A Dreamy Encounter - Part 5

First Published in Roses Aren't Red Anthology

HE SHOULD NOT have kissed her.

Everybody knew that when dreams became real, they ended. And he knew that the moment they kissed, it became real: the feelings he had for her, the unanswered questions about how their dreams had brought them together, why it had all happened.

Pulling into the parking lot of the hospital where he worked, he thought about what Omoronke had said. Art chose me because of you, Damilare. Goodness, he missed her voice so much. Wasn’t it weird, that in the three months that the dream had lasted with her – his own dreams had begun long before then – they had never told each other their full names? It was like they thought the dream would last forever.

He turned off the engine and checked his bag for the essentials: hand sanitizer, face mask, tissue to wipe surfaces. He could get all these in the hospital, of course, but his anxiety told him that anything could happen in the time it took him to walk from the car park to the hospital lobby. Most times, he tried not to listen to his anxious thoughts but on this issue, he wasn’t taking any chances.

He was just putting on his face mask when he saw a woman walking out of the hospital. She was wearing a face mask – she was obviously not one of those stubborn people whom only God knew what was going on in their heads, refusing to wear a mask – so he couldn’t see her face. But she was talking on the phone and she seemed very angry.

He could not mistake that voice for another’s, angry as it sounded. And that body, he knew it almost like the back of his hand. He also knew that walk, anywhere.

He sat frozen in his car. He couldn’t move, he didn’t even think he could breathe. Omoronke was standing just a few metres away from him. All he had to do was step out of the car and call her name, but he couldn’t move and she was walking away.

His love story was ending before it even had a chance to begin.

OMORONKE COULDN’T BELIEVE the tragedy that was her life. In one week, she found out that her best friend was a freak and her mother had stage four cervical cancer. Somehow, she had forgotten that people still had other illnesses that weren’t coronavirus-related. She had thought that one day, she would be able to mend her relationship with her mother, but her stupid step-father had kept her mother’s sickness from her. To make it all worse, the dream had stopped and she hadn’t even told Damilare that she loved him. She basically had no one.

She got to her car in the hospital car park and was fumbling with getting the key out of her purse when she heard her name.

She paused. It couldn’t be. That voice…

Turn around, turn around, the voice in her head said but her feet had suddenly become heavy. Then she heard it again.

“Omoronke.”

It was definitely him. She somehow willed her body to turn towards the sound of his voice and there he was, holding his face mask in one hand and his glasses in the other. Of course, it made sense, he was a medical doctor and this was a hospital. She pulled down her face mask and he smiled broadly at her.

They both started walking towards each other, slowly at first and then picking up pace until they were running. They came to a stop just a few inches away from each other, breathing heavily, taking each other in, both of them unable to believe their eyes.  

Omoronke didn’t even notice the tears that now stained her cheeks as she stared at the man who had been in her dreams for the past three months, the man she had fallen in love with.

“Omoronke,” he called her name again. This time his voice was barely above a whisper and it sounded like he was reassuring himself that he wasn’t crazy.

Omoronke could only stare at him, her throat and her tongue heavy but when she pushed past the mental barrier to speak, the words that came out of her mouth were:

“Let’s… let’s find your kingdom together.”

She had played out many scenarios in her head of what she would say to him, if she ever saw him. She called herself crazy for thinking she could ever see him outside the dream and now that she had, that one line was all she could muster.

“Yes,” he nodded, unable to form more words because he was fighting back tears. Only then did she realise that she was crying, too.

That was it – their tears broke through their restraints and they embraced each other, fiercely at first and then they relaxed and melted into each other’s arms. No more words were needed. They cried and then they laughed and then they cry-laughed.

They were both crazy and they knew it, but they would be crazy together because they knew, from that moment on, things could only get better. And even if they didn’t, they had their crazy, mysterious love.

The End

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Read the first part