CHAPTER SEVEN
DARIAN'S SCREAM ECHOED down the hallway to the nurses' station, causing the three night nurses to suddenly look up from what they were doing and rush down the hall toward his room. He was still screaming as the head nurse burst through the door, not stopping until she had reached his bed.
"Calm down, Mr. Lane, calm down. Everything is going to be okay. Are you in any pain?"
The nurse busily started checking his bandages for any signs of what might be causing him discomfort as the other nurse ran to the other side of his bed and put her hands on his shoulders to keep him from jumping out of the bed.
"The eyes! They eyes! I've seen them before!" Darian gasped, as he yelled at the nurses.
The second nurse looked up at the head nurse with a puzzled look on her face.
"Should we get a sedative for him?" She asked the head nurse, not sure of what was going on, but knowing that they needed to calm him down before he started upsetting the other patients on that wing.
"No. I think he was having a bad dream, that's all. He's been through quite a lot and was probably reliving something from the shooting incident." She waved the second nurse back, hoping that Darian would calm down a little bit if he thought it was just the two of them together.
"Mr. Lane, you need to breathe, hon. You were just having a nightmare, but you are awake now. Everything is going to be fine." She did her best to comfort him as if he were her own child, waking in the middle of the night because of the monsters under the bed.
"What? Where am I?" Darian looked around at his surroundings, clearly confused.
He had just been standing in the gas station and now he was in a room with this strange woman telling him everything was going to be okay. It took Darian a few seconds to register that it was the head nurse, Jackie, standing before him and holding his hand.
"Jackie? Your name is Jackie, right?"
"Yes, Mr. Lane. That is my name. I want you to listen to me carefully, okay? You are in your bed in the hospital right now, sweetie. You were having a dream and you screamed. We came in to make sure that you're alright. Do you feel better now?"
Jackie had been the head nurse on that wing for close to ten years now, and she knew that not every ailment that the patients had required sedation. She had seen her fair share of troubled people come and go, and she did everything she possibly could to make sure that they were as comfortable as they could be while in her care. Even old Mr. Jacobs across the hall took a liking to her, and he didn't like anyone nor was he afraid to tell them that he didn't like them.
She was the type of person that you could see out in public and just know that she would make a great nurse. Her shoulder-length red hair hung loose but never looked a mess, no matter what she was doing. Her gentle blue eyes conveyed an understanding of the world around her that most people couldn't get in numerous lifetimes of experience. Even the doctors and other nurses considered her more of a guardian angel than just the head nurse, and every one of them respected her and her decisions.
"I was in the gas station and there was a shadow. But it wasn't a shadow. It had eyes in it and it leapt toward me." Darian was starting to breathe heavily again and Jackie knew that he was about to hyperventilate.
"Grab the oxygen mask for me please, Mary," Jackie said calmly.
Mary rushed back to the side of the bed and plugged the mask into the oxygen hose connected to the wall behind Darian's bed, handing it to Jackie.
Mary was the newest nurse to join the hospital family. She had only been out of nursing school for a few months. She had trained in the ER before realizing that it was way too stressful for her and had requested to be on the long-term care wing.
She was still a bit skittish at times, but nice enough that the other nurses didn't make her get involved in anything they didn't think she could handle. Her dark brown hair was tied up into a tight ponytail on the back of her head and her small stature made her look like a school girl trying to play as an adult most of the time.
"There, there, Mr. Lane. Nice deep breaths and you will start to feel better."
Jackie held the oxygen mask over Darian's mouth and nose, hearing him breathe deeply. His pulse was also starting to slow back down to an acceptable rate.
Darian looked into Jackie's eyes and could sense the compassion she felt for him. He knew that he was in good hands, and that whatever had happened to him in his dream was nothing to be worried about now. With the fear and confusion slipping away, he reached up to push the mask away from his face.
"Thank you, Jackie. That was just so real. I swear I've never had a nightmare like that in my life! It scared the hell out of me. I guess I was really off in another world there for few minutes."
Jackie took the mask and set it down on the tray next to the bed. She looked over to Mary and motioned with her eyes to go ahead back down to the nurses' station and smiled, letting her know everything was fine now.
"Why don't I sit here with you for a bit and we can talk about your dream, okay?"
"Yeah, I think that would be good. I don't really feel like going to sleep again right now anyway."
Darian proceeded to tell her everything that had happened to him in the dream in great detail. He found it rather odd that he was able to remember so much about his dream because he usually forgot most of what happened in them shortly after waking up.
For some strange reason this dream was persistent in his mind. It was as if it didn't want him to let go of any information that it might be trying to impart to him. After telling Jackie everything that had happened, he looked into her eyes and could see that she was troubled by something.
"I know it's just a dream and all, but do you think there is some kind of message in it?" he asked her.
"It seems like you remember it pretty well and it is a bit scary, but if there is some kind of message, I sure wouldn't know what it would be." Jackie could tell that Darian was frightened by what he had seen in his dream and she wanted to tell him that the shadow he was seeing was probably representing the man who had robbed the gas station. On the other hand, she didn't want to upset him anymore than he already was.
"Maybe I am reading too much into this. Maybe it's just some kind of subconscious aspect of the robbery that my mind is trying to make sense of." Darian looked back towards the bathroom door, where he had seen the shadow peeking out before the doctor had come in to check on him. His eyes went out of focus briefly and Jackie noticed that, all of a sudden, he wasn't paying much attention to his surroundings.
She turned her head towards the bathroom door as well to see if there was something there that Darian was staring at, but she didn't notice anything. She looked back to Darian and saw tears welling up in his eyes.
She knew he was having a very difficult time accepting everything that was happening to him and wasn't quite sure what she could do to make it better. She wanted to hold him and tell him that everything was going to be okay, but she knew that it wasn't the right thing to do. Not now, at least, because of his injuries.
"Are you still with me, Mr. Lane?"
There was a long pause before Darian realized that she had said anything. He blinked the tears from his eyes and looked back at her.
"I remembered seeing the shadow watching me from the bathroom before the doctor came in earlier. Do you think I might be losing my mind or something?"
Jackie thought for a second about how she was going to respond to him. She knew that a lot of patients dealt with things in different ways, and he wasn't the first one to start having nightmares because of a traumatic experience. However, she didn't want him to think she was simply placating him to get him to go back to sleep.
"I think that you witnessed something horrible in your life and you have been in a coma for two weeks. All of this can do a lot to a person's mental state, but I feel that you are going to get over it and everything will fall into place for you soon enough."
Jackie stood up from the chair next to the bed and took hold of his right
hand.
"Don't be afraid of your dreams, Darian. They are happening for a reason and you need to realize that, when you see that shadow again, it cannot hurt you. Nothing can hurt you in a dream no matter how real it may feel while it's happening."
She gently squeezed his hand and smiled at him hoping that he would take her advice and not let the dreams take over his life any more than they already had. She knew it was going to be a long shot, but she was sure that he could work his way through this.
Jackie felt a twinge of sadness in her heart for him, being here all alone, and no family to speak to. She decided there and then to make him part of her family, whether he knew it or not. She wasn't going to let him go through any of this alone from now on.
"If you need anything, even if it's just someone to talk to, you give me a call and I will be here for you, okay?"
"I will, Ma'am. Thank you."
With one final smile, she walked to the door and left the room. Darian lay in bed thinking about how messed up his life was at the moment. It finally sank in that he wasn't able to get up and walk outside for a smoke, which he really needed right now.
He was tired, but he didn't want to fall asleep in case he started to dream about that shadow again. Instead, he flipped on the television to see what was happening in the big world outside.