One Dream

A Story by Sir Pen Name

Jack and Anna recovering from a fight spend there evening in a diner having dinner. Afterwords a huge storm hits and turns there lives upside down. What happens next is life-changing.

Jack and Anna were just finishing dinner when they heard on the television that was hanging in the corner of the old, warn-out looking diner, that the storm was coming in a lot faster then expected. Jack and Anna drove separately to the diner due to the work schedules they both have. Jack being one of three policeman the small town of Tipsburg employs works long shifts and could only fine a small amount of time to meet up with his wife Anna. Anna is a school teacher at Tipsburg Elementary, the school day ends just as Jack's day begins, they hardly get to see each other.

Jack being apologetic as he usually is tells Anna on how sorry he is that they never get to see each other. He tries to devote time on his days off to see her but it usually fails due to the poor condition of there small ranch style home being in such poor condition. He spends most of his free time trying to repair it before the upcoming winter. Jack was raised on a farm out in the country. The closest town was over 50 minutes away by car, so anything that needed to be done was achieved by him, his father or his two older brothers. He was a strong 6-foot tall rugged looking man with constant look of fatigue on his face. He lived by the saying of his father, "Nothing worth having, comes easy". If he felt he did not work hard enough to go to bed he would spend the night fixing the broken door in the kitchen or pick up an extra shift to get more food in the house. Times were tough and he would make sure his wife would not have to worry about food.

Anna would come home and make sure the home was clean and tidy for Jack, even though he insisted that she should rest after her long day at work. She is one of the only teachers at her school for 2nd and 3rd graders. She has aids the volunteer daily, mostly retired teachers or church goers, but they are not there everyday.

When Jack and Anna heard that the storm was coming quicker than expected they both said they should head home. They called the waitress over for the check and quickly head back. It was a 12 minute drive home from the diner they were at. Jack kissed Anna on the cheek and ran his fingers through her hair. He looked into her eyes and stated that she was the best thing that could ever happen to him. She hugged him tight and they got in there cars and headed back. She realized she had forgotten her phone at the school told Jack she would meet him at home a litter later. It would set her back about 20 minutes. Jack insisted that she should just head home instead and get the phone the next day but she refused just in case her mom tried getting a hold of her.

Jack heading home now was driving on County Road 6, a deserted looking, small road barely wide enough to hold one car let alone two. There was a black pick-up truck following behind him about a mile away. The sky was dark from the roaring storm and the wind was fierce. Hail was coming down and record sizes, rocketing down from the sky he was sure one will break his windshield. The hail suddenly stopped and the rained appeared to be gone. He smirked at the thought of the storm being over already, what a storm blown way out of proportion, he thought to himself. Then with out in warning his sedan was whipped around and thrown into the air. A tornado has touch down right on top of him. In what felt like hours but was only seconds Jack was getting flung around in the air like a puppet, helpless to its puppeteer. He found his car plummeting back to earth about a mile away from where it was picked up. it land upside down right on County Road 5, he was alive but badly wounded, as he reached for his phone he realized a piece of the guard rail impaled him through his shoulder.

---

Anna was weirded out for how Jack said goodbye, usually he just hugged her and said love you, that was it. This time it was more intimate, like he knew something bad was going to happen. She pulled out of the diner parking lot following right behind Jack but turned the opposite direction heading towards the school. The winds picked up and the sky darkened. There was not another soul out in the town today, everyone was taking shelter from the storm. When she arrived at the elementary it started hailing hard, the hail was so big and was coming down with such force it cracked her back windshield and broke her side mirror. Not wanting to risk getting hit in the head she decided to wait the hail out. Finally after was seemed forever the hail let up and she made a run for the entry way. When she pulled out the key she heard the town's siren going off, meaning a touch down was spotted. She ran to her desk and was praying Jack was safe. Her phone began to ring, and she quickly picked it up. It was nothing but static. She didn't even think to check who was calling she just wanted it to be Jack. As she was looking in her recent received calls list it began to ring. It was her mother, she answered and her mother asked about where she was. When she said at the school she heard a sigh of relief and than found out the touch down of the tornado was spotted on County Road 6, the road her and Jacks house was off of. She began freaking out and told her mom she will call back later knowing that Jack might be in danger.

---

Jack using his left arm was assessing the damage, with the obvious impalement of his right shoulder he needed to make sure nothing else was wrong. At first appearance everything looked fine other than some scratches and bruises. He was looking for his phone in his car, with every movement hurting, causing him to scream in pain. He eventually gave up, thought to himself that it either got thrown out or was lost under the debris of the mangled car. The truck that was following him saw the whole incident happened, after the tornado left the path of the roadway, he quickly began to following it, Jack's car never truly went high into the air, just was being pushed and lifted into the air; like a light feather is carried into the wind after it falls of a bird, hitting various objects until the abrupt ending to its path of destruction. The truck was one Jack's long-time friends from high school who lived a country-mile or two from him and Anna, he ran over to the twisted up metal mess of what used to be a car and was looking for any sign of life. Jack, now light-headed and queezy from the amount of blood he is loosing started to panic. he began screaming for help and his friend finally found a way to look into the car. Jack was so relieved when he saw him. He quickly said, "Find a way to get me out of this mess, and drinks are on me for the rest of my life". His friend saw the amount of blood knew that there was only a limited amount of time. Jack started to seize up and was in a battle for his life. The friend pulling as hard as he could on the mangled metal but nothing would move, not even an inch. Jack now motionless was having his final thoughts.

---

Laughing, with the smell of grease and popcorn in the air, not sure where he is but sees Anna, standing over himself he realizes he is looking at the first date he had with his now wife. They were young and at the county fair. They had met accidentally when they were both waiting for dates that never showed. Instead of letting the night be ruined they decided to talk to each other, and eventually form what some would say a match made in heaven. Things started to get blurry and he realized he was looking in a new memory, this time not so pleasant memory. He sees himself on a online chat room. The lonely shifts he has been working is finally getting to him. He leaves when Anna is asleep and comes home when she goes to school. He is looking down unto him and is screaming to get off his phone. "Stop it!" he yells, but no response, "Don't Press Send!" he tries again, with the same fate. Knowing now that these actions will spin out of control into a fight that almost ends there relationship.

Such wasted time he thinks to himself, a year-and-a-half of on-and-off fighting was spent after this incident. He deeply regrets what he had done. Making Anna feel as if she was not worth anything to him, or that she was not beautiful enough. He fell to his knees and begged to go to another memory. The next memory came and was shown to him, this time it was a memory he had tried forgetting, Jack was going through hard times and resorted to drinking to get through them, Anna trying to comfort him tried to get him to stop drinking, He tooked the bottle and through it. Yelling, "You don't know what I'm going through, You don't have the answers!" Jack, now knowing that he is seeing his life flash before his eyes pleads to just hear Anna voice one more time, to say how sorry he is, just to say how much he loves her.

He is thrown back into his body, and awakens his friend stunned by his sudden consciousness. Now standing over him while Jack is on a stretcher, the EMS team arrived and got him out of the wreck of metal. The team is amazed that he is alive and talking, they were about to pronounce him dead, he had no pulse. He begs for a phone to call his wife.

"Anna" he says, she a sigh of relief knowing he's alive. His condition has worsened and it becomes harder for him to talk, he's begins to rumble non-sense and says incomplete fragments of thoughts. "Anna" he says again over the phone, this time with a notice gurgle of blood that is coming out of his mouth. She asks if he is okay, and if he saw the tornado. He began to say a complete sentence this time, saying "I'm so..." coughing now, harder for him to breath, "sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you". She stopped him and said, "shut up Jack, you are talking like you are about to die" holding back her tears, but you can hear the cracks in her voice. "Anna, I love you" he said with his final breath as he dropped the phone, ending the call. Jack's friend called her back and told her that Jack was in a bad accident caused by the tornado and that they were heading to the Tipsburg County Hospital, he made it clear the she needed to be there as urgent as possible.

When she arrived it was to late, he was pronounced dead at the hospital. The cause of death was determined to be blood loss. She fell to her knees sobbing over he late husbands chest. Thinking of things that could of been done differently, things that could of saved the time they had together. She couldn't leave him, knowing the last time she had talked to him, he was so adamant about his love for her, she now understands that the sick feeling she had in the pit of her stomach, was based off of something. Something they both felt only Jack knew what it meant sooner then she did. But nothing could be done to stop it. Either he dies or they die together. He chose to make sure she would live and did not tell her to stay.

---

Morning and Jack woke up, he was confused and trembling, Anna laying next to him, her arm over his chest was awoken from Jacks trembling and asked if he was okay. He started crying, confessing how much he loved her, and how sorry he was about everything that he had done. He also said that he will be looking for a new job, with better hours so he could spend more time together as a couple. She held him tight and said that she had a horrible dream about him dyeing but could not remember how. He then explained the same thing happened to him, but he remembered the tornado and everything. They spent the morning in bed with breakfast Jack made for the both of them they turned on the T.V and found out a record breaking storm was going to hit in the afternoon, Jack made sure to be home with his wife that night.