Chapter 16
I am awake, and yet my perception of reality remains shifty. All the familiar objects around me appear oddly foreign, known and yet in part different from the way they should be.
I am unable to define the hour of the day till I get in Arthur’s car and read the clock. 5:03 a.m., it reads. I wonder for how long I’ve slept before Arthur shook me awake.
“When did I phone you?” I ask him.
“At around three thirty, why?” he replies.
“I was just trying to rebuild the sequence of events. But how did you manage to find where I live?” I want to know.
“You told me when you called. Are you sure you remember nothing? It’s strange that your call reached me right then-” Arthur starts.
I look at Arthur, waiting for him to formulate his thoughts.
“It’s strange,” he repeats, and we drive in silence for a moment before he continues.
“I was dreaming when you called. The dream took place in a distant past, and I was a doctor. I was escorted in a rich carriage to a hidden place, situated in a rugged and remote land. The two men accompanying me led me into a small abode, nested in the cavity of a rocky wall. The place was filled with bottles and ampoules, and it seemed to me I had landed in an outlandish chemistry lab. I heard a muffled cry coming from a room I hadn’t noticed at first, where the men gestured me to enter. And there, lying on a black bed, I saw a woman in labour. She looked at me with pleading eyes, and when I sat beside her I couldn’t tell if she wanted me to help her deliver or to keep the baby inside her forever. “Promise you’ll take care of her”, she begged. I placed a hand on her forehead in an attempt to calm her down, but she was determined to get an answer. “Promise. Promise that one day you will remember to tell Iris that I am her mother, and that my name is Katrine,” she insisted.”
I gasp, and Arthur looks my way for a moment too long till a loud, continuous honk wakes us up to reality.
Our braided eyes turn in unison, clashing against the red traffic light we just burned, the head of a huge truck, and our cracked windshield, as time condenses into a frenzy of lost seconds.