Wayne lifted his face from the table. His heart lurched as the cafeteria came into focus.

Dammit! How did I get here?

A diverse sampling of people filled most of the cafeteria's tables and booths, at least in this section of the dining room. More than half wore scrubs, hospital uniforms, or employee ID badges, and all seemed to be acting normally. Some leaned close for chat in relative privacy, others ate in silence, and three people with visitor badges held hands across their table through a tearful prayer.

Nothing seemed out of place; no fearful glances came his way. There were no sirens or alarms. He had blacked out again, which was bad, but it apparently hadn't been terrible. This time.

Thank god.

Half a brick of Marshmallow Heaven, or whatever they called their Rice Krispies Treats, sat on a chipped stoneware plate next to a paper cup of lukewarm coffee. Two one-dollar bills peeked out from beneath the plate. Was this his food? It wasn't his usual fare. His mouth didn't taste like coffee or sugar, so probably not.

Glancing around for more clues of what might have happened, he met eyes with the security guard who followed him from HR. He knew the man. They had done their initial training for hospital security together. He had been hired for Team 2, the armed branch, and took a bit of a superior attitude towards Wayne. Now, he stared at Wayne like they were the only people in the room. Once Wayne noticed him, he walked over to his table.

Wayne wanted to talk to Sarah, not cause another scene, so he looked down across the table at the empty chair and tried slow his racing heart. The man's smug expression boiled his blood. He focused his attention on a mesmerizing pattern of scratches the blue, plastic chair, distracting himself from the piece of human refuse walking towards him. He had to stay calm. Strong emotions, particularly negative ones, could cloud his head, and trigger another attack.

The sand metaphor was Elaine's contribution to describing how the attacks felt. It captured the muddled feeling in his brain that typically preceded an attack. The dust from these mental sandstorms never completely settled, but he could keep it from whipping into a bull-blown attack by staying in control of his emotions. In theory.

He isn't worth it. I won't give him the power to anger me.

If the sand started rising with Dmitri around, Wayne might wake up in cell, or worse.

No more anger. No more despair. No more...

The security guard, a Goliath of a man, slid the empty chair back from the table, its metal feet screeching on the tile floor. He looked at Wayne with a raised brow, tilting his head at the chair and waited.

...hatred.

Wayne gestured for him to sit. "You'll forgive me if I'm not the best company right now, Dmitri." He unclenched his fist and rested his hands on the table. "It's not been good day."

"Forgive?" he asked, as if he didn't understand what the word meant. "It's not personal, you know. I take pride in my work. My responsibilities to my employer are very important to me."

Any professional body builder would have been proud of a physique like Dmitri's. Wayne imagined a heavy Russian accent spitting out chunks of broken English in a booming bass that shook the walls. But the vanilla ambient noise that Dmitri dribbled could have belonged to any TV news anchor in flyover country.

"The hospital is lucky to have you," Wayne said. "No hard feelings, okay? You beat me. Congratulations, and good luck with the next poor bastard you set your sights on." He scooted his chair back, hoping Dmitri would take it as a cue to leave.

The big man shrugged dismissively. "Like I said, it isn't personal. Ha! It's kind of funny, really." He interrupted himself with a genuine laugh, or good fake one. "I don't like police. I can't help it. Maybe I've seen too many movies where the cops are really the bad guys. I don't like ex-cons, either. I don't trust either of them, you see? When I found you sleeping in front the security monitors while that poor girl was attacked by her patient, I just had to know what you were thinking. Hey! Can I tell you my theory?"

"This should be good," Wayne said. He hoped that once this asshat had performed the scathing monologue he had apparently rehearsed, he would go away feeling superior, and leave Wayne alone.

Dmitri nodded his agreement. "Cops, in my experience, often have larger-than-life egos. Some would find this kind of work beneath them, so they phone it in. They'd rather read a book or take a nap. But an ex-con? Well, he just wouldn't give a shit, would he? So I wondered which bullshit lie you used to excuse your negligence, and justify the nightmares that poor nurse is going to have. So which was it? Was the ex-big shot detective too good for the job, or could the ex-con just not be bothered to make an effort?"

Wayne looked at the disposable coffee cup as though anything he could drink would quench the dry, desert winds beginning to stir behind his eyes.

"Whatever you think of me, Dmitri, I'm just a guy. I'm trying to play the shit hand I've been dealt, just like everybody else. But you just had to fuck with me, didn't you? You've been plotting from the second you got this job. Well, you've cost me two jobs this week, and made me look like an asshole to the one person who had my back. So let me congratulate you again. You win. Game over." Numbness tingled the ends of his fingers. His hands balled into tight fists. The strain of not punching this meat-headed dirt-bag frayed his nerves.

Dmitri shrugged again. "If you say so. But I'm not so sure. I think men like you always have a little bit more to lose. But what do I know? I'm just a working man; just a respectable, productive member of society. I'll never understand what makes a corrupt, thieving murderer like you tick.

"If I had been the one who abused my power; if I killed some poor young girl barely starting out in life, just because I thought I could get away with driving drunk... I don't know, Wayne. I don't think I could live with that. I'd have jumped or something. I guess that illustrates my point, because here you are."

"Nice speech, Dmitri. But unless you're more of murderer than you claim, there's nothing else you can take from me. Why don't you piss off now, and we can both go celebrate never seeing each other again." Three years of practice keeping a low profile helped Wayne sound calm and in control, but Dmitri had pushed his buttons like a pro. His smoldering anger began to flare up, and the sand poured in faster to smother him.

Wayne's eye twitched with the effort of keeping his lids open. His head felt like a floating balloon, and Dmitri's face started to blur. Time was running out. If Dmitri wouldn't leave, Wayne would have to get away. He couldn't risk a blackout near someone he hated, especially when he was already this angry.

Images of twisted, tangled metal flashed through his clouded mind. That poor girl's broken body dangled upside-down by her seatbelt. It hit him like a wrecking ball. His fault. Killer. Murderer. He couldn't fix that. He could never make things right for her, her son, or the family that had to carry on without them. No amount of his suffering would ever be enough to atone for this.

"Are you falling asleep?" Dmitri asked? His voice sounded sluggish, deeper. His words stretched. "Aam I booorriingg Youuuuu?"

A comfortable darkness smothered him, a veneer of ignorance that hid him from his own pain and impotence.

"Sarah." The word stabbed into his brain, through the smothering veneer of darkness that fought to hide him from reality. It awakened a primal instinct to protect his child.

He blinked his leaden eyelids, and pinched the inside of his thigh. The pain helped him push through, and a smear of the real world appeared through his heavy, fluttering eyelids. Dmitri, or a demonic version of him, pointed over his shoulder with a thumb towards the cash register and his daughter, Sarah.

In Sarah's place, the bloody girl from the car crash counted out change for a customer. Her hair hung straight up in the air, dripping blood on the ceiling. Her smile dipped as she noticed him staring, but quickly returned for the next man in line.

What sort of hell had he awoken to? It couldn't be real, of course. His damaged brain must have been blending his nightmares and reality; dreaming, but not fully asleep.

Wake up.

He pushed his chair back to stand, but the legs caught the groove between floor tiles. He fell back into the chair and tipped up on two legs. Balancing for a second or two, his brain finally chose between awake and asleep. The sandstorm erupted as he fell, wiping out real world and dream alike.