Series So Far:

White Noise 1/3
By Lacy


Life never runs out of problems to throw at you. Just when you think
it's safe to go in the water...well, you know what I mean.

For three weeks my principle anxiety was that my life, as I knew it,
was falling down around my ears. I was losing Josh, and what could be
worse than that? I was watching him distance himself, moving farther
and farther from me with each passing day.

To be fair, I didn't notice it, at first. I was too caught up in some
pretty self indulgent soul searching at the time. But when I finally
opened my eyes, I realized I missed him. I realized I would be a fool
to let him slip away from me.

So, I got him back. For once, my sense and my sensibility were in one
accord. My heart wanted him back and my mind said I would be stupid
to let him go. It's not very often that my heart and mind agree on
anything. When he was in my arms again, I wondered what I could've
possibly been thinking to let things get as bad as they'd gotten.
When he was in my arms again, I decided that together we could get
past anything. Together we could heal all the wounds.

That was a week ago. I don't think Josh can heal this.

He was pulling an all-nighter at work last night -- the first time it
happened. So he wasn't there to see me wake up in a cold sweat. He
wasn't there to hear me screaming my throat raw.

I've had these kinds of dreams before, but this time it's different.
This time I'm the one that's dying. It's *my* face that's covered
when unrecognizable hands close the lid on a wooden casket. I'm the
one that's being locked away into eternal darkness -- never to be
heard from again.

Also, my dream is not quite the same. After The Shooting, I had
dreams of a dead Josh. A glimpse of my world as it could've been if
Josh's surgeon had been absent the day they taught Bullet Removal and
Lung Repair in medical school.

In the new dream I'm the one in the coffin. I'm dead, but strangely,
I'm aware that I'm dead. Go figure. But mostly, I'm locked away in
the full knowledge that no one will ever come to release me. I'll lay
there, unable to make myself heard, for an eternity of sentient death.

But death can't be sentient -- it can't be conscious -- so I guess
that makes me alive. In my dream, that is. Everybody thinks I'm
dead, so they place my apparently dead-looking body into a casket and
they bury me in the ground. There's a lovely memorial service where
they sing lovely songs and give lovely eulogies. It's all very
lovely. There's only one problem. I'M NOT DEAD! At least, that's
what I'm screaming in my head.

When they seal the casket lid and my world becomes pitch dark, the
sound of my breathing is harsh and close all around me. I can feel
solidity slipping away as my coffin is lifted from its bier and
carried off. I can hear people crying softly. And then, just before
the lowering, I can hear Josh. He whispers to me, but his voice
carries through the wooden barrier as though it were as thin as air.

He tells me that he doesn't know what to do next. He tells me that he
needs my guidance. I tell him that I'm right here and that I'm not
dead, but he doesn't hear me. There's a loud and jarring thump as the
casket hits the ground after its descent. But that's not the
proverbial final nail in the coffin. My apologies for such pedestrian
and obvious phrasing. The final nail in the coffin is actually the
dirt. Yes, I can hear the muffled sounds of shovel after shovel of
earth as it lands on the lid.

That's when the screaming begins.

"Donna. Wake up."

His voice reaches me, even through the dirt and the wood and the sound
of my own screaming. At first, my feverish mind doesn't understand
that the voice doesn't quite fit here somehow.

"Donna. Open your eyes." The voice has more substance this time,
surpassing all the other voices, including my own. It's seems
more...real.

"Wake up, Donna!"

I don't actually comprehend that I'm dreaming until I'm forcefully
awakened. What is it about nightmares that keep you in such a
chokehold? If I'd been having a good dream, a fantasy, I would have
been awakened by the slightest disturbance. I dare you to tell me
that statement isn't true.

I'm sitting erect and my hands are balled into tight fists, as though
I were still pounding on the coffin lid above me. My throat burns
with each swallow and moisture drips down my face, a mix of tears and
perspiration.

"Donna, you were dreaming," the voice tells me. "Donna, look at me."

I'm still in that half-way place between nightmare and reality. I
feel the walls of the casket still closing in on me, brushing my
shoulders on both sides. The fathomless darkness plays around the
edges of my vision. Gentle hands touch my face but I sweep them
violently away. They're too close. It's all too close. I draw my
balled fists to my chest hoping the action will create space around
me. There's no room to move -- no room to breathe.

"Donna, look at me!" The hands touch me again, more forcefully this
time. As I look into his face, the darkness I thought was here to
stay begins to fade, and the nightmare falls away as welcomed reality
intrudes.

"Josh," I breathe.

"You were having a nightmare," he says.

"Yeah." My lungs are trying to catch up and my frantic heart is
dropping into a normal pace. He reaches across my body to turn on the
bedside lamp. The sudden burst of illumination hurts my eyes after so
much blackness.

Josh pulls my taut arms down to my lap and strokes my fists until; at
last, my fingers begin to uncurl. He climbs out of the bed and
disappears into the bathroom, returning with a glass of water. He
hands the water to me, and I have to use both hands to keep from
spilling.

My hands are shaking.

He takes the glass from my quivering hands and sets it on the bedside
table before settling on the edge of the bed, facing me. He brushes
aside sweaty strands of hair from my face and wipes the tears from my
cheeks.

"Are you okay?" His eyebrows knit together in concern.

I drop my head into the crook of his neck and he wraps his arms around
me, stroking a hand up and down my spine. "Bad dream," I croak.

"I gathered. You want to talk about it?"

"Uh-uh," I shake my head against his shoulder.

"It might help if you do." The soothing caress on my back continues.

"I was dead," I admit, after a lengthy silence. "But I wasn't."

"You were dead," he repeats.

"Locked in a coffin. It was so dark. No one could hear me
screaming."

"Okay."

"You couldn't hear me screaming," I tell him.

His arms tighten around me, and unlike my earlier aversion to his
touch, I welcome the embrace. "I could hear you," he whispers.

"Not in my dream. You talked to me...when I was dead...and you were
so sad, Josh. I tried to tell you I was alive, but you couldn't hear
me."

"Donna?" He pulls me back so that he can look into my face. "Is this
the first time? Were you having nightmares when I was sleeping in the
other room?"

"No," I tell him. "The first one was last night."

"The same dream?"

"Yeah."

"Donna," he sighs. "Your subconscious is trying to tell you
something. It's telling you that you need to consciously deal with
what happened to you."

"I'm okay, Josh."

"You stopped taking the medication, didn't you?"

"For the APD?"

"Yeah."

"I had to," I admit. "Dr. Wilborn said I had to stop...for the
baby."

"Okay." He takes a deep breath, and I can see the wheels in his mind
turning -- forming a strategy. Here we go. "I think you need to go
back to her."

"Dr. Wilborn?"

"Yes. You need to work through this with her. Before it becomes too
much, Donna. Take it from me. You think you're okay and then the
most unexpected thing can set you off. We need to nip this thing in
the bud, okay? Call her tomorrow and set up an appointment."

"Is that an order?"

"Does it have to be?"

I grate against the thought of admitting I need to see a psychiatrist
-- again. I just want everything to be okay. I want to go back to
the first day I saw this house -- the day that Josh proposed. I want
to revisit that day's perfection. I gaze into his eyes and read the
emotion there. He's dead serious. He will order me, on the record,
to see a shrink if he must. I have a brief second to decide if this
is a battle worth fighting.

"No," I decide. "I'll call her tomorrow."

"Promise."

"I promise. I'll call her after my appointment with Dr. Burgess.
God, I feel like I have a doctor for every part of my body! I thought
that wasn't supposed to happen until you're like...forty, or
something."

"Hey! Was that a comment directed at your elderly and doddering
boyfriend?"

"You got me." Even with the fear lingering in my quaking muscles he
can make me smile. "You're right, Josh," I admit. "I have to fight
this. If I don't I could end up in the Oval Office yelling at the
President. And how would that look?"

"Well, we certainly don't want that," he smiles, relief painted across
his face. "I think twice in one year would be too much for any
President."

"Even Saint President Bartlet." Talking about the Oval Office reminds
me that Josh stayed late at work again tonight -- that I went to bed
alone. "When did you get home?" I ask, because I hadn't felt him
crawl into bed beside me.

"A little over an hour ago," he replies. "You were sleeping like a
rock. I didn't want to disturb you."

"Did you get any sleep?"

"I had just drifted off," he says, "when you started to....."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Donna. It's fine. You just had me worried when you
wouldn't wake up. Are you feeling better now?"

I nod my head. The shaking in my hands has slowed down since the
adrenaline has stopped pumping on overdrive.

"Do you think you could get some sleep now?"

The thought of going back to sleep, making myself vulnerable to
another night terror, makes my throat go instantly dry. With the
light on, and Josh holding me, reality seems so much more inviting.

"Will you wake me if...?"

"The moment I think anything's wrong, I'll wake you," he vows.

"Okay. Could you...?" I glance over at the glass on the table.

"Sure," he replies, picking up the glass and disappearing into the
bathroom. On his way out, he reaches for the light switch.

"Josh?"

"Yeah?"

"Could we, you know...leave it on? Just the bathroom light."

"Sure." He leaves the light and closes the door halfway, so that the
light only spills onto the side of the room closest to me. He hands
me the water and flicks the switch on the bedside lamp. The bathroom
light becomes a beam of safety in the darkness of the room.

He crosses around to his side of the bed and climbs back under the
covers. Draining the glass of water, I set the empty vessel back on
the table, before scooting back into Josh's waiting arms.

His breath on the back of my neck, soothing my frazzled nerves, keeps
the nightmare images at a distance. But still, in the peripheral
recesses of my mind, I can hear the voices. I can hear the rhythmic
sound of dirt filling my burial hole -- like a song you can't get out
of your head. A tune you can't stop whistling. It hums inside of me
and I can taste it in the back of my throat.

I just have to block it out, as if it was the whirring of so many
other things in life. I have to pretend it's not there, like the high
pitched buzz of the fading fluorescent bulb above my desk at work, or
the whir of the VCR across the room. Like white noise -- the
background music of life. All it takes is time. Recognize the noise,
accept it, and move on.

****