Legal Page
Title Page
Book Description
Dedication
Trademarks Acknowledgment
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Epilogue
New Excerpt
About the Author
Publisher Page
A Totally Bound Publication
His Dream Lover
ISBN # 978-1-78184-913-2
©Copyright Lee Brazil 2013
Cover Art by Pamela Sinclair ©Copyright December 2013
Edited by Jennifer Douglas
Totally Bound Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Totally Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2013 by Totally Bound Publishing, Newland House, The Point, Weaver Road, Lincoln, LN6 3QN
Warning:
This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Totally Burning and a Sexometer of 2.
This story contains 44 pages, additionally there is also a free excerpt at the end of the book containing 7 pages.
HIS DREAM LOVER
Through the gates of the sun lies the land of dreams, and beyond that…the realm of the lost.
In a private hospital room, motionless and still beneath a sheet, lies Joseph Caldwell. His surgery has passed, to all intents and purposes, successfully. The doctors offer no explanation for why he hasn’t awakened from the medically induced coma. The stream of visitors trickles down to nothing, and still he lies in endless sleep. Nearly everyone has given up any hope for his recovery.
Anesthesiologist Oliver Gideon is racked with guilt and confusion. Could he have somehow done something wrong? His superiors assure him he is not at fault, the science he reviews tells him his dosages were correct, but the longer Caldwell sleeps the more Oliver is haunted by the loneliness of the figure in the bed.
He spends every possible moment with the patient, reading, talking, trying to fill the little room with sound, to stir a response that science isn’t sure is possible.
Morpheus, King of Dreams, has welcomed Joseph to his realm. Some dreams, he explains, are true, and some are false. There’s only one way tell. Joseph loves the dream world Morpheus has woven for him, for in it, he’s found something he never found in reality: a soul mate. For the first time, his life is perfect.
In the end, he has to choose. He cannot stay in the Realm of Morpheus forever. It’s either back to the land of the sun, and potential loneliness, or on to the realm of the lost.
Dedication
Dedicated to Hank Edwards—because if memory serves, it was all his fault.
And also to Dianne Hartsock, who suggested the prompt, Dream Lover by Bobby Darrin.
Trademarks Acknowledgment
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Starbucks: Starbucks, Inc.
Dream Lover: Bobby Darrin
Frankenstein: Mary Shelley
The Road Not Taken: Robert Frost
Chapter One
“It’s my half day today.” As though having time off means you’ll be away from the hospital. Dr Oliver Gideon perched on the edge of the uncomfortable chair beside the bed in room thirty-two B at Beachport Memorial Hospital and searched the pale face on the pillow for any sign that his words had been heard.
The night nurse had turned the patient’s face so he looked into the room. If he could see, that was. The comatose man’s eyelids remained obstinately closed after six months of long sleep. There wasn’t even a flicker of eye movement that Oliver could latch onto and pretend the patient dreamed, or merely slept. Those lids lay stubbornly still, immobile as the rest of the man.
Coma. It was supposed to have been a short-term state induced to enhance the body’s natural healing processes following Joseph Caldwell’s surgery. Instead, hours had stretched into days, and days into weeks, and still the man slumbered on, if sleep it could be called.
It didn’t matter that the patient’s eyes refused to open of their own accord. Oliver knew they were slate gray, almond-shaped and, when he was conscious, they telegraphed every emotion the man felt. Oliver knew that, because he’d stared down into those eyes on an operating table six months before, seen the interest in the gray depths turn to fear when he’d caught sight of the gas mask. Fear wasn’t unusual in his patients—he had a practiced litany of words designed to ease the uncertainties of patients who were scared of losing consciousness.
Some people feared spiders, some feared the unknown. Joseph Caldwell, he sensed, feared losing control. He was a man who was accustomed to being careful. His whole being screamed caution and reserve, from the precisely trimmed hair to the neatly plucked eyebrows. If he peeked into the plastic carrier that held the man’s belongings he would surely find a pair of highly polished dress shoes, neat slacks, a button-down shirt and a tie. Even his build was a perfect balance of casual fitness, muscled but not buff, lean but not thin.
The patient had lost muscle and fat though over the ensuing weeks. Allowing his gaze to wander down the thin frame, skipping guiltily over the IV needles and catheter tubes, Oliver counted the man’s breaths for a minute. Each breath raised the thin sheet reassuringly, establishing Caldwell’s claim to life. Persistent, tenacious, clinging to life. He might look waxen and pale, but Joseph Caldwell lived, and that was something.
It wasn’t much consolation, and Oliver felt at times that if the man had died on the operating table he might have been better able to get over the whole mess. This lingering sleep-death tugged at his heart and head, made a mess of his entire reason for being. His mother clucked at him and told him he was obsessed. He might well be. He just couldn’t forget the way trust had replaced fear in that gray gaze, the way the man had held his gaze until sleep claimed him, had clutched Oliver’s hand until his body went limp.
“I could chuck it all,” he spoke. He sipped his coffee idly and grimaced at the bitter flavor. He’d forgotten the sugar again. “And go off to become a bohemian artist. Make splashes of color on gray landscapes and tell the world I’m just misunderstood.” The idea had come to him more and more often of late. He had come to despise his job and the science behind it. Science he felt had betrayed him. All his life he’d loved the quantifiable, the predictable. When science screwed you over what else was there but art? Draining the cup to the dregs, he swallowed the strange lump in his throat that seemed to have been a near-constant problem for the last six months.
“But then there’s the hundred thousand dollars in student loans. Do you think shades of gray with splashes of color would make me millions?” He crushed the cup in his hand. “No, I don’t think so either. That kind of fortune doesn’t favor me.”
Oliver set his empty coffee in the trash receptacle beside the bed. It held only the bits of paper that the staff had left behind, the wrapping for a straw, a plastic needle cap, a few bits of hospital garbage. The bin was as pathetically empty as he was.
“Or not. Did I tell you I’ve picked up a new book this weekend? It’s a leather-bound copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Not a first edition, but lovely. I thought we could read it. I think you’ll enjoy it. I read it before, as an impressionable youth determined to rebel against pop culture by shoving my peers’ noses in ‘real’ literature. By that I mean it’s a classic, Mary Shelley. I know, we’ve just read Percy’s poems, but it is October, you know, and now would be a really good time to wake up and rejoin the world, and…” He allowed his voice to trail away and raised his gaze to the window. Gray skies stretched as far as the eye could see from this third-floor room. The ocean in the distance was choppy and vicious. Dead leaves from the nearby trees had somehow made their way up this far and clung to the wet window. Themes of rebirth notwithstanding, it was perfect weather for reading Frankenstein, and dismal as it may appear with its monsters and mysteries, it also held hope.
“And we damned well need hope, don’t we, Joseph?” Clearing his throat, he wrenched his glasses off and polished the frames on the hem of his deep blue scrubs. “Only two surgeries this morning, then I’ll come back and we’ll start reading, right? I may be able to spend the afternoon, if we really get into it.” And what would take him away? Dinner with his mother so she could fuss over his lack of appetite and lackluster attitude?
“Doctor Gideon?”
Glancing up, he caught sight of the day nurse in bright pink scrubs standing just inside the doorway with a cart of supplies to chart Joseph’s vitals. With her blonde hair scraped back into a tight pony tail, she appeared efficient, stern. “Yes?”
“It’s time for the patient’s physical therapy after I take his vitals.” The nurse’s disapproving tones made his stomach clench, but then what didn’t these days?
“His name”—Oliver forced himself to speak out, loud and clear—“is Joseph, or Mr Caldwell. Our patients are human beings, Nurse, and they should be treated as such.”