in your hands and wash her foot cautiously. She stops crying. You take her hand once again and together walk the steps to the kitchen. Inside, you sit down at the table as your mother begins, “I hope you two have washed your hands. Clean hands and a pure heart, as I always say!” You exchange conniving looks with your sister. Does the backyard hose count?
Over mashed potatoes and coleslaw, Alison describes all the new friends she met at day camp. “Are you looking forward to starting school in a few weeks?” Mother asks, half distractedly, getting up to grab the peach cobbler from the oven before it bursts. You inwardly chuckle at the picture: the three of you, attacking the peach-laden wall with dessert spoons. Alison drags her fork in her mashed potatoes, marking a path taken by perfectly aligned marching armies. “Only if Robby’s there. My big brother’ll always protect me,” she replied, looking up at you with a huge smile and even larger baby-blue eyes. You roll your own eyes, and continue trying to feed that pitiful mutt of yours some cabbage.
A calm, monotonous beeping becomes louder and louder in your head. You open your eyes. You are in a white room where everything is bleached, blinding. As you strain to look, you see that a desolate chair and your own hands are the only foreign, colourful objects around. You see one wall, covered solely with windows, and through that wall, a nurse, head hunched over paperwork, who momentarily glances up and sees you. Her eyes still fixed on you, she freezes and, grabbing the arm of a passing doctor, she gestures towards you, saying something inaudible. The doctor strides in professionally, speaking to you while checking the clipboard near your feet. Your gaze is still matched with the unwavering one coming from the other side of the glass. The nurse looks away, finally heeding the loud demands of a man in a wheelchair by letting him pass. She breaks the staring match in time to let you hear the last of the doctor’s speech: “…you’ve really got yourself a nasty bump on the head, there, uh…” he pauses to check his info sheet, “…Robert. Seems you’ve been in la-la-land for a quite few days now. It says here that we haven’t been able to contact any family, but now that you’re awake, maybe you could--” You interrupt him: “I haven’t got any family, okay, Doc?!” you spit out. You look back to the wall of windows, but all you see is normal hospital traffic. “Take it easy, now, Mr. Tremblant. You’ve had a tough week. Try and calm down.” He leaves, after making a huge scribble in pen on the clipboard, and receives an understanding look from a nearby colleague. You close your eyes, trying to block out the tedium of ringing phones, chatting visitors, and deafening PA announcements.
A little hand is once again clenched in yours. You feel your sister’s palm sweat against yours as her little fingernails dig into your skin. You get off the bus with her and lead the way to a room full of wailing children. In one corner, a group of already-abandoned kids sit, vacantly staring at ancient wooden blocks as if the slabs were Stonehenge. Alison looks from face to face, a smile of recognition gradually spreading over her face. A girl in the group shyly waves. Alison waves back. She tugs on your corduroy pant leg, and you lean over until your eyes are level with hers. “I’s okay now, Robby,” she says as you were the one going to school for the first time. She turns away from you and runs to meet her friend. Satisfied of her safety, you resume the walk you abandoned last June, down the halls to the grade 1-3 wing, rubbing your aching hands all the while.
A cold cloth pats your head, and you wince from the pain of an open wound. You open your eyes to see who is inflicting this pain upon you. Expecting to see a torture chamber goon dressed in black leather, you see instead the nurse from yesterday. Your muscles relax as she takes away the cloth. “Sorry about that. You’d think after twenty years of nursing I would get the simplest things right!” she chuckles. She starts talking to you, idle chit-chat, about her hobbies: reading, collecting dolls. You wonder why she’s talking to you – is this what she does on her breaks? You placate your curiosity with the answer that she is just taking pity on a wounded man. How can women keep talking like that? Well, at least she isn’t shopping.
Mother peeks over the hood of the car, and stops the car in the parking spot just as the first jolt against the curb strikes. Her parallel parking’s getting better. Undoing your seatbelt, you open your door with difficulty and stare up at the building in front of you. Three levels of The Bay loom even higher when the sun is in your eyes. By Mother’s request, the car’s doors are locked and a train, connected by human hands, starts off for the main entrance.
The nurse’s visits are quite frequent, and, aside from a bouquet sent by your office, your only joy. Her name was, you learned over time, Nurse Denby, and that’s all anyone knew her by. She came every day, in different time slots. Deductively, you figured out that No, she did not visit all her patients during her coffee break, but that for some reason she chose you in particular to visit. Today, as you’re finishing your Jell-O, she walks in. “Hello, Robert. I hope you aren’t too full for this,” she whispers, sneakily taking out a Belgian truffle from her coat pocket. You laugh. She can easily surprise you. You thank her and keep the truffle for later, saying Yes, solidified sugar-water is oddly filling. You tell her about your career, since you already know that she’s a nurse, and tell her how much you want your film to be produced, but that you still need a patron. “If I meet any handsome doctor who has money to burn, I’ll see what I can do,” she responds. Her company alone is enough to keep you happy. She is often there when you wake up, or vice-versa: she felt so safe in your presence that once when you woke, you found her simply napping.
