Free Dream Dancer (Ghosts Beyond the Grove Book 2) by Joy Elbel

just entered the next phase of pure, unadulterated weirdness.  Universe, two; Ruby, zero.
     
     

10.  Spark of Hope
     
     
         When I opened my eyes, I saw something hovering in the air above my bed.  It was a circular-shaped blob—a dark smoky gray on one side yet a fiery electric blue on the other.  While the gray area stayed still the blue spot danced like lightning.  I’d never seen a ghost quite like it.  Although curiously fascinated by whatever it was, I wanted it to go away.
         “Get out of here! Go haunt her instead.  She lives for this kind of stuff—not me.”
         I turned my head to the side to get that thing out of my sight and that’s when I realized that it wasn’t a ghost I was looking at.  In fact, there wasn’t anything in the room at all.  The strange glowing orb was inside my very own brain.  No matter which direction I looked, it was there.  Closing my eyes didn’t even make it disappear.
         So I really was going crazy.  Maybe if I admitted it, succumbed to it, there was something they could do to help me.  Frantically, I began pounding on the locked door and screaming for help.
         “Help me!  Help me get rid of the crazy!”
         Shortly after my psychotic outburst began; a nurse, two security guards and Dr. Landon himself were at my door attempting to calm me down. 
         “Take a deep breath, Zach, and then tell me what’s going on,” Dr. Landon said calmly. 
         I sat back down on the edge of the bed and tried to relax.  But it was hard to gain control of myself with that orb bobbing up and down in the corner of my eye.  Nervously, my leg started bouncing up and down in a perfectly synchronized rhythm.  I counted to ten and then exhaled. 
         “I’m seeing things.  Things that I shouldn’t be seeing.  Things that aren’t actually there.”
         “What kind of things are you seeing, Zach?”
         In detail, I described the peculiar image I was seeing then waited for him to tell me what mental illness I suffered from.  But the next question he asked had nothing to do with psychosis whatsoever.
         “What’s your history with headaches?  Do you get them often?  How severe are they?”
         Headaches were something I rarely ever experienced until returning home after from my trip.  Since then, though, I’d had a whole slew of them.  I recounted the frequency and severity as best as I could to him.
         “What you’re describing to me, Zach, is a migraine aura.  There’s no definitive way to predict when the pain will hit but it will hit sooner or later.  I’m going to give you something now for the pain but it may be too late to relieve it.  Meanwhile, I’m getting you in for an MRI.  I know you’ve had several of them already but I want to make sure we haven’t missed something.”
         A migraine headache?  That was it?  That was all that was wrong with me?  It was probably the first time in medical history that a patient was excited to hear that they were having a migraine.  Even as I took the pill and listened to all of the horrible symptoms I might possibly have to endure over the next few hours, I was ecstatic.  Migraines were normal and happened to normal people.  Maybe I wasn’t crazy after all. 
         Roughly thirty minutes later while I was in the MRI, the pain hit.  It rolled in angry waves across my forehead and made even the sight of the slightest ray of light unbearable to look at.  It was excruciating.  When the MRI was over, they had to wheel me back to my room because when I opened my eyes, it felt like ten thousand needles were stabbing into them at the same time.
         As I slumped back down into my bed, the rhythmic pounding inside my head increased.  I lay there listening to it for who knows how long until I finally realized what it was.  My headache was pounding to the exact rhythm of the drum beats from my dream.