Zephyr Dorsey

Beyond Within

“Stephanie!”
The wind billows the red curtains and flutters the sheets covering the furniture.
That table hidden beneath the undulating white fabric was once our tiny world. Newlyweds with little else than food, love, and candlelight. Dinner abandoned for bed. Forgotten candle melting down fast — like life, like youth, like hope.
That desk-shaped ghost was once my prison. She stood behind me there, many a night, hands rubbing my shoulders, consoling me.
“Whatever comes,” she whispered, “We have each other, my love.”
“Stephanie!” I call more frantically.
I walk room to room, searching, calling. I am surprised by the young man glancing fearfully at me in the hallway mirror. I touch my beard, and the youth in the glass touches his cleanshaven face. I run my fingers over my bald head. He runs his through his thick, dark hair.
In the bedroom, I find Stephanie sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in one of her favorite outfits, a dark red skirt with a golden blouse. She turns toward me, her smile warming me like a fire. She reaches out her hand, and I take it, her fingers impelling a kiss. My lips linger on her soft skin.
I sit beside her, but she rises just as I am sitting. I feel the bed giving-way beneath my weight and find myself falling backwards. I reach out for my wife and she reaches for me, but our hands just miss each other, and I fall until I am engulfed in darkness and, far above me, is a rectangle of light, and I can see my wife’s silhouette dimming the glowing frame and hear her voice calling to me, the syllables of my name arriving warbled by the dense and liquidy depths. My lungs plead for oxygen. I start to panic–
“Wake up! Wake up!”
I open my eyes to see a young man in a long white coat staring worriedly at me. He glances at the monitors beside the bed, then back at me.
A tall, elderly man, also wearing a long white coat, steps into the room, his lank shadow falling over the bed.
“We almost lost him, doctor,” says the young man.
The tall doctor leans closer to me. He picks-up my wrist and, holding it, looks to his watch. His expression is serene, and I relax a little. He lowers my arm to the bed and turns to look over the young man’s shoulders at the monitors. “Another shot of Zelanium.”
“But doctor…”
The doctor stoppers the man’s objection with a glance. Obediently, the young man lifts a syringe from a nearby metal table and plunges its needle into a small bottle of clear liquid standing on a silver tray. He pulls back the ring of the syringe’s tiny plunger and draws the clear liquid up into its shaft. He comes over, a look of sadness and concern on his face, and I feel the pinch of the needle in my arm.
My head swirls. I am drifting through a fog.
Cold air scurries like a mouse over my tongue and down my throat. Icy tentacles spread within my lungs. I see a thread of light high above and swim up toward it through the thick fog. The light above grows larger, taking-on the shape of a rectangle. At last, I break the surface, water gushing over the sides of the bed as I hang gasping over the frame.
I climb out of the bed and exit the room on wet, shaky legs. Where is my wife? I must find her.
I return to the room with the roiling red curtains and ghostlike furniture.
“Stephanie!”
I hear movement behind me and turn sharply. There, standing in the corner is an old woman, wrinkled, with sunken cheeks, her hair hanging in gray strings.
I cover my mouth. It is my wife!
Her dark eyes are sad, accusing. “You promised me, Harlan,” creaks her voice. “You said you would never leave me.”
She falls toward me. I catch her brittle bones and sagging flesh. The wind gusts through the window, lifting the red curtains. The body held in my arms turns to ash and floats away.
“You promised me!” the wind hisses.
“Doctor!” the young man gasps.
“Let’s give it another moment, Simmons,” replies the calm masculine voice.
I can hear them speaking, but all is darkness.
“It can take a little time for the Zelanium to go through its full spectrum of effects.”
“Doctor Zelany… I’m sure you realize…” The young man called Simmons clears his throat. The smell of chemicals permeates the room. “The patient could slip into a coma. At any moment.”
“You didn’t even try for that one, Harlan.”
It’s my wife’s voice. It takes me a moment to realize that I am standing on a small field of short-trimmed, very green grass. A bright, rectangular sun shines high above. A few wispy clouds pass over the bright blue sky. The day is warm, and the breeze is refreshing.
I look across a high, flimsy net at the woman talking to me. She is young and beautiful and the legs beneath her white skirt are very shapely. She points toward my feet with her racket. I look down and see the red and white birdie of a badminton set. I reach down and pick it up.
Beside the grassy court, a little stone girl pours water from a pitcher into a fountain.
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” asks a third person.
I look over and see Dr. Hank Zelany standing beside me, also holding a racquet. He is very young. I look again through the net and realize that there is a second woman on that side of the court. She is Hank’s wife, Selma.
I remember my line and answer, “I’m on the side of truth, justice, and the American way.”
“Well, no wonder we’re losin’!” responds the doctor.
“You gonna serve that birdie or fry it up for dinner, hun?” asks my wife, planting her feet apart and readying her racket.
I toss the birdie into the air and arch my back and watch the red and white colors twirl into the extremely blue sky… twirling, twirling… I lose sight of the birdie when it flies into the glowing rectangle, and everything begins to spin.
I open my eyes. Hank is above me, but now he is old again.
He smiles. “Hello, old friend,” he says in his gruff voice.
I struggle to raise myself. He gently puts his hands on my shoulders and nudges me back down.
“There, there,” he says. “Everything is fine. Just rest a bit.”
I allow myself to be lowered again onto my pillow.
“Close your eyes, Harlan. You need to sleep. Remember?”
I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. But my eyes are heavy, and I allow them to close.
I hear someone crying and glance to my right.
I am standing in the sheet-covered room with the flowing red curtains. The crying is coming from outside. I shove aside the curtains and realize that they do not cover a window, but a patio doorway. Looking out, I see that the trees are naked, and the wind is running invisible fingers through their fallen leaves of red and yellow-orange. I listen intently to the wind, trying to determine where the sound of crying is coming from.
I see someone running away, kicking through the rolling carpet of blood and gold. She wears a dress long and white, like a wedding dress, and runs giggling beyond the waterless stone fountain with the chipped-face little girl holding her dry pitcher over moldering leaves.
“Stephanie!” I cry out, but she has disappeared in the woods beyond. I leap through the patio’s curtains but trip and fall.
Getting to my feet, I find myself inside a hospital room. Hank is standing across from me, looking at his watch. He is old, but perhaps not quite as old as before. The wrist he is gently lowering to the bed this time is not my own. It belongs to an elderly woman.
“How is she, doctor?” I hear myself asking.
Hank shakes his head.
I walk over to the bed. Stephanie’s long gray hair flows over her pillow.
I feel Hank’s hand on my shoulder. “We’ve done all we can.”
I lower my head, my eyes filling with tears.
“Harlan? Harlan, are you there?”
I seize my wife’s hand and bring it to my lips. “Yes, my love. I’m here. I’m here.”
“I thought you were gone. I thought you had left me.”
Her voice is frail and dry.
I drop to my knees beside the bed. “No, no. I’m right here, darling.”
“It was lonely without you, Harlan.”
“Lonely?”
“It’s not the dying I mind so much, Harlan. It’s the thought of losing you.”
“Oh, Stephy…”
I kiss the fingers, still so soft, so thin, still the same fingers that massaged my neck as I struggled at my desk to make us a living out of nothing but dreams and an ever more faltering confidence in my craft.
“Harlan?”
“Yes, my love?”
“Promise me we’ll always be together.”
I brush back that strand of hair that had intruded upon her face her whole life. “Nothing can separate us, Stephy. Nothing.”
“Promise me!”
She grips my hand with surprising strength.
A bedside monitor begins flashing. I sense Hank moving toward it.
“I’ll never leave you, Stephy. I promise. I promise!”
Stephanie smiles and seems to relax, allowing her head to drop back onto her pillow. Her grip on my hand loosens, then goes completely limp.
The monitor behind me shrieks a horrible sound. Hank bends down and yanks its cord from the outlet before leaning against the white wall, his face buried in the crook of his arm.
The wind gusts through the room’s red curtains.
A bright light shines in my eyes. I jerk back and see Hank standing in front of me, holding one of his doctory utensils in my face. He lowers the offending instrument and takes a step back.
“Harlan, you’ve got to take better care of yourself. Are you getting exercise? Are you eating at all?”
I shrug.
He falls back into his vinyl-upholstered desk chair. “What’s the problem, my friend?”
“You know the problem.”
He sighs. “She was a wonderful woman, Harlan. But you’ve got to let her go.”
I say nothing. What is there to say? Was a wonderful woman. That said it all.
“Would you like me to set up an appointment for you? To talk to someone?”
“Talk to someone? You mean like a shrink?”
“A grief counselor.”
“I ain’t crazy, Hank. Crazy would be acting as if nothing had happened. As if my whole life had not been completely shattered.”
Hank nods. “How are you sleeping?”
“Not well.”
“No? Why not?”
“She comes to me in my dreams, Hank, demanding to know why we are apart. She says I promised her that I would never leave her.”
Hank rubs the armrests of his chair a few times before standing. “That old house is full of memories for you, Harlan. You ever thought about moving?”
I shake my head. Hank leans his tall frame over his desk and begins writing something.
I smile. “You know, the grass has never fully grown back from where we used to play our games in the yard. Us and the girls.”
Hank turns to me, straightening to his full stature. “Yes,” he says, and I can tell his eyes are staring into the past. He smiles in that sad way that a surviving spouse smiles when thinking of old times.
He walks over and hands me a small sheet of paper.
“What’s this?”
“The first thing we have to do is get you sleeping again. Sleep is nature’s number one wonder drug.”
I crumple the paper in my fist. “Sleeping pills? I’ve never taken a sleeping pill in my life.”
“Harlan, sleep deprivation can have profound effects upon the proper functioning of your body… and your mind.”
“Oh. Now I get it. You do think I’m crazy.”
“Just take the pills, my friend. Get some sleep. Then we’ll go from there.”
I look down at the wrinkled paper. “Zelanium? This is that thing you were working on at the institute.”
“Yes. One pill per night. Just until you get your sleep-rhythm re-established. No more, no less. I’ve got another patient to see.” He pauses at the door to point at me. “Starting tonight.”
The wind from the office window catches the door and slams it closed after him. I jump.
The door re-opens. It’s Hank, but he is now dressed in a different suit. He does a double-take of me.
“Harlan?” he says, quickly setting his tablet-screen down on his desk and coming over to where I’m sitting on the examining table. “You look like a new man.”
“Thanks, doc.”
“Are those sleeping pills helping?”
“Oh, yes. But that’s not the best part.”
“What’s the best part?” he asks, taking hold of my wrist and peering at his watch.
“Since I started taking your Zelanium pills, I’ve been lucid dreaming.”
“Lucid dreaming? Really?”
“Yes. I’m in control of my dreams now. Sometimes partially, but sometimes almost completely. And every night, guess who visits me in these wonderful dreams?”
“Stephanie,” he says, a note of concern in his voice. He drops my wrist.
“It’s amazing. Wonderful. And I have you and your pills to thank for it. I sleep ten, twelve hours a day now.”
“Twelve hours?”
“I despise this waking world, Hank. Despise it. This cruel world without my Stephy. If it wasn’t for my dreams of her, I wouldn’t want to go on living. Your medication is a wonder drug. A miracle. I cannot thank you enough.”
“I have to tell you the truth, Harlan. We did a lot of research on Zelanium. Years of clinical trials. And you’re the only person who’s ever had this type of reaction. I’m afraid… well, I’m afraid it won’t last.”
“It must last! It has to last!” I find myself gripping the sleeve of Hank’s white labcoat.
He looks down at my trespassing hand, and I release him.
“You know, Harlan,” he says, “sleeping too much can be almost as unhealthy as not sleeping enough. It’s often a sign of depression. Maybe you should lay off the pills now that you’re sleeping again. I don’t think we should renew your prescription.”
“You have to renew it! I must have those dreams!”
Hank retreats toward his desk.
“The pills are working, Hank,” I continue, trying to calm my tone. “I’m feeling much better. Don’t I look much better?”
“You look great,” admits Hank, leaning a hip against his desk and crossing his long arms.
“Well then?” I say.
He shakes his head, far from convinced.
“Look… Hank… You know I’ve been fortunate. Not only in love, but with my books as well.”
“It took you long enough,” he kids. “Any other woman would’ve given up the faith when you hit fifty and were still penniless.”
“Yes, that’s true. But now I’ve been left a very wealthy widower. One with no heirs.”
Hank nods sympathetically.
“I have a request to make from you, old friend,” I say.
“Whatever I can do to help.”
“I will sign you over a substantial portion of my worldly wealth, and –“
He waves a hand and takes a step forward. “No, no–“
“And in return,” I say, speaking over him, “and in return, you will do me one small favor.”
I explain the favor.
“You’re mad, Harlan!”
“Is it madness to know exactly what one wants?”
“When what you want is a living death, yes!”
“In my dreams, I’m with my wife. The love of my life. My Stephy. We talk, we share long walks, we enjoy splendid meals. We are young again. We make passionate love.”
Hank frowns and sighs.
“But always, always I must wake up,” I continue. “I’m forced to return to this world, where there’s nothing for me. Nothing! Just a horrible place where I’m old and decrepit.”
“I’m sorry, Harlan. You’re my best friend, and I feel for you. I do. But you’ve got to understand. Ethically, I’m bound to–“
“I know, I know. You’re bound to do no harm. But this would hardly be doing harm. It would be the opposite of that.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I promised her, Hank. I said I would never leave her.”
“But Harlan. It’s only dreams. You’re not really — I mean, it’s not like it’s really her.”
“How do you know that?” I barked. “You don’t know! You only know this.” I gesture around the room. “This faded, paltry realm of pain and heartache.”
I feel a pain in my chest. Hank helps me to lie back on the examining table.
When I open my eyes, he is standing over me. I am hooked up to several monitors. The young doctor, Simmons, is in the room attending to the transparent pouches hanging over my head. When Hank sees that I am awake, he smiles and winks at me.
“Thank you, Doctor Simmons,” says Hank to the young man. “Why don’t you go home and get some rest now before your next shift?”
“You’re sure, Doctor Zelany?”
Hank says that he is sure, and Simmons leaves us alone in the room. I am awake but cannot speak.
Hank approaches me with a syringe. “I hope you know what you’re doing, old friend,” he says as he pricks me with the needle. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.”
I manage to move a hand far enough to place it over his own.
“You’re welcome,” he says, grinning and placing my hand back beside me on the bed. “Tell Stephanie I said, hi.”
Young Stephanie comes up behind me and puts her arms around me. “You kept your promise.”
I bring her soft fingers to my lips and kiss them.