I almost didn’t send that message

A few weeks ago, I dreamed about a friend I hadn’t spoken to in about six years.

Nothing had happened between us. We used to be close, then we moved to different places and slowly stopped keeping in touch.

In the dream, we were outside our old school. He was sitting on the low wall where we used to wait for the bus. I don’t remember much else, except that he kept asking me to sit down for a minute.

The next morning, I looked for his number. I typed a message, deleted it, then typed it again.

“Bit random, but you were in my dream last night. How are you?”

He called me about ten minutes later.

The first thing he asked was whether I’d spoken to his sister. I said no. I don’t even have her number.

His dad had been taken to hospital the night before. He’d spent most of the night there and was sitting outside, waiting for news.

We talked for nearly an hour. Mostly about ordinary things. Work, people from school, a stupid trip we’d taken when we were nineteen.

Before we hung up, he said, “I really needed that today.”

His dad is home now. We’ve met for coffee twice since then.

I’ve dreamed about plenty of people without anything happening afterwards, so I don’t know what to make of it. But I keep thinking about how close I came to deleting that message and getting on with my day.

Has something like this happened to anyone else?