Waltz of Her Life

***

As winter moved into spring, to Linda's delight, Hayley behaved as if she was still trying to save up the money to buy the computer for herself. By word of mouth, she lined up three separate babysitting gigs. Sometimes she would take her "day-glo" laptop with her, but just as often she would not. "Most people haven't gotten wireless like we have here," she explained.

And when she brought home a report card with three A's and two B's, they all celebrated with a fun dinner at the pizza arcade restaurant.

One Friday night, Linda took Hayley and Matthew to the roller-skating rink, where she would prove to her daughter that skating was cool and not something that losers did. During the general skating, she even went backwards, taking Hayley's hands and showing her how to do the same thing, just as she had done with her little sister so many years ago. When the couples skate occurred, a tall, nice looking boy with dark hair and braces asked Hayley to skate together. She glanced coyly at her mother before she ventured out onto the rink with him.

Later that night, when they were driving home, Linda asked about him.

"So tell us about the nice young man you met."

Matthew snickered and added "Yeah! Tell us all about 'loverboy'."

"His name is Travis and he goes to St. Augustine's. And you want to know something crazy? He thought you were my older sister! Is he blind or what?"

Linda was very happy the rest of the way home and slept well that night.

The next week at work, strange things began to happen with the patients in the end-stage units. Nurses would often find patients thrashing about on their beds, straining their lines, causing their vital signs readouts to dip and skyrocket. Both actions triggered the call nurses, and when they would arrive most times the patient awakened. The more lucid ones would say "I just had the worst nightmare."

A couple of the patients on opposite sides of the floor had dreamt the exact same thing. They were walking around in the bright suites of an office building, on one of the higher floors, looking out over a big city beneath them. Suddenly a jet starts flying directly toward the window, causing the people inside to panic, and jump for cover, hiding under desks, tables, or whatever they could find. Unbelievably, the jet crashes into the window, the nose of it plowing through the glass, the desks, the floor, and all the tables and shelves. The room bursts into flames. People lit afire run around screaming. Some of them leap through the crashed-open window into the air outside.