Chasing Nirvana

Six

"I had a dream about you last night," Jimmy said.

It was one week later, and she had been well enough to be removed from the ICU. I sat by her bed in the hospital, watching dark, heavy clouds rolled by in the skies through the small window. It was in the middle of summer, but the weather seemed to be as unpredictable as Jimmy was. One day sunny and a thunderstorm the next.

"Yeah? What about?"

Jimmy smiled. It was dimmed by the drugs dripping down the IV into her arm and her lids with heavy with sleep but she was determined to stay awake. "I dreamt that we were on a train, and it was going really fast. I was running along the cabins and you kept chasing me and asking me to stop."

"So why didn't you?"

"I don't know. I just kept going faster and faster and that made you  laugh. Then suddenly the train stopped and we got off. We were in New York. I could see the Empire State Building, and Times Square, and Central Park. I wanted to go walk around but–"

"But what?"

"But you disappeared," she said.

I raised a brow at the abrupt ending, and looked at Jimmy. She was carefully picking up sheets after sheets of the soft, five ply Kleenex tissues on the bedside table and tearing them into pieces.

"That's doesn't sound weird at all," I said, which made her laugh.

"Nate?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think that dream meant something?"

I stopped staring out of the window and thought about it.

"I don't think so," I said. "What do dreams even mean?"

There was a brief pause. "Nothing," she finally said after a few minutes. "Yet when they disappear, you feel like crying."

***

In the short year I knew Jimmy Jacobs, one particular night stood out. She had called to meet me for dinner at quiet Chinese place located on the corner of Hickory Boulevard and West 34th street. I was a few minutes late but, upon rushing into the restaurant, I saw that it was almost empty. No Jimmy Jacobs. I decided to just take a seat and waited for her. She showed up forty-five minutes later, unhurried, hair rumpled as though she had just woken up.

"Sorry, I'm late," she said. She took a seat across from me. "What did you order?"

"I haven't. Is everything alright?"

"Yes, of course. Why wouldn't it be?"

"I don't know...because you were almost an hour late."

"Oh, that." She waved a nonchalant hand in the air. "I was just reading and forgot the time."

We ordered our food and I waited until the waitress had walked away before pulling a book out of my bag.

"I brought something for you," I said. I passed it to her.

"A notebook?"  

"I've got one just like that, see?" I said as held up a similar one.

"And what am I supposed to do with it?"

"Draw, write poems, whatever," I shrugged. "Anything that comes to mind."

"What is it for?" she asked. 

"You said you weren't good at being human, so...well, I thought I could help you with that. You can write something down every day or draw or paste stickers or whatever...just put down thoughts that come to your mind. It could be a word or ten, it could be an entire page of drawings or poetry, basically whatever you're thinking. I'll write mine down as well. Then once the books are filled, we could exchange it. That way, you'd know what someone else think being human meant, and maybe it would help."