THE DAY MY DREAMS CHANGED

THE CALL THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

My father was carried home that evening.

I remember standing near the doorway, watching several people struggle to bring him inside. Their hands were pressed beneath his arms and around his waist, while his feet dragged helplessly across the ground. The evening air smelled of dust and sweat, and the sound of hurried footsteps seemed strangely loud.

That morning, he had left home looking perfectly fine.

Now he had returned unable to properly control his body.

I kept staring at him, waiting for something to make sense. Waiting for him to stand up, laugh, and tell us that everyone was overreacting.

But he didn't.

Nobody really knew what to do.

Everyone had an opinion. Everyone had something they believed might help.

Someone suggested looking for a white snail.

I didn't understand why, but at that point, we were desperate enough to try anything people believed could save him. Fear had made us willing to accept every suggestion, no matter how strange it sounded.

They found some.

The snails were cold and pale in their hands. Their bodies glistened as they moved slowly across the container. Someone squeezed them, collecting the thick slime that came out.

The slime was rubbed all over my father's body.

He was also made to drink some of it.

I stood nearby, watching in confusion and fear. The smell was unpleasant, and my stomach tightened as I watched him swallow. I wanted to ask whether this was really going to help him, but I was afraid of the answer.

I didn't know whether it would work.

I didn't even fully understand what was happening to my father.

But he kept smiling.

That smile is something I still remember clearly.

His face looked tired, and one side of his mouth had begun to droop, but he still looked at us as if he were the one comforting us. His eyes moved from one frightened face to another.

"Everything will be fine," he said.

His voice was not as strong as usual, but he said the words with such confidence that, for a moment, I wanted to believe him.

Maybe everything really would be fine.

Maybe he would wake up the next morning and be himself again.

Maybe this was only temporary.

I held on to those thoughts because I had nothing else to hold on to. They were small, fragile hopes, but I clung to them as if they could keep our family from falling apart.

Still, deep down, something inside me was already warning me that my life was about to change.

And not in a good way.

That night, the house felt different.

The air seemed heavy, as though the walls themselves had absorbed our fear. The usual sounds of our home—the movement of people, the clatter of dishes, the voices of children—had become faint and scattered.

Nobody behaved normally.

People spoke in low voices. Doors opened and closed carefully. Every few minutes, someone checked on my father.

Even when nobody was saying anything, I could feel the worry moving through the house.

I went to bed with my thoughts racing.

I kept replaying the day in my mind: my father leaving for the interview, the way he had looked when he left, the way he had returned, the strange treatment with the snails, and the smile he had forced onto his face.

I cried myself to sleep.

My pillow became damp beneath my cheek, and I pressed my face into it so nobody would hear me. I wished with everything in me that when I opened my eyes the next morning, everything would turn out to have been a dream.

I wanted to wake up and see my father walking normally.

I wanted to hear his voice the way I knew it.

I wanted our house to feel normal again.

But the next morning came, and reality was waiting for me.

The first thing I heard was my mother shouting.

"Help! Please, help me!"

Her voice tore through the house.

I jumped out of bed, my heart pounding so hard that I could feel it in my throat. I ran toward the sound, my bare feet striking the floor as panic rose inside me.

My mother was trying to help my father.

He had gotten out of bed by himself because he wanted to go to the bathroom to urinate. Somehow, he had managed to stand up.

But before he could get there, he fell and had already peed on himself.

His body had collapsed heavily against the floor. He couldn't get himself back up. He couldn't properly call for help. His mouth was already bent from the stroke, and he had little control over his arms and legs.

My mother was trying to lift him, but she couldn't do it alone.

I stood there for a few seconds, completely frozen.

I remember looking at my father on the floor and thinking:

So this wasn't a dream?

The thought seemed to echo inside my head.

Tears rolled down my cheeks.

Everything I had hoped would disappear overnight was still there.

It was real.

My father was really sick.

I ran outside to look for help. The morning air felt cold against my face, but I barely noticed it. I called out to our neighbours, my voice shaking as I tried to explain what had happened.

I found some of them and quickly brought them into the house.

They came in and helped my mother lift my father. Their hands gripped his arms and shoulders as they raised him carefully and placed him back where he could rest.

I didn't know what to say.

I didn't know what to do.

I was only fifteen years old.

And suddenly, I was looking at my father in a way I had never looked at him before.

Saliva kept running from the side of his mouth. I watched it gather at his lips and slide down his chin. His voice had changed. It sounded weak and unfamiliar—almost like a small child who was only beginning to learn how to form words properly.

He struggled to speak.

But even then, he kept trying to reassure us.

"Don't worry," he said.

"I can walk on my own."

He said it even though we could all see that he couldn't.

The words hurt because they sounded like a promise he could no longer keep. I think he was trying to protect us from the reality he already understood.

Maybe he didn't want his fifteen-year-old first daughter to look at him and realize that life was about to become difficult.

Maybe he didn't want me to be afraid.

Because he knew there were four children in the house.

Me, his fifteen-year-old daughter.

My younger sibling, who was eleven.

Another who was six.

And the youngest, only two years old.

That morning, our normal routine disappeared.

There was no rushing around to get ready. No ordinary family conversations. No one was thinking about what they would eat or what they needed to do that day.

The house had become a place of waiting.

We waited for my father to speak.

We waited for someone to suggest a solution.

We waited for the fear in our chests to loosen, but it never did.

Instead, everyone was silently asking the same question:

What happens now?

Nobody wanted to say it out loud.

We were all afraid of what the answer might be.

Even food was forgotten.

The smell of cooking did not make anyone hungry. Plates could have been placed in front of us, but our minds were somewhere else. The only person who was fed was our youngest sibling, who was still too young to understand what was happening.

For the rest of us, eating felt unimportant.

Our attention was completely on my father.

As the morning passed and the day moved toward afternoon, we were still trying to figure out what to do next.

Eventually, my mother went into the kitchen to prepare something for us to eat. Before she did, she told me to go and check on my father.

I walked toward him expecting to find him resting.

Instead, I found him crying.

My father was crying.

For a moment, I stood at the doorway, unable to move. The sight broke something inside me.

I had seen my father as many things throughout my childhood.

A father.

A provider.

A strong man.

He had been the person who made problems seem smaller simply by being present. He was the one we looked to when we needed answers.

But seeing him cry was different.

His shoulders trembled slightly. Tears gathered in his eyes and ran down his face. He looked frightened, and that frightened me more than anything else.

He looked at me and, through his tears, said something that I will never forget.

"He got the job."

For a moment, I didn't understand.

Then I realized he was talking about himself.

He had gotten the job.

The same job he had gone out for that interview to get.

The same job that was supposed to give our family hope.

The same job he was supposed to resume the following week.

And now he was lying there, unable to properly control his own body.

The words seemed cruel.

He had received the good news, but he could not celebrate it. The opportunity he had worked for had arrived at the same time as the illness that might prevent him from taking it.

I couldn't stand it.

I turned around and ran back into my room.

I didn't want him to see me cry.

Once inside, I pressed my hands over my mouth, but the sobs still escaped. I kept thinking about how he had looked when he left for that interview.

He had dressed well.

He looked good.

He looked like a man going somewhere to change his life.

He had gone out hoping to come back with good news.

And he did.

He got the job.

But he had also come home with a stroke.

The contrast was too painful for me to understand. It felt as if life had handed him something precious and then immediately taken away his ability to use it.

Later that afternoon, when the food was ready, we sat down to eat.

Nobody was really interested in the food. The plates were warm, and the smell filled the room, but it did not reach us. We were eating because our bodies needed it, not because we were hungry.

Then the phone rang.

The sound cut through the room, sharp and sudden.

It was my uncle from the village.

My mother answered the call.

He had already heard about what happened. His voice sounded serious, and even from where I sat, I could hear the weight in his words.

He asked questions about my father and listened carefully as my mother answered.

Then he said he would speak with the other members of the family and find out what they thought should be done.

When the call ended, we waited.

At first, I tried to act as if I was not worried. I stayed close to my younger siblings while my mother moved around the house, checking on my father.

But the silence became harder to bear.

Every time the phone made a small sound, I looked toward it.

Every time someone moved near it, my heart jumped.

Minutes passed.

Then an hour.

Then another.

The longer the phone remained silent, the more nervous I became. I kept imagining the conversation taking place in the village. I wondered what they were saying about my father. I wondered whether they had already decided something without us.

Two hours later, the phone rang again.

It was my uncle.

My mother answered while I stayed nearby. I watched her face as she listened.

At first, she only said, "Okay."

Then she became quiet.

Her fingers tightened around the phone. Her eyes lowered, and the colour seemed to drain from her face.

I knew before she spoke that the decision was serious.

He told her that he had spoken with the other siblings.

They had made their decision.

He was preparing to come and take my father to the village.

By the following morning, he would be at our house.

My mother ended the call slowly.

For a moment, neither of us moved.

Then she looked at me.

"The village?" we both said.

The words sounded strange in the room.

Neither of us knew what to say after that.

My uncle was coming in the morning to take my father away.

We knew what it meant.

My father was leaving.

And none of us knew what would happen after that.

But none of us knew what was waiting for us in the village.

That night, I lay in bed listening to the quietness of the house.

By morning, my uncle would arrive.

And my family would begin a journey we had never planned for.