The dream begins in a dark warehouse. I am alone, and instantly aware that I am being pursued. Large crates are stacked all around me, and I am crouching next to some sort of bobcat. Many pieces of machinery are scatteredly haphazardly around, like someone abandoned them in a hurry.
I hear footsteps approaching and silently begin to move. I have no idea where I'm moving to but my feet seem to be taking me away from the footsteps. I stop and wait again. Now there are two sets of footsteps and they are converging upon me. It is so dark that my sense of hearing is heightened.
As they come within a few metres of me I turn around and see that there is a set of shutter doors which swing open like in those old Western movie saloons. I duck quickly under the doors and hide inside the small alcove which is barely larger than a cupboard. As I look out through the shutters, I realise a lightbulb is casting its light directly over the space just outside the doors. I know then that I will see my attackers just in the moment before they find me.
They come closer in silence. As I predicted, they pause in the dim pool of light just outside the shutters. I know they have found me and time seems to stop while they are drawing their guns, in ridiculously slow motion.
The one on the right looks Italian, tall with dark hair and a receding hairline, wearing a black leather jacket. The one on the left looks Southeast Asian, short and stout with a beer gut. As they raise their guns and point directly at me, I think for a moment that I am going to die. I didn't even realise my gun is loaded and in my hands, but at that moment I am acutely aware of the cold steeliness of the weapon. I raise the gun and shoot them both, first the Italian guy in the left chest and then the Asian guy in the left shoulder. The Italian guy falls to his knees and collapses silently in a pool of blood. The Asian guy remains standing, and I try to shoot him again but I have no more bullets in my gun. His weapon drops with a conspicuous clunk to the ground and he remains standing for a while, bleeding profusely, then slowly slumps to the ground.
The whole thing must have not taken more than a minute, but I feel like hours have passed. My heart is racing and my hands are covered in cold sweat. I take out my phone and ring 000. The next moment, ambulance officers have arrived and I am still standing exactly where I was. They check the Italian guy and he is dead. They check the Asian guy and they think he's dead too, but I could see that he's still breathing and rush out of the alcove to tell them he's not dead. When I get closer I see that the bullet must have clipped his shoulder and actually hit his face, and his entire left head is swollen. He has a good carotid pulse and chest rise seems equal, so I tell them to take him quickly to the hospital because he has probably had penetrating head trauma and needs urgent surgery.
Then I am on a ship. It feels like a military warship, though I don't really know why. There certainly aren't any oldies or recreational activities around, and the atmosphere is absolutely sombre. It is still in the depth of the night, and dark stormclouds twirl close to the horizon, threatening us just above our heads. I am all alone on this ship and cannot hear or see anyone.
The sea is angry and the turbulent waves rock the large ship violently. I am struggling to hold onto the railing as I try to find someone so I can find out where I am or what has happened. As I walk forward, the wind starts howling and it feels like knives are slashing my face. Up ahead I can see lights at the front of the ship, and keep struggling to move towards the lights.
It starts to rain, and the droplets seem to be vicious too, falling in my eyes and making the world blurry. As I get closer to the light, I realise there is a huge crowd of people around someone on a makeshift bed.
We must save the general! One man at the head of the bed is shouting.
I stand a few metres away and watch what is going on. There are two men in white coats at the head of the bed who seem to be the doctors, and then there are a crowd of other people at the foot of the bed milling around. I can't tell if any of them are doing anything helpful.
I get closer and realise the man on the bed is the Asian man I shot in the warehouse. His face is grotesquely distorted, and a surgeon is trying to pick outs of fractured skull. Blood has soaked through all the bedding and is dripping onto the ground. I realise with a start that he is not anaesthetised and his eyes are bulging practically out of their sockets. He has an arterial line and the monitor says his BP is 50/30.
Everyone stop! I shout and everyone stops momentarily, looking startled. What's going on? I demand.
The surgeon explains that this is the commander in chief of the army, who has been shot by enemies during a rogue attack. They had done an exploratory craniotomy because his head was so swollen they thought they had to decompress it for intracranial hypertension, but never actually found the bullet. They lost the anaesthetist during the war and thought he was so hypotensive he probably wouldn't remember the surgery anyway.
As he is explaining this the BP starts to slide, and I ask one of the nurses to fetch more blood. She comes back with a bag containing 2 units of packed cells and 2 units of FFP and says that this is all there is left of the blood bank. We give it to him, but the BP remains terrible. As the wind howls I think - this man has actually not died from my bullet but from poor medical management?
The surgeon keeps prying at the swollen brain tissue, trying to escape from the small hole like a mushroom. The monitor makes ominous lower and lower pitch sounds as the BP falls to near zero.
Then I wake up
I hear footsteps approaching and silently begin to move. I have no idea where I'm moving to but my feet seem to be taking me away from the footsteps. I stop and wait again. Now there are two sets of footsteps and they are converging upon me. It is so dark that my sense of hearing is heightened.
As they come within a few metres of me I turn around and see that there is a set of shutter doors which swing open like in those old Western movie saloons. I duck quickly under the doors and hide inside the small alcove which is barely larger than a cupboard. As I look out through the shutters, I realise a lightbulb is casting its light directly over the space just outside the doors. I know then that I will see my attackers just in the moment before they find me.
They come closer in silence. As I predicted, they pause in the dim pool of light just outside the shutters. I know they have found me and time seems to stop while they are drawing their guns, in ridiculously slow motion.
The one on the right looks Italian, tall with dark hair and a receding hairline, wearing a black leather jacket. The one on the left looks Southeast Asian, short and stout with a beer gut. As they raise their guns and point directly at me, I think for a moment that I am going to die. I didn't even realise my gun is loaded and in my hands, but at that moment I am acutely aware of the cold steeliness of the weapon. I raise the gun and shoot them both, first the Italian guy in the left chest and then the Asian guy in the left shoulder. The Italian guy falls to his knees and collapses silently in a pool of blood. The Asian guy remains standing, and I try to shoot him again but I have no more bullets in my gun. His weapon drops with a conspicuous clunk to the ground and he remains standing for a while, bleeding profusely, then slowly slumps to the ground.
The whole thing must have not taken more than a minute, but I feel like hours have passed. My heart is racing and my hands are covered in cold sweat. I take out my phone and ring 000. The next moment, ambulance officers have arrived and I am still standing exactly where I was. They check the Italian guy and he is dead. They check the Asian guy and they think he's dead too, but I could see that he's still breathing and rush out of the alcove to tell them he's not dead. When I get closer I see that the bullet must have clipped his shoulder and actually hit his face, and his entire left head is swollen. He has a good carotid pulse and chest rise seems equal, so I tell them to take him quickly to the hospital because he has probably had penetrating head trauma and needs urgent surgery.
Then I am on a ship. It feels like a military warship, though I don't really know why. There certainly aren't any oldies or recreational activities around, and the atmosphere is absolutely sombre. It is still in the depth of the night, and dark stormclouds twirl close to the horizon, threatening us just above our heads. I am all alone on this ship and cannot hear or see anyone.
The sea is angry and the turbulent waves rock the large ship violently. I am struggling to hold onto the railing as I try to find someone so I can find out where I am or what has happened. As I walk forward, the wind starts howling and it feels like knives are slashing my face. Up ahead I can see lights at the front of the ship, and keep struggling to move towards the lights.
It starts to rain, and the droplets seem to be vicious too, falling in my eyes and making the world blurry. As I get closer to the light, I realise there is a huge crowd of people around someone on a makeshift bed.
We must save the general! One man at the head of the bed is shouting.
I stand a few metres away and watch what is going on. There are two men in white coats at the head of the bed who seem to be the doctors, and then there are a crowd of other people at the foot of the bed milling around. I can't tell if any of them are doing anything helpful.
I get closer and realise the man on the bed is the Asian man I shot in the warehouse. His face is grotesquely distorted, and a surgeon is trying to pick outs of fractured skull. Blood has soaked through all the bedding and is dripping onto the ground. I realise with a start that he is not anaesthetised and his eyes are bulging practically out of their sockets. He has an arterial line and the monitor says his BP is 50/30.
Everyone stop! I shout and everyone stops momentarily, looking startled. What's going on? I demand.
The surgeon explains that this is the commander in chief of the army, who has been shot by enemies during a rogue attack. They had done an exploratory craniotomy because his head was so swollen they thought they had to decompress it for intracranial hypertension, but never actually found the bullet. They lost the anaesthetist during the war and thought he was so hypotensive he probably wouldn't remember the surgery anyway.
As he is explaining this the BP starts to slide, and I ask one of the nurses to fetch more blood. She comes back with a bag containing 2 units of packed cells and 2 units of FFP and says that this is all there is left of the blood bank. We give it to him, but the BP remains terrible. As the wind howls I think - this man has actually not died from my bullet but from poor medical management?
The surgeon keeps prying at the swollen brain tissue, trying to escape from the small hole like a mushroom. The monitor makes ominous lower and lower pitch sounds as the BP falls to near zero.
Then I wake up
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