Free Surrogate by Maria Rachel Hooley

alive, and that was enough, he promised himself, but just as the sun lay hiding in the distance, waiting to rise, Robbie felt something uneasy stirring in him.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Six
         Robbie woke early the next morning and felt he hadn't slept at all.  It had been a long time since nightmares had reached for him, but last night they had come with a vengeance.  He kept dreaming he was down the road from the wreck and could see it unfold even as he ran as fast as he could, trying to get there and stop it.
         A glimmer of light swooped into the road in front of Carrie's car.  Carrie must have seen it at the last moment, as she'd swerved to miss it, sending her car flying toward the ditch; the only thing had had stopped it had been the huge tree it slammed into.
         More than once, Robbie had woken in a cold sweat as the dream played out over and over, and no matter how many times he told himself it didn't matter--that it was just a nightmare--he would go through it again until he finally woke for the last time, drenched in sweat and raw from the night.
         He glanced at the clock.  5:30.  Granted, it was around the time he usually woke, but nothing about his life felt normal anymore.  He looked at Carrie who was turned on her side toward him.  She seemed so calm--so unaware of the tremors that had been rocking his world all night--and rather than risk disturbing her, he eased from the bed and headed for the shower, figuring that soaking in hot water might help alleviate the stress.  No, a shower wouldn't change anything, but it might help him focus, and he was going to need that to help him figure out a way to explain the differences in his wife to Beth.  Hell, he wasn't able to even explain it to himself, so he didn't have a clue how he was going to get it past Carrie's best friend.
         After the shower, Robbie felt a little better, and with it came a tighter sense of focus.  Still, it brought the details of his dream into sharper focus.  Or at least one detail into sharper focus as well--or at least one detail in particular.  Something that seemed altogether random and senseless. In the dream, he'd seen something silver cross Carrie's path, but the  object hadn't been grounded, not like a car.  It also traveled perpendicular to Carrie's path.  The wreck had occurred in the  middle of a road, not at the mile intersection.  So whatever he had dreamed had not been a car.  It had been above Carrie's car, which had been the only reason she hadn't hit it in the first place.
         "It was just a stupid dream," Robbie snapped as he went for the coffee pot.
         Still, as he sipped his coffee, he found himself going back over the dream again.  What bothered him most, besides not being able to get there in time to stop what happened, just like he had been unable to do in real life, was that it didn't feel like any dream he'd ever had.  Usually his nightmares had weird elements--pink bunnies with machine guns or stupid crap like that.  Also, the timeline were always scrambled.  Things happened out of order, and there was confusion.  There was always something in them to tell him he was having a dream, which is why no dreams, no matter how horrific, had ever actually scared him.  His mind could always tell the difference between dream and life. 
         This time there were no elements that didn't fit, and all the events had been sequential.  He could feel the wind blowing around him as the chaos unfolded.  He could hear himself screaming his wife's name, yet those screams hadn't followed him into the waking world, not unless the wreck had damaged Carrie's hearing, which he knew hadn't happened.  Still, she slept on her side, turned toward him, unaware of the warzone in his mind.
         "Get over it, will you?" he snapped, setting the coffee cup on the counter and rolling his shoulders, trying to ease the tension.  "It was