He dreams

Jesse was sitting in his 1989 F150, his favorite girl Dawn by his side, Journey singing on the radio his lips pressed to hers.  Their bodies warming against one another the teenage passion taking their bodies into places they have never even dreamed of before.  His hips pressing into hers grinding, thrusting against her hands pulling him into her harder.

They were celebrating their both signing up to be soldiers in the National Guard leaving for basic training the next day.  Jesse was going to be a supply and logistics guy while Dawn was going to become a water operator, which were in high demand.  With her bonus, they put a down payment on a house for them to live in when they returned from training.

When they returned they purchased furniture they both could rather agree on.  It was camouflaged with pink highlights, not your normal kind of color scheme but for two soldiers it seemed perfect.  They would sit each evening on the couch and watch classic movies from the 80’s ending each night by making love again and again.

Jesse got a full-time day job at the local factory as a security guard, which allowed him to train on the weekends as required and work towards his degree in criminal justice to become a police officer working for the local sheriff, his uncle.  Dawn worked at the local water plant on the swing shift that was actually working days since no one was actually ever needed at nights the plant was so small.

Before long Dawn was discharging pregnant with their twins, they added onto the small house and Jesse was finishing his degree and began working for the sheriff’s office as a dispatcher.  Dawn had the twins prematurely and they died in the NICU while their loving parents just watched helplessly.  Dawn immediately signed back up to the National Guard.  Despite Jesse begging her to wait, she was gone for training in North Carolina for her new assignment overseas during a war in Afghanistan.

Jesse was falling apart and began seeing a therapist, talking about missing Dawn and for several months; the therapist didn’t say anything to correct him.  Then one day when Jesse was freaking out because he got a visit from the local sheriff and two of the leading NCO’s from the National Guard unit, this drove him over the edge and he was admitted to the local mental ward at the VAMC.

The therapist finally broke her silence about Dawn, “Jesse she has been dead for two years you need to stop contacting the National Guard about when she will be returning.”

Jesse began to panic, his hands in a death grip on the journal he had been writing in since the day he met Dawn in high school when she transferred in. “Dawn is not dead, she is in Afghanistan I know she’s coming home to me soon.”  He handed the therapist the journal and on the last page, he described her leaving for Afghanistan that March.  The problem was, she died in Iraq two years ago when she got out of training and was immediately transferred to Iraq, killed in when a roadside bomb went off as she drove by in her water truck.

The next morning they found Jesse dead in his room he died in his sleep from a broken heart.  There was one last journal entry, “give these journals to my one true love, Dawn.”