Last night I slept fitfully as usual. Around six in the morning I dozed off one last time and had a horrible dream involving Dam, the young man I have lived with for most of the past two and a half years (some of you with good memories may recall a post of mine describing our visit to Sukhothai). In the dream I arrived to collect Dam from a pub (the setting was England I think) where a friend of his told me he had gone off with a guy known to have murdered two young men. Panic-stricken, I got the friend to lead me to the guyтАЩs apartment. It seemed to take forever. Finally we burst into his room and a very unsavoury-looking character sat up in bed; he had a gaping wound which covered his chest but he seemed not to know anything about Dam. At that point I woke up, feeling very unsettled. I promptly decided that I had spent quite enough time in the realm of whimsical Morpheus for one night and got up.
I watched some play-off baseball on TV and thought about making breakfast and getting ready to go to my Thai-language class. Dam, who works for a female cousin in one of the Walking Street bars, hadnтАЩt come home yet but that was not unusual; sometimes he sleeps over at her room. At about a quarter to nine I turned on my mobile and found I had missed a call from Dam some forty minutes earlier. I phoned him with the merest tremor of anxiety since it was unusual for him to call at such a time. A Thai friend answered and said Dam was in Pattaya-Banglamung hospital, having had a motorbike accident. This was the nightmare news I have been dreading ever since buying him the damn thing a couple of years ago. Minor injuries or major ones I asked, trying to sound calm. тАШMaakтАЩ replied the friend with ominous emphasis.
Well, I did a certain amount of running round in circles and making loud whimpering noises after that, but quickly got myself down to the condo reception and ordered a motorcycle-taxi. Lots of calls on the two-way radio тАУ no response. Finally I stamped my foot in agitation and strode off for the motorcycle stand at the condo entrance. There were several riders there (why no answer on the radio?) and I got one to take me to the hospital in north Pattaya. Sure enough, SodтАЩs Law (!) dictated that we met with every delay imaginable on the way: every red light, heavy traffic, old men pushing carts across our path at infinitesimally slow speed. My driver looked back apologetically a few times, no doubt more and more aware of my sense of urgency (the clucking helped). I was in a pretty bad state, imagining broken limbs, brain damage, last breaths. Dam and I had had a tense couple of days together before the accident, due to his having caught me out, not for the first time, in an indiscretion, and I was thinking thankfully that at least we had made it up over a pleasant evening meal with friends and parted with an affectionate peck on the lips when he went to work last night. Our last moments together? Oh dear, as I say, I was not in a good place.
At the hospital I went straight into the Emergency department where a good many woebegone-looking victims of lifeтАЩs arbitrary callousness were already gathered. I had just started making enquiries of a nurse when a young man approached, obviously DamтАЩs friend, and ushered me into an adjoining room with slightly fewer people. Dam was sitting bare-chested and heavily-bandaged, like a half-wrapped mummy, and looking quite as woebegone as any of the rest. He was clearly waiting for a prescription to be filled prior to being released. A combination of the pitiable sight of him and sheer relief that he was not actually a corpse caused me to burst into tears on his shoulder and he had to do his mumbled best to comfort me! As I pulled myself together I could see he was the worse for drink. I had suspected as much from the outset since he often returns tipsy from work despite my constant admonitions. Now was not the time for a show of anger though. I checked with him that no bones were broken; it was mainly heavy grazing to his upper mouth, chin, arms and chest. No major head wounds, thank goodness. The accident had happened, he said, when a car pulled out dangerously in front of him, causing him to brake hard and fall off. Maybe, maybe not, his lack of adherence to strict veracity over the years has not inspired total confidence. I thanked his friend for taking care of him at the hospital, at the same time reflecting privately on the Thai tendency to be melodramatic тАУ DamтАЩs injuries, though bad, were not nearly as life-threatening as his tone had implied on the phone. Never mind, we collected DamтАЩs drugs, paid up and left.
Dam and I returned to the condo in a rickety old songtaew whose ancient driver had to stop halfway to persuade the engine to keep going. Dam sat in the driverтАЩs cab while I sat alone in the back. Much calmer now, I reflected on how good things might come of all this. Dam is due to return to his home town of Korat shortly to start work in an insurance office where his mother is the manager. Despite the fact that his duties will be light and that he will be getting over 10,000 baht a month, good money by Thai standards, he has been wavering of late, even hinting that he might stay on in Pattaya. I love him dearly (without ever having been тАШin loveтАЩ with him) but donтАЩt want him to do that. I think heтАЩll be better off long term in Korat. Now, as a result of this accident, I think it much more likely that heтАЩll stop wavering and renew his commitment to the plan. There could hardly have been a much clearer demonstration of the improvidence of continuing to work at the bar (where, just for variety, he recently also got into a fight with a farang twice his size over an unpaid bill and returned home bloodied but unbowed). If after a few daysтАЩ convalescence he says he wants to return to the bar, IтАЩll point out flinty-eyed that he will have to find other accommodation first. But I donтАЩt think itтАЩll come to that.
At the condo a few of DamтАЩs friends were waiting anxiously to see him. He endured their fussing with an old trouperтАЩs aplomb. His bike had been returned, seemingly in much better shape than he was. I put him to bed and the friends left. He did look poorly, he surely did, my dearest Dam. Later, confined to the condo in order to take care of him, my mind went back to my early-morning bad dream. There I was, in frantic pursuit of Dam, fearing heтАЩd been killed, and a couple of hours later I was doing all that for real. Kind of spooky. A correlation between the two? Who knows. I believe firmly that we inhabit a psycho-physical reality, not merely a physical one, and that dreams, for instance, carry great significance, but frankly IтАЩm not much bothered about that side of it. IтАЩm just relieved that Dam has been spared the worst consequences of his own folly and that I can write about it all now, between nursing duties, with something like detachment.
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Originally Posted by Bottoms Up
