Storymania - I Dreamed... by Ami

I Dreamed...
Ami

We raced to the emergency room; my friend and I. She had cut her hand while slicing carrots in the kitchen. I accompanied her for moral support. However, I was not familar with the hospital that was closest to her house, and knew nothing about the way it was run. It seems that the hospital directors got together and decided that children would be of no help inside the emergency room, and therefore, any child who came had to wait in a separate room. Of course, any child who needed care was promptly admitted and received the same quality of care as adults would, but any other children who came along with any sick person had to leave.

Now, this is a very smart rule and all, since who wants to be screaming at their children to stop misbehaving at the same time as their chin is being sewn up? It would make for some ugly scars, that's for sure! But it seems that, in their analysis of the situation, the hospital directors had neglected to stipulate exactly who was a child, and who was not.
Since I was seventeen at the time, I was underage and therefore not allowed to accompany my friend on the long and terrifying journey down the halls of the emergency room, where her hand would be sewn up.
I protested the unfairness of such an action. How could a seventeen year old, mature, responsible high school senior, who had her driver's license and was a lifeguard, be considered a child? But the secretary at the entrance to the ER was adamant. She would not allow us to enter together. Seeing that, by protesting, I was delaying my friend from having her tattered finger sewn together, I consented to wait in the adjacent room.

Upon arriving at the hospital, I had noticed a high, circular tower which seemed out of place with the structure of the entire building. It was obvious that it had been added recently, and I had speculated on what its purpose could be. As I stepped through the double doors into the next room, I recognized how similar in design it was to the structure of the tower I had glimpsed outside. Apparently, I was getting my chance to explore this odd chamber that I had been so curious about. Well, I thought, everything is for the best.

After I entered the tower, I saw that there was a slide in the center of the room. I hadn't noticed it before, but the entire tower was tilted slightly to the side. Perhaps it wasn't visible from the outside, I mused, and turned my attention back to the room. The slide descended from the top of the tower, and I could not see where it started, it was so high. It twisted around and around, like a tube, towards the top of the room, but as it descended, the last few turns were uncovered. Every once in a while, I would see a person come shooting out of the slide, land uncertainly at the bottom, plant their feet on the ground, stagger around like a drunkard, and join the end of an ever growing line that formed at the bottom of the slide.
I wondered where this line went. People would join it, and I saw that the floor underneath their feet sloped up, in a sort of continuous ramp. It wound itself around, so that the slide remained in the center of the room, with the line being a sort of border around it. I couldn't figure out what the line was for, or where it ended. I looked around the room for something else to occupy me during the time that it would take for the doctors to sew up my friend's finger. It was strange - there were no chairs. There was no television turned to the children's channel, as most play rooms have. There weren=t even any toys. The only thing available was to join this ever lasting line, which I did.

I still had no clue of where the line went, so I asked the person in front of me - a young girl about eight or nine. She didn't know. I asked her why she had joined a line when she didn't know where it went. She didn't know. I asked her why she was here, who she had come with. She named some far off, long lost relative, who she had never seen before, but who came to visit, and hurt his foot. She brought him to the ER, and was directed to the children's room. Soon, however, this girl lost interest and turned her head to the front of the line, once again. I had learned nothing from her!

I looked forward and saw many older looking people there, around my age, although anyone older that me certainly wouldn't have had to spend their time waiting in the children's room. Ignoring the jabs and kicks of the younger children, who were angry at my skipping of people in the line, I pushed my way forward. Once I reached a boy who appeared to be around my age, I asked him where the line went. He replied that it went up. I asked him where it went up to, but he had no answer for me. He pointed out to me that the floor sloped continuously upward, therefore, we were going up. I replied that any fool could figure that out for himself, and he turned his attention back to the line.

I still did not have a clue what the purpose of this line was, so I went forward some more, to figure it out. The next person I spoke to was a girl who appeared to be about twelve. I asked her where the line went, and she replied that it went to the top. I asked her what was at the top, but she didn't know. I moved up the line, asking people where they thought they were g oing, but no one had any answers for me. I estimated that I was about halfway to the top of the tower, judging by the distance I had covered - but still another strange thing about this children's room was that it had no windows.

After a while, I became so frustrated that I simply shouted out loud, "DOESN'T ANYONE KNOW WHERE THEY ARE GOING?!" Everyone suddenly stopped their conversations, turned around, and stared at me. It was a most disconcerting feeling, and I felt a deep red blush work its way onto my face. Whispers broke the silence, and I heard murmers of "...crazy..." and "...not with it...". I was not with it, and I did not know what was going on. I asked the person in front of me, a girl about my age, whether anyone wanted to know where they were going. She stared at me blankly before turning her back to me and facing the front of the line.
I moved up some more, past a boy who had brought his boombox to the ER, with headphones so that he could listen to his music quietly without disturbing anyone. Apparently, he didn't feel that his music would disturb anyone in the children's room, so he yanked the head phones out and turned the volume up. That section of the line was made up mainly of teenagers, who appreciated the music and were swaying to the hip-hop rhythm that blasted out of the speakers. I figured that anyone in this group was too far gone to help me at all, and moved on, upwards, toward the front of the line.
I was three quarters of the way up when I passed a girl who had brought her laptop along, and a digital camera. She told me that she could take my picture - for a fee - and print it out of her computer for me. I told her I wasn't interested in souveniers from this momentous occasion in my life, and moved on. By now, people were talking to me before I initiated speaking to them. I was asked, several times, whether I was the girl with all the questions, and I answered, several times, that I was the girl with questions. I also asked if they had any answers, but no one did. Not a single person in that entire room knew why they were on line or where the line was going to.

People made way for me now. I was not going to wait for hours just to find out what I had been waiting for. They all moved to the side when they saw me coming. I approached the top with much less confidence than I appeared to have. There was a door at the top, and I eagerly pushed my way through to find yet another line, made up of people in single file upon a stairway. The ramp below had been wide enough to accomodate for pushy people like me, but this stairway was much too narrow. I resigned myself to another long wait, but still chanced asking the person in front of me what was going to happen at the end of the line. She didn't know either! I figured that there must be something very exciting at the end of the line, or otherwise, there would have been signs stating what the purpose of it all was.

The line moved slowly, and I, with great anticipation, reached the end. There was another door, which I pushed through and entered a chamber of complete darkness. It was only once the door behind me closed that the lights flashed on, and I saw the entrance to a slide. A slide? I wondered. This is what they are all waiting for? I figured that, once I had finally reached the top, I might as well try the slide. There really weren't too many alternatives, since there were no windows or other exit ways and the door behind me refused to open again.

With great trepidation, I slipped one trembling foot inside the slide. It sucked me in, and twirled me around and around till I was nauseous. Strange colored lights bounced around inside the slide, and I noticed that it was black when the twirling ended and a colorless light shined inside the tube slide. I crossed my arms around my chest, as I had been instructed to at the many amusement park slides I have ridden on in my life. The ride then started in earnest. I flew downward, but left my stomach at the top. I reached the part of the slide that I had initially seen, at the bottom - the part that was halfway open on top - but all I could see was the black underside of the slide above me. I knew that the slide would soon end, and it did. The actual ride had lasted about a minute and a half!

Once I dismounted, so to speak, I staggered around, regaining my sense of balance, which had been thrown off-kilter while I was on the ride. When my eyes could see straight once more, the same line confronted me, the same line of ignorant people who did not know where they were going.