Journey From Heaven

by Joe Derkacht

  Episode Nine

  “You’ve been doing so well, Jack.”

  I opened my eyes and blinked, waiting for my vision to clear. Things grew gradually brighter, as if I were emerging from a dark tunnel, until I finally realized I was looking into a stranger’s face. No, not really a stranger’s.

  “How many times do I have to warn you that you can’t just stop taking your meds?”

  I stared for several long moments before I realized his beard was what threw me. It was long enough to touch his chest. I couldn’t recall ever seeing Doc Schiffman in a beard or that his hair was completely silver.

  “Where—?” I asked, seeing the surrounding white walls and a curtained-off sliding glass door.

  “You’re in Seaside Hospital, in one of the emergency bays. I happened to be here when they brought you in.”

  Without realizing it, I must have struggled, because suddenly he was holding me down with one large paw on my chest.

  “Jack, you’re in restraints. Give me a chance to undo them first.”

  I let him work on the straps. Seaside Hospital made no sense at all. The last thing I remembered was stumbling on my way home from church. The closest hospital was in Healy City, not Seaside.

  “Why—Why am I here?”

  “Why not?” He asked in return. “You have a medical emergency, people usually want to transport you to the nearest available hospital.”

  “Nearest?”

  He squinted briefly at me. His glasses were new, too, still gold-rimmed, but squarer. I decided I didn’t like them as much as the old ones. Nor did I like the beard, his attempt, perhaps, at trying to conceal an aging neck? The overall effect made him look fatter, drew more attention to his spreading paunch.

  “I understand Zell is coming for you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said. “You’re just lucky you were sitting down when it happened.”

  He jotted one last note in my chart and turned away. At the door, he said, “I’ll see about your release. You’ll find your clothes in the closet.”

  Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I found I was dressed in a hospital gown. I looked down at my arms, thinking I would find scratches or perhaps bruises from my fall. Instead, I saw a peculiarly darker shading than usual, almost as if I’d somehow found time for a tan during my spell. As I dressed myself, a glance in the mirror over the room’s sink startled me even more. Since when had I grown a mustache and goatee?

  Venetian blinds covered the room’s single window. A desperate pull on the cord revealed the hospital grounds. My heart sank at the sight of flowers and shrubbery in full bloom. Worse yet, in the distance two shirtless young boys were riding skateboards. Closer by, several women in sleeveless blouses were eating lunch at a picnic table.

  I probably stumbled backwards. I found myself seated on a tartan-upholstered chair next to the bed. The last thing I could recall from before waking up in the hospital was walking home from church in early December. Yet, here I was, in Seaside, with summer’s bright sun shining everywhere, my arms and face tanned reddish brown, and a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee I didn’t remember growing.

  “John?”

  I glanced up from my chair. It was Zell, poking her head in past the curtain. She looked harried but otherwise the same as always.

  “Are you all right, dear?” She asked as she came in, glancing to right and left as if looking both ways before crossing a street.

  “Doc Schiffman tells me I am,” I managed to say.

  She stared at me sympathetically and clutched her purse to her chest.

  “I looked all over town for you. When I couldn’t find you, the police—”

  I must have stiffened at the word police.

  “They were very helpful and polite,” she finished primly. “Especially after I told them I was Blackie’s favorite aunt.”

  I know I grinned. She was not Blackie’s aunt. If I remembered rightly, Blackie’s wife Angie was actually a step-niece or something like that.

  “I don’t know why, but I hadn’t even thought about checking with the hospital. Are you really all right?”

  “I ah, I don’t know. Everything’s kinda fuzzy.” I couldn’t tell her the truth. She would think I was nuts, me thinking I’d stepped from winter into a balmy summer day. Something like that didn’t happen to normal people. Why did it have to happen to me?

  Strangely, I didn’t feel the same as I normally did after one of my episodes. The usual giddiness and lightheadedness were absent, replaced by a sense of displacement, like I didn’t belong here. On the sidewalk going home, in a patch of shrubbery, was where I belonged.

  It wasn’t until we were on our way home in Zell’s old, white Buick that another memory intruded itself upon my consciousness. I hadn’t fallen into shrubbery on my way home from church. I had been at my drafting table thinking about Kit. I’d tried to stand and instead toppled over and had fallen into a swirling black hole!

  Sitting in the car, with events strobing through my mind, I shivered, feeling the same old giant waves rolling over me. When would they end? Where were they carrying me?

  To reassure myself, I felt my shirt pocket for my Copenhagen. The pocket was empty.

  “Would the hospital take my Copenhagen?” I asked.

  Sneaking a peripheral glance my way, Zell kept her eyes to the road. She didn’t trust herself or anyone else on 101’s narrower curves.

  “Copenhagen?” She stammered. “Oh John, you quit years ago. Don’t you remember?”

  Feeling bile rise in my throat, I cranked the window down as fast as I could and hung my head over the side of the door. Zell found a place to park off the shoulder of the road and stopped the car before I actually puked. I was glad the pavement no longer rushed past like a dead gray river. The ocean air felt cool on my face.

  “Here,” Zell said, grabbing up a brightly colored newspaper ad sitting between us on the bench seat. “Sorry, the tissues are in the trunk with the groceries.”

  I dutifully wiped my mouth. As I wadded up the ad to throw it away, I saw the words, “1995 Model Clearance!”

  “Is this—?” I started, faltering as I again glanced at the date.

  “What?” She asked.

  “Nothing,” I said lamely, sobered by her stare. If it was 1995, I had a lot to think about. I’d somehow misplaced seven years of my life.