A new chance

Jeremy lay in his hospital bed. Hurting. Lonely. Bored. It had been many days, maybe even weeks now, during which time no one much had come to visit him. A few friends right after the accident. His boss. His sister.

"Hey, there," a new nurse appeared at the foot of his bed, picking up his chart and giving it a quick glance. "Looks like you've had a tough go of it."

Jeremy tried to muster a smile and almost succeeded. "Yeah, I guess." She had long blond curls and a great smile. She was pretty, he thought, just the type he liked. Not that he had much of a chance with her now that most of his body was covered with severe burns. "At least I came out of it better than my house."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well, easy come, easy go, I guess." The flat sarcasm in his voice betrayed his sense of material loss.

She checked his vitals and started to replace his IV feed.

"So what do you do?" she asked, making small talk to take his mind off what she was doing.

"I used to be in marketing for an Internet start-up that does web-based remix apps, but now..." he faded off. "I'm not sure."

She looked at him, quizzically, but without any pressure to continue, until he eventually did.

"So much in my life has changed with the fire. I'm basically homeless. I probably won't have a job by the time I get out of here. With everything that's happened now, it makes you, well, you know, rethink things I guess."

Retaping the IV feed, she asked him how old he was.

"Twenty-five. Just had my birthday last month."

"Maybe this is a new chance," she said casually, finishing up. "See you later."

As she left the room, his mind went back to his big birthday bash. There were over a hundred people there, and it was a great party. Lots of great food, booze, fun-loving friends. He thought about the huge cake and the wish he'd made. No chance of that now.

Depressed and without any ready distractions at hand, he drifted off to sleep.

Jeremy seldom had dreams he remembered, but during this afternoon nap, he had the most vivid one he could remember. He was not in LA any more, and in fact, he wasn't anywhere he'd ever seen. It was warm and dry with a dusty spice scent in the air. There was a vast desert and a expansive deep blue sky, maybe somewhere in northern Africa. He was in a white, airy tent sitting on a tall, wooden stool. In front of him was an easel and a canvas, and on it was a vibrant scene of a lush garden full of juicy red tomatoes, bushes bending over from the weight of heavy pomegranates, vines with watermelons about to split open from ripeness.

In one hand was a paintbrush; in the other, a palette with the bright colors of the fruits. His hands and arms were scarred but healed.

He set the palette and brush down and stood, walking toward the opening in the tent.

Outside was the very same garden he'd been painting.

A very old man was walking along the path at the edge of the garden. He wore a light gauzy cotton djellaba, and he carried an intricately carved wooden staff.

He turned and looked deeply into Jeremy's eyes, "We're so glad you've seized this new chance."

Jeremy immediately woke, sitting up in bed. He could still hear the ancient man's voice, smell the spice in the air, see the deep colors of the garden, and feel the sensation of a deeper life.

He felt a new awareness in his body. He couldn't say exactly what it was, but there was a kind of energy and presence in his mind that he had not felt before.

Within himself, he felt both calm and fervor.

With the new clarity, he picked up the spiral notebook next to his bed. Someone had given it to him with a suggestion of engaging in some therapeutic writing, but it had lay unused since then. Now, he had a reason to write.

He quickly made a series of lists...what he'd lost, what he still had, what he wanted out of life, what was really important, what he would do next.

Ten pages of frantic scribbling, sketching, and searching later, he felt like a different person. He knew that his life was on a new path.

His birthday wish was fulfilled: he had found "someone special." He just hadn't realized it would be a different version of himself.