The night slowly crept through Mila’s Rehavia apartment. A cold breeze blew in through the windows Mila had left ajar. The dimmed streetlights filtered between the delicate curtains, projecting ripples of light across the thin comforter barely covering her.
Mila adjusted her pillow and position countless times before slipping into another lucid session of strange dreams. Memories stored in the corners of her subconscious came to the light. She appeared in a child’s bedroom, a man was speaking to a baby a sentence like a blessing—or was it a curse? Mila, you are iron wrapped in silk, like your mother. Love without sacrifice is not love. Then he walked away, leaving her standing with her arms outstretched trying to hold on to him. She ran after him through a large garden, but instead of finding him, she met a young woman in ancient clothing, a girl so much like herself.
Come Mila, let me show you. Mila followed her to a house deep into the jungle where her guide was no longer a young woman, but an older lady; her hair was still dark and long, and her face matured but glowing with life. She waited for Mila to get closer, standing at the entrance of a stone and wooden house. It also rose tall as the trees around. The lady picked a vine and told Mila the ingredients of Ayahuasca, the Soul’s Journey, the experimental brew she had ingested about a year ago. Your mind, Mila, could be forever lost. The old lady said with a forlorn gaze into Mila’s eyes.
Mila mumbled incomprehensive words, tossed and moaned. And again, without warning she was swimming frantically in the sea. She tried with all her might to catch up to a solitary boat disappearing in the horizon. “Don’t go! Please, stay!” Mila cried in her sleep. She turned to the other side, clutching fistfuls of her comforter and bringing them to her chest, curled to her knees like a baby in the womb.
She was now at the daunting end of her dreaming cycle. She stood in a road in front of olive trees fencing the perimeters of a typical community in the country where she sought refuge, Israel. As she gazed around trying to recognize her surroundings, her legs fused with the pavement. The asphalt rose up her legs and trapped her in place. She tried to run several times, but she couldn’t move. Her screams were jammed between her tongue and her lips. Her heart raised. She was drenched in sweat. Little by little, shadows took form. Faceless men encircled her with insecure steps like zombie army, marching to the sound of a requiem for her death.
Echad, shtaim, shalosh, a female voice called and Mila went off like a bullet, adrenaline pumping her heart and her fighting arms. With a steel rod in hand her arms became her defense. Her attackers lunged at her with terrifying glares, but disintegrated when she struck them with her rod. They dropped like dried leaves on the ground at the end of fall.
Mila opened her eyes gasping for air as if coming back from death. Her shaky limbs shielding her chest. Her body and sheets were damp, her heart was drumming loudly and so fast that made her tremble. It could burst out of her mouth. She tried to swallow but her throat was rough and dry. She sat at the edge of the bed, wrapped in the cover of solitude, and cried until she couldn’t breathe anymore; she gasped for air and sobbed.
Instinctively, she reached for two bottles on her wooden night stand next to her bed. She had kept them there, taunting her, calling for her submission to their power. She would do anything at this moment to numb the pain, crumpling her chest and cutting the air in her lungs. She rubbed her thumbs over the blue Pharma-NorTech logo. The white bottles felt surprisingly cold inside her sweating and shaky fist. She stared at them, an antidepressant in one hand and an antianxiety in the other. But she stared at the bottles, one pill of each promised to calm her aching soul. The pills would trick her “faulty” mind and brain into perfect function. That’s what the psychiatrist on Masae’s payroll told her when she tried to reach out for help. He said that it would balance her moods and make her night terrors go away. But, how much could she trust this doctor? Would these pills keep her need of knowing who she used to be at bay? More like a mind fogging combo, she thought. Could these tablets mend a broken soul? Then she remembered the brew Masae tested on her. So much for trusting Masae or anyone on her team. She placed the bottles inside the table’s drawer. She would try to face her demons face to face before surrendering to the pharma power.
“There is much life to recover!” She yelled, narrowing her eyes and shrugged defeated. She got up and changed into dry clothes.
“What was my real name? And my faith and convictions? My mishaps and victories from before the coma?” Mila huffed and puffed. If she could only reach and snatch each elusive recollection and make sense of them in the larger picture. She could piece together the fragments and know who she was, who the people in her dreams were. What the series of events she saw had to do with her.
“How can I recognize the sparks of energy and knowledge of plants inside my being and move through Time?” Mila muttered through tight lips. She buried her fingers in her hair, wishing she knew someone outside Masae’s payroll to call out to for help. For the time being, she had to deal with her pain and amnesia by herself.
“God, are you real? Did I know you?” She whispered, drowning in the murky waters of her subconscious and consciousness, blurring the lines between the two. Perhaps it was the experimental drug still causing a ripple effect in her mind. Could she trust what she saw in her dreams? Could she trust what she thought?
“How different are we, old self?” Mila murmured, her voice cracking. She reached for a bottle of lavender essential oil and rubbed a few drops in her palms. She sniffed the familiar scent and thought of the lady in the large garden. Smell memory was a primal sense, she had learned, and that lady’s scent was of lavender and chamomile. Her heart was finally relenting to a normal beat.
Chazak, chazak, chazak, ve-ematz! Be strong, be courageous. Mila had heard the beautiful lady say in her dreams. There was strength emanating from those words. She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes, drying her tears.
“God? If you are area, could you help me remember?” Mila asked, her gaze low not knowing what to wait for, how would the answer arrive.