The Boss's Surgery

In the dream, I was an assistant to a very wealthy yet extremely odd man. His methods were creative, and I can honestly say no one else in the world would have come up with the things he did. I was very proud to be his assistant, and I worried for him constantly.

He fell ill one summer, and it was my job to ensure that he got to his doctor appointments on time. He had this habit of cloaking all of his daily activities behind fun games and parties, and his doctor's office was located on a secret level of a children's activity center (it was much like a cross between a fair and a theme park). His appointments were getting much more serious, and this day he had a surgery scheduled.

Driver took us to the main entrance, since my boss prefered to walk up the entrance and feel the excitement just like the children did every time he came here. I escorted him into the building and up an elevator while constantly on the phone with first the doctor, then the secretary, then a security man who was to help me get my boss into the hidden level of the building. But of course, my boss had other plans first.

He wanted to go on a ride first. He waltzed right up to the entrance to a motion-ride movie theater and went inside. It was dimly lit; the show would be starting soon. Many people were already in their seats, and my boss went straight to his favorite chair on the far right side of the room. As I was making my way back his direction, I bumped into an adorable little girl who was holding a small balloon. I apologized to the girl, and she said hi and started telling me about her day, and I was trying to be very polite and get back to my boss, but she wouldn't stop talking. Soon the lights dimmed even lower, and I was forced to sit where I was, next to the little girl.

The movie began, and I was shocked at the intensity of the motion in the chairs. It almost seemed as if the entire room was tilting just to force me from my seat, and when I looked around, no one else seemed to have that problem. I also could not find a seatbelt, and spent the entire movie with my hands clamped to the edge of the seat, vainly attempting to stay centered, all the while getting very dizzy.

When the movie finally ended, my dizziness started to fade. The little girl had lost her balloon, and I wanted to help her find it or get her a new one, but my boss was top priority. I made a note to myself to find her again and get her a balloon, then I rushed across the room to my boss... or at least, where he should have been. I started panicking until I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and he was smiling at me, telling me, "did you think I was going to just leave you like that?" He gave me a wink, and led the way to a small door hidden at the back of the theater. He tapped it three times, and it opened into a small room, the walls made entirely of cement. It looked very much like a parking garage, except that it had cushioned seats in what I'm guessing was the waiting room. There was one other door, full metal with no handle, that slid open a few minutes later to reveal a man in a white coat, who stated, "the doctor will see you now."

We entered through the door into a room that seemed completely opposite of the waiting room. The walls were a polished mahogany, and the ceiling was painted with a beautiful sky scene--clouds, birds... it was a bright sunny day inside this room. The doctor, a man in all white with a white mask over his face, asked us to stand back for the procedure. My boss sat down in a chair in the center of the room, and I followed a few men in suits to a platform just above the room to watch.

It started out like you would expect any surgery to begin. They put an oxygen mask on my boss, and gave him two shots, one in his arm and one in his neck. Then things got crazy.

They had some sort of machine that resembled a vacuum, with a very small, thin hose coming out of the top. they used a scalpel on the back of my bosses head, and made a small insertion. Instead of blood, it began to ooze a chunky white substance. It was extremely sickening to watch, but try as I might I could not tear my gaze away from that substance that was bubbling out of my bosses skull. And it did seem to begin bubbling... The doctor held the end of the hose up to the stuff and began suctioning it into the vacuum. The end of the hose was shoved deeper into my boss's head, and suddenly, without warning, my boss tilted his head to the side. I could see the end of the hose, still inside him, pushing up against the inside of the skin in his head. He tossed his head to the other side, and I watched the end of the hose move across the inside of his skull... it was like he was possessed. His face was not his own, nor was his movements. I was just waiting for the moment when it tore his head open, and oddly enough I was more afraid of that white stuff going everywhere. With every second that passed, a lump was growing on the side of his head, expanding until it was almost as if he had two heads!

After a few more twists and head tosses, and the doctor moving as quick as he could,  the lump began to shrink, and the movements became less extreme until soon he had stopped moving at all, and the lump was gone. the doctor continued vacuuming for a few more seconds, then removed the hose. My boss now had a bubble of stretched skin at the back of his head, and a small hole with some dried white crust around it. The doctor bent over him, and the wound was out of my view. When the doctor straightened up, there was no sign of the atrocity I had just witnessed. Instead, there was a small stitched cut, no bubble or even sign of such a thing. It cleaned up very nicely, and the doctor looked satisfied.

It seemed as if we were ready to leave within minutes, without my boss needing any time to recover. I was still worried for him but much more relieved that he had gotten the help he needed. He ran ahead to where Driver had parked the car, and told me to catch up when I was finished with the paperwork.

After what seemed like an hour, I left the seriousness of the office and stepped out into the carefree atmosphere of the children's center. As I made my way to an elevator, a bunch of balloons and a bouncy ball flew past me, and they went straight into the elevator as I was stepping inside. Before the doors closed, the same little girl from the motion ride entered, smiling and laughing and chasing the balloons. In the confines of the elevator she was able to grab one, and I was happy to see that she found a replacement for the one she had lost. I didn't think she had seen the bouncy ball, so I picked it up and handed it to her. She was very excited.

We got to talking, and I learned that she was waiting for her mom to pick her up. I offered to walk her to the drop off area, and along the way she started talking about how her daddy owned the building and put all the fun games and rides that she loved in the building for her. I knew that my boss had this building built, and in that moment I knew that this girl was his daughter, one that I never knew he had. I also knew why he had his doctor's office built into it... because this way he would get to see his daughter every day before an appointment, so if something should go wrong in surgery, the last thing he got to see was his daughter, smiling and happy. It was very touching and I almost started to cry. Until I realized that my boss's wife was the one picking her up.

No one knew much about her, except that she was a workaholic and was never seen in the same room with my boss more than once a month. I myself had never seen her, and I had a hard time believing that she would pick her daughter up herself, or that she even knew she had a daughter. Soon enough, however, an old fashioned orange car pulled up. When the door opened to let the girl in, I got a glimpse of the driver. She was an image right out of the '50s. She was fair skinned, with her golden hair curled and piled on her head in an intricate style. She was wearing a light tan trenchcoat, and had bright red lipstick on. The music floating out of the car was also classic oldies. The little girl gave me a hug before running off to get in the car, and I stood there amazed. It was as if my boss had met a woman in the past and brought her to this day and age. It would explain why she was hidden from the world, with "workaholic" as the excuse for not being seen often. She was very beautiful.

I returned to my work, though the rest of the day was a blur. The next thing I remember was getting home, and my house was a wreck. Trash, pillows, toys, food, plates, beer bottles, Coke cans... it was a nightmare. My husband and his friends were over, so I didn't start cleaning just yet. I went into my bedroom and grabbed my notebook, where I record various details of my life (it's part of  a self-therapy I was working on). The guys were talking about how even though it was pouring rain outside, they were going to make a bonfire. Chris was going to be bringing a girl back to the house again, and they wanted to sit around a fire like they did last time.

I was instantly upset, because I knew that they were going to have a lot of fun and that somehow I wasn't going to be a part of it. I went to write my feelings into my notebook when I noticed my special pen was missing. I somehow knew it had been lost outside, and it was pitch black out there. My hubby told me he had some idea of where it might be--either on the neighbor's porch or behind some bushes on the other side of the property. We didn't have a flashlight, so my hubby gave me his phone, and I used his screen as a small light to give us at least some idea as to where we were going.

We walked up to the neighbor's porch (their house somehow being right next to ours) but there was no sign of my pen. We continued walking in the other direction towards the bushes he thought it might be hidden behind. After a while, the darkness began to recede and we found ourselves walking on a somewhat lit pathway, the rain had stopped and instead of being in a grassy field, we were on a dirt path in a sea of snow. After a little ways we ran into the girl Chris was bringing over, who was on her way to our house. She got excited when she saw us, and asked if we wanted to go back to the campfire with her. I said that I had to find my pen first, and maybe I'd catch up with them later (even though somehow I knew I wouldn't get to go). She looked to Mike and asked if he wanted to get a few beers at the campfire, and at first he replied that he was helping me find my pen, but she told him she was sure I would be fine by myself, and he agreed. He turned to me and said, "It's just up ahead, you can find it alone. Just meet up with us later, okay?" and he left with the girl, both of them laughing and running back into the darkness.

I sighed, and started walking very slowly along the path. I walked off into fog, and once I couldn't see anything else around me, I blinked and found myself awake, lying in bed.