Bound

Sensitive content: one of the characters has a terminal disease.

I am - in no way - someone who carries regrets. I love my husband, my son Ismael, my family, and I would choose the same path all over again. Yet, I never forgot one love from my past: Samuel. I have thought of him every single day since he broke up with me almost 30 years ago. Over the years, less so, but still daily. I love him with the same intensity I felt the day he left - maybe even more profoundly now.

For several years I would yearn for one last conversation, for closure, for one last kiss, for friendship even, or a warm hug. For any little strand of what we once had. I would pray for our angels that we be able to hug one last time before we got old and died.

At some point, we reconnected online. He promised to visit me. My entire body trembled just to think of it. We chatted and I finally told him what had been on my mind since that last day. He said he had never stopped loving me and never would, no matter what happened. And then he stopped answering my emails and texts.

I continued to follow him on social media. I paid special attention to how he would change his relationship status every few months or so. He never spent more than one year with the same woman.

One day I accidentally discovered something from a random news website. It was a piece on rare diseases, and Samuel was featured. He had a terminal illness. Not the kind one finds out about and dies in a few weeks or months, but the worst kind, that makes you die slowly, that causes you to lose your physical senses one by one, until you cannot move or communicate with the world although your mind is perfectly sane inside what seems like a hollow body.

I later found out he had got his current girlfriend pregnant and that they were getting married. She was his nurse, a la Stephen Hawking. When the baby was born, she was named Sky, the nickname he used to call me because of a punk rock song we enjoyed:

“Candy's awful nice that much is true

But not as sweet as you

As sure as there are clouds up in the sky

I'm in love with you”*

I remembered his bright green eyes shining as we waited at the bus stop. He always sang this tune to me as we waited for our bus or walked home from classes, emphasizing the word Sky. We had met in college and had become friends and then lovers at that same bus stop.

I wondered how he had convinced his wife on such an unusual name for a girl - maybe he had sung it to her too? I did not believe that. I knew he was somehow paying tribute to me. Especially when I put the pieces together and realized he had stopped talking to me at about the same time he'd found out about the disease. I was certain he thought of himself as a burden to me, that it would completely ruin my life to leave my family for someone fatally ill.

Over the decades we were apart, I frequently had vivid dreams with Samuel. In these dreams, my husband would sometimes appear and acknowledge that, although we were married in this life, Samuel and I were bound forever. His acknowledgement contained sad acceptance, and no sign of anger.

Sometimes my dreams would tell me something about Samuel’s life which I would later confirm. Thus, I first found out about his disease in a dream. I awoke at 3 a.m., covered in sweat, my heart in my mouth.

Other times these dreams were profoundly intimate, eye to eye, unlike anything I had ever experienced in real life. When I awoke, always at 3 a.m., I would go to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. My hair would be shining like a cup of viscous hot chocolate, and my mouth would be lusciously red, as if someone had softly bitten my lips for a long, long time.

When I found out Samuel was sick, I moved heaven and earth to find a way to contact him outside of social media (in which he had not been active for a really long time). I was finally able to get his cell phone number. Five years had passed since we had last chatted, but this time when I sent him a “hi” he did respond. He said he could no longer walk or talk, but that he used a wheelchair and his arms still worked fine. We continued to chat for a few days but it was overwhelmingly painful to imagine his physical situation. I also felt guilty and edgy around my family, and this time I was the one who stopped responding.

Five more years passed. The thoughts continued, and I occasionally had those vivid dreams. Every few months or so I would check social media to see whether he - or even his relatives- had posted something. There was never anything. I would then selfishly think about what would happen to me if I found out he had died.

One night I had an exceptionally vivid dream, and unlike previous ones, I could remember every little detail when I woke up at 3 a.m. I went straight to the computer and began to write it down:

We were camping in a temperate forest, but it seemed like summer, maybe early autumn. I was wearing an old fashioned bright red dress, with many frills and sequins. He was sleeping peacefully by my side and I had a baby in my arms. My love for them was intensely palpable. I would somehow know it was World War II, but the love felt stronger than the fear. Then I would hear gunshots and my arms were suddenly covered in blood. Our baby was dead. I would go outside and fearlessly scream into the forest. There was a man standing silently, a gun in his arms, the person who had killed our baby boy…

I stopped writing because I did not want to identify the person with the gun in my journal. It was my present husband. I could not go back to sleep for a really long time.

The following night I had another dream. In this one, as in real life, I would wake up at 3 a.m., but to three firm knocks on the front door. I thought it was time to get up and actually believed it was morning, but when I opened the windows all was dark. I heard noises and walked to the front door, unafraid. Samuel was there, an angry expression on his face. I don’t think I had ever seen him angry before, in real life or in my dreams.

“Where is he?” Samuel demanded. I stared at him, glad that my husband was out travelling for work and that our son was at a sleepover. It did not cross my mind to question why Samuel was at my door, thousands of miles away from where he lived, without a wheelchair, in the middle of the night.

“Who?” I asked timidly.

“Our son. Ismael”.

I blinked. And then it all came to me, the baby in my arms, the shots. Yes, our son, Ismael, born again to me, but to a different father. I woke up, my heart beating so fast I felt dizzy. I don’t even know why I looked at the clock - 3 a.m.

On the third night’s dream, Samuel and I were having a peaceful conversation at a café.

“You know he is really my son, right? He was conceived while you were still in love with me”.

“I do love you”, I said”, “but I also love my husband”.

“Yes”, Samuel agreed, “but you did not really love him then”. He went on to list a series of Ismael’s traits that were his, not my husband’s.

Shortly past 3 a.m. I was up in bed, writing about the characteristics Samuel had listed in the dream. They were all true. On some unfathomable level, I agreed that Ismael was somehow his son. This seemed to be enough, because the dreams ceased.

Several weeks went by before I dreamed about Samuel again. “Dream” was an increasingly inaccurate term, as it felt more and more like I was actually with him.

This was especially so the night the dreams returned. It seemed as if I had closed my eyes briefly, only to be transported into another dimension, where I opened them again. Samuel and I were inside some sort of coach, on top of several layers of soft, pastel colored patchwork quilts. He was leaning on his elbow, smiling, playfully trying to kiss me.

“How did I get here?” I asked. I felt that familiar warmth inside that always came with his presence, yet at the same time I was scared.

Samuel only smiled and said: “Sky”. He also shook his legs for me to see.

“Wait, have you healed?” I sat up, my head touching the top of the coach. This time I was acutely aware of his physical health .

“Almost”, he said.

I would wonder about my husband and at some point in the dream he would show up and quietly tell me it was okay for me to take care of Samuel. As usual, he did not seem happy but accepting of the situation, as if he had no other option.

I had similar dreams for several days in a row. In each one Samuel would be a bit healthier than before. As usual, I would wake up at 3 a.m. On the 12th night, he was ecstatic - he gás healed completely. He seemed taller and younger than before, and even his grey hairs had disappeared. Since I no longer had to take care of Samuel, it was implied that I would have to choose between him and my husband, which felt uncomfortable in my stomach. I asked how it was possible for him to have healed 100%, to which he replied it was due to some sort of transplant.

When I awoke, I thought something was off. Panic built up inside me. I knew, for a fact, that his disease was incurable in real life. However, in some dimension he had obviously healed completely. Did this mean he had died?

I rushed to my computer. Years before I had secretly saved his number in coded form, and erased it from my phone. When I saved it on my messaging app, it said the number no longer existed.

Tears welled up in my eyes. A few months earlier I had done the same thing and his photo had shown up in the app. Yet I did not have the courage to send him a message. My cowardice had meant I lost my last chance.

My mind tried to console me by coming up with alternative explanations. Maybe he could no longer type (not the best alternative), or he might have changed numbers. I went back to bed and sobbed myself to sleep.

The next day I scoured the internet for any possible information on Samuel, without success. Unlike the time I got his phone, everything I tried led to a dead end. His last post on social media was from years before. I even looked up his wife and siblings, who similarly had not posted anything in years.

Who would I be now without him? For years he had been present in my life, despite the distance and the lack of communication. And somewhere inside me I had always believed in that last hug before our death. I felt dizzy, like the ground beneath my feet was literally being taken away. It had been a relationship of over 35 years, even if most of it happened in my dreams or in mutual silence. How could it come to an end like that?

* * *

My life has not been easy. For most of my adult years, I have had an incurable disease which has left me with incomprehensible slurred speech and paraplegia. Yet, when I turned 55, a miracle happened, and the disease stalled. I could never walk or communicate clearly again, but at least my death sentence seemed to have been put off.

I was able to see my daughter Sky grow and go off to college. My wife, unfortunately, became tired of being my caregiver and ran off with another man. I was sad but at peace. Deep down, although I was grateful for our daughter together, my heart had never been fully hers.

I often thought about the original Sky, my lifelong love, the one I had secretly named our daughter after. Sarah. I followed her on social media, although I myself had not posted anything for years. It is hard to admit, but I am a bit ashamed of my condition. I knew that if I kept in contact we would eventually meet again, and I did not want her to see me this way. I never stopped loving her. I also know for sure she will always love me. Yet, I feel she deserves better and she is happy with her family.

For years I have had the strangest, most vivid dreams involving Sky. Her son Ismael and even her husband have shown up in some of them. For some strange reason it always feels like Ismael is my own son.

One night I dreamed I had completely healed. I told Sky I’d had some sort of transplant. That same week my wife left me, and I got a new phone number to cut off contact with her; after all, our daughter was all grown up and my ex could contact her directly.

For a long time the dreams ceased and I missed my love more than ever. On my 65th birthday I asked my daughter to take me to the town where Sarah lived. I would not contact her, of course, but I wanted to visit the places we used to go one last time.

The night before the trip, I dreamed that I was with Sarah at a beach we once used to enjoy. I was in my wheelchair and she sat beside me.

“I will always love you”, we said together, and laughed.

* * *

Sarah woke up and looked at the clock. 3 a.m. It had been ages since her last dream about Samuel, and this one was the most vivid of all. She went to the bathroom and stared at her image in the mirror, her gray hair astray. She smiled.

In the dream, Sarah and Samuel talked and laughed at the beach. In the next scene, they were getting married in a beautiful garden, walking together across the aisle, flowers on both sides. Her husband, dressed in white, was the priest.

“I am sorry for what I did in our previous life”, he said quietly, before starting the ceremony, “I never meant to do that”. Sarah and Samuel nodded solemnly.

When the couple said yes, Sky and Ismael cheered and threw handfuls of fresh, bright green leaves on them. They smiled and hugged tightly.

The next day Sarah got up cheerfully and decided to go to the beach. She told herself she was going crazy, but perhaps that was good. Her husband had passed three years earlier. It had been a good marriage and their time together felt complete, yet she had felt sad and lonely since he died. That day, she felt like herself again.

Sarah got off the bus humming Today I fell in love. She knew exactly where to go. From a distance, she saw a wheelchair gleaming in the sun. She rushed to it, her heart pounding, and hugged Samuel.

“I will always love you”, Sarah said, as he pressed her hands firmly, and they laughed.

*Song excerpt from Today I fell in love, written by Joe King and performed by The Queers in the album Punk Rock Confidential (1998).