Life in Disarray

Before her death, my wife had been the dreamer. She used to tell me about them when she awoke and I'd be amazed because my sleep had always been free of any imagery.

After the explosions began, those of us who were still alive were too busy trying to survive to spend much time mourning those who had been killed. There was a grand hotel that had withstood the blasts and we turned it into a fortress against the anarchists. As long as we kept vigils posted, we were able to ward off the worst of the bombers and, in addition to the obvious benefit of its guest rooms, there was an attached restaurant that we put to good use. Plus, the open areas provided by what had been conference rooms made for a decent triage center in our new world.

Everyone living there was expected to help out wherever there was a need. As the weeks passed and we adjusted to our new reality though, different strengths were acknowledged among us and we sorted into sections. There still wasn't time to truly grieve for those we'd lost but we did have time to think more about those who were gone now that we weren't constantly worried about our own lives.

Even as I missed my wife, I was aware of how much more suited to this new world she would have been than me. Her father had been a doctor and he'd given her better-than-rudimentary medical knowledge. Her years spent working as a nanny would have served her well in tending to the children here now. She had enjoyed knitting on occasion and would have been able to help with the constant mending of clothes, whereas I couldn't even stitch a straight line. She had loved to cook and would have been far more capable in the kitchen than my minimal ability to boil water allowed me to be. Additionally, the strong community that was developing here as we all relied on one another for our survival would have reinforced her belief in the "stronger together" philosophy.

Which isn't to imply that I was unable to pull my weight. The hotel's large laundry room was definitely a stroke of good fortune for the few thousand of us now living there. With the makeshift hospital needing a constant supply of clean linen for the wounded being treated, the numerous towels being used daily, and those of us who now called this our home appreciating being able to don clean clothing when we could, I kept myself busy within the constant hum of the multiple washers and dryers.

I even set up a rollaway bed for myself in a back corner of the cavernous space and bunked there rather than taking a shared space in one of the hotel's rooms. I had no qualms about using the housekeeping locker room that was nearby. Mostly, I craved a modicum of solitude within the teeming building.

It was there, when I slept on that uncomfortable bed in that noisy room where I now spent most of my time, that I began to dream.

Prior to the destruction that had upended my world, I had done a fair amount of travelling. I had wandered through hundreds of cities (sadly, I knew that many of them were now also under attack), along thousands of streets, meeting scores of people. Now, in my sleep, I had dreams about my voyages but it all got mixed up together and I'd end up lost. Cities would jumble together; people I met in one place showed up inexplicably in spots where I never knew them to be; landmarks appeared on roads where they did not belong. The strangeness never troubled me while I wandered in my dreams though the vividness of the imagery would startle me when I awoke.

Never having remembered dreaming before this, and thinking about how my wife had described her dreams, it took me some time to realize that my sleeping mind was searching for something. It wasn't until the day I was delivering freshly laundered bandages to the quasi-hospital rooms, and saw a recently injured patient being treated, that I realized what I'd been looking for while I slept. The wounded girl was wearing a charm bracelet on her unharmed wrist and from it dangled a silver heart.

My relationship with my wife had begun not long before her birthday. My feelings for her were strong from the start and I'd wanted to get her a gift to demonstrate how special she was to me but, since things were still new between us, I also hadn't wanted to overwhelm her with anything too elaborate. It was during this time, just a week or so before we had dinner plans for her birthday, that I had to take a trip to Spain for a conference. While there, thinking about this wonderful woman I had the pleasure of dating, I found myself on a small side street lined with storefronts. And there, in an old silver shop, I saw a beautiful heart-shaped locket.

The necklace was more than I'd intended to buy for a still-new relationship but it was perfect. We hadn't taken a picture together yet at that point but she'd insisted, after opening the gift, that we had to find an instant photo booth that night. She'd taken two of the images and inserted them into the locket and, after that, she rarely took the necklace off.

Now, as I stood staring at the heart on the girl's bracelet, I realized I didn't know where my wife's locket had ended up and that was what I'd been wandering all those streets in my dreams trying to locate.