Dream Horse Read Free Page B

if I can remember how to count backward from a hundred. Or worse, they want to make sure I’m resting. I haven’t even had time for a decent dream.”
    “Have you had any dreams?” Lisa asked. She always thought dreams were interesting.
    “Um, yeah,” Stevie said. “An hour and a half ago a nurse woke me up in the middle of a dream about a horse.”
    “See, she’s right. She’s not really sick. Dreaming about horses is perfectly normal,” said Carole.
    “Well, this wasn’t so normal,” Stevie said. “It was this beautiful bay gelding. He was cantering. He had a gorgeous gait—smooth as could be. Anyway, suddenly something startled the horse, and it got spooked and shied sideways. Next thing I saw was something flying over the horse’s head. I don’t know what it was, but itwas big. Then a nurse came in and asked me who the first president of the United States was. I told her it was Frank Sinatra. That got her to leave pretty fast.”
    Carole, Lisa, and Phil all laughed. It was just like Stevie to tease a nurse.
    The door to Stevie’s room opened, and a young doctor came in, accompanied by a nurse with a worried look on her face. Stevie’s friends offered to leave, but the doctor said that wouldn’t be necessary.
    He looked in Stevie’s eyes with a penlight and had her follow his finger as he moved it around in front of her.
    “Everything seems okay,” he said to the nurse. Then he turned back to Stevie. “Um, Stephanie,” he said, checking her chart, “do you happen to remember—now, don’t worry if everything isn’t totally clear to you—but would it be possible for you to recall who the first president of the United States was?”
    “Napoléon Bonaparte,” she said, without batting an eye.
    “Right,” said the young doctor, making a mark on her chart. “Thank you.” He smiled insincerely and then turned to Lisa, Carole, and Phil. “I think Stephanie could use a little more rest now,” he said. “Perhaps you’d like to come back tomorrow?”
    Carole was about to set the doctor straight and explainthat Stevie was just being funny, but Phil tugged at her sleeve.
    “Sure thing, Doctor,” he said. “Bye, Stevie. We’ll check in tomorrow to see how you’re doing.”
    “I’ll be home by tomorrow,” she said brightly.
    “We’ll see,” said the doctor.
    “Come on,” said Phil to Lisa and Carole.
    As they scurried through the shiny hallways of the hospital, Lisa asked Phil why he’d been in such a hurry to get out of there.
    “Because something very strange is going on,” he said.
    “Wait a minute. You know she was joking about the president. It’s a dumb question. She was just giving a dumb answer,” Lisa said.
    “Not that. Of course she was teasing. No. It was about the horse in her dream.”
    “What about it?” asked Carole. “I’ve seen lots of horses shy. That didn’t seem strange to me.”
    “What was strange was that she was describing exactly what Teddy did at exactly the time she was dreaming about a bay gelding getting spooked. Don’t you see? She described what happened to me. And the thing she saw flying over Teddy’s head was my body!”
    Lisa stopped walking and put her hands on her hips. “Are you telling us you think Stevie’s suddenly developed ESP from a bang on her head?” she asked. “Also,keep in mind that the accident that put Stevie here in the hospital is a lot like the one that made you fly over Teddy’s head and land on your backside. She was probably just dreaming about her own accident.”
    Phil paused for a moment. Then he shrugged. “I guess my notion is pretty kooky, isn’t it?”
    “That’s one way to put it,” Lisa said.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “But it did seem strange. I mean, it happened to me about an hour and a half ago, and that’s when she was having the dream.”
    “And the same thing happened to her about
three
hours ago,” Lisa reminded him. “It makes sense that she would dream about the accident that