In Continuum.

Dreams Of A Miracle

Watched her as she flew,
Deep within the blue
A day out from the county I.C.U.
There is nothing you can do
Someone gently says to you
The doctors say that now it won't be long

Dreams, they take you to a million different places don't they. Sometimes I wonder if this life that I am living now, is really just the dream that has been going on for years. A patient newly out of a comatose state usually forgets what happened during their ordeal. Some of them tells you about the dark tunnel and the light at the end of it, but that's just a generic answer in my opinion. It's probably just the moment when you open your eyes, to see the lights above your head piercing through the darkness in your eyes. The experience is probably not nearly as fantastical as that, and I have always believed that a person in a comatose state goes into an endless dream of some kind. So that got me thinking, if it is possible that I am already in a comatose state myself right now, lying in a ward with a glass window just to my right and family members peeping in from the other side, concerned and petrified. This, might just be part of my dreaming process, before I finally wake up myself. It's interesting, now isn't it?

In bed last night, I drifted off into an uncomfortable sleep. Not really because the bed was harder than usual, or because my neck wasn't properly positioned on the pillow, but because of the dreams that I had were just rather disturbing really. I've slept on a million different surfaces, and like Ah Chang I do consider myself somewhat of a sleeping king. I can sleep anywhere, at anytime, provided the opportunity. I've slept on soil, sand, mud, grass, gravel, stones, rocks, metal benches, wooden benches, wooden floors, on top of a M113 vehicle, ant nest - everywhere. It's not something I can add into my job resume in the future I'm sure, but then it makes a good story to tell, no?

I try and live up til the moment
And I hope that I don't blow it
What is it in me that she hears?
It's just a song she likes
Little arms around my neck
And a dying girl whispers in my ear

I dreamed about Stanley, for some reason. I was back at the ICU again, with Hanwei and the hospital was darker than usual. Soft murmurs traveled down the corridors from the nurse station just at the end of it, and we were there in the dark, trying to visit Stanley in the middle of the night. We crept along the walls and in the shadows, thinking that we'd get caught and be thrown out of the hospital once discovered. But we risked that, and found our way to the ward and walked in. And like the corridors, the ward itself was in a suffocating silence too, with the lights dimmed and the nurses gone. The computers and other machineries continued functioning, and that familiar pulsating of the machines echoes in the empty ward.

So there he was, still lying there on his bed in his troubled sleep. We immersed our hands into the basin to have them washed, then proceeded through the big glass doors into the room itself. It smelled like medicine, as if somebody made a perfume out of them and sprayed it all around the room. I covered my face with the back of my hand as I approached the bed, and as we did so as quietly as possible, Stanley sat up in bed and looked at us in surprise. He looked totally fine, and started plucking off the tubes and the needles that were embedded into his skin. He was confused as to where he was at that moment, disorientated and a little scared altogether, until Hanwei and I tried to explain things to him. It was then that he stood up for the first time in a very long time.

Tell me now can you feel it?
I've been keeping company with a ghost
She comes to me like a piece of summer
She comes to me on the days when I need it most

We talked and we laughed, something about the accident amused him somehow. He walked around the room, and for the first time, Hanwei and I were glad to see somebody walking, like the sight of a toddler taking his first steps. But there he was before our eyes, all perfect and well with no traces of the accident on his body whatsoever, save for the ridiculous scrub he was wearing. The flowery pattern did not suit him at all, and we made fun of him because of that. But it was all in good fun, and we started to call our friends to tell them the good news - that Stanley woke up and he is OK now.

Just then, a bunch of security guards came into the ward and shone their torches into our faces. They were all dressed in black, and because of the incredible shine, we could not see their faces. All I heard were words about my arrest, and something about writing bad checks. The burst through the door and grabbed me roughly by the arms and dragged me out into the corridors. They took Stanley away too, and threw a black bag over my head to keep me from talking. But I kept yelling and screaming, all the while trying to break free from their grasps. I wonder what crimes I committed, why was I dragged off to prison because I was happy for a friend, happy that he woke up from his deathly slumber.

Well summer dies and nothing lasts forever
And you're so fine girl, the way you stand up to your fears
Summer dies and its just moments we have together
I'd give my bones for you to get a few more years
For you and I, oh Annie
More than life than trying to survive, oh Annie

I remember the dream very well, the part with the trip to the prison. We were all chained to the side of a truck, as it sped down a dirt road towards the prison. Some of my friends were there, and others were strange faces. There were even celebrities from cinema and the music scene, chained like myself to the iron railings at the side. We talked little on the trip there, and my friend Jonathan was right in front of me in the dream. Neither of us knew where we were going or what is going to happen, but he too seemed to have been involved in some bad checks. What is it with checks, anyway?

We were ushered off the truck and in a row, marched into a classroom of sorts. It was a dark one, with the lights above our heads flickering nonstop. It looked like my camp's canteen somehow, just a lot darker. And before us there was a whiteboard, and a woman standing before that lecturing us about the rules of the prison. But none of us were interested in the rules, most of us just asking each other of their so-called crimes and sins. Looking around, the people all looked dead or depressed, and the fact that we didn't know what was going to happened, scared the hell lot of us. The unknown, trapped in a prison for crimes we did not commit, it was a scary feeling and I wished that I've watched Prison Break on the television.

My boyfriend took pictures of me as I held you
I travel alone and the loneliness brings me to tears
Summer dies and it's just moments we have together
I'd give my bones for you to get a few more years
For you and I, oh Annie
More to life than trying to survive, oh Annie

The lecture was done, the lights dimmed some more as if it wasn't dark enough. The woman left the room, leaving us to pack our things and move along in line to our cells. I did so quickly, stuffing my personal things into a small bag and joined the queue out of the lecture hall. But something bad was about to happen, and I knew it in my heart. The line disappeared into the darkness beyond, and from that darkness I could hear the desperate wailing of men like myself, screaming out in pain and sufferings. But the people in line were like drones, zombies of sorts, just marching on with their heads bowed and eyes dead. I wanted to leave the line, to run away even if I get shot. But the man from behind pushed on, and the corridor was a narrow one. I was forced ever forward, and right before I reached the edge of where light ended and darkness began, I told myself," This is a dream."

Stronger than the hands that hold you
You sing along to the song on the radio
If I drank too much and I am wreckless
Just this once would you forgive this
I hold on to the days gone by

My eyes opened, almost too wide. My mouth felt terribly dry, and the wind from the fan next to the bed was uncomfortable all of a sudden. The light of a Sunday morning poured in through the windows, and there I was in bed moments after my awakening, wondering if what I just saw really happened. I did the routine checks on my body, the limbs and the head, the organs and the body. Everything was intact, and I was alive and breathing still, on the morning of yet another day in life. I was just glad that I was alive, and that the whole episode in the prison did not happen at all.

But as I congratulated myself in bed about my survival through the ordeal, a sudden truth settled into my head. If the prison episode wasn't real, that means that the Stanley episode wasn't either. And that made me truly depressed for a moment, thinking about just how happy I was to see him walking again in the ward, perfectly fine and totally recovered. There I was in bed on a Sunday morning, while he is probably in that same old bed, still in a coma and still battling Death in the face. Everything remained the same, and I started to wonder if it is true that dreams reflect only the opposite of life, that if it happens it a dream then it will not happen in reality. I dearly wish that that is not the case, for I am still waiting for Stanley's awakening himself, to stand up and walk out of the hospital.

There he was, still smiling in the image of my head, standing by the side of his bed. But as I woke up from my own dreams about his awakening, he fell back into his sleep in reality. So with my fingers crossed, I am once again hoping for his full recovery sooner or later. Because at this point in time, nothing else matters more than him waking up, anymore.

Tell me now can you feel it?
I can't keep this all to myself
She's elegant and she means it, oh

Years for you and I, oh Annie
More to life than trying to survive, oh Annie
Watch her as she flew deep within the blue
Watch her as she slips away from you
I'll keep fingers crossed always for you