As I come to, it feels as if someone has jammed a six-inch blade through the middle of my skull. The two faces hovering over me are the woman and man of my dreams.
“Am I dreaming?” I ask.
They both smile. “No, Lieutenant,” says Jasmine Komine. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Where am I?”
The man says, “You’re on the floor of our apartment.”
“You fainted,” says Jasmine, “and before we could get to you, you rolled off the couch and banged your head against the coffee table.”
“Are you okay?” asks the man.
“Please, can you help me up?”
They each take an arm and the three of us manage to get me up on the couch. I massage the back of my head gently, then take a look at my hand. “No blood,” I say, relieved.
“Should we call an ambulance?” Jasmine asks. “Just as a precaution.”
I shake my head, gently. “No, no need. But have you got some aspirin?”
Jasmine heads off in the back.
“Who are you?” I ask the man.
“Me? I’m her fiancé. She finally talked me into it. I mean, I love her, of course, but you know how it is for bachelors.”
I can’t quite understand why he answers my question like that. “Great. That’s great. I’m very happy for you two.”
Jasmine returns with the aspirin.
“Could I also have some water?” I ask, thinking that would be a given.
“I’ll get it, Babe,” says the man.
He turns and walks toward the kitchen.
“You’re limping,” I say, breaking out in a minor sweat for having called that one in my dream.
He stops and turns to me. “Yes, it’s a carryover from some stupidity when I was in high school. I was trying to bulk up to take the physical exam for the fire department. Some guy convinced me to do steroids. I did. Long story short, I had a stroke. Luckily, the only remnant of the whole thing is this limp. It was way worse. I had to learn to walk and talk again. It was awful.”
“But,” says Jasmine, “the good news is that he went to college instead and teaches at HU now. That’s where we met.”
“Yeah,” says the man. “She’s in psych, I teach math.”
“I always like to say that he’s into chaos and I’m into order.”
This bit of information blows my mind more. “Say what?”
“Yeah, she does always like to say that,” he agrees, rolling his eyes.
“But why is that?” I ask, my headache intensifying as my mind feels like it’s being blown further and further apart.
Jasmine says, “Well, I like to think that as a psychologist, I help people find order in their lives. You know, work toward some kind of normalcy, get their minds to function in a positive, controlled direction. And this guy, well, he’s into chaos.”
“She means my specialty is chaos theory.”
This whole thing is too much for me. My head is pounding. I toss the aspirin in my mouth and attempt to swallow them without the water. They stick in my throat on the way down, and I start coughing hard. This doesn’t help the throbbing.
“Oh my,” exclaims Jasmine, “your water.”
She runs to the kitchen while the guy pats me on the back, not hard enough to do anything about the aspirin, but hard enough to exacerbate the pounding in my head.
Grabbing the water from her, I drink the whole glassful. “Oh God, I need to lie down.”
“Of course,” says the guy, helping me to settle back on the couch. “You sure you don’t need an ambulance?”
“No, no, I’ll be fine. But what’s your name?”
“It’s Harry, Harry Wong.”
This my mind can almost not wrap around. He has the face and the limp of the Harvey Wong in my dreams. But it’s Harry?”
“Sorry,” I say, just to make sure I heard him correctly. “Your name again?”
“Harry Wong.”
Before I black out, I recall my dreams I’ve hit on all cylinders except the name. But Harry’s so close to Harvey — am I psychic?
Lanning Lee 