Dream of Me

The nights are cool, a drastic contrast to daytime's sweltering heat. The pink mosquito nets on the windows keep most of the bugs out, which is a relief in mosquito-riddled Nicaragua.

I roll over in my bed, my latest dream still lingering in my mind. The digital clock on my nightstand reads a blaring 2:32 P.M.

In my dream, I saw a lady I see often at the soup kitchen in Managua, Nicaragua's ghetto district where I work as one of the only medical doctors in the entire area. I took a year off after finishing my internship at Vanderbilt's Children Hospital to try to make a difference in the world - not that I'm succeeding.

My thoughts drift back to the mystery woman. She has no teeth and is probably in her mid-thirties, although she looks like she's eighty. People age weird in the ghettos because of the squalid living conditions and the prevalent glue addiction. The government supplies glue to the homeless to keep them quiet. They eat the glue or sniff the glue to get high. Some of them can survive the years of glue addiction. Most of them can not. One of the other specialists I work with, Dr. Tomas, is here working to get nine-year-olds off the glue.

I close my eyes and drift back to sleep. That woman is there again.

"Necesita usted algo?" I asked her.

Her only reply was to smile, displaying her raw gums.

I wake up with a start. I know what Dr. Tomas would say about that woman popping up in my dreams – that she was a by-product of my worries, of the sinking realization that I can do nothing to help the people of Nicaragua, for despite my efforts, people are dying all around me.

I hug myself tightly, the woman dancing in and out of my brain like a hazy mirage.



Notes:

Word Count: 296
First Place in: "COLORING THE WORLD CONTEST TEMP. CLOSED "