The Hambledown Dream

by Dean Mayes

  Andy was distracted from the radio discussion by the presence of a figure in the corner of the room, beside the bed, huddled in a chair. A woman.

  He strained to see her in the darkness.

  “Sonya?” he croaked. “Sonya, is that you?”

  The figure in the chair woke with a start and reached up above her head for a switch on the wall. A light snapped on and Samantha sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Dev? Hey,” she said, blinking the sleep from her eyes. “Welcome back.”

  Andy shook his head and tried in vain to open his eyes. His face felt so swollen. He managed to open his left eye and look up at Samantha. For a moment, as he stared blankly at her, Samantha sensed that he didn’t recognize her; it was as though he were expecting her to be someone else.

  Everything spun back into focus. He was gone from the room overlooking the garden. He was gone from Sonya again. He was back in Chicago, The Pub, his apartment, Samantha sitting here. Then he remembered.

  Vasq.

  Andy’s last recollection was Vasq striking him with something hard.

  ‘You can’t just walk away, you fuck!’ Vasq’s words echoed. ‘I own you!’

  Andy struggled to sit up in bed until Samantha placed a firm hand on his shoulder.

  “Hey, hey. Just take it easy, there. You’ve got a couple of busted ribs - not to mention bruises all over you. You need to rest.”

  He slumped back, flustered, frustrated, suddenly aware of a dull ache in his side that was evidently masked by morphine.

  “Sonofabitch,” he said, feeling as though he was trying to talk with a mouthful of marbles. “This is not good.”

  “You’re telling me,” Samantha agreed. “You got jumped pretty good. Those friends of yours left you for dead in an alley not far from your house. You took a hell of a beating.”

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s early,” Samantha replied. “The nurse let me sneak in since I accompanied you into the hospital. You’ve been here three days.”

  Andy groaned ruefully and blinked his eyes, trying furiously to open his bandaged one, but failing. Eventually he gave up.

  “I knew Vasq wouldn’t let me go quietly.”

  In the soft light from the overhead lamp, Samantha noticed his good eye. Something about it made her frown curiously. It was different, somehow, but she could not determine what exactly it was that was different.

  “You have to talk to the police, Dev,” she said, brushing the thought away. “If you know it was them, you’ve gotta stop them now before they do it again.”

  Andy’s face contorted into a mask of pain.

  “They are a protected species, Sam. I don’t have the coziest relationship with the police, either. I doubt they would act on my sob story,” he looked back at her. “You’ve been here all this time? Every day?”

  Samantha nodded.

  “Gideon has been really good about letting me come down. It’s almost as if he’s really worried about you. He’s even paying my cab fare and not docking my pay. Generous of the old bastard, isn’t it?”

  Samantha watched him sympathetically before a curious frown furrowed her brow. She remembered something Andy had said just a few moments ago.

  “Who’s Sonya?”

  Andy blinked with his one good eye and Samantha tilted her head slightly.

  There it was again, that something about his eye that she couldn’t quite discern. She leaned in closer to him, her iridology interest coming to the fore. As he looked towards the ceiling, Samantha tried to get as close a look at his pupil as she could. But whatever it was, it eluded her.

  Brushing the thought aside, Samantha smiled curiously.

  “Andy? Who’s Sonya?”

  The mention of her name from anyone else’s lips sounded strange.

  “Dev?”

  Andy turned his head slowly, painfully, back to Samantha.

  “She... I...,” he struggled to come up with an answer. Eventually he settled on a simple diversion. “Nobody.”

  Samantha’s frown softened.

  “C’mon,” she pressed. “Didn’t sound like nobody to me. I’ve never heard you mention that name before. You’ve got me curious.”

  Andy shook his head.

  “It’s nothing. Nobody. It was just a dream.”

  Samantha wasn’t at all convinced.

  “C’mon, Dev,” she said with a quizzical grin. “I know you’ve had a few more irons in the fire than you let...”

  “Let it go, will you?” he shot back suddenly. Samantha flinched. He immediately regretted it.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Samantha was stung. Her cheeks flushed and she looked away from him.

  “I should leave you to get some rest.”

  She rose from the bed and collected her jacket from the chair. Feeling awful, Andy reached out and took her hand in his.

  “No, Sam. Please stay. I...”

  Samantha paused. She looked down at her hand in his, but made no move to pull it away. His hand was warm, his grip firm. Slowly, Samantha sat down again. An awkward silence settled between them for a few moments.

  “I have a habit of being an asshole to you, huh?” Andy finally said. “You don’t deserve that. You deserve much better than that.”

  Samantha blushed and squeezed his hand. Still she didn’t pull away.

  “Have you ... ever felt like you’ve known a place ... somewhere far away, like, intimately?” he asked. “Yet you know you’ve never been there?”

  Samantha tilted her head to one side.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Andy closed his eyes. He spoke haltingly.

  “Ever since the overdose, I’ve been having these dreams. About another place, another life. It’s like - I know this place. I’ve always known this place. But I’ve never been there.”

  In the darkness behind his closed eyes, he saw her.

  “I’ve never even met her. It’s crazy. But I know her. It’s like - I’ve always known her.”

  Samantha withdrew her hand. He didn’t notice.

  “She’s beautiful, Sam. We’re in love. Like, really in love. We have a house together - a dog. We have a life together - or at least, we had a life. Something happened. I’m not there anymore. Something happened to me. But I don’t know what.”

  “It sounds to me like you’ve taken one too many pills, Dev,” Samantha mumbled.

  He continued, unaware she was growing uncomfortable.

  “I know it sounds crazy. But it’s so frigging real. I can’t explain it. It’s like - something happened in that trauma room. It’s like I absorbed the memories of someone else’s life.”

  Samantha stood up again abruptly, and this time she put her jacket on.

  “Andy, you need to rest,” she snapped. “You’ve had the stuffing kicked out of you and you’re not thinking straight.”

  She leaned over the bed as if to plant a kiss upon his forehead. But she caught herself, hesitated, then turned away briskly and left the room.

  Andy stared dumbfounded at the door that shut noisily behind her.

  In the hall, Samantha paused and glanced back at the door to Andy’s room. She shook her head and cursed under her breath.

  ***

  Two days later, Andy sat propped up in bed, contemplating the breakfast tray in front of him. He had been moving the cereal around the bowl for nearly half an hour, hoping that, miraculously, his appetite would magically appear.

  It didn’t. He wasn’t the slightest bit hungry.

  The swelling in his face felt as though it had improved significantly in the time since he’d first awoken in the ICU - yet it still felt incredibly painful. Every time he so much as twitched his lower jaw, sharp, intense pain pierced through the sutured gash in his right cheek. Once he was moved to the four bed bay on the ward, his sleep was terrible. He tossed and turned - as much as the awful bruising would allow him to. Often he found himself seeing out the pre-dawn hours mulling over his predicament, thinking that
he must be going crazy. The police had been and, once again Andy had stonewalled them, as he had done so in the past. This time, the detective had left him a card encouraging him to consider making contact if Andy’s memory came back to him. Strangely, Vasq was of little concern to him right now. He had no idea what the hell was up with Samantha. She hadn’t returned to the hospital after the other night and she hadn’t called either. Her behavior was a mystery to him.

  The curtain to his cubicle ruffled quietly and Beck’s head appeared around it.

  “Hey, man,” he greeted.

  Relieved by the diversion, Andy pushed the tray table aside and gestured feebly for Beck to come in.

  Right away, Andy registered that something was not right. Beck’s face was pale. Dark rings circled his eyes, as though he hadn’t slept in days. He was still in his dirty work clothes.

  “Hey yourself,” Andy said, taken aback by his friend’s disheveled appearance. “Jesus, you look worse than I do.”

  Beck nodded with a wan smile and stood at the end of the bed.

  “I’m just glad you’re OK, man,” he said flatly. “Those pricks sure did a number on you.”

  Again a moment of silence. There was definitely something not right.

  “What is it, Beck? What’s wrong?”

  Beck fidgeted.

  “We got broken into, man,” he said. “Same night those fuckers jumped you. The apartment’s been trashed. I found it that way when I got home, after I left The Pub.”

  Andy’s shoulders slumped and he sank into the pillows. Suddenly his head was incredibly heavy and he felt a rush of nausea.

  “I just got through with the police,” Beck continued. “I suggested that whoever it was that got to you probably did over the apartment.”

  Andy nodded slowly, painfully. A knot of anger twisted in his stomach and he grimaced. He knew right away who they were and what they had done.

  “I’m so sorry, Beck. First they come after you, and now this. I never meant for this to happen. How bad was it?”

  Beck brushed it aside and sat down on the chair.

  “Look, don’t worry about it right now. You need to rest. I’ll take care of things.”

  “I walked away, Beck. I turned my back on that bullshit.”

  Beck patted Andy’s arm awkwardly. He did not want to betray the frustration he felt.

  “I know you did, man. I know it. But I guess this is the blow back, huh? Of having gotten caught up with that shitty crowd in the first place.”

  Andy closed his good eye, knowing Beck was right.

  “Hopefully the police will be able to do something,” Beck said.

  “Did they take anything?”

  Beck shook his head wearily.

  “Seems as though they wanted to cause damage to send a message, rather than take anything. It’s a mess, but it’s fixable.”

  Beck was prudent enough not to tell Andy yet the extent of the vandalism. The structural and property damage was bad enough, but the perpetrators had gone further by defecating in the bedrooms, spreading feces across the walls and leaving graffiti tags in red spray paint.

  “When are they gonna let you go?” Beck asked, changing the subject.

  “I dunno,” Andy replied. “I think maybe in a day or so but I haven’t seen a doctor yet today. I want out of here as soon as possible, though. I’m not sure if my insurance covers me for this length of stay. Besides that, I’m getting sick of being a repeat visitor.”

  Beck managed a smile, leaned back in the chair and put his feet up on the corner of Andy’s bed.

  “Mind if I hang for a while?”

  Andy gave Beck a gentle punch on the arm.

  “Would you, man? That’d be cool.”

  ***

  By lunch time the doctor still hadn’t come, so Andy sent Beck home and decided to go for a walk - the first walk of any kind he had been capable of taking in days. Lost in his thoughts, Andy wandered the hospital corridors. He stepped out onto a balcony that overlooked the Chicago skyline. He sat alone in a stark and cavernous patient lounge. He thumbed through just about every trashy magazine on the rickety coffee table. One of them, a particularly tattered edition that was minus its cover, was dated 1992. As Andy thumbed through it, the beginnings of a headache tugging at the corners of his temples, he came across a full-page ad featuring a pristine coastline, a bejeweled sea, a brilliant sun hanging in an azure sky. It was a travel advertisement.

  “Visit the Sapphire Coast, New South Wales, Australia.”

  A boom went off in Andy’s mind and his one working eye went wide. He recognized this place! He had been there! A cacophony of black-and-white images erupted like camera flashes across his consciousness as though they were on fast-forward.

  He remembered the words of the radio announcer from the early hours of the morning.

  “...our spiritual self has an electrical potential that - if harnessed in the right way - can be sustained beyond our own mortality...”

  A question began to form in his mind. Andy tore the page out of the magazine. He folded it and stuffed it in his pocket, then got up from the lounge. In the corridor, he inspected a sign on the wall showing directions to various departments.

  He was only interested in one.

  Trauma & ER.

  Andy hopped an elevator and found his way to the ER on the ground floor - the very ER he had been brought into on the night of his overdose. It was unsurprisingly busy with staff: nurses and doctors rushing here and there, orderlies moving patients in beds, on gurneys and in wheelchairs through the bustling reception area. The waiting area was chaotic with yet more people being seen by staff or waiting to be seen. The noise didn’t help his headache.

  Andy scanned the reception area and beyond to the trauma rooms. Searching. Searching.

  A familiar doctor in a green lab coat and scrubs stood before a gurney, upon which lay a lifeless, elderly African-American man. The doctor was signing a form on a clipboard while shouting orders to a team of staff nearby. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and sported a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard.

  Andy watched intently as the doctor checked the patient with a stethoscope then signaled for a pair of orderlies to wheel him away. The patient appeared to have died.

  And then the doctor stood alone, rubbing his brow with thumb and forefinger wearily. Seeing an opportunity, Andy approached him. The doctor looked up at him.

  Andy knew he gotten the right man. The name tag hanging lopsided from the lanyard around his neck left him in no doubt.

  It was Ellis - the doctor from the trauma room.

  Ellis studied Andy curiously.

  “Can I help you?”

  “You’re Ellis, right?”

  Ellis nodded tugging his lanyard.

  “That’s what it says here. This is a restricted area. Are you lost?”

  Andy smiled inwardly at that question.

  “You probably don’t remember me. I was here a while ago. You saw me. I was in a pretty bad state.”

  Ellis squinted at him.

  “Look, I see a lot of people in here, kid. I couldn’t possibly...” his voice trailed off and he raised his finger towards Andy. “Wait a minute. Overdose - crystal meth right? Pulled from an inner-city trance party.”

  Andy nodded evenly and said, “Good memory.”

  Ellis folded his arms and studied Andy more intensely.

  “I see you’ve managed to grace us with your custom once again,” he observed cynically. “What was it this time? More of the same?”

  Andy smiled and shook his head.

  “On the contrary, Doctor. You’ll be pleased to know I’ve had a change of direction. Unfortunately, in the process I’ve made a few enemies. It’s been more difficult to leave that life than I anticipated.”

  Ellis seemed genuinely surprised. Somebody called out his name nearby, and he looked across to see the team wheeling yet another new arrival into one of the trauma rooms.

  Ellis turned to leave. Sensing that his opport
unity was slipping away, Andy stepped forward.

  “Dr. Ellis, I have to know something.”

  Ellis paused in his turn, signaling to his team to go ahead.

  “That night. When I was brought in. Did I ... die ... at any stage when you were looking after me? Did I have to be revived?”

  Ellis nodded.

  “Yes. You were in cardiac arrest when we wheeled you off the ambulance. The paramedics said that you had been out for about five minutes. It took us another two to bring you back.”

  Ellis couldn’t stop any longer. He hurried away to the trauma room.

  Andy had been given his answer.

  CHAPTER 12

  Sonya sat at her desk in the freshly painted office examining a thick sheaf of documents. She grabbed at the collar of her crisp, white business shirt trying to get some air across her skin. Although the air conditioner was finally installed and ready to go, it hadn’t been connected to a power supply. The small fan that sat on the bookshelf behind her was woefully inadequate, but at least it kept the air circulating in the room. Sonya was thankful for the short business skirt she wore. In the rush to get the practice up and running this week, she realized belatedly that she didn’t own any sort of appropriate suit for the summer weather. A rushed drive up the coast to Wollongong had her searching desperately until a small boutique came through for her at the eleventh hour. It was an uncharacteristically warm day, so early into the season.

  Across from her sat an elderly couple. The husband was dour, slump shouldered and balding, with an overgrown mustache and a crumpled suit that smelled of mothballs. He daubed at his perspiring forehead with a handkerchief and constantly tugged at his tie. His wife was a large woman in a loud floral dress, the nylon type that made her sweat so profusely her body odor filled the room. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun. Sonya could have sworn it had smoothed out all the wrinkles on her face. She sat, arms crossed, her lips pursed as though she had been sucking on a lemon.