In the dream

In her dream she was the first to arrive. She stood and watched helplessly, uselessly, as they ran, wheeling him in, as he mumbled something that sounded like her name, like an accusation. She stood, in her dream as she had in reality: speechless, her hand clamped over her mouth.

But in her dream, she was the first one there and as each person arrived she said the words herself. Josh was hit. It's critical. In the dream she said it deadpan, delivered as though it were an inconsequential inconvenience.

Hit. Critical. Critical. Critical...

In the dream, no one hugged her either. In the dream they nodded and went on their way, walking calmly to the room where they would wait, and wait, and wait. In the dream she spoke calmly and her knees did not buckle under her and she asked no ridiculous questions. In the dream a nurse eventually came over to her, when the last of them had walked calmly to the waiting room, and she offered her a glass of water, and inexplicably asked if she was his wife, and that was when Donna began to cry. And the nurse did what none of the others had done; she slipped one arm around Donna's shoulder and led her to a chair.

She didn't know why she wasn't following the others, except that even in her dream she was dimly aware of a sense of betrayal, a sense of injustice. The nurse offered no empty words of meaningless comfort, no he's going to be okay that no-one suspected to be true, but just for a minute or two someone had taken care of her and in the dream for those two minutes she was aware of her shoulders lightening. But she woke up to the sensation of falling, to the familiar nausea tightening her stomach, to her shoulders sighing again under the weight of responsibility, to the sobs convulsing her body, to a haunting loneliness that she knew would never leave her if he didn't live.