“OK, no,” I exclaimed. “Get on the floor.” The body that had been sleeping with its head on my pillow slowly picked itself up and jumped to the floor. “Good dog,” I praised, lowering myself down on the bed carefully. I sighed in relief when my bare skin touched the sheets. I pulled up the bedspread around me and closed my eyes.
My eyelids jerked open moments later and I starred into the darkness. “I’m dreaming,” I announced sitting up in bed. The lights flicked on and I was in the park sitting on the bench in front of the lake where I picnicked with my family. I looked around and noticed that the sky was gray. “What an ugly day,” I declared. I tried to get up but my legs were frozen to the ground. “This is... strange.” I looked down at the grass. “It’s black,” I said. I reached down and touched the black grass but my fingers kept missing it. “How peculiar? It’s there but at the same time it’s not.”
I looked around at my surroundings; the trees, the buildings, the lake, the bench... everything was black and white and gray, almost like a black and white photograph. “It does look like a picture,” I thought aloud. “I’m dreaming that I’m stuck in a black and white photo. I wonder if it’s one that I took when I was younger.”
“The colors!” A voice yelled off to my right. I looked over and my eyes grew wide as I came face to face with my own face. The other me was in color, but he, or I as I should say, was fading. His face was growing paler and his clothes turned black and white. The other-me stood and grabbed his arm.
“What’s wrong?” I asked the fading me. I tried to get up but I couldn’t, my body was glued to the bench.
The other-me dropped to his knees, gripping his chest, and let out a cry before falling onto his side on the black grass. “Somebody help him!” I cried trying desperately to get up from the bench. “Somebody help me!” The adrenaline pumped through my body and I tried in vain to rip myself from the bench. I screamed for help but there was still nothing. I got lightheaded and had to stop trying to get up from the bench. “Whoa,” I said wanting to close my eyes. “I’m dizzy.”
I looked back at the fading-me and noticed a crowd of people around him.
“His heart’s stopped!” A voice cried out.
“He’s not breathing!”
“Somebody call an ambulance!”
“He’s dead!”
I shot up in bed, sweat dripping down my face. I starred into the darkness for a few minutes expecting to be transported back to the park but this time I knew I wasn’t dreaming, I was at home, in bed, with my beautiful wife and two gorgeous daughters.
“Taylor?” Clare said. I felt the bed shake and then her hand on my arm. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” I told her, lying back down on the bed. “I just had a bad dream, that’s all.”
“About what?” She asked.
“September,” I told her without hesitation. She moved over in the bed and leaned her head on my chest. “Yeah, about that,” answering her unasked question. I touched her cheek softly. “Honey, what happened after I went down?”
“People heard you screaming,” Clare said softly. “They thought at first that it was someone playing around.”
“I don’t even recall screaming,” I informed her.
My wife nodded into my chest. “People who were around you said that it was more like a groan which turned into a yell. A jogger ran up to you and tried to see if you were awake, but you weren’t. Then he started calling for help. A bunch of people rushed over and one man who had been walking his dog down by the lake ran over because he saw a crowd. He pushed his way through and found you unconscious on the ground with the runner trying to wake you up. The man with the dog was a doctor and laid you on your back. Someone called 911 on their cell phone while he concluded you had a faint pulse and your heart had stopped.” I wiped a tear from her eye, ignoring a few that had fallen onto my skin. “He started compressions on your heart and did CPR until the ambulance came. He traveled in the ambulance with you, continuing compressions and breathing for you until you got the hospital and the doctors shocked your heart. You never got to meet the man who saved your life.”
“I don’t know his name,” I said to her.
“Neither do I,” she said. “I never met him either. I sat holding your hand in the Intensive Care Unit and didn’t bother myself with anything except for the fact that you had to wake up.”
We didn’t speak, we didn’t have to. We were both thinking the same thing. In one way or another we had to find the man with the dog.