My dad is dying, and the family are rushing to be with him. It is at a hospital somewhere in Maui. He is on his hospital bed… except there’s nothing of him except his… brain. We are all beside ourselves with grief. Mom, my siblings, me.

Then I figure out a way to communicate with him, simply by asking a question: dad, if you can hear us, just ‘nod’ — and the piece of brain jiggles! We are all beside ourselves with laughter and joy. We talk to him this way for a while.

Then, we have to leave but not before some of his other relatives from our Lolo Maximino side of the family (Ilokanos) arrive. But then, there is a commotion as the hospital’s nurses and doctors and administrators are saying there is a flash flood coming (the hospital is by a large river), because of a storm or typhoon higher up on the mountain.

I look outside the window and to my horror indeed see the river rising, fast. Everyone is running away. I take my dad’s brain carefully and wrap it in a towel, telling him not to worry, I have him. I nestle the towel carefully into my jacket, in my chest, and zip it up, and then start to flee myself. I am on the road outside the hospital, and the water is coming down fast and rising very fast. I run up the road a couple of blocks, with other people (strangers in my dream, not anyone familiar).

We run until the river stops rising with us, and we are safe, by the upper part of the hospital parking lot.