All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.

-Plutarch

It was on a frosty winter night, the twelfth of February, Lincoln’s birthday, 2016, when I woke up suddenly, profoundly jolted, a sharp white hot bolt of adrenaline shooting through me like flame daggers, instantly waking me from a deep sleep. I was in full panic mode, panting and gasping, sweating and crying, scared to my very core, saturated with the Fear and I had no reason why. I sat up in the dark trying to find my bearings. Dianna slept peacefully beside me, oblivious.

I shook her and woke her. She looked at me with unfocused uncomprehending eyes as I burst into shivering tears and tried to tell her how scared I was. She wrapped her arms around me.

“You’re shaking,” she said. “Are you cold?”

“No, I’m hot.” I said.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know! I’m just scared.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. Like I was hit by lightning.”

“Poor baby.”

“I’m scared. Scared for my life.”

She held me tight, the confusion and fear in her face was real and I suddenly felt foolish.

“You’re my baby,” she said reassuringly.

“Yes. Yes I am.”

After that night nothing was the same after I went to bed. I didn’t exactly dread it, but I was hopefully wary.  I wanted to sleep so badly that I couldn’t bring myself to really dread trying. The adrenaline surge happened a few more times but was never as sharp and definitive as the first time. I started to panic slightly when I laid down. I felt like I was suffocating. I would tell myself, be cool and then my breathing would eventually settle down.

Every night I would go to bed with the hope that I could get more than three hours of sleep. I took Excedrin PMs. I took melatonin. I smoked bowl after bowl of pot to set in motion the deep deep sleep I needed so badly. It never came. I would invariably wake up, make coffee go downstairs, sit in my chair at the computer and promptly fall asleep, bolt upright, head thrown back, for three or four hours, waking up exhausted and groggy.  I would stand under the shower for a long time and let the hot water rain down on me while I supported myself by leaning against the wall. At work, I would nod off in front of my computer. Every night I would crawl under the covers, exhausted, and almost immediately go into The Dream.

The corn stalks are faded yellow and stiff and crumbling. They clitter in the breeze which ebbs and flows like warm breath, bringing with it the smell of dirt and wind and autumn and smoke. On the dead cornstalks are perfect ears of corn, large and fat and two tones, bursting with life, as if having sucked out all the juice from their spindly roosts. As I walk through the cornfield, grasping the cornstalks one after the other, helping propel myself forward, my feet are leaden on the ground my shoes old and falling apart one sole flapping. My clothes are rough, old shredded, smelling like a campfire and the dirty blue sky. There is thunder in the background, not rolling but sharp and booming.

Maybe it’s not thunder.

I keep moving forward through the corn field, rustling through it, looking for a place to hide, hearing myself panting heavily, snorting at times, gasping as if I cannot catch my breath. As I grasp stalk to stalk I pull myself along by reaching out to the huge fat ears of corn. As I pass, something flashes and catches my eye and I turn to see the ear of corn I have just pulled on was smeared with shiny bright red blood. Astonished I stop and look at the palm of my hand. It too is stigmata slick with blood, but there is no wound. I look around anxiously. I call out hoping someone will answer. My voice sounds faint against the breeze and distant thunder.

Maybe that’s not thunder. 

The air is heavy and I can hear myself retching, like a dog. I run my hands over my rough clothes, not understanding but feeling that something is wrong. My feet ache and my legs feel like rubber. I feel my face and am surprised at the beard, matted and full of leaves and tiny sticks. I pull off my sweaty cap, a wool thing with a leather bill, and run my fingers though my hair. They come wet, red and slippery.

Then there is only the sound of the dead corn in the wind, and the sky is unnaturally blue. I stare at the bloody fingers in disbelief, and feel myself choking on something in my throat. It is as if I can’t breathe and I panic. The blood is gone from the ear of corn, (I note the lack of continuity) and the sky has suddenly turned dangerous and dark with huge puffy thunderheads. I can smell ozone, sulphery smoke, and my own sweat. I can feel my heart pounding wildly, desperately. Then the lightning. A sharp white hot bolt shooting through me like ice daggers.

Maybe it’s not lightning.. 

I’m in Kansas, I think.

And then I am awake.

People are standing at the foot of my bed, blurry because I am not wearing my glasses. It’s a hospital bed and I can feel the tube down my throat, an ugly scraping feeling, a feeling just on the edge of panic.

Be cool. I think. Be cool.

I try to raise my hand but they are strapped to the bed rails.

Okay.

Something happened.

I am so thirsty. Oh Jesus I am thirsty. I try to gesture and try to talk but can’t. Dianna, holding my hand, brings me a pad and a pen. I write “water” but it looks like the scrawl of an infant. I try again. This time it kind of looks like drunken letters trying to find their way home. Dianna nods and jabs a sponge lollipop into the side of my mouth. Oh sweet relief! The precious water trickles down onto my dry and compromised throat. I try not to choke. I try not to freak out.

“What happened?” I try to write. Everyone looks at each other.

I close my eyes.

I feel someone holding my hand and it’s Katie, my stepdaughter. And Evan, my son is holding my other hand. Evan. My son. Dianna is there. I feel calm. I feel in full possession of my faculties. My mind stands apart and very scientifically says, “hmm,” and I can think and reason, but I can’t remember.

Just stay cool. Be cool.

In and out.

“You were in a coma.”

“Respitory failure.”

“You fought us hard.”

“You’re a lucky man.”

“..and 30 years of marijuana smoking didn’t help.”

“Sleep apnea. Very oxygen deprived when you came in to the ER. Your toes were blue and you   were very pale.”

“Possible heart failure.”

(I think, you don’t know my heart if you think it can fail.) 

In and out.

“Blood sugar.”

“Had to restrain you.”

“Very serious.”

“We’ll transfer from ICU later in the week.”

“Lucky man.”

“..almost…alive..so you have that.”

“I know you’re not sleeping well,” Dianna tells me, months earlier. “You’re talking constantly in your sleep. Some pretty crazy shit. You’re like having conversations with yourself in different voices and sometimes you talk in an accent, like a Southern accent. It would be creepy if it weren’t so funny.”

She wrote it down.

“I don’t want to go down there.
I don’t want to go into that room.
What room?
You know which one.
You mean the basement full of drunken monkeys?
Yeah baby. Wow! That’s pretty good.
You said they should put some more notches
in the van Allen belt! 

Father passed this box down to me.

What’s in it? 

It’s a box full of toupees. 

But who should want that shit anyway, you know?

We are not sleeping
in the forest tonight
It’s like ten below. 

Do you hear that?
It’s for me. Ignore it.

This is my new job.
Hi. How are you doing? 

I know it’ a lame question.
Besides what else are you going to say to each other?
I decide what’s safe and unsafe. 

You don’t have the proper bone structure to hate. 

We became semi famous for our failures.
Don’t look at the grey people.
Their eyes are grey.

They’re all grey.
Who are they?
No. I can’t talk about that.
(Going into an ominous robot-like monotone)
The grey people know who you are.
Be careful!
I will only be here 17 days.
I have hopes you do not encounter them.
I will only be here a short time.
I will only be here 17 days. Have hope you do not encounter them.

 (Back in regular reciting voice)

There’s a punk band called paramecium
They’re not very good but the organ player’s name is Bill
He’s pretty good.
It’s cool.
They buried cups in the ground during the Civil War.
The guys in Paramecium drink beer.
You can’t wash it off.
It won’t come off.
We’re just mongrels
Might as well embrace it.
You can tell who they are
When you look at their eyes and the way they smile
They have dead people living
inside of them.
I don’t know why 50 percent
keeps jumping on me
and then jumping down.
These guys were trying to sell a coconut
for 10 million dollars.
They couldn’t sell it and the stock market crashed
and it devalued the German mark.
I sent him on a quest.
Do Knights have telephones?
The food chasms are good
and they have running water
I think we’ll be okay here.”

It’s bright in the hospital room. It’s late May and summer is just about ready. Last night there was a lovely spring rain, a gentle cleanse that made me feel melancholy in all the best ways. Looking out my hospital window I can almost see the earth turning greener. I’m not thinking about almost dying. This morning everything is full of life and sparkling. I can smell the earth through the hermetically sealed windows. I can feel the Life.

“What’s it like to be in a coma? Do you remember anything?”

“Just sweet sweet black black sleep.”

Everything is fresh. I am in my hospital bed, luxuriating in a lemon ice pop that I am eating constantly to soothe my ragged throat. I eat it slowly, letting the cool cool syrupy ice slowly slide down my shredded throat. The feeling is delicious.

Dianna is with me and we spend the afternoon watching Ghost Hunter Shows on the Discover Channel. Later today I get to leave the hospital and start my life over. I’m scared. I want to go home, but I also don’t want to go home. I have gotten used to the hospital. I have gotten used to these lovely lemon ices. But for now, this is a bright moment, I am very happy. Dianna snuggles with me in the bed. I want to stay alive because the life she has made for us is too sweet to leave just yet.

“You’re my baby,” she says.

“I will prepare and some day my chance will come.”
-Abraham Lincoln

 It was the Dream again. The corn field. Crows circled, and the distant guns had ceased. The corn was green and vibrant, a gentle breeze blew the stalks and rattled the husks. I am no longer running in the dream, no longer panting or waiting for the shock of the bolt. I looked at my hand and there was no blood.

I’m in Kansas, I thought. 

I am home from the hospital, fragile, tethered to oxygen, hesitant and afraid to be alone. The enormity of what happened to me is just sinking in. I am told that if I can live for 90 days, I will be mostly out of danger. I look up the odds and find that 43% of people in similar circumstances die before 90 days. But I am feeling good. I’m a lucky man.

I’ll take my chances.

When I come home from the hospital, a present is waiting for me. It is the 50th Anniversary box set of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, five CDs full of backing tracks, outtakes, remasters, mono and stereo, a DVD and lavish hardcover book. Evidently I had ordered it, but I have no memory of it.

My memory of the past year is dream-like and hallucinatory; being almost totally leeched of oxygen it’s a miracle I was conscious at all. I remember things like you remember dreams, mostly I remember driving. Driving in the country for no reason, past corn fields sprouting spring corn, not remembering why I am there. Going home, trying to sleep at night, but existing in a surface world of unconsciousness where I jabber endlessly and catch myself reaching out into the darkness because in my dream someone was handing me a pipe to smoke.

My first night home from the hospital, on oxygen, I sleep for nine hours, a deep luxurious sleep. Not even in the hospital did I sleep like this. I wake up restless but refreshed. It is a beautiful June morning, not too hot, but the summer smells come on strong, and the sky is such a clear azure blue, untainted by clouds, that it seems artificial.

I ask Dianna to help me outside. I am still weak, not even able to lift my oxygen tank. She collects my Discman and my headphones and the Sgt. Pepper Cds and helps me with the tanks outside. I settle in my wicker chair, put on my headphones over my oxygen tubes, and sit back. In front of me, Dianna works in her garden, digging in the dirt and filling the air with a delicious smell of summer.

In my head through the headphones, a song begins. It is my favorite Beatles song, “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Not the glorious cacophonous version we all know and love, but an earlier take, a beautiful folk like version softy strummed and sung by John. It is so soft and pastoral that it matches the place I am in perfectly, seeming to fill in the spaces between the summer smells and feels.

“Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It’s getting hard to be someone
But it all works out
It doesn’t matter much to me.”

Suddenly and without warning my heart fills to overflowing. The green of the yard and the blue of the sky blur in my tears. A volcano wells up inside of me, boiling and roiling, pushing upward through my stomach and through my heart into my throat.

“Always know sometimes it’s me
But you know I know when it’s a dream
I think I know I mean a “Yes”
But it’s all wrong
That is I think I disagree.”

 I am struggling to maintain my composure, but the tears are flowing followed by huge body racking sobs that I can no more control than I could a sudden and violent cloudburst. The music is full blast in my head, stinging my heart and covering me in a shroud of memories, connections, feelings and impressions that come at me from all angles. Everything inside my heart is exploding outward like a supernova in slow motion, all to this amazing soundtrack, remixed and remastered until it is absorbed by my DNA.

Dianna does not hear me weeping although she is only twenty feet away, facing away from me, intent on digging in the dirt, planting flowers, making Life. The sobs are coming out of me like lava, my cannula is clogged with snot and my glasses are smeared with tears. I’m alive. I’m alive. I’M ALIVE!

Life is so beautiful. The earth is in rejuvenation mode. All around me is green and blue, the colours of life and hope and love. I look up into the top of the trees and watch as a high breeze blows north to south, rippling through each tree in lazy succession. I watch as the love of my life, this amazing woman who I have just put through the worst of all hells,  is working placidly in the garden, happily secure in my presence beside her. I am filled with a love and a hurt so big that it doesn’t seem to be coming from anything other than God, Life, the Universe. And Everything.

It is all so 42.

Dianna turns, hearing me at last,  dropping her gardening tools and coming toward me, a sad sweet smile, coming to me like perfume in the breeze, coming to me with her arms opening and her eyes brimming with Love and understanding.

“I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh..”

As the song ramps up to its crescendo, so does the emotion inside of me until the final definite crash of the orchestra. As the majestic hum of the “endless chord” decays in my ears, our eyes meet and she sees that I am crying, helpless, afraid, overwhelmed, grateful, confused, determined.

Alive.

And I know then, and am sure, that everything will be all right.

“When you’ve seen beyond yourself
Then you may find peace of mind is waiting there
And the time will come when you see we’re all one
And life flows on within you and without you.”

Michael K. White wasted his youth as a member of the semi -legendary off-Broadway playwriting group Broken Gopher Ink. Their New York shows were “Human Skeletal Remains,” 1983;” A Fall of Stones,” 1988; “The Black Blood of Angels,” 1989; “Stigmata,” 1990; “Men In Black,” 1991; “The Amazing Melting Man,” 1991; “Confetti,” 1995; “Clazion Catches Light,” 1995; “My Heart and The Real World,” 1999-2001; “Daguerreotype Dialogues” (with Dianna Stark) “Graham’s Law of Diffusion” (with Dianna Stark) and “Punk as Fuck!” (with Dianna Stark.) His novels, “My Apartment” “Change” short story collections “The Book of Dreams” and “The Helically Wrapped Circular Waveguide” and Broken Gopher Ink’s “Four Plays” and “Murder In The Men’s Store” are available on Amazon.com and fine bookstores everywhere. A rockin’ audio version of “Change” is available at audible.com.
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