Come Down in Time
By Jennifer Ransom
Copyright © 2013 by Jennifer Ransom
Cover art by Design Dept.
All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. References to actual people, places, and events are used to lend authenticity to the novel and are used fictitiously. All characters, dialog, and events are from the author's imagination and are not real. Any resemblances to real people, places, events, or dialog are coincidental.
This book may not be copied, scanned, or reproduced in any way without permission from the author.
To my daughter, Jes, who taught me about timeless,
forever love when I first looked into her newborn eyes.
I know you're out there somewhere
Somewhere, somewhere
I know you're out there somewhere
Somewhere you can hear my voice
I know I'll find you somehow
Somehow, somehow
I know I'll find you somehow
And somehow I'll return again to you.
The Moody Blues
Prologue
Jamie sat at the kitchen table in her cap and gown. Her cell phone was in her hand. She called Tommy again. Where was he? Her parents and little brother had already left for the graduation ceremony, and she sat waiting on Tommy. Damn him, she thought. How could he be late on this day?
The ceremony would start in twenty minutes and she was the valedictorian. She was supposed to be there thirty minutes ahead of time. She had to get there! Five more minutes passed, and then Jamie got up and drove her mother’s car to the school.
The parking lot of Baker High School was full and Jamie had to park under the oak trees that stood in the back of the school. She hurried inside. Mr. Macky, the principal saw her come in. “You’re late!” he said. “You’re on in a few minutes.”
Jamie sat in the front row of the auditorium with her classmates, listening to the graduation speaker. She didn’t hear a word he said. She was stressed out because she was so rushed, and she was angry at Tommy for not picking her up on time. When Mr. Macky introduced her, she walked up to the stage, carrying her speech in one hand. She forced herself to smile. A sea of parents and brothers and sisters stared at her. Jamie read her speech, looking out at the audience, looking back at her speech.
“We’ll go out into the world,” she said. “And we’ll find ways to make it better.”
Everyone clapped loudly as Jamie left the stage. Mr. Macky took over and started calling out the graduates’ names. Tiffany Akers went first, then one after the other through the alphabet. “Tommy Grisham,” Mr. Macky called. But Tommy was not in the row of students to accept his diploma. “Tommy Grisham,” Mr. Macky said again. Then he moved on to Nathaniel Grohman.
The longer Jamie sat there, the madder she got. Mr. Macky moved through the alphabet and finally he called, Jamie Walters. She accepted her diploma as the audience clapped. There were only a couple of people behind her, and then everyone threw their caps in the air. Jamie should have been happy that she was a high school graduate, but she was mad.
She found her parents and Bobby in the front hall of the school. “Have you seen Tommy?” she asked them. “He never picked me up.”
“No,” her mother said. “I haven’t seen his parents either.”
That was the moment that Jamie stopped being mad and started being worried.
“I’ve been calling him,” Jamie said. “But he never answered.”
A reception was set up at one end of the lobby, and Jamie’s parents and Bobby started moving that way, still carrying their programs in their hands. Jamie didn’t budge.
“You go on,” she said to them. “I need to find Tommy.”
She called Tommy again and left another message. It wasn’t an angry message like the two she had left before. It was a frantic message. “Tommy, where are you? I’m worried about you. Please call me.”
Jamie looked around at all the people in the lobby. She stood still as they moved around her, sometimes bumping into her. And then she ran out the door and got in her mother’s car. She drove to Tommy’s house.
She pulled up to the house. Tommy’s father’s car was gone, but his mother’s green Toyota was in its usual spot. Jamie and Tommy had spent the first year of their relationship in that car, making love in the back seat more times than she could count. Jamie got out of the car, still wearing her graduation gown, and went up to the door. She knocked but no one answered. She sat on the steps to wait. She would wait all night if she had to. She called Tommy again. No answer again.
Jamie sat on the steps for two hours before her mother called.
“Where are you, honey?” her mother asked.
“I’m sitting at Tommy’s house waiting for him to come home.”
She was ending the call from her mother when she saw Tommy’s father’s car turning into the driveway. Jamie stood up and started walking to the car.
Mr. Grisham got out first.
“Where’s Tommy?” Jamie asked. “I’ve been trying to find him all day. He missed graduation.”
As Mrs. Grisham was getting out of the passenger side of the car, the back doors opened and Tommy’s little brother and sister got out.
“Jamie,” Tommy’s father said. “Tommy was in an accident. He didn’t make it.”
“What do you mean?” Jamie said, looking from Mr. Grisham to Mrs. Grisham’s faces. “What are you talking about?”
Tommy’s mother was crying. Mr. Grisham put his hands on Jamie’s arms. “I’m sorry, Jamie. Tommy’s gone.”
“No!” Jamie screamed. “No! We’re getting married in two weeks. He is not gone!”
Mr. Grisham held Jamie against his chest as she wailed. When she finally pulled away, she saw her parents’ car pull into the drive. Her mother opened the door before the car had come to a complete stop. She ran over to Jamie and took her in her arms. Her father came up and encircled Jamie and her mother. He led Jamie to the car. “Come on, hon,” he said.
“We’ll come get the car tomorrow,” her father said to Tommy’s father. Her father put her in the back seat and her mother sat beside her, holding her hand. Jamie cried all the way home. She cried every day and every night for a long time after that day. She could still see Tommy’s face, his brown hair, his friendly smile, for a long time. Years later, she could still conjure Tommy’s face, if she let her mind go and let it come to her. Tommy’s face. Her love.
Chapter One
At the end of her shift, Jamie had dealt with three car accidents, two gunshot wounds, an asthmatic child, a stroke, a child who had lost a finger when a door closed on his hand, three heart attacks, and more respiratory illnesses than she could count. It was a typical night in the E.R. of South Central Hospital in Atlanta. When she got off at eleven p.m., she drove home to her townhouse in the suburbs. She was exhausted, as usual. Her refrigerator held no promises of a good hot meal. She made a sandwich and drank a glass of wine before crawling into bed. She repeated that day, over and over.
But one day she got a call. A call she had been waiting for.
“This is Dr. Nathan Abbott,” he said. “You applied for a job at our clinic in Tennessee.”
“Yes!” she said. She had applied for a job there, in the Appalachian Mountains. She wanted to do something di
fferent that didn’t involve a big-city emergency department. She was fatigued with the stress of it.
“I thought I’d do a phone interview first,” Dr. Abbott said. “We get a lot of doctors thinking they want to come to the mountains and live an idyllic life. This is not an idyllic situation here.”
“Yes, I know,” Jamie said. “I’m from an area near there. Plus, I’ve done a lot of research on it.”
“Research won’t tell you what you’ll be facing here,” Dr. Abbott said. He was very up front. A truth-teller. Jamie liked that.
“Here’s the deal,” Dr. Abbott said. “Dr. Shah’s three-year contract is over in a month. He’s a good doctor, but people around here are distrustful of him because he’s foreign. That’s just the way it is.”
“I think I understand,” Jamie said. In her career, she had known many foreign doctors, and she knew them to be excellent. Sometimes there was a language and cultural barrier with the patients. She couldn’t deny that. She imagined it must be much more difficult in an isolated Appalachian town.
“The government provides housing for the doctors,” Dr. Abbott said. “And it’s all right. I just want you to know that if you decide to come here, it’s not going to be a fantasy. It’s hard work and a lot of personalities and rural situations to deal with.”
“Okay,” she said. She didn’t know what else to say to that.
“If you think you’re still interested, then I’d like to offer you the job.”
“Don’t you need to interview me in person?” Jamie said. She had never heard of getting a job without a personal interview.
“Nah,” Dr. Abbott said. “You’ve got great credentials. I’ve seen your photo, and you don’t look like a serial killer.”
Jamie laughed then. “No, I’m not a serial killer,” she said.
Dr. Abbott laughed too. “Sorry,” he said. “I know I’ve been blunt. I’ve just been through this hiring process a lot of times and there’s no point in sugar-coating the job.”
“When would you want me to start?” she asked.
“As soon as you can get here,” Dr. Abbott said. “How much notice do you need to give to the hospital?”
“I’ll give them thirty days. I should be arriving around the time Dr. Shah is leaving.”
“You saw the salary in the ad. I’m assuming you’re okay with it. I can’t get you any more than that.”
The salary was half of what Jamie was making at the hospital. She had been careful and saved her money over the years, so the salary at the clinic wasn’t a huge concern to her. She needed to do something different, and if she hated it, she could always go back to a big city.
“It’s fine,” she said.
“I’ll send you the contract and the information you’ll need,” he said. Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Welcome to our clinic. We’re glad to have you.”
Jamie went immediately to the hospital administrator’s office. It was almost five and she didn’t want to have to wait until the next day to give her notice. Dr. Perkins was walking out the door when she got there. She told him she was giving her notice of thirty days.
“We’re sorry to lose you,” Dr. Perkins said. “You’ve been a good doctor for us.”
She shook his hand and he wished her luck. Then she went back to the E.R. to complete her shift. She did that for thirty more grueling days—heart attacks, strokes, the flu, accidents. For a month, she worked and went to the townhouse to sleep. She couldn’t remember having a good meal in all that time. Thirty days later, she was on the road to Tennessee.
Jamie played the radio for the first part of the drive. When the scenery became hilly, she turned the radio off. She was back in her territory and the longer she drove the more she thought about home, her parents, her house, and Tommy.
After Tommy had been killed driving off a cliff to pick her up for graduation, Jamie had retreated to her bed. She had cried many hours of the day, at first, and her mother took care of her. She brought her food on a tray and sat with her, holding her hand. Her mother stayed up late at night tending to Jamie during those first weeks.
It took a long time for Jamie to process the fact that Tommy was dead. She kept thinking, if only he wasn’t picking me up, then he would be here now. She kept thinking if only she could go back in time, she could change everything. She would ride to the graduation with her parents and little brother, Bobby. Tommy would go with his parents. They would see each other at graduation and get together afterwards.
As many times as Jamie tried—and there were so many times—to change what had happened, she was still left with the fact that Tommy had been killed coming to pick her up. Finally, she did come to accept that. She could not change what had happened. Tommy was dead and he would not be coming back.
Jamie spent the following year at home with her parents and little brother. Eventually, she did get out of bed and started contributing to the household. Her father taught biology at a nearby junior college and her mother worked part-time at the Baker Baptist Church as a secretary. There were times when Jamie was alone in her childhood home, left to her memories. Those were terrible times for her. She spent those days in bed or watching TV. When her mother got home after noon, she took care of Jamie in the only way she knew how. She brought her food and sat with her until she had to leave to pick up Bobby from school. Over that year, Jamie gained a lot of weight. Maybe thirty pounds, but she didn’t care about her weight. She didn’t care about anything. Tommy was dead and it was her fault.
At first, Jamie couldn’t believe that the world went on without Tommy in it. How could that be? Tommy was dead and the world should have died with him. Her world died. Gradually, as Jamie began to move around in the house, she started to realize that she would have to do something with her life. It wouldn’t be the life she and Tommy had planned for themselves. Living in the cottage near his grandparents’ farmhouse, growing organic vegetables and herbs. Tommy was all about organic farming and wanted to make a difference in the world. “We can grow heirloom vegetables and sell them to the restaurants in Nashville,” he said. But the best thing about it, Tommy said, was that they would be making their own way in the world without relying on an employer in a boring job. “I don’t want us to end up like my father, complaining all the time about how stressful my job is and how much I hate it,” Tommy had said on many occasions. “We’ll be doing what we like to do.”
Jamie had agreed with Tommy. Her parents had hoped she would go to college, but when she told them she was going to marry Tommy right away and live on a his grandparents’ farm, they didn’t argue with her. They knew as well as anybody in Baker that Tommy and Jamie were an inseparable pair. And though they had only been with each other, neither felt the need to be with anyone else. Why should they? They had already found the person they were meant to be with. They felt lucky to have found each other so early in their lives.
The more Jamie drove, the more she thought about Tommy and her hometown. She had been avoiding this area of the country for years. Now, she wondered why she was moving so close to home. She kept thinking about things that she had put away in a locked box in her mind. She didn’t want to remember, but she couldn’t stop remembering.
Jamie applied for college at Vanderbilt in Nashville and got a full scholarship. Her parents wouldn’t have to pay a thing. When she drove away that day on her way to college, in a used Honda her father had bought her, she didn’t look back. She never went home again.
She moved into the dorm and unpacked her boxes and suitcases alone. Hours later, her new roommate moved in, with her parents and brother helping her. Jamie had felt awkward that day, meeting a new roommate and her family. She had been so isolated the past year. But Linda, who was from Nashville, made her feel at ease.
“Let’s go exploring,” she said. “When my parents are gone.” She rolled her eyes then, and Jamie laughed. She and Linda had walked the campus from one corner to the other, checking out all of the buildings where their classes would be. They
got hamburgers at the student center afterwards. Linda chattered away about her boyfriend between bites of hamburger and French fries. She took long sucks on a straw of her chocolate milkshake, and Jamie sat there and listened. She didn’t have to do much talking of her own.
“Tyler’s father insisted he go to Yale, like he did. Tyler had the grades for that. I didn’t,” Linda said. “He’s been gone already a week, but I don’t really miss him.”
“You don’t?” Jamie said.
“I know I should,” Linda said taking another bite of hamburger. She chewed for a few seconds. “But I’ve been with him since tenth grade. I want to see what life has to hold for me. It’s not like we were going to get married or anything.” She took another hard draw on her milkshake. “It’s kind of a relief,” she said finally.
Jamie had been with Tommy since tenth grade too, but she missed him every day. She was going to miss him the rest of her life.
At first, Linda talked on her cell phone to Tyler late at night, her back turned to Jamie. Tyler called her all the time, and Linda took his calls. But then she stopped taking his calls.
“He’s really getting on my nerves,” she said one night. “I told him I want us to experience college as free agents, know what I mean?”
Jamie nodded. She could understand that.
“He’s not taking it well,” Linda confided. “But it just has to be this way. I’ve already met several people I want to date, and I can’t do that as long as I’m still Tyler’s girlfriend.”
After a few days, Tyler seemed to get the message. He stopped calling and Linda started dating. She went out several nights a week and every single Friday and Saturday. On one Saturday that Jamie would never forget, Linda had a different date for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
“This is getting complicated,” Linda said, laughing. “I can hardly keep it straight who I’ve got a date with.”
Come Down In Time (A Time Travel Romance) Page 1