Chapter 5 - Dreams

She laughs out loud, hugging her sides as she kept rolling on her back while we rest on the grass, enjoying the summer day. I am smiling, fascinated by seeing her laughing like that although she is laughing at me and not with me. “That makes no sense, you idiot!” She tells me and I shrug.

We are at the park after we went to have our favourite ice creams. Blackberries and cream, her favourite. Chocolate and mint for me. We were literally doing nothing, just watching the clouds when she started to point out shapes. Bunnies, ice cream, a hand… but I took it a bit farther. I started saying very specific things completely unrelated.

“C’mon, that totally looked like the Abzorbaloff after he eats Ms Schmidt, dancing We’re All In This Together. How can’t you see it?” I repeat, making a reference to the episode Love and Monsters from Doctor Who, High School Musical and our Calculus professor in high school.

“You’re nuts! It looks like a daisy,” she tells me and I quint my eyes, trying to see what she sees. But nope. I still see the Abzorbaloff.

“Nope, you’re wrong. It looks nothing like that flower. Cass, you’re blind.” She laughs again and I know it would be nice to just accept what she says, but my stubbornness and randomness to see shapes in the clouds is making her laugh, so I keep going. What I love the most about Cass is her laughter. I’d do anything to make her laugh.

“It’s a daisy!” She repeats sitting straight and smacking my arm.

“Oi!” I protest grabbing her wrist. “What happened with the no violence policy?”

“You’re saying nonsense! It’s a daisy!” She insists, trying to hit me again so I grab both of her wrists and pull her towards me. She loses her balance and lands on my chest, but keeps fighting me so I roll with her, pinning her against the grass.

“It’s an Abzorbaloff!” I exclaim and she is moving frantically, trying to escape.

“A daisy!” She protests still fighting me so I hold her tighter until she gives up and stops moving. But then my heart stops when I notice how close we are and how easy it would be to lean in and kiss her… to just show her how I feel.

She starts to lose her smile, probably wondering what’s wrong with me and I’m about to do something, but someone throws a ball in our direction and a Golden Retriever runs over us. Just like that. I roll away and blink confused for three seconds before Cass bursts out laughing again. I look at her and I notice her hair is even messier than usual, this time it has leaves and grass on it and other things the dog left behind. At the sight, I start laughing again.

Well, it wasn’t the time and I don’t think I was going to tell her anyways… I can never gather the courage to tell her how I feel. Sometimes I fear it’s going to be too late when I finally decide to confess my feelings.

+ + + + +

I wake up after that dream with a weird feeling, a lump in my throat telling me it was too late at the end, but too late for what? And why am I having these dreams with Cassidy? These are not dreams of a future, these are dreams of a past that I have never had. A past with her, but I never met her before the day I woke up.

Why do I dream of being another guy? Someone who knew Cassidy, someone who was in love with her?

But that’s not the weirdest part. Oh no, the weirdest part is that these dreams don’t feel like dreams, they feel like memories. Like it actually happened. Like we went to that shop to get ice creams, like we went to the park and we were watching clouds, like we were ran over by a golden dog.

Could this be a side effect of the coma?

But thinking too hard makes my head hurt, so I put that thought aside. It was a dream, a weird dream. Dreams don’t make sense, they are just random images our subconscious plays for us, nothing else. They don’t predict the future; they don’t mean anything. Looking for a deeper meaning is pointless because there is none.

“Hey honey,” Mum greets and only then I realise she is here. She should be back at home now, working… but she is still with me. I don’t know how she’s managing things at home, and she refuses to tell me more. She says it’s her problem and that I should only worry about getting better.

“Hi, Mum,” I reply and she approaches to my bed and I take a better look at her. “Are you okay? You look really tired.”

“I’m okay, Liam. Don’t worry about me. How about you? Do you need anything?” She asks me, but I can’t stop staring at the dark bags under her eyes and taking notice of how thin she is. She’s lost a lot of weight.

“In fact, yes. I need you to take rest, proper rest. The sofa is no place for you. Go to Aunt Mary’s house, Mum. Sleep, eat, take a bath. I don’t know. You look worse than I do,” I tell her and she smiles sadly. I know she doesn’t want to leave, even if it’s just for the day. “I’ll be fine, Mum. I’m all better now. In a few days I’ll be cleared up and ready to go back to Uni. The worst passed already.”

“I know… I just… I can’t help it.” I place my hand over hers, stroking her skin with my thumb.

“I’m all right, Mum. Go and get rest yourself, okay? Please.” She sighs deeply. “If something happens, they’ll call you immediately. I need you to be okay, Mum.”

“Okay,” she finally agrees and I smile brightly. It makes me feel better that she’ll go and sleep in a proper bed. “See you later, honey. Call me if you need anything.”

“Will do, Mum,” I promise and she kisses my forehead before turning around to grab her purse and leave the room.

I feel a lot better, still weak, but I know I’m improving, getting better every day and soon everything will be back to normal. I really appreciate all what Mum is doing, but she needs to rest as well.

So I stay in my room and decide to watch some telly to kill some time before it’s time to go to the physiotherapy. A part of me is excited because that means I’ll see Cassidy, but another part of me is confused. Although I accepted that that dream means nothing, it still confuses me.

Later a nurse comes to see if I’m okay and brings me breakfast. I really hate hospital food, but I can’t starve to death and if I wanna leave this place, I better do everything they tell me to do. After lunch and before the visiting time, Cassidy knocks at my door and walks in with a big smile. I smile back at the sight of her hair, messy and frizzy. I’ve seen her fighting with it all the time, trying to put it in its place, but it’s like her hair has a life on its own. But I kind of like it, it does remind me of the hair of the character of that Disney movie, Brave. She has the same hair as Merida, she is just not ginger.

Not ginger, just like the Doctor, my inner voice adds and I agree. My doctor is blond.

“Hi, Liam!” She greets holding the bag against her body, pulling a lock of her curly hair behind her ear.

“Hi, Cass,” I greet back and she smiles when I say her nickname. I like her full name, though, I think it’s beautiful. “How are you?”

“I’m great and look what I brought,” she says, putting her bag on my bed at my feet. Then she opens it and takes out many DVD boxes. I furrow my eyebrow trying to see what movies those are, but I can’t see the titles. Her hands cover them.

“What’s that?” I ask, sitting straight on the bed.

“All the movies about planes I could find. Or I think they are about planes. I may be wrong. I haven’t watched them,” she replies furrowing her eyebrow in a confused expression and I chuckle, because she looks really cute like that.

Cass approaches even closer, with all the movies in her hands and shows them to me, her smile big and proud. She brought Top Gun, of course, and many other titles, like The Aviator and Flyboys. My smile grows bigger at her cuteness. She took the time to look for all these movies, just to amuse me.

“I’m not responsible if these movies suck, I just looked for movies about pilots,” she comments when I don’t say anything.

“Some are very good,” I tell her and she loses her smile.

“Oh, so you’ve seen them already,” she looks down and I feel terrible, so I jerk forwards and take her wrist, startling her.

“Not all of them and I’d love to watch some of these again. They are really good, like Top Gun. You have to watch it,” I tell her and she smiles again. She is very pretty when she smiles.

“But after your session today, okay?” She says then and I nod with a huge grin. “Perfect then!”

Cass puts all the movies on the nightstand next to the bed and I observe her carefully, and she acts oblivious to all the attention I’m paying to her. I remember the dream and the way she laughed so hard. She looked so happy and although she is smiling now and she looks fine, she doesn’t look as happy as I saw her in my dream.

How accurate are my dreams? Because I dream of a past, a life I don’t know and I wonder if it could be possible that there’s a degree of reality in my dreams, even for mere coincidence.

Bah, what am I thinking? Of course not. I bet her favourite ice cream is not blackberries and cream.

Just to make sure, I ask, “Cass, what’s your favourite ice cream flavour?”

She looks taken aback for a second before she answers and I’m waiting for any flavour, except, “blackberry and cream.”

Just a coincidence, a coincidence. I keep telling myself that.

“Especially the one from a little shop near a park where I live. Well, where I used to live, not my dorm in the Student Village,” she adds and my heart stops for a second.

“And what was the name of your Calculus teacher in high school?” I ask next and she looks utterly confused, but answers anyways.

“Ms Schmidt. She was actually nice.” I gulp because her answer freaks me out. Too big of a coincidence. My dreams is freaky accurate. “Why do you ask?”

“I—“ I start but I’m still too freaked out. How can my subconscious know those things about Cassidy? I don’t know her, I barely know her name and where she is from. This is not normal. And I’m scared of asking her what an Abzorbaloff is, because if she knows, then that means I‘ve gone mad and nothing makes sense in my life anymore. “I just had a dream, that’s all,” I tell her and she still looks confused.

“Wanna tell me about it?”

“Nope,” I reply immediately. I can’t talk about something that scares me and that I don’t understand. Maybe if I ignore this it will be fine. I can’t deal with this now. “Let’s go to the gym instead. I bet Rob is waiting,” I change the subject and she nods. She still looks confused but she lets it drop.

“Let’s go,” she says and I do my best not to think of the dream and these creepy coincidences.

-:-:-:-

Dedication to @saskey. Later you'll see how Liam remembers that moment ;)

Bel, xx