“You were always this stubborn. That’s why I always liked you and felt close to you. Not only because you were my grandbaby but because you reminded me of myself when I was younger. Now listen.”

  The dream voice continued, “You and Hal. Mission. Mountain Dominus. See and go into Valley of Depths. Crystal of Gibraltar go boom.” Then added, “Got that?”

  “Boom?” said Zoe with a whisper.

  “Boom,” said the dream voice in agreement and reinforcement.

  “Ohhh. You want me to break some crystal in Gibraltar but I can only see it in the Valley of the Depths which is only accessible through Mountain Domi.”

  “Yes, basically baby… that was really good. It’s Mountain Dominus though,” the dream voice corrected her.

  “Mt. Domi sounds cuter…”

  “Girl if you don’t get your hiney over to the mountain right now”

  “Wait Grandma but whose--”

  “Zoe? Zoe? Hey wake up. It’s time to go. Wake up.”

  Zoe woke up in the hospital armchair, sitting towards her grandmother Eliza. The unconscious thought “whose Hal?” percolated into her conscious mind before it faded away like any other ethereal thing.

  Officer Joe was standing talking to her, Officer Clark by his side.

  “Zoe we’re back. I got Officer Dawson.”

  Zoe was still groggy from her dream, in fact she felt like she was still there in the dream space. Her body felt wholly contained in another realm, somehow superimposed over this present reality. Everything outside of her, the room, the empty space, other people, all took energy and focus away from her. She glared at them as if looking into the sun, reticent of an overstimulating world she could not escape.

  After what seemed like a long silence, Zoe took a dry gulp, and finally spoke “whose, whose--” then realized the outpouring of thought and mixing of realities that was happening. “Whose Hal?” became “nevermind” spoken outloud.

  “Whose who?” One of the officers replied.

  Zoe asked a different question, “go where?!”

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  Zoe’s eyes saw her grandmother, “how’s my grandma?” she asked hurriedly.

  “We're going to take you to your father Zoe,” Officer Clark spoke to Zoe, “we were able to get in contact with your mother who gave us the information for your father. We couldn’t reach him. But your mother said she would get in contact with him to let him know we’re coming and what happened.”

  Then he added “and your grandmother’s still sleeping.”

  Zoe got up to go with the officers. She didn’t care anymore. All the old, previous, feelings of feeling like she couldn’t adequately connect with her grandmother and tell-show her how grateful Zoe was returned. Her grandmother was there in person but it felt like her spirit was trapped behind a glass wall and Zoe couldn’t reach out to her -- or anyone for that matter -- into that other dimension.

  As Zoe walked out of the doorway she thought she saw her father. It was a father but not hers walking into another room. He was cheerful and had this soft demeanor similar to her own father; a man whom she had only met a few times in her life. However, Zoe’s father unlike this stranger in the hospital hallway had a more puerile being or countenance to him while this man clearly had a more masculine-natural gait to him. One that came naturally through experience and his own bodily feeling not the self-imposed presentations of bravado. Maybe it was the jeweled wristwatch and business casual polo but Zoe’s father wore all that too. With one man you got the sense that he got what needed to be done finished and with the other you were left waiting sad, empty-handed, and alone. That is one was responsible and the other not so much.

  Officer Clark passed Zoe who seemed to be walking slowly and he pressed the elevator button call downward button.

  Zoe did in fact linger and somewhere behind her in the distance she heard commotion. The rapid beeping of a monitor gone silent into unresponsive tone was followed by the clamoring of nurses running into a room.

  It all seemed so distant to Zoe. It took place on the periphery of her consciousness where it seemed it didn’t really concern her even though she was cognizant of it.

  “Zoe,” Clark put his heavy hand on her shoulder. “That was your grandmother’s room. She’s in trouble.”

  “Huh?” Zoe said clueless.

  …

  Three days had passed before Zoe ate anything more than a cup of hot instant noodles.

  The two officers Joe and Clark did indeed end up taking Zoe to her father’s house. She was catatonic by the time she got there. He, irrelevant as always.

  Zoe had been hysterical when she ran into her grandmother’s room. Officer Clark had to bear-hug her from the back and pull her out of the room. Even that had not been enough, first she almost slipped out of his grasp before he managed to grap her again. Then she started clawing at his arms and kicking his legs from below. Officer Joe had to grab her legs and hold them as Clark lowered his grab to include her foearms. Zoe’s might was matched only by her screaming which quickly, already incomprehensible , devolved to deep sobbing and murmuring.

  The frantic sobbing continued first in waves then in volleys until they ripped and into the hospital hallway, whereupon she broke into a sudden eerie mutedness. Just silence and unfeigned stillness. The cessation of nervous-system energy as expressed in the animal body.

  If you looked at her chest you could not see it even moving with breathe.

  “I don’t want to live anymore,” was the unconscious command emanating from her being: “I give up.”