Shadowless | The Dreamweaver

I’m having that recurring dream again. I’m swimming in a pool with my daughters and some fish who are apparently well-known to me and with whom I communicate. 

There’s a moment when I realize that I cannot swim to the surface and leave the pool, though I’m well aware that I am not drowning.

Later, somehow having emerged from the water, I find myself walking around the pool with my daughters and our cat. I walk around the pool looking ever so carefully into the depths to see if I can observe any indication of how or why I wasn’t able to swim to the surface. I was mostly trying to find my shadow at the bottom of the pool but wasn’t able to see any semblance of one. All that I could see were some dolls and children's toys gathered at the bottom of the pool near the drain. I thought to dive in to retrieve them, but my daughters urged me not to go, saying that without my shadow I ran the risk of being pulled into the drain.

Later, I made my way to the children’s hospital where I was to report for my first day of work.

I had a brief encounter with the security guard at the entrance who seemed to know me from somewhere, and then I ended up taking the wrong elevator and had to walk to another wing.

I finally got to the right floor, and seeing that I was already late, I went directly to the nurses' station without changing into my scrubs. The nurse on duty, a seasoned old-timer who gave me the once-over, handed me a clipboard and told me I needed to change the bed linens on all the cradles and cots on the ward. The patients' names were all color-coded, the children divided into groups of which ones had to be removed from their beds and which ones I had to maneuver around while they remained.

I told the charge nurse that I was colorblind, and she looked at me with growing impatience, then circled the children in one group and drew a rectangle around the other.

Then I woke up.