TO WAKE FROM DREAMS
PART 10
He started to tremble as it all came back.
In the recurring ‘dream’ he had every night after that night, he had been lying there, darkness all around. He had reached instinctively for her, knowing, somehow, even in his sleepy state, she would be there, and she had come to him and rested in his arms. And then she’d whimpered and said his name.
And they’d kissed…
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Lois closed her mouth, once she realized she’d been openly gaping at the woman, and took a deep breath, pulling herself together long enough to get one thing straight.
“Where did you get your medical license? Ronald McDonald University? Listen lady… I cannot possibly be pregnant. I haven’t had sex in… a *long* time,” she said, her cheeks burning.
“Who does this woman think she *is*?” Lois thought angrily, seething at all of this, finding this woman’s stupidity a complete inconvenience for her. She had better things she could be doing.
“I promise you. I am right. I mean, look at the facts. You haven’t been eating any differently than you normally do you said. You said maybe you had even been eating less than normal. But you’ve gained weight.”
“Or *you* have a faulty scale. I said that before and I’ll say it again!”
“And you have been nauseous and today you got sick. You can expect more of that, by the way, for the next couple of months.”
Lois tried to keep herself in check. But then she burst. “You’re nuts!” She felt like she had just stepped through the looking-glass.
“I have been at this a long time. Long enough to have possibly informed your mother that she was pregnant with you. And I have never… been… wrong,” she said, proudly.
“Well, doc, you’re wrong today,” Lois said. When the doctor didn’t look convinced, Lois sat forward. “I honestly have not had sex in almost two years,” she said, in a hushed voice, blushing all over because of the nature of the conversation.
“Well let me get my pen and paper,” Dr. Morgan said, dryly.
Lois raised her eyebrows and looked at the woman expectantly.
“To start writing the Third Testament,” the doctor explained, like she was serious.
Lois didn’t smile and tears filled her eyes. The doctor took notice and walked over.
“Okay, how about I do the exam once more?”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Clark flew to Lois’s apartment and looked in her window for any signs of her. He knocked incessantly for a few minutes, but ultimately decided she was not there.
From the looks of it, she hadn’t been there in awhile.
“Dammit!” he said, flying away from her window.
He needed to find her. He needed to talk to her. He had left everything unsaid for far too long. She needed to know everything. Absolutely everything.
And soon…
He reluctantly flew away from her apartment and headed to the place where he figured she *must* be.
The Daily Planet.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“So there’s nothing wrong with her? It really was just a little nausea?” Perry asked the doctor.
Lois stared at the clock on the wall, growing impatient as the two of them talked.
“There is *nothing* wrong with her. I promise you that,” the doctor said.
Dr. Morgan had promised Lois she would not say anything of what she *had* discovered to Perry. After being reassured a few times about doctor/patient confidentiality by the doctor, Lois had allowed the woman to come out and at least dispel Perry’s fears that Lois was in danger of having an exploding appendix on the way or something.
“Well, okay then,” Perry said, smiling.
He turned to Lois.
“Uh, Perry? I have to go. There’s something I have to do,” Lois said quickly.
“What’s wrong?” Perry asked.
“Oh, you know me. Trapped in all that grief and stuff. Well, see you!” she said, kissing his cheek abruptly. “Bye!”
It was only when she was out in the street that she allowed herself to think about everything.
She turned into a side-street and leaned against the building, breathing heavily. She was sure that if the building were not there to support her, she would have just fallen to the ground.
Two exams had confirmed one thing which she knew to be impossible.
She crouched down and tried to control her breathing, while she reasoned with herself.
“It’s just a nightmare. All of this is some horrible nightmare. That he died. That you’re… that you’re… oh god, I can’t even say it. I just need to wake up. Wake up… wake up…it’s all some horrible nightmare.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He hadn’t been in the newsroom in a really long time. The moment he walked in, his emotions started surfacing, and he was almost tempted to turn and leave. He missed it so much!
But he snapped himself out of it, remembering what was more important just now. And that was finding Lois and taking her somewhere where they could talk and he could tell her everything. About himself. And… about them.
A quick scan of the newsroom revealed what he’d feared. She was nowhere in sight. In fact, he couldn’t even spot her desk.
They must have moved the desks around – or she had wanted a new desk – because the desk Lois used to occupy had a middle-aged man sitting there now, typing quickly. Unaware of the presence of the superhero amongst the goings on around him.
“Superman, hi!”
He turned to see Jimmy, walking over to him, looking curious, but sort of excited to see him. Seeing him now was much less painful than the last time he had seen him. At the police station.
“Hi, Jimmy. How are you?”
“Okay, I guess. So…”
“I’m looking for Lois, actually,” he said, reading Jimmy’s inquiring expression.
“Didn’t you know?” Jimmy started.
Clark suddenly felt very nervous. Had something happened to her? His heart started beating faster and faster. “Know what?”
“She doesn’t work here anymore.”
His expression fell. He hadn’t expected that. He was relieved that nothing had happened to her. But riding alongside that relief was complete confusion. *Lois* no longer worked for the Daily Planet? *Lois Lane*?
And why hadn’t he known? Or noticed…
“What?” he finally managed. “She doesn’t work here anymore? Why… when…”
He wasn’t making sense, but Jimmy stepped in to clear it all up.
“She quit the night CK was murdered,” he said quietly, looking down.
He felt as if the air was leaving the room. And he felt horrible. Guilty. He’d been running away so thoroughly and so quickly, that he’d been completely blind to everything else. He’d been stupid. And selfish.
He should have known. He should have done something long ago.
Lois shouldn’t have quit the job she had loved so much. And he should have told her, when she had been falling apart before his eyes, the truth. It would have saved them both so much heartbreak. It would have kept her working. And it would have prevented her from looking… he shuddered, remembering… the way she had looked earlier today.
He should *not* have let her world fall apart. He should have been there! Not in Thailand and New Zealand and everywhere else! He should have been *with* her. There for her. He should have been her best friend.
“Superman, are you okay?” Jimmy asked, sort of timidly.
“I just… I didn’t know she had quit. I wish I had been more aware of what was going on here. She’s my friend. And… I feel horribly that I couldn’t have been more supportive of her during that time,” he said quietly, after having fumbled for something to say. But meaning every word.
“We weren’t really there for her, either. Well, not that we could have been. That night, she disappeared, and we didn’t hear from her for awhile.”
“She disappeared?” Clark asked, his feelings of guilt and shame intensifying.
“Yeah. All we wanted – the chief and I, I mean – was for the three of us to be able to help each other. To feel it together and console each other. But she slipped out of here that night, after telling Perry she was done, and we didn’t see her again. She wasn’t at her place. We didn’t know where she’d gone. She called a few weeks later, so we knew she was okay. But before that, it was insane. We were really worried.”
“I’ll bet you were,” he said, trying to control his emotions in front of Jimmy.
“But she called Perry the other day and now they’re out having lunch. So that’s a good thing, anyway,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” Clark agreed, trying to seem positive.
He looked up and saw the expression on Jimmy’s face. He looked like he was trying to be strong. For everyone. For Lois. For Perry. For Superman. But he looked like a kid that desperately wanted to just openly feel whatever it was he was feeling. Not wanting to hide it anymore.
And Clark understood that feeling all too well.
“Jimmy,” he said. “I wasn’t a very good friend to you, either. Or to P – … uh, Mr. White. I really am sorry. I know this has been hard for you. I wish I had been there more for all of you.”
Jimmy looked up at him, in awe.
“Superman, you don’t have to apologize – “
“Yes, I do,” he said, not breaking eye-contact with the young man. A young man who had always been like a kid brother to him. “I consider you a friend. I’m going to try to make everything right again, Jimmy.”
“What? How?”
“I can’t say. But, I *am* going to try.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Lois was surprised not to see an eviction notice on her door. But then again, she mused, her landlord had never paid much attention to anything. She knew Lois always got the money to her sooner or later and in one way or another.
The moment her door was closed behind her, she looked around the apartment. It felt cold, somehow. Probably, she realized, because she had been at Clark’s place for so long. And his place was anything but cold. It was cozy and warm and… and she couldn’t think about that right now. And she couldn’t go back there.
She had to figure out what was going on.
She *needed* to know what was going on. Or she’d go mad, she was sure.
Her apartment was the place to be for that, she realized. She couldn’t get distracted there. It seemed so clean, almost sterile. It was so much more impersonal than the place she had just been living. This was a place where she could sit down and think about everything and figure out what on earth was happening to her.
She took a deep breath.
She was pregnant.
Pregnant!
How had she not noticed?
She had only realized in the doctor’s office that she had been late. How had she not noticed that over a month had gone by?
Or that she’d gained a little weight?
Well, she had been wearing Clark’s sweats mostly, so she couldn’t have known that. She wasn’t far enough along that it would have been obvious.
Assuming this was true and not some strange nightmare, that is.
She was reeling.
She was pregnant…
*Pregnant!*
She might have assumed she’d been abducted by aliens or been kidnapped and knocked out and then impregnated… or something crazy… if she had been working regularly all these weeks. But she had to rule all those things out.
She had spent her entire pregnancy – one month and one week, the doctor said – at Clark’s apartment, holed up like a hermit on Prozac. No aliens or criminals were responsible for this. Well… it seemed highly unlikely, anyway. “Although nothing is impossible,” she said to herself, softly.
She shuddered at the thought that some person could have come into the apartment, while she was out cold and done something like that to her. While she was sleeping, practically!
That thought immediately spurred another one.
Her dream.
The only time she had done anything even remotely resembling making love to someone had been in a dream she could barely remember at first. It had been in her mind.
Every day pieces had come to her. In dreams.
In dreams, she would remember the dream from that night… the night her nightmares had stopped.
She sat down on the couch, her thoughts moving in overdrive.
Usually pieces of the dream would come to her – creep up on her – without her having invited them. But sitting down just now, thinking about the dream on purpose, she realized… it was all very clear in her mind.
She had dreamed about kissing Clark.
He was holding her.
She told him – *finally* – that she loved him. And he whispered it back.
Her dreams now – or rather recollections from the dream from that night – were in flashes, mostly. And in darkness. Just… feelings.
She could remember how she felt inside at every breath… every movement… every touch. How she felt in her heart and her soul… and in her body.
She remembered so clearly…
… she was touching his chest, which was healthy and whole. No bullet wounds. Smooth. Soft. Hard. It felt so nice…
… “I love you, Clark,” her voice had said, sounding dreamy and tired, but meaning it oh-so-much…
… his fingers in her hair… her fingers in his hair. On his back…
… the kisses growing hungrier…
She could remember what it felt like to touch him. What his skin felt like beneath her fingers. What her skin felt like beneath his fingers. Like it was on fire…
… exploring each other more and more and more and more…
… bodies moving as one. Together. And then…
Her eyes opened wide.
She had made love with Clark, in a *dream*… around the same time the doctor had mentioned.
“It was just a dream,” she said quietly.
A dream that she had remembered – or re-dreamed – many times since that night. It was so vivid. This dream had not gone away, as so many dreams do. It had dug itself deeper and deeper in her. Ingrained itself. Burned itself into her memory.
She had thought that was because it was Clark in her dream, and she hadn’t wanted to forget it. She had made things right with him, in the dream, and told him how she felt about him. Shown him. She figured she had forced herself to remember the dream because she needed to remember it. Because it was special. Because it was Clark.
But something about this didn’t make any sense.
Had it not been a dream?
No. She immediately dismissed the idea that a ghost of Clark had come and made love to her and it had resulted in pregnancy.
After meeting Superman, she believed in the unbelievable. But this was ridiculous! And she refused to entertain the thought at all.
A ghost getting her pregnant!
She shook her head.
But she had woken up naked that morning, the t-shirt she had worn to bed on the floor beside her. She hadn’t considered it strange at the time – she had merely thought she’d removed it in the night… possibly during the dream, she added, her cheeks burning for the thousandth time in the past hour.
It had just been a dream. It hadn’t been real.
“Clark is dead!” she said loudly. Angrily. Trying to make sense of her dizzying thoughts.
She touched her stomach as a tear slipped down her cheek. What was going on? If she *was* pregnant and this wasn’t a nightmare, then she was… scared. Something happened and she didn’t know what it was.
“What’s happening to me?” she cried, standing up.
She walked toward her window. She hadn’t been there in so long that the window immediately made her think of Superman. That was where he entered when he visited her. Or when he had visited her, before all this. When she had thought herself foolishly in love with him. Losing all chances of telling another man how she really felt.
Looking at that window – at that particular moment, while thinking about that dream – so many tiny pieces and questions in her mind – suddenly made perfect sense.
She looked up – her eyes still wet with tears – just as the truth came crashing down.
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