Daniels Song. Katherine Dobney
logging truck was coming at us. I didn’t see a driver, just the grill. Why wasn’t he getting back in his lane? Why couldn’t he see us? Anna hit the brakes and the car started to slide sideways. The tires were making a high pitch sound that was deafening. I closed my eyes and it felt like my heart had stopped. I didn’t have time to do anything else, not even scream. Then I flew into the back of Anna’s seat. I could hear the screaming of metal being ripped apart. There was the sound of glass exploding. I knew it was only seconds, but it felt like a lifetime. I was halfway on the floorboard and the seatbelt made me feel like I was being cut in two. Something was pushing me down. Someone was laying on me. It was Toby. I could hear his soft moans. It was hard to breath, I felt as if I was being crushed. And I couldn’t see, there was something wet in my eyes. Not tears but blood, it was warm and sticky, running down my face. “Toby,” it was all I had in me, just a whisper. “Toby,” the pain in my head was unbearable. Everything felt as if it were spinning. My mind was blurry, out of focus, foggy. Where was I, how, who, I didn’t know if I remembered my name. Everything was slipping away. I must be dying.
“Hope. Hope you’re going to be alright.” A voice… no music… it seemed like both. One deep perfect note like a bow was being pulled across the strings of a cello. It was haunting and beautiful at the same time. It gave me a strange sensation, one I had never felt before.
“Hope, you’re going to be alright, but I need you need to keep fighting.” Fighting? I didn’t understand, what was I fighting? My mind couldn’t focus and the fog was turning into night, getting darker.
Then, blue, the darkness was turning blue. I thought I could see the most beautiful big ice blue eyes staring at me. They were filling me with love.
“You need to keep fighting Hope.”
I felt two hands encase mine. Someone was holding my hand, giving me strength, but who? I began to shiver, but I didn’t feel chilled. I just felt pain, unbearable pain. Then someone was wrapping me in a blanket. Holding me close to them.
“Hope, please hear me, believe me.”
I forced my eyes open with everything I had left in me. Then, I was looking into that dreamy set of big beautiful ice blue eyes, surrounded with dark lashes. Someone was holding me in their arms and holding my hand. I could see, I could see my hand. But I wasn’t wrapped in a blanket. It was a white glow, a white light, in the shape of wings? Wings that gave comfort, made me feel protected. I was wrapped in wings! I must be dead.
“Hope, you’re going to be alright,” the white glow, the white light, in the shape of wings, kept saying. And my mind was getting foggy again. My thoughts, my memories were slipping away, I was slipping away piece by piece.
“Hope, you’re going to be okay.” Someone squeezed my hand gently.
“Hope, please open your eyes for me”. It wasn’t the music talking to me. Where was the beautiful music?
“Hope, I love you.” I knew that voice.
“Daddy,” I sounded so small.
“Thank God you’re alright, Hope, I thought I’d lost you.”
“Daddy, where am I?”
“Just rest.”
As I closed my eyes, he rested his head on my hand. The hand he was holding and there were tears falling on it. My dad was crying.
Encounter
* An unexpected or casual meeting with someone
Chapter 3 - Daniel’s story
It was a quiet and peaceful evening, and the stars shown clear and bright. I had the large glass double doors open. I enjoyed the idea that I could lie in bed and see the heavens. That’s why I had picked this room. Out of all the empty rooms in Willy’s house, this one made me feel that there were only three walls closing me in. I wanted to be close to my stars, as close as I could get. And I loved the big glass doors, which helped me feel as though I was sleeping under the stars.
I awoke to a knock at the door. “Hey, Danny Boy, may I come in?”
“If you must.”
Willy came back in his excessively happy tone. “I must”.
The door opened and there stood Willy, his hair going in every direction. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and bright green pants with pink high top Converse tennis shoes. To call Willy eccentric was mild. He was always easy going, and always enjoyed a good laugh.
“I was hoping you could go to Seattle with me.”
“You mean would I drive you to Seattle.”
“I thought it would give us a chance to talk and a trip to the city would do you some good.”
Willy did this when he wanted to talk to me. He knew I could not go anywhere and he would have four and a half hours of my attention. I knew he was planning it that way. After all he was my mentor and I always felt reassured after his counsel.
“We would only be gone about a week.”
‘If only a week’ I thought, sometimes a week to Willy was more than seven days.
“Will Professor Noland mind?”
“No, the students are taking their final exams. I have to do some cataloging that would take me only a week so it wouldn’t be a problem. When do you want to leave?”
With a smile that said surprise, “Tomorrow” he came back. I should have known.
The next morning I woke to the sunshine flooding my room and it glistened off the mirrors on the closet doors. Which reminded me, I needed to get some cleaning and packing done before we leave. I hurried through my laundry and straightened the room. That was always easy since I didn’t feel the need for a lot of clutter. I just had a few personnel possessions. My bathroom was the worst. I had a bad habit of listening to music in the shower. The counters showed it with CD’s everywhere. It was always like a game of memory, finding which case and CD matched.
I washed my car and removed all the star charts from the back end. I even cleaned the passenger seat off. My car was a small, two-door hatchback. If I knew Willy, we would need all that space plus more and I was right; Willy walked out the back door with two large bags handing them to me to pack in the car. He looked at me with a sinful smile saying, “I’ll be back” in his Schwarzenegger voice. I just shook my head and walked to the car. I had finally got the bags in and the hatch closed but when I turned around there stood Willy with his picnic basket in hand. I gave him an expression, which begged, ‘do we really need that?’ He already knew what I was thinking. We had spent so much time together.
“I thought you might like to eat, at some point.”
It turned out to be a relaxing drive. The road wound through the evergreen forests. The trees were so tall it felt like driving in a canyon. There was such perfection and beauty in them standing regally along the river until you hit Interstate 5. From there to Seattle it was just one long highway.
It was a quiet ride. Willy wasn`t saying much; he just looked at the scenery. After a while I noticed Willy fidgeting in the passenger seat. He was looking at the dash with a funny puzzled expression while he twirled a shiny CD on his finger.
“Where is the CD player?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Daniel, it’s the twenty-first century you need to update the stereo in this thing. How do you listen to your music?”
I glanced his way and said simply “iPod.” I smiled at his dismay. “I didn’t want to change the classic dashboard so I had an adapter installed.” Willy just stared at the CD as if wishing it would play by magic.
The traffic was becoming congested as we were heading into rush hour.
“Daniel, I wanted to ask how are you doing? I know you’ve been busy and....” Willy said, in a