Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student (Illusions 2)

body. It felt like not a nice place to be. A monitor showing something. My wrists were tied to the railing of the bed.

What is this place? Hello, I’m awake! Vanish this dream, please!

No change. It seemed, forgive me, real.

There by the bed was the woman I knew, she was my wife? No. I loved her, I knew. She reached for me, terribly tired, but warm, loving, happy. What was her name?

“Richard! You’re back!”

Nothing hurt. Why was I tied into this rig?

“Hi Sweet,” I said. My voice…my words felt like a foreign language, broken syllables.

“Oh, thank you so much, dear one. Hi! You came back!” There were tears in her eyes. “You came back…” She untied my wrists.

I had no idea why I was here, why she was crying. Was my dream somehow connected with this strange place? So much I needed to find what’s going on, here.

But I had to sleep, an escape from this terrible hospital. I was gone again, a smile for her, in a minute. No dreams, no understanding, feeling fine, exhausted, drifting away from waking into my coma again.

Chapter 2

Before believing, we choose what we want to believe. Then we test it for true.

When I woke once more, the hospital again!

She was still there. “Are you OK?”

She’s my wife, I thought. Can’t remember her name. Not my wife. I loved her.

“I’m fine. Where are we? Except all these wires, tubes. What’s going on? What are they for? Is it time to leave?”

My voice sounded like a broken cloud, barely English.

She had not slept.

“You were hurt,” she said. “You were nearly landing when the wires...”

Not true, I thought. I never saw any wires. A crash? I never saw any crash. In fifty-some years flying, I never came close to electric wires. I remembered the sound of the tires in the grass.

“Wires were right on the ground?”

“They said you hit the wires, up in the air.”

“Not true. They were wrong. I was a few inches from the ground.”

“OK, they got it wrong. You’re alive, now, dear one.” She brushed tears from her eyes.

“I was dreaming, is all. Fifteen minutes I was gone, half an hour max.”

She shook her head. “It’s been seven days. I waited for you here. They said you might not make it, or you might…die from the..”

“Sweet! I’m fine!”

“You have some of their heaviest drugs in you now. You had a respirator, for days, every kind of monitor, brain scans. Your heart rate was…way too high. They thought it could stop.”

“Not possible! I’m in perfect health!”

She smiled, through the tears. As though she had said the words a thousand times: “You’re a perfect expression of perfect Love, here and now. You will have a perfect healing. There will be no permanent injury.”