Mr. O'Donnell and the Bed by Patrick Sean Lee (microsoft ebook reader .txt) 📕

This must be quick, as dreams are surprisingly quick in real time, I’ve been told. A few seconds of dream can be a novel’s chapter!

I had a dream this afternoon. I’d fallen asleep while lying atop the blankets in our bedroom, reading a book titled “How the Irish Saved Civilization”. Written by, yes, an Irishman..and he was serious!

Cut to day job.

I’m a contractor by profession. I build big things. Houses and stuff. I do a lot of fancy remodeling, often for wealthy clients whose faces light up after I’ve presented a detailed bid. “You will do it THAT cheaply?”

I’ve been doing a full kitchen, bar, and bath remodel for a lovely lady. I’ll call her Mrs. O’Donnell. She is (I found out much later after she gladly accepted my bid) a physician. You’d never suspect it by looking at her, or talking to her. Well, what does a physician look like anyway?

Mrs. O’Donnell showed me her home. Quite a nice place; a white laquered Baby Grand in the living room, and upstairs is the Master Bedroom.

“I’d like you to look at the windows overlooking the pool. My husband is...well, you’ll see.”

We went upstairs to the Master Suite. Mr. O’Donnell is lying in bed. The TV is on. Horse races or a golf tournament or something is on the huge flat screen TV at one end of the room. He’s chattering to himself as Mrs. O’Donnell points out the bank of windows to me.

“I’d like for you to give me a separate itemized quote on removing these windows, installing a set of French doors, and constructing a deck outside…so that John can get some fresh air and sunshine, you see.”

“No sweat…”

“The Irish, ya’ know, are the greatest horsemen in God’s green world,” Mr. O'Donell says out of the blue to me with a deep brogue.

“Yes sir. They truly are. You are correct.”

"Mary, darlin’, what did ya’ say this guy’s name is?” John remarks.

“It’s Patrick Lee, John.”

“Ah! I remember now.

“Ya’ ever been back home, lad?”

“Patrick Sean Lee, Mrs. O’Donnell. From Cork me fam’ly’s from.” I’m already talking Irish. "No sir, but me heart's still there."

This goes on for some time, and I’m totally enamored with invalid John and his quick wit. I get the job.

Poor John passes on unexpectedly a week before we commence work. I’m saddened. We wait a month so that Mrs. O’Donnell can take care of funeral stuff, and grieve properly. Time passes. All is well. We’ve torn the house to smithereens and we’re putting it all back together. Mrs. O’Donnell flies off to Ireland for a two-week rest (well-deserved) about then.

A few more weeks pass...

I’m stressing because the granite installer is dragging his feet. The sink faucets can't be installed until the granite goes down on the countertop. She’s coming home tomorrow evening, and even though she’s a jewel, I know she wants to be able to use here expensive kitchen again!

This afternoon.

 Mr. O’Donnell. Mrs. O’Donnell. How the Irish Saved Civilization. Falling asleep.

I have a dream.

We’re in a house. Not hers, but we’re in the kitchen working. Talking about John or Mrs. O'Donnell. John, I think. I don’t know exactly who “we” is, only that I'm the second half of the we. That’s how dreams go. We must have been saying something nasty or untoward about John, because we're whispering.

The room is a shambles. I look up and there’s John, his butt high in the air, poking out of the room right next to the kitchen entry. Weird that the room is a water closet.

He doesn’t seem to be paying TOO much attention to us, but just in case, I slide a bunch of plexiglass panels across the opening so that he can’t hear us. Next thing I know, someone else has entered the other room, and John is laughing and carrying on with him, just as though he weren’t ill at all.

And Mrs. O’Donnell is out of the country—coming home any minute.

Jeh-sus, I’m thinking, if she sees him out of bed I’m dead meat!

The panels disappear in a poof! There’s now a bed dead center of the room that a second earlier was a toilet, and John, who is seventy-something (or was, God rest his soul), is jumping up and down on it. Like he’s some twelve year-old kid. But he’s not! He’s ancient, and frail. How can he do that?

Lord, I’m thinking again, what if he falls off? It’ll kill him, and then by God she’ll come home and wring my bloody neck!

That isn’t the end of my terror, though. John suddenly shrinks, down to about two feet tall. I don’t think too much of that in the dream. I mean it doesn’t even hit me as odd. What makes me cringe is this; John is now a Leprechaun, laughing it up. Paying absolutely no attention to me standing at the head of the bed saying Hail Marys as fast as I can.

Leprechaun John Pirouettes a couple of times, and now he’s wearing Leprechaun clothes, a green Leprechaun hat, and has a pipe between his teeth. He twirls to the edge of the bed, stops, and raises his arms, and then raises one leg—straight out.

Oh Lord! He’s gonna’ JUMP! I know that’ll kill him for sure, because even though he’s a Leprechaun, he’s still an old man with brittle bones!

He turns so that his back is facing the edge of the bed. He's laughing and saying something in Gaelic. I’m praying faster. His arms are straight out, the one leg that is also straight out in front of him is shot backward now. He looks like a kid playing airplane. I just know he’s going to do a double or triple back flip. Or try. And when he lands…

I wake up. When the initial fear ebbs in those mili-seconds of regaining consciousness, I laugh.

Lord-a-mighty! I wish the dream had lasted just a wee bit longer. Maybe he would have stuck the landing, maybe in a pot of gold! I still would have caught hell from Mrs. O’Donnell, though, for ever having let him get up from his bed and jump around on that other bed next to the kitchen!

Publication Date: 06-21-2013

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
To John