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a bit on the tall side, she moved like a ballerina.  As she approached me, her every move was gilded with grace.
    I was lying flat on my back in a hospital bed, and it was pretty dark in the room.  The heart monitor alongside the bed only beeped once every two seconds.  Its digits and graph glowed green.  A respirator helped me breathe, and all kinds of tubes and needles were shoved and poked into me. 
    Even had my eyes been open, I’d have barely seen the woman in the faint green glow of the machine.  But I could see her in my dream, striding toward me in black heels, snug jeans, and a man-tailored shirt that she filled out like no man on earth could. 
    She sat alongside me on the narrow bed.  And with her face tinged in green, she gently stroked my hair back.  As she lovingly slid a hand over my head, careful not to touch my bandaged gash, there were tears glistening in her eyes.
    “Jack,” she said, “come back honey.  Don’t you dare leave me; we have far too many memories to make yet.”
    This woman in my dream seemed so familiar.  I knew her face, her body, her walk, her gestures and her voice.  Somehow, I knew I loved her.  I didn’t know why because I couldn’t place her.  And that hurt deeply.  I felt as empty as a long-dead, hollow tree.  I ached to hear her speak again.  I needed to hear more.  Finally, she drew a deep breath and prepared to speak. 
    But she didn’t.  She ran out of time because I was literally bounced right out of my dream.  There was a thunderous thud.  The entire top half of my body lifted high off the mattress and then slammed back onto it.  It felt like the Pilar had fallen off the roof of a three story building.  The hull beneath the bunk crashed on the water as if it were concrete.  My entire body jarred.  And when I awoke, I immediately realized how lucky I’d been to land back on the padded mattress. 
    Then the bow rose again.  It lifted so high it seemed we were about to go airborne. 
    “Ernest!  Ernest!” I hollered as I fought my way into the adjoining cabin, heading for the doorway. 
    All the guests were gone, and the floor there was soaked with water.  Spanning my arms out like wings, trying to prevent myself from slamming into a wall or anything else, I sloshed my way toward the exit.  I looked like an inexperienced daredevil walking a high wire as the bow lifted higher, and the thirty-eight foot hull rocked and rolled.  I knew she was about to crash down again.
    With my sneakers, socks and the bottoms of my pant legs now soaked, I opened the door to the deck.  More water, gallons and gallons of it, rushed in.
    The wind was howling louder than I’d ever heard it before.  But with Ernest standing right there at the helm, I was able to hear his desperate voice.  “Close that door, quick!  The cabin’s going to fill up with this damn water!”
    By the time I managed to close it behind me, two full beer cans had washed below with the deluge of water.  The cooler, upended on the deck, was lying open in a foot of water.  Obviously, when I was down below and the boat slammed hard down, a monster wave had washed over the bow and cockpit.  I didn’t know which was louder, that wind or the deafening torrents of rain pounding away at the ocean’s surface.   
    With the sky now as black as a midnight eclipse, I shouted to Ernest, “My good God, what’s happening out here?”
    “The Bermuda Triangle!   We’re in it!  Never saw anything like this in my life!  Here, quick, get this on,” he yelled, flinging an orange lifejacket at me.  “Don’t bother buckling it! Just slip it on.  We’re dropping over the edge of this gargantuan wave right now, and the boat’s heavy as a pack of pregnant elephants!”
    I couldn’t see the wave before us, but just like Ernest, I felt the bow begin to drop.  Down, down, down, into the hellacious blackness we plunged.  It seemed like forever as we waited for the impact.  The Pilar was nosing