20. Waking Up to a Nightmare

I am sitting on the pavement of a busy street, people striding quickly past me in both directions. They take no notice of me. I do not look up, my head and my stare are still. All I see are people’s legs hurrying along their way. I don’t move. I can’t move. My heart is too heavy, my legs are too weak. I know I need help. I try saying something aloud to attract someone's attention, but all I can muster is a whisper that I can hardly hear myself. My voice has abandoned me too. I start weeping, gently for a while, but soon I give in to despair and start sobbing loudly. Yet the passers-by are still oblivious of me, busy as they are with pursuing their errands. They appear to be physically in the same place as me, but I am alone.

This scene cannot be real, I think to myself. These passers-by must have been superimposed onto my world by some sort of time-space error. Their hectic striding cannot be happening at the same time as my crying for help, else they would see me; one of them would. I am helpless. I lie down on the pavement in anguish. My face rests on the hard concrete, which has been kept warm by the pollution of the speeding cars. This hard, warm feeling against my cheek feels real though, so the scene must be real after all. I am really living it. My tears are profuse, they wet the pavement. My eyes are now closed. I lie there powerlessly.

Then the first stone hits me. I open my eyes in pain to realise that the passers-by have disappeared and I am surrounded by a group of thugs. They are attacking me, throwing stones at me. I move away, using whatever little strength I have left to try and escape, but I stand no chance. The second stone hits me hard on my back. It opens a large wound, it penetrates my skin like a bullet. So does the third stone, on the side of my stomach. In vain I beg for pity, but they are thirsty for blood and human suffering. They continue to stone me. I can now feel the stones inside my body. They don’t belong to there: they are foreign objects, pulsing and throbbing like cancerous tumours. They cause the most horrendous pains. I am now sobbing so loudly that I wake myself up. I stop. And I am suddenly silent in the still of the night.

I touch my face, wet with tears, I touch my temples, my neck, my chest, drenched with sweat. The night is still and silent. For a split second I think back to the busy passers-by in my dream. Maybe they are asleep too now, somewhere, dreaming sweet dreams. Some of them may still be striding along the same street now lit by the moon; or maybe they have moved to another city in a different time zone to continue their errands; or have simply gone into someone else’s dreams. Then, sending a shiver of fear along my spine, my mind goes back to the thugs. The fear soon dissolves. I am so relieved that they have gone back into the darkness, that they never existed, that it was only a bad dream.

My relief is short-lived, as I now come back fully to my senses, and wish I hadn’t. I remember that my existence is a living nightmare. I remember that I have metastatic cancer. This is not just a bad dream. I have tumours inside my body that feel indeed like foreign stones thrown at me by a vicious enemy. The nightmare is real. It does not end when I wake.

The pain is very real too and because of it I cannot sit up easily in the bed. I must do it nonetheless, in order to reach for the painkillers on my bedside table. I swallow two pills; they should soon ease the pain a little. I close my eyes, tears start flowing on my face again, like in the dream I just had; but I know that from this nightmare I am not going to wake up. I cry myself to sleep again.

Night of 13 September 2015.

Cancer patient.