When it finally happened to Linda on one of her shifts, August Pilarcek, an ailing symphony conductor was her patient. She had grown fond of him because they both spoke about music and dancing together. Mr. Pilarcek simply rang for the nurse as soon as he woke up, rather than thrash around on top of the bed for the nurses to find him. Linda ran into his room and asked "What is it?"
He was pale as a ghost, and his head rolled back and forth across the pillow as his lips moved. "I had that 'plane flying into the building' dream that's been going on," he said. "Except I was on the ground, walking, like I used to walk through the theater district, back in the forties. Then a plane hits this tall glass building, blows up, and fiery hunks of it start raining down on people."
Linda quickly checked his lines, his charts, and his readouts. "That's terrible. Did you want a sedative, Mr. Pilarcek? I'll get you one."
"But that's not the worst of it," he went on. "People started raining down out of the building, too."
"People?" Linda felt the hairs on the back of her neck raise.
August Pilarcek nodded. "They jumped out of the building, where the plane hit. Their bodies hit the concrete and splattered open like big bags of guts." His features contorted, and he lifted his head from the pillow, his eyes watery, as he looked around the bed and the side tables.
Linda quickly snatched an emesis pan from one of the shelves and held it underneath him as he spewed vomit into it.
She patted and rubbed his back as he continued, until the heaving subsided and he eased back onto his pillow. With a cleansing towel, Linda cleaned off the corners of his mouth and dabbed sweat from his forehead.
"It was terrible," he went on. "The most real dream I ever had. The worst nightmare."
Linda was suddenly glad she didn't have to fly anywhere soon.
She was going to bring up the incidents at the weekly meeting, but a crazy thing happened. The patients suddenly stopped having the dream. She was reminded of a credo.
"Death takes the mind where minds don't usually go."
By the time August arrived, she wished she could find a button to fast forward through the month like the fast forward button on a cassette tape player. They called April the cruelest month, but to her, it was August. Summer tightened its hot, watery grip in the air. There were no holidays in the month. She knew people in the helping and medical professions who took the whole month off. One doctor she'd met would vacation down in Chile, skiing.