It didn't feel like a dream. In most dreams you can't actually feel anything. But Bob felt himself on a gurney covered in stiff white sheets. He was surrounded by white, in fact. White walls, white ceiling and as he rolled his eyes back to take in more of the scenery, a cute blonde looking down over him in a white, old fashioned nurse's uniform, with long cuffed sleeves and cap like a folded table napkin, as opposed to pastel scrubs. She was fussing with his pillow and humming a song he vaguely recognized. Something his grandfather used to sing at Christmastime. She looked like a Hollywood starlet of the black and white era, only in saturated colour with bright red lips which broke into an excited smile when she realized he was looking up at her.
"Hi there," she beamed with all the warmth of a long lost relation.
It confused him. "I said I didn't want to go to the hospital," he grumbled, but it was hard to be short with the pin-up nurse gazing at him so lovingly.
"Don't look at me, kid," said the man with pomaded hair and a pencil moustache in a dinner jacket standing on the other side of him. Bob hadn't been looking at him, hadn't even noticed him there until he spoke.
The nurse paid the man no mind.
"Who's that?" Bob asked, even more confused.
Her smile didn't change. "That's the guy they send in when everything's going too smoothly and they need someone to mess it up."
"Oh," said Bob, trying to decipher her meaning. "Why's he wearing a tux?"
"A tux!" the man scoffed. "My dear boy, I really have tried but your penchant for dungarees and those shirts that look like long-johns have made it obvious that fashion is not your forte. This is a formal dinner jacket," he said, sweeping his hand away from his chest to showcase the look. Another sweep of his hand in the opposite direction transformed the jacket into a crisp tuxedo, black tie and all. "This is a tux," he said.
"I see it now," Bob said calmly, looking for an exit sign. "Do you both...work here?
"I'm Crystal," said the nurse, "and that's Jonas."
"The Incomparable Jonas with Crystal," the man corrected her.
The one called Crystal posed with her second introduction and the nurse's uniform she wore transformed into a different version, one with a much shorter skirt and cupcake sleeves.
Bob shook his head looking for an explanation in it. "Is this what they mean by a Shriner's Hospital?"
"We're your guides," Jonas said.
"To discharge?"
"Your spiritual guides. Through life."
"Well it snows in Texas now, so sure," Bob said drolly, now convinced he was dreaming. He felt under his sheets to see if he was dressed. His subconscious had done a thorough job of setting the scene. "Could someone hand me my pants? I'd like to get home."
As he tried to sit up both characters shouted "no!" and shoved him back down again by his shoulders.
"Oh, Jonas, I touched him!" Crystal said in an excited whisper.
Jonas' brow furrowed as he reached his hand out to brush Bob's shoulder again. He tried to hide a small smile and turned his face away. Bob mouthed calling for security but chickened out on giving it volume.
Crystal grabbed Jonas' arm. "Gee, are you tearing up? You big softie. You're gonna get me going."
"I know I'd like to be going so..." Bob tried.
"I'm afraid you can't go anywhere just yet, Robert," Jonas said. "We called in a big favour for you. We might even be breaking the rules. Not that I thought it was necessary but this one kept wringing her hands like she was making soap."
"Ha! That's comedy" Crystal said rolling her eyes. "If you never broke the rules we wouldn't be here would we?"
"I know math was never your strong suit, dearest, but that was ninety-four years ago, so yes, we likely would."
"Okay, but we wouldn't have kicked it off drowning at the bottom of the Atlantic in a steamer trunk would we? This guy!" Crystal snorted, slapping Bob's arm. "Listen to the way he says 'syoot' like there's a Y in it."
"Drives you nuts, I suppose?"
"Don't it, though?"
"Spoken like a woman who bowled overhand."
Crystal's cheeks burned bright pink as her hand went to her hips. If she'd still been wearing the long sleeves she would've rolled them up. "Like my eternity's such a thrill! I should be listening to harp music instead of the tinkling of you still trying to get change out of payphones."
"Please, they don't even make them anymore."
"Oh yeah? Then why does your index finger have a bicep?"
"I'm sorry," Bob interrupted. "What's happening?"
Crystal's features softened immediately for Bob's benefit. "No, sweetie, we're sorry," she said, petting his head tenderly. "Sorry you got hurt, I mean."
Bob couldn't say it didn't feel nice or even oddly familiar. He felt himself relax and give into it. "It's just a bump," he said.
"I wasn't talking about your head," Crystal said.
"That cold-cock must've flipped your switch," Jonas said pounding his fist into his palm. "Otherwise we wouldn't be here seeing you. That is, you seeing us. But understand ours is strictly an advisory role."
"Intervention is Esme's department," Crystal confirmed.
"Esme's department," Bob repeated with a contented sigh in the absence of understanding any of it. A pretty girl was still petting his head. "Who's Esme?"
"She's your guardian angel, honey."
"She's why you didn't split your head open or worse," Jonas said. "The guy that clocked you had a knife, but fortunately he has a guardian angel too. A big one."
Bob tensed up again. His hand found Crystal's and removed it for being as useless as shower cap with a leak in it.
He turned to see Jonas' doubled chin and raised brow. "You could've been Swiss cheese," he said holding a tight grin which turned his moustache up in the corners.
"This is a dream, isn't it?" Bob asked in a tone which pleaded for mercy, but he could feel his lips move and his teeth touch and the acute sensation of his throat gulp. "Honestly, I'd settle for the punchline if it isn't."
"It's more of a visitation."
"Yeah well when are visiting hours up?"
Bob managed to sit up this time. He threw off his sheet and swung his legs over the gurney's side. Jonas and Crystal held out halting palms.
"I can see this may be a bit much," Jonas said. "I hope there are no hard feelings. You're our first one, you know."
"First one what?" Bob felt obliged to ask, letting his head fall between his shoulders.
"Ward. Assignment," Jonas said. "Like that cartoon cricket that came out after our final curtain."
"Jiminy Cricket!" Crystal said.
"My consciences," Bob said doubtfully. "My guardian angels?"
"Esme's your angel," he was corrected.
"Well, where's she?"
"Oh no, you can't see her," Crystal laughed nervously.
"You'd probably croak on the spot," said Jonas.
They shared an inside chuckle, and stretched their faces in matching expressions of 'yikes', oblivious to Bob's sudden panic.
His eyes bulged and his neck tightened as every other muscle in his body felt suddenly weaker. "Is this about me dying? Am I gonna die?!"
"No you're not going to die."
"Am I dead already?! Is that what this is?"
"No," Jonas said soothingly, with a little chuckle. "We'll call this a dream if it makes you feel better, and that stuff about Esme is just about angels not often taking human form. Oh some do a good enough job if they want to, but with others... you just might not know what to make of them."
"So not wings and harps?"
"Sometimes wings, but not always just two."
"Esme's sort of, well she's, kind of ...shapes," Crystal shrugged.
"They've never lived, see? No need for a body" Jonas clarified. "Where as we - "
"Died in a trunk at the bottom of the ocean," Bob said, finishing the sentence.
"There you have it," said Jonas.
"Ah-huh. Look, I've heard of the tunnel of white lights before but fluorescents? Nah, this is a dream. Guess my brain blew the production budget on you two. Not bad," he said trying to poke Jonas's leg. He felt nothing and so cleared his throat. "I won't say it hasn't been interesting, because it has. Very nice to meet you both, but I need to wake up or leave or something, okay? Like now would be great or like a second from now, which is now too. You'll do that for me won't you?"
"Certainly," Jonas said.
"Much appreciated. Oh, and since this is one of those lucid dreams can I ask you to do me a favour and snap me out of it real fast? Like don't start talking in slow-motion or turn into actual Shriners or anything creepy. Deal?"
"Deal. But not just yet."
A groan of frustration got him nowhere. "Why not? If I'm not gonna die then what am I doing here?"
"We're just waiting for your discharge."
"I'm fine."
"No you're not."
"An aneurysm?" Bob mumbled to himself. "Can't be my heart. I can do a backflip. Is it a tumour?" He nodded his head, resigned. "That explains it."
"He'll explain it," Jonas said suddenly staring off down the white corridor
"He who?"
"Raphael," Crystal said turning her widened eyes in the same direction as Jonas.
A look of reverence overcame the pair as they urged Bob to witness a figure approaching. Perhaps it was just Bob's mind that gave the shape of light the form of a doctor, but the emerald green of his scrubs shimmered and shifted like hot air above sand. A halo of colour concentrated as the figure neared. Bob felt as though he were staring at some optical illusion; an image made of other infinite images. Something about the energy of this being held Bob motionless in awe, as though he'd found himself able to breathe in the vacuum space. The awareness of this was like a spark of a struck flint which suddenly, nearly brought him to blazing alarm, until the luminous golden eyes above the doctor's mask creased with an unseen smile and Bob was instantly, very calmly looking up at a man like any other.
He said no words aloud but Bob could feel him communicating to the guides. A gentle chastisement of 'you two didn't need me for this' and then the feeling of Crystal and Jonas begging pardon humbly. Then, again voicelessly, Bob understood the comforting assurance, 'They think your spirit is broken. We will see,' as though recalling a memory. A stethoscope materialized and the doctor pressed it to Bob's chest and listened, a frown-like crease forming on his brow.
"Is it serious?" Bob heard himself ask.
Several seconds passed. "Sounds like jazz," the doctor responded lightheartedly, in his way.
"Please tell me not that atonal free stuff."
"A heart full of music will always find joy."
"I have to find it in Buffalo, though, right?" Bob said.
The doctor laughed, or at least it felt like he did. Anxiousness and curiosity left Bob's body and the pressure he had forgotten to notice in his head was gone. The doctor, with eyes the amber of honeycombs as only bees can see, imparted one more message in both words and feeling before being absorbed into the atmosphere around him as softly and quickly as he'd appeared: "All is well."
Bob found himself once again alone in a white hallway of his dream with the two jaw-dropped strangers above him.
"Holy cow!" Crystal said.
"Sacrilige," Jonas scolded her, almost forgetting to close his own mouth.
"That was definitely a human form," Bob said, unable even with a suspension of reason to let the word angel or his name pass his lips.
"I only said it's not often," Jonas said.
"We're just so proud of you," Crystal said sweetly.
"No big deal," he said, a little humbled by the affection. "Nothing like being pants-less to keep you from screaming and running down an endless hallway."
He laughed meekly at his own joke feeling an instant pang of guilt that it might have sounded like he was mocking the situation rather than himself.
"Not just now," Crystal said. "Always."
"That's why you can't let this awful moment of before discourage you, son," Jonas said. "We were in show business too, you know. We can't tell you exactly what to do but if we could we'd say you've just got to stick it out. Don't quit now."
"Besides, there's a girl!" Crystal said, for which Jonas elbowed her immediately."Hey! How come you get to tell him to stick it out and I don't get to tell him what for?"
"You want us to get what for?"We're not allowed to tell him what to do!"
"I didn't! You did!"
Jonas rubbed his temples and shook his head. "I swear it's like someone's licking a lollipop and slapping my cheek with it constantly."
"I wouldn't waste the lollipop, bub," Crystal shot back, "but if I did you and I both know it'd slide right off that greasy mug."
There was just enough time while the two were sticking their tongues out at each other for Bob to move to slide off the gurney again. He slid into peaceful nothingness as the dream and most of its details dissolved like a painting left uncovered in the rain.