Until I Die Again [On The Way To Heaven] (Soul Change Novel) (2 page)

“Can I see her?”

“Of course. And I would suggest you call her family and let them know that there isn’t much time.”

“Her mother is on her way now. No one has any idea where her father is. That’s all the family she has.” Jamie’s voice sounded flat, as if it came from a cardboard box.

“Follow me to ICU then.”

He couldn’t believe he was walking down the sterile corridors of the hospital to say what might be his final words to his wife. Their marriage had shattered long ago, but the thought of her dying still ripped him apart.

Dying. Hallie dying.

Hallie lay in a glassed-in room, a fragile creature in a protected environment. Jamie stood alone by the door for a few minutes, sustaining a hope that perhaps this was the wrong woman. As long as he didn’t see her face, there was the smallest chance that Dr. Hughes had gotten Hallie mixed up with this dying woman. But soon he was drawn to her side, and the limp hand he held was definitely Hallie’s.

His mind tried unsuccessfully to erase the tubes from her mouth and nose, the IV stuck in her arm. The respirator issued a soft, wheezing sound every time it gave her a life-sustaining puff of air. He couldn’t understand the green scribbles on a nearby monitor but was thankful that something was happening.

Life flowed under the serene exterior, but where was her soul? Right there, he told himself, still locked inside her body. He squeezed her hand hard, as if by holding on, he could keep her from slipping away. He envisioned himself in a tug of war with Death. Of course, Death would win. Jamie had to keep reminding himself of that; it hadn’t sunk in that she would actually die.

He had heard that people in comas could sometimes hear the sounds around them. So, he would talk to her then and try to pull her back. Starting from the first time he’d ever seen her, he told her how stunning she’d looked in that sparkling blue dress.

Throughout the night, in between the times when her mother spent time alone with her, Jamie went back and forth between forgiving her for the heartbreak she’d caused, and asking her why she had betrayed him. How he wished he would have asked her before. Now he might never know why she wouldn’t fully open herself up to him, or give her heart to him.

Chris swam up from the depths to consciousness, lured by a man’s voice. She didn’t have the strength to open her eyes or respond, but slowly her mind began to recognize his words and put them into logical order.

“You actually died last night. You were gone and then you came back to life. That has to mean something. Dammit, it has to mean that you’re going to come out of this coma.”

I’m here, Alan. Or is it Dad?
Then she realized what he had just said. She had died and come back. She had gotten her second chance! Only vaguely did the memory of her twisted body return. She felt no pain, only a spear of panic as she wondered what her life would be like now. It didn’t matter, she was alive! She clenched her fists, testing.

 
“You moved again.” He took her hand in his, and his warmth felt good on her chilled skin. “Oh, Hallie,” he said, drawing it out into a sigh. “Dr. Hughes keeps reminding me that it’s not unusual for people in deep comas to move or twitch. He calls it posturing or something like that. But I can’t help wondering if you’re trying to tell me you’re in there.

“So many times…” He took a deep breath, and his voice sounded more strained when he continued. “So many times in the last two years I wanted to rip that wedding ring off your finger. I couldn’t, God help me, I just couldn’t do it. Now that it’s not there, it seems strange. The hospital sent all your jewelry home with me.” He forced a laugh. “You’d be hollering how naked you feel without it.”

Wedding ring?
Chris groped for memories of her life. Alan. They were dating, but not married. She slowly opened her eyes, focusing in on her surroundings. The machines didn’t surprise her; she had expected that. But the man did. His arms were outstretched on the wall opposite her, his head was pressed against the glass. His breath made a circle of fog in front of him.

He was not Alan, nor her father. She could only see him at an angle from the back, but she already knew she had never seen him before. His blond, straight hair tapered down the back of his neck. His wrinkled shirt and jeans outlined a lean, muscular body.

When he started to turn around, her eyelids fell shut under the weight of fatigue. Why was he in her room, talking to her like this? She needed more time to figure it out.

It took little effort for Chris to keep perfectly still. He came close and gently rubbed one hand, then the other. When he laid her hand down, she had to quell a desire to reach for him.

“I guess I should tell you that Mick is not on the list of people allowed to visit you. Maybe you’d be mad at me for that. I don’t know. As soon as he heard, he came right here. Then he blew up in the lobby when he was refused admittance. Family only. Color me old-fashioned, but I just don’t think it’s right, your lover being in here.”

Chris could hear his shoes scrape the floor as he paced next to her bed. Her
lover
, Mick? Now she was sure this man had the wrong room. She wanted to open her eyes and tell him he’d made a terrible mistake, tell him how crazy it was, his thinking she was his wife. But all she could do was listen.

“And I know about your plans to take off with Mick. I found the plane tickets when I grabbed your suitcase after the stroke. Even you couldn’t lie your way out of two one-way tickets to France with both your names on them.” He laughed softly. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hold that against you now. Hell, I’m even gracious enough to wish you all the happiness in the world.”

This is crazy! I’ve got to tell him he’s made a mistake. How can he think I’m his wife?
Just when she started drowning in a sea of confusion, she got a reprieve.

After a whoosh sound, Chris could hear a vast array of noises from the hallway: a distant conversation, a doctor being paged. A feminine voice said, “Excuse me, Mr. DiBarto. You’re going to have to leave for a little while. You can come back in about an hour.”

The door quietly closed, leaving the drone of machines to press down on her. After a few minutes, Chris forced her eyes open, looking everywhere around the vacated room. She moved her hand again, and smiled to feel it there. And she smiled just because she could. Then she realized there were tubes in her nose and mouth, and one started to cause a strangling sensation in her throat.

When her hand reached up over her mouth, she jerked her head around, ready to encounter the owner of the graceful fingers with long, bright pink nails. She had never worn nail polish, nor had nails long enough to paint. She stared at the hand that hovered shakily over her face, and moved a finger. One long finger moved. Then another moved at her will.

The hand moved lower, and pulled the tape away before pulling the tube from her throat. The slight gagging sensation was followed by the wonderful feeling of taking a breath on her own. She could breathe! Next came the tubes in her nose. But the hand still looked foreign to her.

Chris tried to remember what had put her there. An accident. Yes, she could hear the distant memory of crunching metal, screams. Her screams. It hurt to think of anything else. She had to get up, to see herself and make sure she was whole. Her arms felt weak, but she pushed herself up a few inches at a time. The room started to spin around, and she closed her eyes and held fast. Finally it passed, and she tried to still the waves of nausea pulsing through her stomach.

Once she felt stable again, she held her breath and looked down. The blankets had slid down to her waist, and she pushed them to the floor—and stared. Not at herself, not the straight, boyish figure and skinny legs. Something was wrong, terribly wrong! This was not her body!

She moved legs that seemed twice as long as her own, shapely legs with small feet and painted toe nails to match those fingers. They moved in unison with her thoughts. Her arms moved at will, and… her eyes widened. Her chest was not the barely-a-B she was used to seeing, but much more than that! Beneath her hospital gown, voluptuous breasts rose each time she inhaled. Her hands moved to her head, desperately wanting to feel the kinky curls she had hated all her life. She pulled a handful of long, dark blonde hair in front of her face.

Panic twisted her heart, and dazed confusion rushed through her blood. Or was it her blood? Nothing else was hers! No, it had to be a horrible, distorted nightmare.

The picture filled her mind, this time vividly. Her twisted body, the blood, oh, the blood. But there was so much more than that. She remembered floating above her body, feeling detached from it. The clear, bright light telling her that it wasn’t her time yet. He’d said something about a new task. She had been given another chance as… Chris’s gaze fell to the plastic band on her wrist:
H. DiBarto
. She was in another woman’s body!

“Hallie! You’re awake.”

The man who had been talking to her earlier rushed to her side, followed by a tall woman in her fifties. Chris looked at them blankly, the reality of her situation crashing in over her.

“Hallie, it’s Jamie, your husband. This is your mother. Are you all right?” Then he shook his head, smiling. “You’re okay. I knew you’d come back.”

Jamie leaned over and hugged her, followed by a crushing hug from the woman who was supposed to be her mother. The woman touched Chris’s face, hair and arms, as if to assure herself she was really seeing her daughter and not an apparition.

Chris tried to talk, but nothing came out. Finally a sound croaked from her throat. “Why am I in here?” She gestured to all the equipment around her.

Her mother leaned forward and gripped her hand. Chris wasn’t sure whose hand was shaking, but their clutched hands quivered. “You had a brain hemorrhage, sweetheart.”

Chris’s weight pulled her back to a prone position. All the while, she kept staring at Jamie, keeping her focus on one person to keep her mind from exploding into a thousand directions.

His face was finely sculptured, and his eyes were the lightest shade of blue she had ever seen. He had one of those regal noses from advertisements for cologne and blue jeans. He must have been staring at her with the same disbelief that filled her face. Then he smiled, and the whole room seemed to light up. Maybe she was in Heaven after all, and he was an angel.

The illusion of Heaven was disrupted when a nurse pushed her way in after looking through the large glass window. Everything happened quickly after that. She called the doctor in, ushered Jamie and her “mother” out of the room, and put her through a battery of embarrassing and lengthy tests. All the while, the doctor kept asking her questions.

“What’s your name?”

“Hallie…” She stole a glance at her bracelet. “DiBarto.”

“How old are you? Where were you born?”

The questions kept coming, and she didn’t know the answers to most of them. At least the answers that belonged to the body she was in. Her own life was clear and the memories vivid up until the day she died. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Who am I now?

“Are you all right?” one of the nurses asked.

Chris shook her head. No, she wasn’t all right. She would never be all right again.

Jamie, his mother, Theresa, and Hallie’s mother all gathered in the closet-sized room with Dr. Hughes. The bad news room. He tried to keep telling himself that Hallie was all right now, but another dark thought kept pressing into his mind, spurred on by the memory of that blank look on Hallie’s face: brain damage. What would he do if she never recovered mentally?

Dr. Hughes looked at his paperwork, then set it down on the desk with a short sigh. “I have been a doctor for fifteen years, and all I can tell you about Hallie’s recovery is that it is a miracle. I have never seen someone in so deep a coma awaken so suddenly. Her movements are purposeful, hand and eye coordination much better than anyone could ever expect.”

“So she’ll be okay?” Hallie’s mother asked, nervously fingering the frosted hair piled on top of her head.

“Well, Mrs. Parker…”

“Please,” she interrupted, placing a hand on Dr. Hughes’s sleeve. “Call me Velvet.”

Jamie always cringed at the mention of her mother’s name, Velvet. Her real name was Hedda, but she kept the stage name she used when she had been an exotic dancer years ago.

Dr. Hughes leaned back in the brown vinyl chair. “We’ve run tests, numbers of them. There isn’t a trace of the hemorrhage or any damage. Physically, she’s perfect.”

Jamie pushed out the words, “And mentally?”

Dr. Hughes tilted his head. “That’s what we’re not too sure about. Both long and short term memory are impaired. She seems to know little other than her name, and the nurse saw her peek at her name band for that. With the kind of recovery she made, it’s going to be hard to predict her progress. In normal cases it could take up to two years for her memory to return, and even then some of it may never return.”

Velvet’s face registered shock. “You mean she might always look at me with that nothing look on her face?”

“I’m not saying that at all. But you may have to fill in the blank spaces for her.”

Jamie leaned forward. “Will she be the same? I mean, her personality and all?”

“Yes, in time she will become basically the same person she was. She will, of course, be different in some ways. This kind of experience changes a person. She’ll probably appreciate life a lot more.”

“Hah!” Velvet’s deep, harsh laugh seemed to ricochet off the walls. “She already did.” When she noticed Jamie’s right eye narrow, her smile died.

Dr. Hughes cleared his throat, perhaps in an attempt to clear the air of tension. “I would like to keep her here for a few days, just for observation. Then she’s free to go home, although she should stay near the hospital for a few weeks.”

A sick feeling churned in Jamie’s stomach. “Do you think she’ll have another stroke?”

“No, not at all. The last CAT scan we did came out completely clear.” He shook his head and looked away for a moment, as if still stunned. “It might be a good idea, though, to keep her nearby in case of complications. This isn’t an average case, so it’s hard to foresee any problems that might occur.”