Awake

Overview

After a car accident, Michael Britten begins living in what feels to him like two different alternate realities; one in which his wife survived the crash and his son didn't, and one in which his son survived but his wife didn't. He lives one day with his wife, and when he goes to bed at night he awakes in the world where his son is alive. Here is a brief breakdown of Michael's parallel worlds:

Both realities feel completely real to Michael, though Dr. Lee and Dr. Evans both assure him that their world is the real one, and that the other is merely an elaborately constructed dream world designed to protect Michael from having to deal with the grief of losing one of his family members. They warn Michael that holding on to such a complex delusion could be extremely dangerous, and that sooner or later he will have to come to accept the reality of his loss. Michael, though, has absolutely no intention of trying to figure out if one of his worlds is, in fact, a "dream" or not. He flat-out states: "if you're telling me that the price of seeing them, feeling them... of having them in my life is my sanity... then it's a price I will happily pay."

Michael learns to cope with his new dual existence, all while trying to deal with the immense grief his son and wife feel at losing one another. He goes back to working cases in the police force, and finds that his access to two realities is unexpectedly helpful in his case-solving. Clues and details from one reality seem to bleed into the other, in a way that gives Michael an edge on cases which perplexes his partners. Understandably, he never tells his partners that he is getting help from his dream worlds, instead coming up with plausible lies or, when all else fails, simply calling it "a hunch".