When
I fall asleep, I have a dream about her. I have a dream about the girl I am.
The dream about the girl whose life I have taken. I see something of her life
before I came along. Vanessa gets sick and I see her father as a slightly
younger man. She falls into a coma. The father argues with some other doctors,
and they seem to be trying to tell him that she will never wake up. Even if she
does, she won’t be the same, they say. The father is furious and refuses to
accept this. He never leaves her side except to eat, and sometimes he forgets
to do that. He keeps a quiet vigil over the girl who would never return.
The
doctors insisted the little girl was all but dead. “Let her go,” they said.
“She is gone from this world.” The father began to believe that these doctors
could not help his daughter, or that they didn’t even want to. He decided to
take his girl under his own care. He was experienced at caregiving. He had
equipment of his own or a way to acquire what he didn’t have. What he didn’t
own, he stole, and what he couldn’t steal, he made. But his money ran out
before his love did, and soon he had to sell almost everything but his house to
keep her alive. He sold his patents, his inventions, his formulas, and his
bonds, and moved into an old lab in the country, all to keep her alive.
Throughout
the sickness, the daughter never left his side, just as he never left hers. I
see her spirit hovering, floating above him, over him, near him, watching him
as he watched her, all through this unique vision of a fever dream telling me
about her life.
“He
never gave up hope,” a voice says to me. “Even when everyone else told him I
was gone, he never gave up. Even when he might have known it himself, he still
didn’t give up.” Somehow, Vanessa was speaking to me. I hear the voice of a
young girl, younger than I am now. “I couldn’t leave him until I knew someone
else would be there,” she continues, “But now there is you. You must be there
for him to be what I cannot. Daddy needs me, but I can’t be there.” Her voice
was sad, but determined, seeming more mature than this child could possibly be.
“Be kind to him, as he will be kind to you.”
I
wake up, trying to remember as much as I can.
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