The Dream Jumper's Promise

Chapter 3

Running her fingers through her layered brown hair, Tina attempted to erase one day from her life. It seemed inconceivable that it was only eight hours since she’d slipped into bed on Tuesday night, the day the police gave her Hank’s wallet. Shortly after that, she’d seen James Dunn in the dive shop. Or had she? Tina had to think for a minute to sort out if that had been a dream too. No. She’d fainted and woke up looking at James. Jamey.

Hurrying to the bedroom, she noticed the wallet on the corner of her antique French dresser, right where she’d left it. And she was wearing the Pink Floyd T-shirt from Tuesday night. The cerulean nightgown was neatly folded in a drawer, wrapped in tissue paper.

A gust of wind forced its way through her yard and the slant of the palms momentarily distracted her. The sky was quickly lightening to gray. Today would be a stormy one, the first day of the Kona storm, not the second. The rain hadn’t arrived yet.

She called Dave. He’d cancelled the charter. “You feeling okay today?” he asked. She could almost hear him holding his breath.

“I was groggy from a sleeping pill, but I’m fine now.”

Dave sounded convinced that she could be that confused. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that Dave’s girlfriend, Sally, had rescued him from the bars of Maui and introduced him to the Lahaina Alano Club and AA. Dave was not quick to judge another person’s confusion. Especially someone who’d recently spent months in bed mourning the disappearance of her husband.

On the good side, Tina had not canceled a day of diving. And now she must continue the day as if the strange dream hadn’t picked up her life and shaken it upside down like a snow globe, dislodging everything that wasn’t glued down.

A real visit to Doc Chan would now be at the top of her list. Tina’s non-appointment the day before had been full of the fear of waking with coral in her wet hand. Today her concerns were entirely different. She’d have to admit to her shrink that she’d experienced a whole day that did not exist.

vvvv

Lahaina’s downtown was traffic-free as Tina drove the stretch that attracted tourists from all over the world. Lahaina had everything visitors wanted in a quaint Hawaiian town—picturesque sea wall, statues of salty whalers and one-eyed fishermen, colorful buildings trimmed in sea-foam white, restaurants boasting Jimmy Buffet-type entertainment. All this, and dependably good weather. The Hawaiian word lahaina meant ‘merciless sun,’ appropriately so, because the town was protected from most bad weather by the towering mountains on the east side. Not today, though. This bad weather came from the south.

Tina didn’t notice any of this as she raced to the medical building to get as much time with her shrink as possible, before the other crazies—the scheduled ones—arrived.

“I’m concerned that your dreams are confusing you.” Emily Chan’s foot tapped the edge of her desk as she suggested the problem might be the Xanax. Doctor Chan was the only psychiatrist on Maui’s west side. Fresh from Loma Linda medical school, she was familiar with new treatments and drugs. Being current was immensely appreciated by Tina. “The drug could be producing lifelike dreams,” she said. “I’m going to suggest you use it only for emergencies.”

Tina’s eyes widened. “That’s basically what you said in my dream.” Another thought came to mind. “Do you know of any way to wake up during a dream? If this happens again, I’m going to need to know if it’s real life.” At the very least, the consequences might be embarrassing if she thought she was in a dream state, only to find out it was reality. “And how could a dream span twenty-four hours?”

The doctor didn’t seem as worried that the dream lasted a full twenty-four hours. “Dreams can appear to span long periods of time, when in fact, they really only take a few minutes of sleep.” Pages from the German psychoanalyst, Carl Jaspers, lay across Dr. Chan’s desk. “It sounds like you had what is called WILD, a Wake-Initiated Lucid Dream, meaning you didn’t fall asleep knowingly but entered a dream state straight from consciousness. Then you experienced what is referred to as a false awakening. In this case it was what Dr. Celia Green categorized as type two. Listen to this: ‘The subject appears to wake up in a realistic manner, but to an atmosphere of suspense. His surroundings may at first appear normal, and he may gradually become aware of something uncanny in the atmosphere, and perhaps of unwonted sounds and movements. Or he may ‘awake’ immediately to a ‘stressed’ and ‘stormy’ atmosphere. In either case, the end result would appear to be characterized by feelings of suspense, excitement or apprehension."