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I’ll wake up and everything will be fine. Brad will say how much the kids were worrying about me, and I’ll be able to go home in a couple days after some x-rays or a MRI.
    I remember the time I hit my head on a dock while I was water-skiing at camp. The next thing I remember my parents were by my bedside at the hospital, telling me it was just a mild concussion and everything would be fine. I was fourteen, and my parents wanted to get rid of me for the summer so they could go on a cruise. I always hated my mom and dad, I was the youngest and I never felt they had the time to love us, me especially.
    I was in the hospital for a week, with endless tests, scans, and specialists pointing at computer screens and telling my parents what would happen next. I remember the smell of ammonia and alcohol, the hum of medical equipment, and the constant checking by the nurses.
    I remember coming down the stairs when I was home and overhearing them blame me for the cruise they couldn’t take. I ran back up stairs and cried the rest of the night. I never looked at them the same way, didn’t they care about me? Didn’t they love me? The feeling they cared more about their stupid cruise kept me distant from them for the next few years until I left home.
    At seventeen, with Brad.
    I really messed up my life. Part of why I hate my teenage years was because I felt I wasted so much of it, got married young, and started having children because I thought that would make me more mature. I hated being young, and I thought children would make me an adult faster.
    Did I let my children down?
    I can’t, I can’t second guess myself. In the life I don’t have anymore I made decisions to live the way I did, and I should never think about the what-ifs that never happened.
    Maybe this is all some hallucination from my water-skiing accident, some sort of damage that is just now coming up as I get older. I close my eyes tightly and pray, that my family is by my bedside showing me love and compassion.
    I hope.
    More ash hits my face, and I brush it away. There is a lot of ash falling now, huge clumps hanging together like huge puffs of slow falling snow. Maybe this is a volcano. But people just don’t burn up, do they? With that much heat, the houses would all be set on fire. There would be fires everywhere. We would hear things, there would be an alert.
    It’s so quiet.
    I brush more of the ash out of my hair and off the horse. We’re getting covered riding out here. Where are we going?
    A red glow to the left catches my eye. I make out the red glow of a DINER sign, and I pat the horse. “Whoa, stop.” I point. “Over there, I’m hungry, and thirsty. I could get us something to eat.”
    I don’t know what horses eat? Grass? Oats? Maybe there’s some oatmeal inside, and I could get him some water. If the horse is my only ride, or the only thing alive, I need to take care of him. Just like the kids I never used to have. It kills me to think about them, but I am so young now, and I could never imagine myself having children.
    Yet I did.
    The horse, remarkably, obeys. He clops over to the front of the diner, lowers his head twice, and waits. I jump off into the fluffy gray ash, and I land on something beneath it and nearly fall. I kick the ash off of whatever it is.
    Clothes, shoes, jackets, pants…there must be dozens or hundreds or pieces of clothing under the ash. The soft lumps all over the parking lot must be even more. Cars sit in the parking lot with open doors, blinking lights, and some of the engines are still running.
    I walk towards the diner, and I have to kick ash away from the front door to get it open. I slip inside. The diner is empty, but I still smell the incredible scents of food.
    I am so hungry, and parched too.
    “Shut the door!”
    The voice startles me.
    “Shut the damn door!”

CHAPTER VII:
    So They Live
     
    People emerge from behind counters, under tables, and from out of the bathroom. There’s an older waitress, a