Pieces of Hope

by Carter, Carolyn

  For Ethan. I feared body and soul for Ethan.

  “Daniel, STOP!”

  Time was moving too swiftly . . .Daniel reached him now. Lifting Ethan by the collar he drew back his fist a third time, an insane look of hatred contorting his features into some unrecognizable form. Then, just before his fist exploded forward like a bullet from a gun, he glanced at me—

  I’d never seen a look of murderous rage, but it wasn’t something I was ever likely to forget. Deep as pitch, a deathly blackness smoldered in Daniel’s eyes. I realized with a shiver that he longed for Ethan’s death and it terrified me that he might actually succeed.

  “NO!” I roared at Daniel.

  Before the thought had fully materialized, I moved seamlessly, instantly, from the spot where I had stood frozen in horror to Ethan’s side. Crouching beside him, I extended my open palm as a shield. As Daniel’s fist continued on its relentless trajectory toward Ethan’s face, I envisioned time halting, slowing to an insane crawl. I imagined the face of a clock, the second-hand ticking in half-time—

  And the instant this idea formed, it happened. Time slowed . . . Just as it had at my accident . . . Just as it had at the Station in Charlotte’s presence. I could see Daniel’s fist—tightly balled, his right thumb forming a solid loop over his fourth knuckle—inching toward my open palm as if I were watching a movie frame-by-frame.

  But when the thrust of his punch reached my open palm—instead of deflecting it—Daniel’s hand and forearm slid inside me. My eyes flew wide, but there was something more startling that occurred, something I secretly hoped only Daniel and I would ever know . . .

  At once, I could both feel and hear Daniel’s thoughts, as if some weird melding of souls was taking place. And I suspected—if the startled expression on Daniel’s face were any indication—that he was experiencing the same thing I was. Love and desire burned through me like fire devouring oxygen. My heart seemed to expand, creating a deafening sound in my ears as it pounded everywhere at once. The sensations were so overwhelming I feared that my heart might burst in response. His pulse quickened, and I experienced his longing for me, his passion consuming me like flames licking at dry wood. It all happened in less than a second, but it seemed like a lifetime. Feeling violated, I reeled as I snatched my hand forcefully from his, freeing my soul from his invasion.

  Time surged forward, clicking ahead at its usual pace.

  Ethan was still lying on the ground, conscious now, and heat flooded my face as I wondered how much he had witnessed. Even now, as I gently reached out an arm to help him up, the memory of it clung to me. With emotions rushing through me, I overdid it and lifted him high into the air. He landed on his feet, dumbfounded at my strength. But his intuition was strong, and I could see that he had questions—or was it my guilty conscience that led me to think this? Daniel wasn’t helping. He was wearing an enormous grin—the grin that I loathed and loved—and it weighed heavy on my heart.

  “My God, Daniel—what if you had hurt him?” I spoke in a whisper; it was all that I could manage.

  “Does what I feel matter so little to you?” His spine stiffened “Don’t you care if I get hurt?”

  “No! I mean yes!” He was thinking of his heart I guessed, and suddenly I was taken aback. “Of course, I care. But the rules. They’re different for us here. You might have”—the words came tumbling out—“killed him.”

  “He started it! Don’t forget that. I was only going to finish it!” Daniel burned with rage as he made this proclamation, and I couldn’t figure for the life of me what was behind it. Sure, I was in the middle of it. But there was something else going on, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I considered telling him what a stupid thing he had done, though that seemed pointless at the moment—an angry person was never a good listener. And if I were forced to admit it, I was burning with inexplicable emotions of my own. However brief, our encounter was just long enough to relive every memory. How they had rushed around inside of me! In that temporary instant of physical connection, I remembered how much I had loved him and how much he still meant to me. Our love felt as real now as it had three years ago.

  I must have been staring at him absently, dazzled a little by the rush . . . I’m sure I wouldn’t have missed it otherwise. But when I finally came out of my haze, I noticed that Ethan was no longer at my side. I searched quickly, discovered him backing away slowly in astonished disbelief. He was completely unaware of the danger he was in.

  I took several steps toward him, my hands coaxing Ethan back. “Please don’t move, Ethan. You’re very close to the—”

  I heard the crumble of earth and stone as it broke away from the edge. No earthly ears could have heard it. Ethan certainly hadn’t. And I screamed.

  Disbelief turned to disaster as Ethan lost his footing and fell backwards off the cliff. Clawing and scrambling in mid-air, he struggled to grab hold of anything solid. But for all his struggling, he only managed to twist himself into a downward dive. His face a contorted mask of fear, I couldn’t move to help him. It was Ethan’s terror, I realized. I was feeling his fear and it was paralyzing me.

  Suddenly, ebony wings filled the darkened sky, and Gavriel swooped down like a graceful, souring eagle, snatching not Ethan—but Daniel, and tucking him like a package beneath one arm. Daniel’s expression was a mixture of fear and disbelief. Mine was one of outrage.

  “Aren’t you going to do something?” I shouted hysterically as the Powers hovered before me. “Ethan—he—he—” I could only point helplessly at his missing form.

  “Young Hope, we cannot intercede,” Camael said sympathetically.

  “FOR GOD’S SAKE!” I shrieked at the top of my lungs. “INTERCEDE!”

  There wasn’t time to ask where or why they were taking Daniel, or why—with all their Divine powers—they resisted helping Ethan. There was scarcely time to process the horror, let alone register my options. My sluggish mind failing, I began to hallucinate. I’d imagined that Gavriel had nodded at someone in the darkness, someone I couldn’t see, in the split-second before he flew away.

  At that precise instant, time halted. It didn’t slow. It came to an all-out dead stop.

  I wasn’t sure how I knew it. I just did. Maybe it was because of the wind. It didn’t billow anymore, whip my hair about, or slowly die down. It was utterly still. There were tiny yellow specks of pollen suspended before me; I reached up and plucked a piece out of the air.

  A little-girl voice, the strain apparent, called out to me, “Now, Hope! I’m not sure how long I can hold it!” In the distance, I glimpsed Charlotte in the moonlight, her skinny arms outstretched, face tensed, as though she were tenuously holding back the weight of the world. The others stood beside her—Creesie, Gus, Mac, Cat, and Rin—with resolute expressions, believing with absolute certainty in Charlotte’s gift. In the dusty recesses of my mind—a mind that seemed not entirely my own—I recalled something about horrific consequences and time reversal when applied to the living realm . . . Obviously, Charlotte must have believed the situation was dire, and salvageable . . . or she wouldn’t have taken the chance . . .

  I skimmed over the side of the bluff, catching Ethan mere inches from the blackened water. The rough waves were still, suspended in mid-air the way you’d see in paintings or photos. Ethan was head-down, a resigned expression on his face, arms pushed out in front of him, a last-ditch effort to protect himself from the fall . . .

  Useless . . . It would have been so useless. I wondered how it would have happened. Would it have been described as some sort of freak head injury? A birth defect? Stroke? How would it have been explained that—when Ethan attempted to wake up—he simply wouldn’t have?

  I grabbed one leg and shifted his weight beneath my arm. Surprised at the ease with which I was able to move his body, I whisked him away to a sandy spot on the narrow beach that looked soft and dry. Cradling his head in my lap, I gasped. For the first time, I could see the ugly yellow and purple bruise already forming over his left
eye.

  As time returned to its usual pace, Ethan came to. His head and arms thrashed about as if he believed he was still falling, and then he saw me.

  “What the hell, Hope?” Ethan was struggling to sit up. His head wobbled for an instant, then it dropped back into my lap. He was pointing at something behind me.

  “Oh, sorry.” Of all things to frighten him, my fluttering red wings did it? “I forgot they were there.” Instantly, they disappeared.

  “Are those anything I should know about . . . or is that one of those questions I’m better off not asking?” Shock had quickly turned surly.

  “It’s not really important.” I shrugged. “Just a talent in this realm. I have to tell you, though, that I think you’re in for the black eye of the century.” I attempted to touch the swollen mark, but Ethan grabbed my wrist and held it away from him.

  “What’d you do that for?” he asked, his voice livid. “I could have taken him.” It took me a moment to realize what he meant.

  “Under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t need my help,” I said softly, quickly reaching the conclusion that more than his eye had been bruised. I stifled a laugh—boys and their egos. “And if we were anywhere else, you’d be absolutely right. You could’ve taken him . . . in a heartbeat.”

  He looked up at me then, dropping his hand as he clambered to a sitting position. I gasped again. The bruise was already looking worse—with the purple turning blackish at the edges, and hints of green inching its way in. If it looked that terrible now, I could only imagine what it might feel like when he awakened.

  He scooted backward in the sand with his heels, his eyes slightly out of focus, but wanting some space between us. “I only helped you because the rules are different here,” I hurried to explain. “Because Daniel has separated from his body, and because . . . well, because you haven’t, he could have . . . hurt you.”

  “What the—” Ethan burst into a litany of curse words, several of which I had never heard strung together like that. “Killed me, you mean!” His face twisted into anger. “I saw that look in his eyes same as you!”

  I half-nodded, not wanting to acknowledge that he would have tried kill Ethan on purpose—and, strangely, rose to Daniel’s defense. “I’m sure it just got out of hand.”

  Ethan ignored that. “He knows about these rules, same as you?”

  Eyes down, I nodded slowly.

  “But back in the . . . in the living world as you call it . . . what about there? Are we on an equal playing field there?”

  I knew what Ethan was getting at, but I was hesitant to answer.

  “I wish I could pull the plug on that guy!” he sputtered in a rage. “Or maybe I could wait for him to wake up and beat him senseless!” He rambled on like that for a while. After what felt like an eternity, he calmed down enough for me to get a few words in edgewise.

  “That’s really going to hurt tomorrow.” I was staring at his left eye. I reached up, not quite touching it, and winced for him.

  “Good!” he growled. “It will stop me from feeling sorry for that loser lying comatose in the hospital. It’ll remind me how the coward tried to kill me in my sleep!”

  At this, I laughed. “You realize you sound absolutely ridiculous.”

  Ethan didn’t laugh. “Were you really going to ask me to kill myself, Hope?” His expression darkened, showing pain. I couldn’t look at him. I was too ashamed. “No, don’t answer that. I don’t think I want to hear it.” Absently he dug a trench in the sand with one of his bare feet. “But tell me what happened back there . . . between the two of you.”

  “What?” I tried to skate around it. “I . . . stopped him. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” Ethan fixed his eyes on mine.

  I nodded again, holding my breath in anticipation of his next question.

  “That’s not all!” His tone was icy. He stared off somewhere over my head. “I can’t believe you would lie to me. Help me to understand, Hope.” He paused to breathe, forcing himself to calm down. “Maybe there were extenuating circumstances. Tell me there’s more to the story that I don’t know about . . .”

  “Ethan, what are you—” Fear trickled down my spine.

  “I know about the kiss. Don’t bother denying it,” he seethed. “I know it happened. I know because—because—”

  I gasped in horror, a realization coming over me. “Because Daniel told you?”

  “He told me just before I rammed my head into his chest.”

  “He . . . told you?” I mumbled. “But that’s impossible Why didn’t I hear it?”

  “It was strange. His mouth didn’t move. He spoke in my head.”

  Incredulous, I stared at him. Daniel had spoken telepathically to Ethan, and he had somehow me out? Where had he learned to do that?

  “But that’s beside the point. Everything here is strange.” Ethan grew impatient. “I know something happened back there between the two of you, and I want to know what it was. And don’t lie to me this time. Don’t,” he threatened.

  I took my time answering, avoiding the worst details, the most intimate ones, and skipping over a melding of souls as best I could to avoid causing Ethan any further harm. His face remained expressionless, as if I were telling him a story of someone he scarcely knew. But I knew I’d hurt him. I heard it in the rhythm of his breath.

  “And what now, Hope. Are you going to stay with him—here? Are you planning to spend your eternity with Daniel Hartlein?” Ethan’s voice was cutting, his tone severe enough to slice through my skin. It dazed me to see, when I looked down, that there was no blood. I wanted to bleed. Somehow, it would have been less painful.

  “It’s nothing like that!” I shouted. But my stupid voice betrayed me. I didn’t sound as sure of myself as I thought I should. My head felt muddy and tired. “My mother is near! I only need a few more days. She’s very, very near.”

  “You’ve been saying that for a while now. Do you know that? How much of what I told you about your condition do you remember?”

  “All of it!” I snapped. “I’m bodiless not brain-dead!” Why wasn’t he listening to me? My mother was near! What part of that didn’t he remember?

  “You may not have that kind of time,” Ethan insisted.

  “You said at any minute I could wake up, that my injuries were . . . what was the word? Oh, yeah. . . superficial,” I snapped.

  “That used to be true . . . Before your so-called heart attack and your scuffle with Daniel and whatever else you won’t tell me that went on at that Station—yes, it used to be true.”

  My eyebrows flew up by accident. How did he know I’d skimmed the details?

  “I know you don’t tell me everything,” he said. “I’m not a total idiot, Hope.”

  No . . . Of course he wasn’t . . . I was. I was.

  “Since that little episode,” he said bitterly, “you’ve been back in the ICU, and it’s been a struggle ever since. That was three days ago. No one can make any sense of it.”

  I ticked off the time on my fingers—three days initially in the ICU, then five in a second ward, plus three more in the ICU . . . 3 + 5 + 3 . . . ELEVEN DAYS?

  “How can that be?” I muttered under my breath.

  “Your body isn’t responding to the normal tests, reflexes and pain stimuli—”

  “You let them inflict pain on me?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Normal tests. Nothing crazy. What am I supposed to tell them? ‘Hey, don’t do that. That’s my girlfriend and she’s coming back. She tells me every night in my dreams?’”

  I had to hand it to him there, and I backed down.

  “In one of the tests,” he went on, “we run the sharp end of the reflex hammer along the bottom of your foot—your toes are supposed to curl under. It’s called a Babinski reflex.” Ethan shook his head. “Your body shows no reaction. It’s an indication that your mind isn’t sending pain signals to your body. It’s like a disconnected circuit.”

  “If I didn’t know better, it
almost sounds like you’re saying”—my voice caught as I realized the implications—“I’m dying?”

  His eyes looked wet in the moonlight. The sound of the ebb and flow of the waves nearly concealed his response. He spoke so softly I had to strain to hear him.

  “The truth is I don’t know how much time you have left. I don’t even know if you can return . . . Oh, and I quit my job at the hospital.” When I protested, he shrugged. “I had to. I refused to leave your bedside and, as you know, hospitals tend to frown on that sort of thing.” He smiled sadly. “Your family has been great. They no longer think it’s odd . . . my connection to you. But as far as they know, I’m still just the guy who takes care of you.

  He smiled sadly. “But David seems to understand the most. Imagine it—your dad. I haven’t said it, but he knows I love you—and for some reason he doesn’t care and doesn’t ask. I’ve sometimes wondered if your mother is influencing him. If I were in his shoes, I don’t know that I would be as cool about it as he is.

  “I’ve watched him, Hope—all of them. Gigi, so brave, cracking jokes to keep the mood light. Brody and she tell you a joke a day, and they keep waiting for you to wake up and tell them it isn’t funny. And your sister, well, she reads to you every day. She found a book on your nightstand. Brody seems to enjoy it the most, but I think that’s because Claire is the reader. Still, it’s hard to tell. Most of the time, everyone’s in such a fog that it’s difficult to enjoy much of anything . . .” He seemed to rest his eyes on something in the distance, but it might have simply been an image in his mind.