Visions in the Dark

I am in this old Western style town that has narrow dirt streets and wooden plank buildings. I am wearing a white dress and carrying a grey coat in my arms. The streets are filled with rough looking men, some of whom heckle me as I walk past. I do not see any children or women other than myself.

I come to a part of the street that opens up to a small lake. On the other side there is a man hitting baseballs in the direction of the street I am on. One of the baseballs hits my wrist and several men on the street laugh at me. As I am reeling from the stinging in my wrist another baseball suddenly hits me in the head and I fall down. I pretend I am unconscious to see if anyone will help me. My eyes are closed but I can hear footsteps approtching.

A heavy leather jacket is placed over me like a blanket and my grey jacker is put under my head like a pillow. I can sense several people around me, but all are silent and there is no conversation between them. Slowly I open my eyes to see who came to my aid. There are several men I do not recognize and one I do. The one who is farmiliar is my dream character Walter, who often only appears when I am my dream character Chun-li. I think it is strange that he is here, because I am not Chun-Li and he has never appeared before when I am any other character. Walter senses my thoughts and telepathically I can hear him say "Welcome back."

At first I think he is welcoming me back to consciousness but I figured he actually meant "Welcome back to the world of dreams" because I have not remembered any dreams for months, and also because he is not a character that shows a lot of emotion and he seemed really happy to see me again.

Walter picks me up and carries me to an area outside of town that has a medical ward of some kind. On the inside of the building it looks like a modern hospital but on the outside it has a complicated security system with checkpoints that you might find at an airport, prision or even military base. I still see no other women besides myself. After Walter checks me in he says that he has to do something and leaves. I beg him to stay because I feel safe when he is around but he insists that this thing is really important and disappears out the door. I do not see him again in this dream.

Not long after he leaves I explore the hospital a bit but when that gets boring I head outside and try to navigate the maze like security/check point system. I am held up at one gate and questioned intensely bye two guards but they eventually let me go. After that however, I notice to different men following me around, keeping just enough distance from me so as not to raise suspicion, though I can see them no matter where I go.

The sun begins to set and I want to get back to the hospital room but I find that I am lost and don't know which security gates I have to go through. The men following me are getting closer and closer and I fear they are going to tackle me or something. My last thoughts in this dream, before I wake up, is wondering where Walter is and why he left me all alone.

I am lost in a coniferous forest somewhere in snowy northern Canada. I have been lost for a long time, wandering in the endless frozen forest, and the cold is starting to effect my body in seriously adverse ways. My left hand, from the wrist, has turned completely black from frostbite and my legs have been numb for hours, thoughI still force myself to stumble through the snow because for I have a false believe that if I keep moving that things will get better or I will be found or something.

Another night comes and the moon is the biggest and the fullest I have ever seen before. It is so bright in fact that I can find my way through the forst as if it were day time. I cannot see what it is but I hear foot falls in the snow behind me and know that I am being followed by a wild animal. Many days and nights pass and my body is sucumbing more to the cold. The animal that has been following me is still around but I have no yet seen what it is, though I suspect that it is waiting for me to die. One day I collapse in the snow exhausted finally reigned to my inevitable fate and wait for the wild animal to come and eat me.

I lift my tired head and see a light grey wolf slowing making its way to me. The wolf is very think and weak looking and I can see the outline of its ribs and the creature seems to be starving terribly, though it is not threatening me and seems more curious than anything. I figure I am going to die anyway so I pull a pocket knife out and cut off my frostbitten hand and toss it towards the wolf then immediately pass out. I wake up at night and find myself alone. I don't know where the wolf went and cannot see if it ate my hand because it is too dark. I find the strength to stand up and begin wandering again, more out of boredom than anything because I don't think I am going to be saved and I am essentially just passing the time until I do. I am so cold and so tired that I no longer actually feel the cold that much anymore, let alone think about it.

Something happens one day though the dream becomes fuzzy and I cannot remember exactly what. I think a bear or a group of evil hunter men came upon me and attack me but I am saved my the light grey wolf that had been following me before. The wolf chases away my attacks and then has to drag me away from there, by the collar of my coat, through the forest because my body is so tired and damaged by the cold that I can no longer walk. I don't know how long the wolf dragged me but it felt like a long time. I pass in and out of consciousness for days and in one moment of clarity I talk to the wolf and believe it can understand me (partly loneliness, partly delerium) and tell him that when I die that he has my permission to eat my body because I know that it is still starving. I pass out again right after.

I wake up in a hospital bed. I know I am still in the north because I can see a snowstorm raging outside of my hospital window. It is night and everything is quiet and I am trying to wrap my mind around how I survived in the frozen north for so long. I also wonder about the starving wolf and feel bad that I did not die so that he would have something to eat. I lay awake for a long time because my mind is ruminating about so many things and the thoughts of my experience begin to overwhelm me when a nurse with sort curly hair in pink scrubs comes in and says that the doctor will be in shortly. After some time passes an elderly Native American aboriginal chief dressed in a leather vest and a coyboy hat comes in and tells me that I am lucky to be alive and he asks me about the details of my ordeal.

I tell him everything I remember happening including being saved by the starving wolf and the doctor tells me that I am mistaken. He says that I was found by the side of the road in one peice and that they had to amputate my hand because of the frostbite damage after I was brought to the hospital. I argue with the doctor and tell him that I am so sure that it all really happened. The doctor tells me that I was suffering from delerium from the cold and that I probably hallucinated the whole thing. I feel kind of at a loss because I am not sure how to feel but the doctor tells me that I probably did meet a wolf in the frozen north and that it guided me out of the forest because in Native American aboriginal legend, the wolf is a protector and a guide for lost soles.

After the docotr leaves I stare out of the window for a long time, trying to come to terms with what I though was real and what I was told really happen. Through the blowing snow outside I can see something move and when it comes close to the window I can see that it is the starving wolf that saved me, though it no longer looks like it is starving. The wolf looks at me for a moment than runs off into the snowstorm and the dream ends there.

At the beginning of the dream a new hospital has opened on the border between South and North Korea. The hospital was created by the United Nations for the people of both countries who cannot afford healthcare on their own. It is supposed to be politically neutral, and it was when it first opened, but the tentions between the two countries have overlapped into the hospotal building and it is now divided. The nouth end of the hospital is declared the territory and property of North Korea and the south end of the hospital to South Korea. While doctors and hospital workers can go anywhere in the building, North Koreans are restricted to the north end of the building and South Koreans to the south end.

These restrictions were brought about by the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to prevent people from North Korea from escaping through the hospital and defecting to the south. South Koreans are barred by armed soldiers located in the north end from entering and North Koreans are arrested if they try to enter the south end. Other than these strange rules, the hospital functions normally after some renovations are made to make sure that both South and North Koreans have access to the care they need in their respective building space. This includes two seperate waiting rooms in each end of the building. The name of the hospital in the dream is the United Nations Hospital of Peace, but because it sits on the border of the two Koreas, people generally call it the Border Hospital.

All of the doctors and care workers who are employed there are volunteers from different countries. This is so politics can be left out and the care of the patients remain priority. I have just finished my PHD in general medicine and I am transfered at my request to the Border Hospital. I am all idealistic and hopeful and actually think that I will be making a difference to bring about peace for the two countries by providing unconditional healthcare for all, and in the back of my mind I think about helping North Koreans defect secretly if I can but I voice my ideas to no one.

The majority of my work is located in the south end of the hospital, but one night I am very tired after a long day of work and because it is so late I have missed the last bus that would take me to the small apartment where I live on the South Korean side of the border. The hospital is open twenty-four hours a day on the south side, but is forced closed at midnight in the north end by the North Korean army. Since the lobby in the south end is full of activity and people, I wander through the empty halls in the north end. After checking on some in-patients and running a few last errands I laid down to sleep on a padded bench in the lobby in the North Korean end.

The dream changes from first person perspective to third person perspective. Sometime during the night, North Korean soldiers quietly enter the lobby and take me away in a dark green truck. Since the north end of the hospital was mostly empty of people, no one saw what happened and nothing is said about it publicly on the North Korean side the next day. I am missing for many days before two men from the United Nations come to investigate. Many people in the hospital tell them that they suspect that North Korea has me, but are afraid to make public accusations for fear that they will meet a similar fate. The two investigators do not have many leads when one day they come across the hospital security camera system. Because of lack of funding, no security guards had been watching the system, but it had been digitally recording ever since it was put in place when the hospital first opened.

The two men review the tapes and on the night I disappear they see men dressed in North Korean uniforms enter from the north entrance of the hospital and take me away. When confronted with the video evidence, Kim Jong-il definantly states that the soldiers were really South Koreans in disguise to make North Koreans look bad. He then invites a few select diplomats to visit all of the North Koreans prisons, but I am not found in any of them. The soldiers in the video are rounded up and questioned but only one will talk after being promised asylum in South Korea. He says Kim Jong-il knew about the security camera system and had been hacking it to spy on the hospital. When he saw me sleeping in the North Korean lounge, he commanded his soldiers at the hospital to arrest me for spying.

After the defection and confession of one of his soldiers, Kim Jong-il stages a coup and takes over the hospital. After evicting the patients and workers, the North Korean leader tries a take over of South Korea through the building, but the south retaliates and destroyes the hospital, sending North Korea back to their side of the border. No trace of what happened to me after I was arrested is ever found.

The dream starts off with me nine months pregnant with twins. I am lost and I have nothing to my name, and I wander aimlessly down a long stretch of road in the middle of nowhere. I walk for hours until I come across a little farm that seems vaguely farmiliar. I do not see any hydro lines or cars and it is soon aparent why: I am on a Mennonite farm. The Mennonite couple who answer the door are the same ones whom I remember from my youth: they owned a small store that they ran out of their house, close the the trailer park my parents and I went to every weekend in the summer. I have forgotten their names now though.

When the couple saw the state I was in, the husband rushed to hitch up the horses to the carriage and they took me to the nearest hospital, which was in a small town a few miles away. The showed great concern for me and even waited with me until I had been admitted. The Mennonite couple said they would come back the next day to check on me before they left. The hospital was a huge 5 story building that towered over everything else in the tiny town. It was strangley disproportioned compared to the area it was in, like it would be a hospital found in a busling metropolis, not a sleepy, country town. Despite its size, the hospital was unusually quiet and there seemed to be no one around.

A male nurse in green scrubs greeted the Mennonite couple plesantly but barely looked at me while he filled in the admission forms. The nurse still wouldn't look at me when he brought a gurney in for me to lay on and show the Mennonite couple out. As soon as the couple was gone the male nurse strode right past me and did not even acknowledge my presence from that point on. I was wisked away to another part of the hospital.

The female nurse pushing my gurney parked it in a hall outside of some rooms that had no one in them and I asked why I could not go into one of those rooms, but she ignored me. I was left alone in the hall and even though I could see all of the normal equipment that are in hospital halls, there was absolutely no one around. No nurses, no patients, no custodial staff: no one.

I layed on my gurney until I became restless and cold and got up to try and find someone. Just then three male doctors walked through some double doors at the end of the hall and came up to me. The one in the middle had a file that they were all looking at and discussing. I tried to get their attention, and though two of them glared at me for a second, none responded to my questions. When the three doctors were done reading the file, they finally addressed me, but said that, despite my condition, they had no rooms available for me and said that I would have to sleep outside in the grass.

I kind of stared at them dumbfounded and demanded to know why I had been admitted as a patient if they was no room - which I knew was a lie because all around me I could see rooms for patients that were completely empty, though ready for use. One of the doctors shook his head and said: "We have room for patients, just no room for you."

I broke down into bewildered tears as I was pushed to a pile of straw in a grassy spot by the hospital's main entrance and asked to get off the gurney. The female nurse threw a thin blanket over the straw and then turned around and went back into the hospital. I couldn't believe what was going on but I laid down on the pile of straw because I was exhausted and defeated. I could feel my babies kicking from the inside, as if they knew something was deeply wrong as well. I remember wishing that I was dead as night came, because it was so cold and the thin blanket did nothing to keep me warm. Only once or twice did a nurse come out to check on me, or offer me a sip of cold water.

When the sun began to rise it woke me up because it was right in my eyes. It was a bit foggy and everything was covered in a light frost. I was shivering violently and my lips were blue but I was much too weak to move and seriously thought I was going to die there. I suddenly felt some warm hands lift me up and I was tightly wrapped in a heavy blanket that smelled like barnyard animals. I opened my eyes and saw the Mennonite couple, who demanded to know right away why I was not in the hospital.

When they heard of my horrible treatment at the hospital, the Mennonite couple take me in their carriage back to the farm, insisting that I can give birth in the comfort of their home. I don't rememeber much else from the dream though I do know that I woke up before giving birth.