vision

It started as a fantasy: the kind you tell yourself to lull into sleep. Never you mind why there were guns and claws involved. I'm pissed about something. Somehow it turned from me deciding suicide was the answer if things played a certain way to me standing near a young soldier whose head was bandaged. I could sense he was very young: maybe early twenties. Can't say he was a private from that, but yeah. Thin. And tranquil. I couldn't see his face for the bandages. A blonde nurse and someone else began rolling his cot down the hospital highway. They did it quite suddenly. I was going with him, at first. The emergency hallway doors were flung back and I could see a beautiful golden gateway. The Sumerian kind with carvings. Enormous. I started to go down the hallway with him but I was stopped just beyond the emergency room doors. That's when I realized he wasn't being taken to the emergency room. This was death to him, and I literally couldn't go any farther. (I did try for a minute to see if I could.) He thought he was being taken in for surgery. It woke me the way these things do. Then my husband called to chat. I told him about it, and I told him that if it was someone attached to his unit they'd be on blackout any minute now. 20 minutes later... well. You know the drill.