The Running Dream

Jessica believes that her sense of smell has sharpened during her stay in the hospital, especially when it comes to the multitude of flowers she has received from well-wishers. Her room is immersed in a variety of flowers, “tuberoses, sweet williams, columbines” (19), which her mother has reverently sniffed. Balloons with get-well wishes float along the ceiling. Jessica calls the balloons her “very own round-faced cheering squad […] peeking through the fog in my mind” (19).

But despite the fresh scents of the flowers and the cheery helium balloons, the reality is that Jessica isn’t sick. In her mind, she is “crippled. Disabled. A gimp” (20). As she considers these labels for her new reality, she loses her appetite for the dinner the nurse brings in.

Worried about her daughter’s mental and physical health, Jessica’s mother urges her to eat some dinner, but the smell of the food turns Jessica’s stomach, and she refuses to eat after trying a spoonful of mashed potatoes. Her mother is satisfied, however, by Jessica’s willingness to try some Jell-O. The dessert feels good in her mouth, so Jessica takes the bowl from her mother’s hands and continues to eat.

It’s the fifth day that Jessica has been in the hospital since the accident. She has been taken off the morphine drip but the other pain medications leave her in a mental fog. Another patient is now sharing her room, and the person’s arrival changes the smell of the room, making it smell “sickly […] [l]ike diarrhea and disinfectant” (21).

The room has taken on a more depressing tone that Jessica sees as reflective of her own inability to envision a happy future. The flowers are “drooping and dropping petals” (21), and the balloons have lost their air as if they are “tired of trying to cheer me up. Like they want to give up too” (21).

Friends and family have consistently called Jessica’s room to speak with her, but just as she can’t face her new reality or see the people in her life. Her parents have mixed feelings about the situation; Jessica’s mother thinks it would do her good to converse with her friends, but her father believes that Jessica isn’t ready for that kind of attention yet. Her father is kind to the people who call for her, except for her track coach, with whom he is “more firm than kind” (22).

Finally, there is Kaylee, Jessica’s thirteen-year-old sister. Unwilling to face her sister, Jessica feigns exhaustion any time her sibling stops by the hospital to see her. She imagines that Kaylee is “freaked out to see me like this” (22) because Jessica has always been the stronger of the two girls. But now, she doesn’t know what to think of herself and doesn’t know what to say to anyone who visits her:how does she lie and say she will be fine when she really wants to ask, “Why me?” (22)