The Man Who Watched the World End (30 page)

After the dream was over
I stayed in bed with my eyes closed because I knew as soon as I opened them I would be back in my bedroom in Camelot. It was still dark when I woke up, even though it was the next morning. The shades were down and the sun was only starting to come up over the trees. I stayed motionless as long as possible so the intense sights, sounds, and smells in my dream could linger without interference.

M
y true senses came back when I opened my eyes and looked around my bedroom. I couldn’t identify the two figures in the framed picture han of my drivewayh,be,ging on the wall in front of me. I knew it was Andrew and me, but we no longer resembled the people in the photograph, wouldn’t have been picked out of a police lineup for possibly being the men in that picture. I inhaled deeply but didn’t smell anything. Our house had to be stale with mildew, probably much worse, but none of the odors registered. I heard a dog bark from off in the woods. There were probably a hundred other sounds around me that I didn’t hear anymore. It made me wish I could stay in my dream where I got to experience more of the world around me and be content doing so.

It was at that moment, under the blanket in my bedroom,
that I realized I’ve said everything in this diary that I need to say. In the dark room, with the memory still fresh in my mind of the dream that had just played out, I finally understood why I’ve been recording how our lives have unfolded here in Camelot.

It wa
sn’t for me, it was for Andrew.

It was to make sure there was a record of what life was like around the sofa where he lived. It was to record how the world fell apart around him even though he never complained or seemed inconvenienced
by it. It was to show that even if he couldn’t talk or hear, he had someone who loved him, would do anything for him.

The dream
also made me wonder if Andrew has ever had his own dreams. The doctors all agreed that Blocks didn’t have significant brain activity, but I never completely believed that. And what is ‘significant brain activity’? Maybe he doesn’t have enough capacity to talk or move, but maybe there’s enough for him to have some semblance of a dream. They might not be dreams the same way I experience them, in full color and sound, detailed and expressive, but maybe Blocks still get taken to some other world when they close their eyes.

I like to think
Andrew closes his eyes for a reason, that when he goes to sleep he too is taken to a world where his senses allow him to experience the world the way I do. He could play catch with me. He could laugh with his classmates and slide a note across his desk that says he’ll be a girl’s lunchtime boyfriend. I like to think that for at least a portion of his life he has the opportunity to be a part of another world, a world where he can do whatever he wants: get off the sofa, remove his nutrient bag, shake his joints out, walk right out the front door and go for a jog, explore the neighborhood, or go back to the beach that my parentaid="14K">