Sarah: Let Dreams Be Real

Would you like tea or coffee while you decide what to paint, Lily?
She used her right arm to tuck her long brown hair behind her right ear. She smiled softly not knowing what to say. This isn’t her place. It isn’t her place to make the decision. It is her friend’s responsibility. Or it was. That was before she, before she, became no longer capable.
Tea, please. Meghan’s going to wake up today.
Lily, replied. The parents, those caring people that didn’t know their daughter at all, were visiting with the doctors. They had given up. Lily wondered – did they really care about her? Meghan had been doing better. She screamed in her sleep at night. She held her belly sometimes. She shook her head.
We sure hope so.
Lily had been at the Neuropsychiatric Institution in Utah for a long time. It was her home. Locked into a wheelchair, not able to walk since the day she entered the Institution all bandaged from the “accident,” she stared at the woman.
Yes, yes we do.
And she continued to paint. She painted with her tears of a world where she knew how to walk. A world where her and Meghan traveled, laughed, and smiled. A world where that nice, tall boy that kissed the young blonde doctor, held Meghan’s hand too. A world where the afflicted caretaker had no worries, except getting whooped at chess by a woman that made him not only smile, but glow. She painted herself in the picture, in the corner, not alone but instead a part of everyone she loved. She held a hummingbird in her hand. He loved her. Then she finished the painting, closed her eyes, and prayed.
And Meghan woke up.