Of Dreamscapes: D-Line, pt. 2
The train coasted along, silently passing by the fields, the trees. Occasionally some wildlife would pop up in the distance, see the mass of metal moving, and turn tail back to its burrow.
That’s how the man felt all too often.
Life had a way of inserting itself when least wanted, forcing itself into your cozy nook and up-heaving everything in its path. The man was reminiscing on how he had just settled into some kind of normality before life came along. The ripples of its passing left his daughter, Nicole, with a tumor. Something uterine, if he was remembering correctly. He remembered thinking she was too young to be dealing with all of this, too young to be having surgery, too young to be left infertile the rest of her life.
Truthfully he hadn’t wanted to come. He felt like he hadn’t been there for most of her life, and as such wasn’t entitled to be there for her difficult moments. Deep down, he knew that it would have been easier to stay at home, sit and wonder, but never have to see his daughter looking small, frail, vulnerable, sitting in that hospital bed with tubes sticking out of her arms. But Laura had asked him to come, Nicole had requested he be there, and he decided back then, and reaffirmed to himself now, it was better to have experienced that pain, to have shared it with others, than to sit and wonder the rest of his life. It was a good hurt, but damn did it hurt.
He let out a wistful sigh, drawing the attention of his companion. Al looked up from his book, setting a small piece of paper in between the pages as he closed it. “You alright? Seems like you’re ready to talk again.”
The man nodded, pulling his gaze from the window. “Yeah.. yeah, I think I am.”
He cleared his throat, “Where to start… at the beginning, I suppose,” he let out a nervous laugh. “Nicole was born on a chilly November evening. I wasn’t there, Laura hadn’t even told me she was pregnant. She asked for the divorce about two weeks into her pregnancy, best I can figure. Probably right around the time she found out too. I was furious when she told me, ‘How could you hide that from me?’, ‘You think I can’t be a good father!?’. I distinctly remember dropping any pretense of logic and just lobbing the first paranoid question that came to mind at her. She didn’t answer. I could just hear her sobbing on the other end. I guess women have always had that effect on me.. They start crying and I can’t be mad anymore. I told her.. I said, ‘I wish you would have told me,’ and I believed, at the time, that if she had brought it up, instead of asking for a divorce, that maybe we could have worked it out. But she had that job offer, and I had a broken heart.”
Al sat, listening intently, nodding along. “I can’t imagine that was easy, for either of you. Did she raise Nicole alone then?”
The man shook his head, “Nah.. Laura was always easy on the eyes. She found another guy out there, Dennis. Fine guy. Real nice, respectful, understood the situation he was coming into, understood that I was probably going to be cagey and angry with him from the outset. I’ll say though, he won me over. Probably a better father than I ever would have been,” he sighed again. “Life has a way of really messing things up, huh?”
Al grinned, “You don’t know the half of it, pal.” They shared a laugh, it was nice, the man really needed it too, all these heavy topics were dragging his soul down, he could feel it.
“So then I get a call one night,” he dragged his hand through his hair, it was thinning near the edges, pulling back from his forehead and receding like a sworn monk. “Laura, in tears, I could hardly make out what she was saying. Eventually Dennis took the phone from her,
‘Hey pal,’ I could hear the bad news in his voice, ‘It’s Nicole.’
I think my heart just about exploded right then and there. Dennis explained what had happened as best he could, Nicole had passed out on the playground, teachers ended up calling 911, and they found swelling in her abdomen. They thought it might be blood pooling, so they did an MRI and found an angry little tumor that had attached itself to one of her ovaries. Not uterine cancer, they said, rhabdo… something or another."
He drew a slow breath, steadied himself, "A couple of weeks went by and I got another call, Laura actually talked this time, told me the prognosis was good, survival rates for this type of thing were very good as well, but they wanted to do surgery as well as chemo. Well, by the time she had called they’d already started chemo for her, but they had just scheduled the surgery, and Nicole asked specifically if I could come. How could I say no?”
He caught himself choking up again, the vision of his little girl laying in that bed again, ragged little breaths catching in her chest, her hair matted in a cold sweat, her skin far too pale. A strong gust might have blown her away, and that’s why his own breaths were so short. At least, that’s what he told himself.
“So how did it go,” Al asked, “the surgery?”
The man nodded, “It went well enough. We were assured many times over that the hospital had the best surgeons, the best doctors for this sort of pediatric situation. So we trusted them, and they did their best. They got all of the cancerous cells out, had to take the ovary it was growing on, ended up removing a good portion of her uterus too."
The man shook his head, "So she’ll survive, but she’ll never be able to get pregnant. Feels ironic, doesn’t it? She gets to live, but never gets to bring her own life into the world.”
“Ironic?” Al shrugged, “Maybe, but there’s plenty of people already. She could still adopt, do the whole in-vitro thing, lots of options.”
The man nodded again, “Yeah, we’d talked about that a bit while we were waiting. It’s stupid, but part of me believes that if I'd been around, none of it would’ve happened. I know it's wrong, but I so desperately want to believe it could have been avoided… somehow…” he shook his head, let out a deep breath, staring at the textured pattern in the rubber floor mats.
“They let us in to see her, just me and Laura. We both just sat there and stared for a long while, couldn’t look at each other, couldn’t say anything that would make the situation better. Felt like an eternity, but she spoke up first. She apologized, said she hadn’t meant to hurt me. Said she was scared, thought I might run out on her if she had told me. She did what she thought she had to, cut things off and wish for the best after the move.
I told her I understood. I didn’t.
But, it was in the past, it was already done, and like I said, Dennis had won me over, so I wasn’t terribly concerned. She asked if I had met anyone, what I was up to these days. I.. I couldn’t keep up the small talk. It felt so fake, so… pointless in the face of what we were staring at. How trivial my life would seem next to our daughter’s future being forever altered? How miniscule my day-to-day nothing was in comparison?” He fought back angry tears, but they overwhelmed him, streaming down his cheeks.
He gave up, his mouth was drawn into a tight line, his bottom lip quivered. “How could my daughter have wanted someone as insignificant as ME there for her?!” he sobbed, doubling over and putting his hands to his face.
Al sat and watched as all this happened in front of him, his friendly smile turned into a concerned frown, and he leaned forward as the man slowly broke down. Eventually he stood up, crossed the aisle and put a hand on the man’s shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze.
When the man had finally calmed down some, Al spoke, “You know, kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. Not to mention, they don’t have the same social restrictions we’ve imposed on ourselves.” The man sniffled, wiped his nose with the sleeve of his jacket.
Al continued, “It sounds like Nicole was scared, didn’t really understand what was happening to her. I can’t say I’ve ever known anyone who heard the ‘C’ word and didn’t panic. I think she knew that the rest of her family was going to be just as worried as she was, if not more, and that all of you would need to lean on each other for support. She wanted you there to see she was alright, and for you, Laura, and Dennis, to know it was going to be alright. That’s what it sounds like to me, anyway.”
The man croaked out a chuckle, “Nicole was a sweetheart like that.. Thanks.” Al gave him a warm smile, a pat on the shoulder, and stood up to return to his seat.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The carriage ran beneath a thick canopy of trees, bits of light streamed through them as the evening sun blazed a golden orange on the horizon. The man sat back, looking up to speak to Al and saw that skeletal looking hand again, the back of Al’s head looked bone white, and when Al sat down, turning to face the man, half of his face was gone. The skin and muscle had vanished, only an empty eye socket with a glowing blue light remained. The man jolted back in shock and terror, tried to stammer something, and Al looked at him, confused.
“Whatsa matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” The train left the forest at that moment, making a whoosh as the carriages hit open air again. The light returned with the sound, as did the flesh on Al.
“I-I, b-but you.. Your..” was all the man could reply.
“Something on my face?” Al turned to try and look at his reflection in the metal trim along the windows.
“Y-your skin.. b-b-bone”
Al turned to him as he said it, he looked normal again, but his eyes were determined, locked on the man. “What about bone? What did you see?”
The man caught his breath, gulped, and shook his head, rubbing at the temples again, “I… Nothing.. Just.. just stressed is all..”
Al let out his own sigh, “Still needs more time…”
“What?”
“Nothing, friend. But, why don’t we change gears here. Tell me, what’s the last thing you remember? Not from your daughter, or your estranged wife, think hard, really hard, what’s the most recent memory you have?”
The man scrunched his face up, the most recent memory? Well he was just reliving his daughter, that wasn’t too long ago, but that brought up the question of why he was on the train now. Well crap… what was his most recent memory? He got up this morning, he got breakfast, put on his work clothes.. But he wasn’t going to work. No, but he needed his suit for something… Meeting? Not quite.. Conference! That what is was, there was a conference he was attending today. Work was paying for him to go for the two days it was spanning, they were even putting him up in a hotel nearby, but it was being held a state over, so they booked him on the train and he’d be checking in…
The outside shifted again, another dark tunnel, and then the cityscape reappeared in the distance.
Al nodded slowly, “Good, good. We’re close, tell me about this conference.”
The man nodded, trying to gauge their distance from the city, “Sure, say is that where you’re headed too? This train has been going for a while now..” He glanced at his watch, the numbers still weren’t making sense.
“I’m going to be nearby, think we’re getting off at the same stop though,” Al told him. He spread his arms across the seat next to him, crossing one leg over the other and reclining back, “But we’ve got time, tell me about your day so far.”
The man smiled a polite smile, better to practice it now, he’d need it for all the random people he was going to meet today, “Well, the day started simply enough...”
That’s how the man felt all too often.
Life had a way of inserting itself when least wanted, forcing itself into your cozy nook and up-heaving everything in its path. The man was reminiscing on how he had just settled into some kind of normality before life came along. The ripples of its passing left his daughter, Nicole, with a tumor. Something uterine, if he was remembering correctly. He remembered thinking she was too young to be dealing with all of this, too young to be having surgery, too young to be left infertile the rest of her life.
Truthfully he hadn’t wanted to come. He felt like he hadn’t been there for most of her life, and as such wasn’t entitled to be there for her difficult moments. Deep down, he knew that it would have been easier to stay at home, sit and wonder, but never have to see his daughter looking small, frail, vulnerable, sitting in that hospital bed with tubes sticking out of her arms. But Laura had asked him to come, Nicole had requested he be there, and he decided back then, and reaffirmed to himself now, it was better to have experienced that pain, to have shared it with others, than to sit and wonder the rest of his life. It was a good hurt, but damn did it hurt.
He let out a wistful sigh, drawing the attention of his companion. Al looked up from his book, setting a small piece of paper in between the pages as he closed it. “You alright? Seems like you’re ready to talk again.”
The man nodded, pulling his gaze from the window. “Yeah.. yeah, I think I am.”
He cleared his throat, “Where to start… at the beginning, I suppose,” he let out a nervous laugh. “Nicole was born on a chilly November evening. I wasn’t there, Laura hadn’t even told me she was pregnant. She asked for the divorce about two weeks into her pregnancy, best I can figure. Probably right around the time she found out too. I was furious when she told me, ‘How could you hide that from me?’, ‘You think I can’t be a good father!?’. I distinctly remember dropping any pretense of logic and just lobbing the first paranoid question that came to mind at her. She didn’t answer. I could just hear her sobbing on the other end. I guess women have always had that effect on me.. They start crying and I can’t be mad anymore. I told her.. I said, ‘I wish you would have told me,’ and I believed, at the time, that if she had brought it up, instead of asking for a divorce, that maybe we could have worked it out. But she had that job offer, and I had a broken heart.”
Al sat, listening intently, nodding along. “I can’t imagine that was easy, for either of you. Did she raise Nicole alone then?”
The man shook his head, “Nah.. Laura was always easy on the eyes. She found another guy out there, Dennis. Fine guy. Real nice, respectful, understood the situation he was coming into, understood that I was probably going to be cagey and angry with him from the outset. I’ll say though, he won me over. Probably a better father than I ever would have been,” he sighed again. “Life has a way of really messing things up, huh?”
Al grinned, “You don’t know the half of it, pal.” They shared a laugh, it was nice, the man really needed it too, all these heavy topics were dragging his soul down, he could feel it.
“So then I get a call one night,” he dragged his hand through his hair, it was thinning near the edges, pulling back from his forehead and receding like a sworn monk. “Laura, in tears, I could hardly make out what she was saying. Eventually Dennis took the phone from her,
‘Hey pal,’ I could hear the bad news in his voice, ‘It’s Nicole.’
I think my heart just about exploded right then and there. Dennis explained what had happened as best he could, Nicole had passed out on the playground, teachers ended up calling 911, and they found swelling in her abdomen. They thought it might be blood pooling, so they did an MRI and found an angry little tumor that had attached itself to one of her ovaries. Not uterine cancer, they said, rhabdo… something or another."
He drew a slow breath, steadied himself, "A couple of weeks went by and I got another call, Laura actually talked this time, told me the prognosis was good, survival rates for this type of thing were very good as well, but they wanted to do surgery as well as chemo. Well, by the time she had called they’d already started chemo for her, but they had just scheduled the surgery, and Nicole asked specifically if I could come. How could I say no?”
He caught himself choking up again, the vision of his little girl laying in that bed again, ragged little breaths catching in her chest, her hair matted in a cold sweat, her skin far too pale. A strong gust might have blown her away, and that’s why his own breaths were so short. At least, that’s what he told himself.
“So how did it go,” Al asked, “the surgery?”
The man nodded, “It went well enough. We were assured many times over that the hospital had the best surgeons, the best doctors for this sort of pediatric situation. So we trusted them, and they did their best. They got all of the cancerous cells out, had to take the ovary it was growing on, ended up removing a good portion of her uterus too."
The man shook his head, "So she’ll survive, but she’ll never be able to get pregnant. Feels ironic, doesn’t it? She gets to live, but never gets to bring her own life into the world.”
“Ironic?” Al shrugged, “Maybe, but there’s plenty of people already. She could still adopt, do the whole in-vitro thing, lots of options.”
The man nodded again, “Yeah, we’d talked about that a bit while we were waiting. It’s stupid, but part of me believes that if I'd been around, none of it would’ve happened. I know it's wrong, but I so desperately want to believe it could have been avoided… somehow…” he shook his head, let out a deep breath, staring at the textured pattern in the rubber floor mats.
“They let us in to see her, just me and Laura. We both just sat there and stared for a long while, couldn’t look at each other, couldn’t say anything that would make the situation better. Felt like an eternity, but she spoke up first. She apologized, said she hadn’t meant to hurt me. Said she was scared, thought I might run out on her if she had told me. She did what she thought she had to, cut things off and wish for the best after the move.
I told her I understood. I didn’t.
But, it was in the past, it was already done, and like I said, Dennis had won me over, so I wasn’t terribly concerned. She asked if I had met anyone, what I was up to these days. I.. I couldn’t keep up the small talk. It felt so fake, so… pointless in the face of what we were staring at. How trivial my life would seem next to our daughter’s future being forever altered? How miniscule my day-to-day nothing was in comparison?” He fought back angry tears, but they overwhelmed him, streaming down his cheeks.
He gave up, his mouth was drawn into a tight line, his bottom lip quivered. “How could my daughter have wanted someone as insignificant as ME there for her?!” he sobbed, doubling over and putting his hands to his face.
Al sat and watched as all this happened in front of him, his friendly smile turned into a concerned frown, and he leaned forward as the man slowly broke down. Eventually he stood up, crossed the aisle and put a hand on the man’s shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze.
When the man had finally calmed down some, Al spoke, “You know, kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. Not to mention, they don’t have the same social restrictions we’ve imposed on ourselves.” The man sniffled, wiped his nose with the sleeve of his jacket.
Al continued, “It sounds like Nicole was scared, didn’t really understand what was happening to her. I can’t say I’ve ever known anyone who heard the ‘C’ word and didn’t panic. I think she knew that the rest of her family was going to be just as worried as she was, if not more, and that all of you would need to lean on each other for support. She wanted you there to see she was alright, and for you, Laura, and Dennis, to know it was going to be alright. That’s what it sounds like to me, anyway.”
The man croaked out a chuckle, “Nicole was a sweetheart like that.. Thanks.” Al gave him a warm smile, a pat on the shoulder, and stood up to return to his seat.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The carriage ran beneath a thick canopy of trees, bits of light streamed through them as the evening sun blazed a golden orange on the horizon. The man sat back, looking up to speak to Al and saw that skeletal looking hand again, the back of Al’s head looked bone white, and when Al sat down, turning to face the man, half of his face was gone. The skin and muscle had vanished, only an empty eye socket with a glowing blue light remained. The man jolted back in shock and terror, tried to stammer something, and Al looked at him, confused.
“Whatsa matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” The train left the forest at that moment, making a whoosh as the carriages hit open air again. The light returned with the sound, as did the flesh on Al.
“I-I, b-but you.. Your..” was all the man could reply.
“Something on my face?” Al turned to try and look at his reflection in the metal trim along the windows.
“Y-your skin.. b-b-bone”
Al turned to him as he said it, he looked normal again, but his eyes were determined, locked on the man. “What about bone? What did you see?”
The man caught his breath, gulped, and shook his head, rubbing at the temples again, “I… Nothing.. Just.. just stressed is all..”
Al let out his own sigh, “Still needs more time…”
“What?”
“Nothing, friend. But, why don’t we change gears here. Tell me, what’s the last thing you remember? Not from your daughter, or your estranged wife, think hard, really hard, what’s the most recent memory you have?”
The man scrunched his face up, the most recent memory? Well he was just reliving his daughter, that wasn’t too long ago, but that brought up the question of why he was on the train now. Well crap… what was his most recent memory? He got up this morning, he got breakfast, put on his work clothes.. But he wasn’t going to work. No, but he needed his suit for something… Meeting? Not quite.. Conference! That what is was, there was a conference he was attending today. Work was paying for him to go for the two days it was spanning, they were even putting him up in a hotel nearby, but it was being held a state over, so they booked him on the train and he’d be checking in…
The outside shifted again, another dark tunnel, and then the cityscape reappeared in the distance.
Al nodded slowly, “Good, good. We’re close, tell me about this conference.”
The man nodded, trying to gauge their distance from the city, “Sure, say is that where you’re headed too? This train has been going for a while now..” He glanced at his watch, the numbers still weren’t making sense.
“I’m going to be nearby, think we’re getting off at the same stop though,” Al told him. He spread his arms across the seat next to him, crossing one leg over the other and reclining back, “But we’ve got time, tell me about your day so far.”
The man smiled a polite smile, better to practice it now, he’d need it for all the random people he was going to meet today, “Well, the day started simply enough...”
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