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I had a dream the night before her angiogram. In the dream I was not anxious, me and my friends were hanging out, we were going to eat dinner and a girl I didn't know was there, she and another friend of mine who is single for a really long time was eyeing one another. Everything felt great. Then I walked by a window of a store, it had TV sets in it, my uncle was sitting in his wheelchair and talking about the war he hit in, I'm standing to look at it, thinking he's on TV, but then realizing he's really behind that glass, that it's not a store window but a glass door in the hospital.

His wife, my aunt, come over, she's telling me my mother's OK and about to go have her procedure, my mom join us, we are standing on the ward's counter, everything is empty quite and white as we are waiting for a nurse or someone to approach us, my mother's sitting in a wheelchair, she say that the hospital wanted to let her go home till her surgery, but that my uncle pulled some strings and told them that she wasn't feeling well enough, that her legs were aching and so they let her stay and that's why she's in a wheelchair, I start pushing her toward the operation room, then, I'm distracted by something or take a wrong turn or something and the wheelchair tips over and my mother falls to the floor.

She's covered in a dark green hospital blanket and I can't see her at all, she looks really small under the blanket, my aunt looks alert and shocked, I'm starting to yell "help! Help" and run down the corridor toward where the nurses are, they are engaged in conversation and me, half hysteric, trying to explain to them what happened, eventually one of them, a heavy woman with short brown hair, is following me, not as fast or urgent as I need her to be, from afar, I see my aunt crushing her fists on my mom's chest's supposed to be under the blanket, she's giving her a heart massage trying to bring her back, she's screaming my mother's name, loud trying to wake her, her voice break into crying, then I see my mother's hand roll from under the blanket, and i know, with certainty, that she's dead. That she's gone for good.

I'm thinking "this is too horrible and too real to be a dream" and then I wake up, but I'm a child, I'm not me, I'm a little girl, her hair's in two pigtails and bangs, I'm covered in a red blanket and holding tight to a small, knitted teddy bear and my eyes are shut in fear and tears, I feel a heavy bracers on my teeth, in my mouth.

I wake up again and I'm me, I'm sitting in my own messy room and start talking to him on the web cam, wanting to tell him about the scary dream I just had, I'm starting to talk to him but something is bothering me, making it hard for me to speak and I realize I still have the bracers in my mouth, but that it if hanging loose, it's attached to my right back teeth alone and all the rest of it is just hanging, I reach into my mouth and start playing with bits and pieces of wire in my mouth, it doesn't detach, eventually, I just pull it out with force, I go to the bathroom and wash my mouth, watching the sink get full of bits and pieces of metal, old needles, wires, feelings, rusted and old and shiny.

I wake up again and this time I know I'm truly awake cause I'm anxious.

It doesn't leave me anymore, not ever since it's started a week and a half ago, I'm taking bendodiazepines, the pills I was always afraid and really hopeful toward, that pill that's supposed to just take a panic attack and dissolve it in 20 minutes, they dulls it just a little bit but doesn't really help. I found myself going to the hospital last Thursday just to get the same pills from the hospital's Psychiatrist just to get the same pills I was already taking and a recommendation to go back to SSRIs, which I took for one day and then gave up on, remembering that when I took those pills a few years ago, they made the depression slowly go away but didn't help for anxiety at all.

All this fear, which I know isn't really a fear, there's a war going around me, my building being broken into and the thing I fear the most is the sound of a barking dog and the wind in the trees. And now this.

On Friday my dad calls, it's a little odd cause we already talked earlier that day, I'm home, I'm always home those days or at work, the anxiety makes it almost impossible to get out of the apartment and do anything but be home and be anxious. He tells me that my mom, who I've also talked to this morning, had a heart incident, they still don't know what is it exactly, she's in the hospital, she's OK but her test aren't good, they are administrating her into the cardiology ward, no I don't need to come now, visiting hours are going to be over soon anyway. I call my sister and we talk, then I talk to my other sister and we agree to go there that evening. We sit in my sister's living room, watching Television. I'm feeling anxious we try to calm one another, my younger sister's depressed again, my middle sister's staring on the TV screen then on the pages in her laps, she's got a big test on Sunday and have to study. We watch a little news then some series then a movie, my younger sister end up going back to her apartment since her boyfriend's coming over.

And so a couple of days later the DR. decide to have an angiogram and I dream that dream.

Though I didn't tell work that I'm going to go to the hospital the next day, I call them in the morning and let them know I'm going to go up to Jerusalem, I walk all the way to the central bus station, trying to ignore the trees, the way banners and flags flap in the wind, the air is almost still this season but to me, it looks and feels like a storm. I debate between taking the service taxi or the bus like my life dependent on it. Eventually I take the bus then a taxi to the hospital, Jerusalem, and especially the hospital, that's on a top of a mountain in the middle of a forest is always more windy then Tel Aviv and the hospital has so many frightening different noises in it I feel I can burst. But I don't I go up to the ward, my mom is already out of recovery but there's a DR. in the ward so all visitors need to stay out. I sit with my father and my sister in the waiting area and we watch TV. There weren't any missiles since morning, and so the news shows are trying to fill one dead hour after another with kids psychologists and other anxiety specialist talking about how to comfort people who are having hard times in the war.

Eventually we go in, my mom's laying in bed, in a hospital's pajamas, she's napping, her hair has a lot of gray in it and suddenly she looks older and small to me, like she shrunk down inside that huge hospital bad. I touch her skin, her hand. She wakes up slowly, she's not feeling good but after the nurse checks on her and adjust something in the bandages she's feeling better. She asks me how I'm doing, she knows that I'm anxious, that I'm not eating, I'm telling her I'm not so good, she makes my dad go down to the mall and get me some rice from one of those Chinese fast food counters. We sit and talk, it's hard to find what to talk to with her, she's trying to make me feel better, not as anxious, she's asking me what I'm afraid about, and telling me that i can always come back if I don't like it over there, it's so hard to explain how I feel. I try to talk about this woman at work, to talk about random stuff that's going to make her feel better, but it's hard, it's all so difficult and tragic.

My dad gets back, I eat some rice, my mom eats some of it and the hospital's lunch, she was worried the day before and didn't eat much, my dad goes out again he's taking the car to the auto shop and I stay with my mother. It feels to me like I haven't spend any time with her in ages, just the two of us, I’m thinking about all the anger I have for her and had for her in recent years, I look at her body in the bed, at her face, and it just dissolve for that moment, it evaporate as I see her as a person, sick and scared and loving, worried about me even more then I worry about her. And I want to cry, I want to curl in her arms and have her protect me, nurse me back into health and mental stability, I want her to be big and strong and with the amazing ability to fix everything.

I'm afraid she'll die, I'm afraid I'll be anxious in New York and have no where to run away to, not that I ever did, not that there's ever a place to hide from myself, from the notion of my parents getting old and die, from being alone and scared, so scared and helpless.

I don't want to feel like this anymore, I want to be healthy and strong and brave, I can't stand that fear in the pits of my belly anymore.