Red blinking lights on machines keeping me alive were the first things I saw before the pain came rushing in and blurred my vision completely. I reached to pull the tube out of my mouth only to find my arms tethered to the sides of the bed. Things beeped. Alarms buzzed. My legs were suspended above me in cages of wire, bandages, and blood spots. 

A woman came into the room. I could smell her. She injected something into one of the many tubes running in and out of my body. 

"This will help." 

I was crying. I could feel the water dripping down my face and it was one of the few things I could actually feel. I tugged on the straps and bit down on the breathing tube mouthpiece until the sedatives took hold.

It had been a long time since I'd been back in New York. I found myself standing in the middle of Sixth Avenue, probably somewhere in the upper teens on the edge of Chelsea. All the traffic was stopped at the light and I was mid-block. A retirement aged UPS driver was loading his double-parked truck. 

"You better be careful." 

I looked to see the traffic light change from red to green. A solid line of cars raced forward. The wall of oncoming chrome should have been enough to get me moving but my legs wouldn't work. They were all rubbery and worthless. I pulled them with my hands, only to fall down in the street. The cars were right on top of me. I could see the drivers of each one and they were all me. Somehow I was also the UPS man and I watched myself get run down repeatedly until I was a crushed flat bloody smear on the asphalt.

Four months later I was still in the hospital with my legs in braces. Half my life was one drug filled nightmare after another. The other half was that of a forgotten cripple painfully trying to walk again. 

"How are you sleeping?" My doctor was a nice enough kid, fresh out of med school and entirely optimistic. 

"Rough, real rough."

The doc pulled on my braces until I screamed and then told me to man up. 

"And how is the walking coming?" 

I told him only slightly better than the sleeping. He reached into his oversized lab coat pocket and tossed me a paperback called Taking Charge of Your Dreams. 

"That's the book I was telling you about. You know, to help with your nightmares. Keep up the good work, you'll be leaving soon." 

After two months no one came to visit me anymore. My doctor and my physical therapist were the only two people left in my shrinking nightmare filled world.

Stairs haunted me. 

I dreamt myself at the bottom of a grand staircase in an old southern mansion. There was someone at the door. Someone after me. I ran up the stairs two at a time, then the next flight, then the next. As I climbed the stairwell got smaller and smaller. The walls closed in. I heard noises in the attic above. I was trapped on an endless staircase that was crushing in on me. I put both my hands against the wall wanting to pass through it. 

I fell right through the wall and found myself on a large outdoor terrace in midtown Manhattan. It was nighttime and slightly raining. The party going on inside took no notice of the man out on the balcony. My pursuers were gone and I was overcome by the strange feeling that it was a dream. I could tell by the way the neon lights were too out of place even for New York and I couldn't read any of the billboards. 

I decided to try and fly. I leaned forward and stretched out my arms like superman. Then I lifted my legs off the floor. I floated off the ground, tried to move forward, but just floated there hovering. 

It was my first attempt at dream flight.

I woke up in my tiny one-room apartment. Two canes propped up next to the bed. Books on neurology, trauma, PTSD and lucid dreaming littered the place. I downsized, was replaced at work, and was living a meaningless isolated life on disability. I'd never walk perfectly again but I was getting around with my canes. 

I'd read every book in the library on dreams and dream control. I was facing my waking demons head-on in the dream world. Western medicine had failed to cure my nightmares so I turned to the east. I decided to find the Tibetan masters of dreams and sleep I had read about. My dream life became my obsession. It was on an international flight that I realized I had mastered flying.