Where Dreams Subside

The was nothing unusual about that Thursday afternoon. Detective Daniel Clay was taking his normal route to the station after finishing lunch at Brooke's Diner a few blocks away. With fifteen minutes left to his lunch hour, his walk was unhurried and other than the typical detective attire you wouldn't suspect he was a police officer. He kept walking, nodded to the Homeless Joe, and wondered if his partner Davies would be back from her appointment on time.

So, with all things considered, he didn't feel anyone following him. None of his cop instincts were kicking up. Why would they? He had been working Robbery for three years and had never made noise; he had no enemies to feel threatened by. Everything was clear cut - black and white in a world full of gray.

From the outside Daniel had lived the ordinary American life. He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago with loving parents, two younger brothers and an older sister. In high school he got decent grades, was co-captain of the football team and power forward on the varsity basketball team. He even dated the head cheerleader. After college, he joined the force just like his old man. Also at that time he meet Kimberly Weston who would later become his wife. They bought a house together just outside the city, got a dog named Bill, and go to dinner at his parents house every other Sunday. Life was good. No bumps, no waves. Everything was perfectly normal. That is until Daniel was nearly beaten to death and left in an aisle just three blocks from the station.

It turn out that life wasn't as ordinary as it appeared.

*

The hospital was in it's usual Monday haze. Almost anywhere you stood there was beeping of machines, people yelling about charts, or hear the blinking of horrible overhead lighting that always seemed to be on the brink of burning out. Camille hated the hospital and would give her last hundred bucks to be anywhere else. She looked around her in the waiting room at the array of people who would probably agree with her. Every time she stepped on the other side of the sliding glass doors of the hospital entrance her body would tense and her fingers would stiffen. It took everything she had to go in and she had been coming there every other week for the past seven months. To Cam, it was a waste of time, but she made it a rule never to argue with her brother. Besides Elliot was all she had left.

Cam twisted a pencil between her fingers as the pounding in her head increased. She had had the headache for two days now, but coming into the hospital made it worse. Laughing quietly to herself, she saw the irony in her situation as clear as day. To keep her mind occupied she thought of the new items that had come in for Professor Clemmons.  The crate was suppose to be delivered to the department at 5:00 that afternoon and if she wasn't dying she might be there at the opening. Well, someone had to be there she mused. That bastard Clemmons hadn't opened any of his deliveries in God knows how long. If it wasn't a guaranteed article in the Science Journal then the man could not be bothered. To put it bluntly, the man was a press whore.

Her thoughts were cut short when the charge nurse called her back to the exam room. Walking down the corridors with Nurse Daisy felt like walking down the halls of a prison as a death row inmate. She was probably exaggerating a tad, but the white walls seemed to be caving in on her. They passed room by room, each with its own sad story. When she first started her visits Cam couldn't help but look. Now she forced herself not to because her heart broke when she did.

The exam room was typical with med bed, the standard doctors chair and slid curtain for privacy. After checking her vitals Nurse Daisy showed herself out shutting the door on the way. Instead of thinking about the results of her latest tests, Cam walked over the small window at the back of the room and looked out at the joyous view of the parking structure across the street. Amazing what a Ford Escort looks like from four stories up. If Roger he ex- were here he'd tell her that she was avoiding the issue and not confronting her fears. No shit Sherlock. But Roger wasn't there, he was off with supermodel blonde with legs that went up to there and was named Brandi. With an "i" no less.

At that moment, there was slight knock on the door before it swung open. Dr. Harry Steinberg looked like your favorite uncle. He was overweight and completely bald except for a grey ring around the back of his head. His eyes were brown and always made you feel at ease. Harry was an all around nice guy, with bad news to tell her. It didn't take a genius to figure out what the MRI and blood test said. All you had to do was look at the good doc's face. Dr. Steinberg leafed through her chart one more time while he took a seat. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally spoke.

"So Camille, how are we doing today?"

"Well, my day's been okay, but your going to tell me other wise."

Dr. Steinberg sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Look, Camille, we can take the tests again if you want. But I'm going to tell you what the other doctors told you, there's nothing here to explain the pain you're experiencing in head. There's no tumors or abnormalities that we can find."

Cam gave a tired smile to the doctor and shook her head. She knew there would be nothing there. She had had the headaches since she was a kid and there was nothing there. Whatever was going on with her, it was all in her head. Ha.

"I don't know what to tell you kiddo, other than the malfunctioning lab we ran a couple of months ago, everything is clean." Ah, the infamous "Malfunctioning Lab". It almost sounded like an old mystery movie by Alfred Hitchcock.

It was finally over. She tried not to think about the small piece of hope she held. The things that made her "special" would remain a mystery and that probably was a good thing.

"So Doc, how are the grandkids?"

The two of them shot the breeze for a minute talking about the missus and his children and their children. Everyone was growing up, he said. The next thing he know, they'll be having kids and he won't see the end of it. Harry was in the middle of talking about his plans for paying a bigger car for when the family visits, when Nurse Daisy rushed into the room.

"Excuse me Dr. Steinberg, but we're having trouble with Rm. 415 and we need you stat."

It was then that everyone heard the shouts coming from down the hall. Nurses and orderlies were running and screaming down the passage way. Instantly, Steinberg switch back to the Doctor-On-Call and rushed out of the room to commotion. Cam stood there for a few minutes trying to absorb what happened. The shouts continued from outside and like a witness to a car wreck on the freeway, she couldn't help but be drawn to it.

Everyone had surged into Rm. 415 which turned out to be completely down the hall. Trying not to get in the way, Cam stood back from the doorway to peek inside. Two orderlies were holding down the patient as he scream what seemed to be gibberish. Dr. Steinberg filled a syringe with what had to be a tranquilizer and injected it into the man's thigh. Slowly, the man stopped fighting the two men that were holding him down. His eyes were searching the room for something and suddenly fell on Cam. Their gazed held each others for a single, breathless moment and he mouthed something she couldn't quite pick up before he shut his eyes.

Cam stood totally still as she felt like someone had just hit her with a dump truck. Completely overwhelmed at what happened, she forced her mind to go blank but was having little success. Around her everything went back to normal. Nurses filed away to there stations and checked on other patients to make sure they were maintained. She could only stand motionless against the wall until Nurse Daisy touched her on the shoulder, her Southern accent cutting through the fog clouding her mind.

"Are you alright honey?"

Cam mutely nodded.

"Such a strange thing, that one. None of us thought he'd wake up."

"Why? What happened to him?"

"Police officer. He was found in some alley, half dead. When he got here he was in a coma. Been out for almost two weeks now."

Cam wanted to ask more about him when Dr. Steinberg tapped her. She followed him out to the waiting room.

"Sorry about that. Are you alright? You look a little under the weather all of the sudden."

"Is it normal for patients to wake out of a coma like that?"

"Sometimes." Dr. Steinberg sighed deeply. He took off his glasses and cleaned them on the edge of his white lab coat. "They become disoriented because they're not familiar with time and the space there in. Depending on what kind of trauma they've dealt with, their speech can be impaired like you heard. He'll be fine in the morning. We're just happy he woke up."

She nodded to the doctor and shuffled her way silently out of the hospital. The fresh air hit her face as the doors slide open, but she didn't notice the cool breeze. Too distracted to think she walked the seventeen blocks back to the office instead of taking a taxi. Her mind kept whirling around the man in a coma. What stuck with her the most was the look of terror in his ocean blue eyes. His fear and urgency had rolled off of him in waves.

Camille stood outside her destination, but didn't walk through the building's door immediately. Standing in the middle of the sidewalk, she ran the scene through her head over and over again, scanning through each detail with a fine tooth comb.

It wasn't possible, but if her memory was right, that man had said her name.

[WIP - Comments welcomed and appreciated...]