by Laura Burton
“Mom?”
Toby swallowed and stared at her in shock as she pressed the palms on her hands against the wall and slumped her head down. She wept violently for a few minutes before she stood up straight, dabbed her eyes with a tissue and walked farther down the hall. It was as if she was in another world, and did not see him standing there.
He pushed down the silver handle, opened the door and entered the room. The air was heavy and loud with an array of medical sounds—something that Toby could only describe as a pumping noise, like the time he used a foot pump to blow up an inflatable bed when he was a kid. There was also an intermittent buzzing that reminded Toby of a car horn. However, it was not the sounds that had him in a state of shock. It was what he saw. He stared at the young man lying in the hospital bed in silence. An array of wires and pipes fanned out from the body connected to machines crowding the bed. It was like something from a sci-fi movie he watched as a kid. How is this possible? He wondered as he looked at the frail version of himself hooked up to a ventilator.
Maybe if I pop myself back into my body, I’ll wake up? He climbed onto the bed and stretched out on his back, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath… then opened them dramatically. Nothing. After several attempts, Toby hopped off the bed and scratched the back of his neck. Slowly, memories of his life flooded back into his mind; it were as if a veil had been lifted and the cloud of forgetfulness was gone. He paced the room in frustration and wondered what to do next.
I’m not dead, but I’m here and my body is there. So, what now?
As if the universe heard his thoughts, Toby found himself back in his home, standing at the window where the dark figure once stood. He decided that the only thing to do was wait for the doctors to fix him and in the meantime follow a routine.
He surfed for hours on the beach in the mornings, ate in his favorite burger place, played the piano at home and slept restlessly. His dreams were plagued with nightmares of men with black eyes and snake-like tongues chasing him. Hissing, biting… hunting.
Soon, the allure of the perfect waters had lost its magic, and the burgers that had tasted just as good as he remembered, lost their flavor. Toby became overwhelmed with feelings of depression. I can’t stay here anymore, there’s no purpose for me… it’s time to leave California. He wondered if he traveled the world, he would find a purpose for his existence? He sat in his bedroom and rested his chin in his hand in thought as he pondered the big question: Where do I go?
Toby remembered the night before the big championship that his mother was going to sell one of their properties in the Cotswolds, England. He’d never been to England before, and the moment that crossed his mind the room vanished.
Chapter Twenty-Two
California Six Months Ago.
Toby stood in a garden and looked up at the sky. Swirls of pink and green flooded the sky in a transcendent realm of beauty. The sun’s golden light shone brighter than at home. The richness of the green leaves on the trees scattered across the branches was unnaturally perfect—the grass verdant. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his shorts and inhaled the aroma of pinecones and dew. For the first time since his accident, Toby experienced something completely new, something not lodged in the recesses of his mind. He was no longer relying on memories to create experiences. A quiet, elderly couple walked arm in arm along the path and smiled warmly at him as they passed by. Toby turned and watched them walk with care. He wasn’t sure who was bracing whom as they leaned in toward each other. He smiled and a warmth spread through his chest and his arms tingled, though, he did not know why.
He turned and his gaze hovered curiously on a woman sitting on a park bench. The ruffles on her chiffon blouse caught the sunlight and dazzled him. He blinked rapidly to adjust to the light and noticed her delicate hands were placed neatly in her lap. Her dark brown hair rested in a plait over her right shoulder and her amber eyes glowed as two embers of fire; it created a spark from within Toby and like a magnet he walked up to her.
Toby paced his bedroom and rubbed a hand across his jaw as he pondered the situation. Across the landing, in his grandfather’s bedroom, lay the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. How did I get this lucky?
“You cannot have her.” Toby whipped around and stared into the soulless inky-black eyes looking at him. The gentleman standing beside his writing desk wore the usual attire—black clothing with pinstripes running down the legs of his trousers. Toby squared his shoulders and shot him a killing glare.
“What do you mean?” he whispered aggressively. The guardian took a bold step forward. The motion had Toby retreat back a couple of steps.
“This is most unusual.” Toby stared at the immobile, thin lips of the guardian as he listened to his words entering his mind. “No two souls have successfully merged consciousness before.”
“Is that what has happened? Amelia and I? We’re merged somehow?”
The guardian blinked slowly. “It appears so. It was intriguing at first, we were… curious to know how it would conclude. Unfortunately, we cannot allow this relationship to continue.” Toby made a noise of frustration and paced the room again.
“What has it got to do with you? Why won’t you tell me who you are? Why are you doing this? What’s the problem?” He became astutely aware of the rising pitch of his voice. The guardian slid his pale hands into the pockets of his trousers and looked out of the darkened window.
“Have you ever looked at the moon and wondered how many days it takes to orbit the Earth?”
“What? I—no.” Toby stopped pacing for a moment to give the guardian a quizzical look.
“On average, it takes twenty-nine days for the moon to orbit the Earth.” The guardian turned to face Toby again; the expression on his face was blank, like a sheet of paper.
“Did you know that most of the population of your Earth wrongly assumed the Sun orbits the Earth, also.”
“The Earth orbits the sun. They teach that at school,” Toby replied defensively. “I don’t understand what this has got to do with….”
“It takes the Earth exactly three hundred and sixty-five days to orbit the sun.”
“I do not—”
“There must be order. You asked who we are. We are duty bound to maintain order. We are the Guardians.”
“Of what? Earth? Space? Time? The Galaxy?” Toby smirked.
“You must let her go. She is going to wake up.” Toby’s eyes widened as the Guardian’s dark pupils bore into his soul.
“And I can’t? How do you wake up? What do I need to do?”
“Waking up happens when there is no other perceived option.”
“How the heck do I achieve that?”
“End your relationship with her. We have to maintain order.”
Toby’s smile stiffened. “Yes, you’ve said that already and now you’re really ticking me off.” Toby paced the room once more.
“I need more time, let me tell her.”
“That is prohibited. She must not know.”
“But I know? Why am I allowed?” Toby puffed up his chest in defiance.
“You are not to wake.”
Toby’s lungs deflated as he exhaled slowly. The Guardians words weighed heavy on his mind. “So, I’m going to die? Is that what you’re saying?”
The Guardian peered out of the window once more.
“What is death?” he asked.
“Seriously? You’re asking me?” Toby inhaled and the air got caught in his chest and decided to tell the man, though it seemed impossible the guardian didn’t know. “I guess, death is no longer being alive on Earth.”
“Then, yes, you will die.”
“What if I figure out how to wake up? Will I be allowed to live?”
“I am not permitted to answer.”
“That’s a yes, then, so there’s hope, right?”
The guardian remained silent. Toby’s heart rate quickened as he picked up his pace walking back and forth.
“Just give me a bit more
time. Leave Amelia alone for a while okay? You’re freaking her out.”
“You have three days.”
Toby dragged a hand through his hair and whistled.
“Three of my days? Or three day—days?” The guardian inclined his head. Toby stopped moving and looked down at the beige carpet beneath his feet. He had three days left, three days to work out how to wake up and persuade Amelia to join him. It wasn’t quite the hope he needed, but it wasn’t over yet.
“Okay, three days, then.”
Toby held Amelia’s hands tightly as he glanced around at the guardians standing around them. He recognized one of them. Unlike the rest, he had his hands dipped inside his pockets. Their eyes locked and for a brief moment, Toby was connected to him. Is this what you meant? Toby thought. The guardian inclined his head. Toby’s heart raced as he understood. There was no escape. Not only were they cornered, but Toby’s time had run out.
“Toby,” a wavering voice entered his mind. “I love you so much, so much. I’m so sorry we have to do this but it’s time to let you go.”
The guardians took another step forward, closing the gap between worlds.
“Toby, we can’t jump, we’ll die!” Amelia shouted at him her fearful eyes pleaded with him to change his mind.
“No, don’t you see? If we jump, we will live!” he exclaimed urgently.
“Do not do this,” a stern voice entered his mind. He glanced over at the guardians and frowned.
“You need to let her go.”
“Can there be no other way? If we jump… will it work?”
No reply. The guardians stared at him in silence, their black eyes boring into his soul. He knew instinctively that they would not interfere; but they deeply disapproved. He turned back to Amelia. He wanted to kiss her deeply, hold her in his arms and just stay in her embrace for all time.
“Toby, I’m scared. What’s happening?” she whispered as he pulled her in for a hug. He breathed in her scent as he buried his face in a mass of damp curls. I’m too late. I left it too long to explain, he thought to himself as he gritted his teeth.
As he and Amelia stood on the brink, he heard his mother’s voice in his mind again. “Go and be free. You will always be my baby boy. I love you.” Toby stepped back and pulled on Amelia’s hands to join him near the edge of the waterfall. This was their only chance to be together. Just one opportunity to wake up.
“I promise I will find you,” Toby said fervently. He meant it. Every part of his being vibrated; he knew that something was already happening. Perhaps it was too late? Maybe they would jump, and he would die anyway? It was the ultimate leap of faith. With a final nod, he jumped. Amelia followed, and they fell arm in arm into the watery depths below.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Is This a Dream?
Amelia sat frozen as she stared open-mouthed at the man standing before her. He had a mop of wavy blonde hair pushed to the side and he wobbled slightly as his nimble hands clutched the handle of a black walking stick. As he smiled, deep lines creased above his defined cheekbones. Amelia searched his eyes; they were as blue as the sky and glassy. Were there tears pooling in his eyes?
“Toby?” Amelia whispered. The man grinned and sat down on the bench next to her and spread open his arms. She briefly glanced at the bruising dotted up and down his arms like tattoos and raised a hand to her mouth.
“Are you—?” She sat immobile, unable to fathom what was happening. He held out a hand and cleared his throat.
“I don’t think we’ve met. My name is Toby,” he said as Amelia took his hand. The brush of his skin against her sent sparks of joy throughout her body. It were as if the molecules of her body recognised his and longed to be reunited with him.
“I’m Amelia.” Tears welled in her eyes as she grinned at him. They hesitated for a moment, eyes locked and wondering what move to make next.
“Can I give you a hug? I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” Toby asked with his arms outstretched again. Amelia nodded and allowed her body to fall into him as he enveloped his arms around her.
“What happened to you? Where did you go?” she asked quickly as her tears wet the white cotton of his polo shirt.
Toby stroked her hair and held her tightly as he told her his story. He recalled the events of his accident, told her about his mother Jill. A small smile crossed his lips as he spoke about his friends who had come out to watch him compete. He swallowed uncomfortably as he recounted the accident. The long endless days he spent on the beach unable to recall what happened to him.
“Then I saw my own body….”
Amelia lifted her head up to look at him and raised a hand to her mouth as she gasped. “Did you freak out? What did you do? Did you try and get back in? Were you dead?” The more answers Toby gave her, she found even more questions to ask.
“I think I was in shock for a while. It was crazy.” He continued his story about lacking purpose, finding that he couldn’t even bring himself to surf again. Nothing gave him joy, so he decided to go to a house his mother owned in the Cotswolds. “—and I saw this beautiful shy woman sitting on a park bench,” he said slowly with a grin. Amelia felt her cheeks warm as she blushed.
“How did you know I wasn’t just like everyone else in that world?”
“You started to act weird. I think it was in Bath I started to suspect… and then you saw the guardians. They are invisible to everyone else.” Amelia nodded slowly as she pondered his words.
“After a really long time of feeling nothing, you were this little firework that set off so many feelings inside of me.” Toby was blushing now. Amelia held his hands and tilted her head to the side as she listened.
“Not only that, but you helped me find me again. I wanted to get back into the water. It’s because of you that I could get back on the board once I woke up. Maybe there was a missing piece of the puzzle to find myself again. And Fate brought me to you.” Toby averted his eyes and chewed his lip.
“How did you know jumping off the waterfall would work? Why was it forbidden for us to be together?” she asked, the questions burning within her. Toby looked back at her with wide glassy eyes and shrugged.
“You could call it a hunch, I guess.”
Amelia gasped and was momentarily annoyed by his cavalier attitude, but her anger quickly faded.
“We could have died.”
“Do you remember when you thought I was on the phone back at my house?”
Amelia nodded.
“I was talking to one of them. You could say he gave me the idea.”
Toby pulled her in closer, tucking her head back down on his shoulder.
“When I woke up… it was horrible. They had just turned off all the machines keeping me alive. It could have been too late for me….” Amelia peeked up to see Toby holding his index finger and thumb to his tear ducts. “The guardians… they wanted me to die. I don’t know how it all works. But I also know that somehow, they can’t interfere too much. At the end of the day, we did have a choice.”
Amelia’s temples throbbed as her brain worked overtime processing the information.
“The recovery was… intense. A lot of that first month is a blur. They kept me pretty drugged up. Getting off the ventilator was the hardest hurdle. I guess I didn’t really think about how hard it would be.”
“To get better?” Amelia nodded as she remembered her own experience and she had only been in a coma for thirty-six days. She looked up at Toby again.
“How long were you in the coma for?”
Toby puffed out his chest proudly. “Ten years, one month and six days,” he replied. Amelia gasped.
“Did the doctors try to convince you that everything that happened to you while in the coma… wasn’t real?” she asked hesitantly. Toby nodded and smiled reassuringly at her as he squeezed her hands.
“They tried, and I went along with it. I just needed to learn to function again. You know, it took time to eat and drink on my own… then sit up and stand. I di
dn’t talk about my experiences at first. But once I was back at home, I told my mom and Teddy—he’s my mom’s fiancé. They believed me, and helped me look for you.”
“How did you find me?” Amelia asked as looked around at the garden surrounding them.
“It wasn’t easy at first. I didn’t have all of my memories in the beginning. I had forgotten that you said you were a reporter. But then I found an article about a ‘Reporter Wakes from Coma’ and knew it was you. It said—”
She turned to look at him and rolled her eyes. “—that ‘heartbroken Amelia visits the Cotswolds every weekend desperately seeking to be reunited with her dream lover.’”
She knew her face was probably bright red. “Jerry enjoyed embellishing facts, sorry.”
Toby’s smile faltered. “So, you didn’t want me to find you?”
“Oh, no… I didn’t mean… I just didn’t… I was desperately… I tried to find you too!” she stammered.
Toby raised his eyebrows. “I thought you had forgotten about me,” he said.
“I thought about you every day,” she implored. “The doctors told me I invented you in my head. I searched for you on every online platform I could think of but all I could go on was ‘Californian surfer’ and ‘Toby.’” She took a breath and pointed her finger at his chest. “If you’re so famous, why couldn’t I find you?”
Toby nodded his head. “Because my name is Elliott,” he replied as if struck by a revelation. Amelia gawped at him.
“You’re not called Toby?”
“My friends and family call me Toby, but my name is Elliott Tobias Fletcher… you have my mom to thank for that.”