Friday, April 11, 2008

The Morning After

The next morning I woke up with a sober mind. What a crazy dream! I was sick to my stomach, but this was no hangover. This was regret. I have never felt regret like that in my entire life. It was as if a little girl was drowning in a swimming pool and I could have easily saved her. Instead, I walked up to the edge of the water, spit on her and walked away. I was in tears. What had I done?

And this wasn’t just any little girl. This was the first girl that ever stole my heart. I remembered all the times that girl was there for me. I thought of all the times I was holed up in a hospital bed with asthma. There were the times I was in I.C.U. in oxygen tents. I had IVs sticking out of my arms. I got chicken pox when I was a student at Vista Heights.

Every time I was sick that girl was there for me. She would send notes home with my next door neighbor Jason Ashton. When I got back to school she was always there to welcome me back and ask me how I was. She was the one girl that made me feel loved when nobody else did. And the one time she needed me, I’m sitting at home drinking Budweiser and feeling sorry for myself when her brother calls.

All I could think was, “Of course I’ll go visit her in the hospital!”

What made matters worse, was this strange feeling I had that it was no dream.

I’ve had vivid dreams before, but never anything like that. And usually when I have a dream it’s visual. Sometimes there is a line or two of dialogue in a dream, but I don’t remember ever dreaming a telephone conversation before. As time ticked by that morning I felt more and more like that really happened.

Then like Mr. Scrooge waking up on Christmas Day I started thinking, “Maybe it’s not too late.” If that did happen, he said he would call back. Maybe I can still redeem myself. The next two days I never left the house. I grabbed the phone and put it on the coffee table in front of me. I sat on that couch 2 full days not going anywhere.

The phone never rang.

Then I thought about calling her family. It may be a bit of a shock for them to get a call from some guy after 7 years asking if she’s okay, but I have to know. I grabbed the phone book and opened it up to Campbell. When I saw all those listings I remembered. “Oh yeah, I tried this before and I couldn’t find her.”

As the days went by, the phone still never rang. I again thought it must have been a dream. Yet, the feeling it really happened kept gnawing at me.

I took a piece of paper and made a list. On one side I wrote a list of reasons why I thought it was a dream and on the other I wrote why I thought it really happened. Here’s what I wrote:

Why I think it happened:

1. I have not thought about Neve in years, why would I dream about her?
2. My dreams are always visual, not telephone conversations
3. It was too vivid to be just a dream

Why I thought it was a dream:

1. Neve never had a brother
2. She never had a brother, much less one I stuck up for at school
3. People don’t go to the hospital when they’re depressed
4. Neve was a girl that was adored, beautiful, and happy, with a family that loved her, being paid to take ballet. She had everything going for her. What could she possibly have to be depressed about?

For months I carried that piece of paper around in my pocket. On bus rides to work I would pull it out and start thinking. That dream gnawed at me a very long time.

I am certain of this date, Friday, February 9, 1990. I will remember that date forever. I was at a staff party at some hotel. I got drunk that day and blacked out. I woke up the next morning, face down on a hardwood floor. I wasn’t hung over, but my mouth was very dry. Other than that, I felt fine. That dream from the week before was the first thing that popped into my mind when I woke up. I was still sick with regret over that dream. It was the last time I ever drank alcohol.