I had the feeling that I lost my mind, or at least pieces of it.  I had been hospitalized in the Intensive Care Unit for almost six weeks, then on the surgical floor for another six weeks before I was shipped off to a rehabilitation hospital for six months.  It was during the six weeks confined to the surgical floor that the weird dream emerged.

        The time that I endured in Intensive Care was a drug induced haze.  I had broken my neck and shattered my forearm when I fell off that cliff May 31 or June 1 (depending on what time I actually did fall).  My guts weren't in good shape.  Later I was told that my internal organs had been massively displaced.  When the surgeons sliced my abdomen open to assess the extent of internal damages, they cut into my liver because it shouldn't have been there.  My lungs were in bad shape too, they were hooked up to a respirator to force them to breathe.  My body was hurt pretty badly.  That was why the doctors had me zoning all day and night with Morphine and intravenous Valium.  Alone in my room, I would open my eyes, look around, and then close them again.  I guess there wasn't a hell of a lot to see anyway.  I was strapped, with my arms at my sides, onto a bed that electronically rotated from side to side.  Mostly all I could see was the stained ceiling; there were four steel screws driven into my scull that kept my head immobile because my neck was in traction.

        I woke up one morning with a strange feeling from a dream.  I dreamt that two of my friends had come to see me months before when I was in ICU.  I saw Chris standing beside my blue rotating bed and Mike nearer to the door looking at the get well cards taped on the wall.  We had become close in the week preceding my accident, during a BOCES senior trip canoeing in the Adirondack Mountains.  I would never forget Chris and Mike's surprised reaction when I crawled, shivering into their tent one night.  My sleeping bag was water logged thanks to a thunderstorm and their tent mate Jim now occupied my tent with his girlfriend.  Mike, Chris and I raised a few eyebrows by sharing a tent, two men and one woman.  That was funny, this was not.  Chris leaned toward the bed and spoke, but I couldn't hear him, I don't think.  At least I didn't respond.  His face looked tense.  He said something else, straightened the white blankets heaped on the bed, then Chris appeared to be disgusted.  In his hand he held a stuffed pink bunny rabbit with long fuzzy ears, which he tossed into a chair that stood by the window.  Then Chris and Mike rushed from the room.  The odd part about the dream was my point of view, the "camera angle" so to speak.  It was as if I were floating on the yellow splotched ceiling looking down and observing this scene.

        Remembering this dream had a strange effect on me.  I knew that friends weren't allowed to visit me in ICU because of how ill I was.  Only family members were allowed access.  My mother later told me that suddenly I had many "brothers and sisters" trying to get in to visit me.  These "brothers and sisters" were my friends hoping to give support.

        A few hours after remembering the visitation dream I elevated the head of the hospital bed and adjusted my pillow.  I examined my room as I had nothing else to look at.  The room was larger than my ICU room, though a green striped privacy curtain was all that came between me and a roommate who snored.  The same white blankets covered the same white sheets that rested over my lifeless limbs.  Turning my head to the left, I could view an entire white wall smothered with brightly colored get well cards.  Then looking forward, helium balloons with stupid messages imprinted on them were tied to the foot of my bed.  Occasionally I would take the plastic-coated paper flask of milk off my meal tray and hurl it at the balloons just to see if I could hit them.  I never did have any luck at this target practice though.  Looking to the right, I could see the window.  The sill was the crowded resting place for a collection of gifts given by friends and family, my boom box, assorted munchies, and yes, a bunch of stuffed animals.  As I glanced at each item it seemed that my gaze was drawn away, as if searching for something, and then I saw it.  A fluorescent pink rabbit with ears that must have been a foot long sat nestled among its stuffed comrades.  It was patiently sitting there, staring back at me with blank plastic eyes.