Jamie stepped down from the stool. “Can I take it off now?” she asked.
“Yes. Bring it right back down so I can get started. Your wedding’s in a week. There’s so much to do!”
“It’ll all work out, Mom,” Jamie said as she headed for the stairs. She stopped and looked at her mother standing in the den. “I love you, Mom,” she said.
“I love you too, honey,” her mother said. “A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.”
Tears sprang to Jamie’s eyes when her mother said that. She used to tell her that all the time when she was little. She went upstairs and took the wedding gown off. It was exactly what Jamie wanted. She couldn’t have found it in a store. She and her mother had gone to Nashville trying to find the right dress, but Jamie wasn’t satisfied with any of them.
“Mom,” she said tearfully on the drive home from Nashville. “None of those dresses are right for me.”
“Tell me what you want,” her mother said. “I’ll make it for you.”
So Jamie explained as best she could the kind of dress that she wanted. “I like old-fashioned,” she said. “With maybe eyelet material. I want three-quarter sleeves. I want the skirt to be plain off-white gauzy material, and the top to be off-white eyelet material. I want the neck to be scooped, maybe scalloped a little. I want a simple dress that fits who I am.”
“Do you think you can find a pattern like that?” her mother said. “I feel like I need a pattern. Can you go on the Internet and find something like what you want?
When they got back home, Jamie sat at her computer and started searching. She looked through a lot of patterns and finally found a style that suited her. It was simple but elegant. It would follow the lines of her body. She printed the page and took it to her mother.
“This is what I want,” she said.
“This is Simplicity,” her mother said. “I can go into town and get this pattern tomorrow. You should go with me so we can choose the fabric.”
Jamie hugged her mother. “Thanks, Mom. You’re the best mother ever.”
And now, Jamie hung her wedding gown on a padded hanger and put her jeans back on. She took the dress down to her mother, who took it out of her hands and walked into the den. “I’m going to get this hem done tonight,” she said as she sat on the couch.
“I’ll make supper,” Jamie said. “You don’t need to be fooling with that.”
Her mother looked at her gratefully. “Thanks, honey,” she said.
Tommy picked her up after supper and drove to the cottage near his grandparents’ farmhouse. They had been working for the past three weeks to get it habitable for them. The slat wood walls had been painted a fresh creamy color and the wooden floors had been scrubbed and waxed.
Tommy took her hand and led her to the one bedroom. Her eyes lit up when she saw the iron bed with a new pale green comforter on top, a hand-made quilt folded at the bottom.
“Granny helped me pick out the sheets and stuff,” he said. “She said it needed to be right for you to move in.”
Jamie walked over to the bed and fell back on it. The mattress was soft and welcoming. The antique bedside tables had been cleaned and waxed. She turned on the old Victorian style lamp by the bed. “Come here,” she said.
“Let me lock the door first,” Tommy said. He left the room but came back in less than a minute. He lay back on the bed with her.
“This is going to be our bed,” Jamie said. “I love it.”
Tommy put his leg over her and kissed her. They undressed each other slowly as they kissed and felt each other, caressed each other. Nothing can be as good as this, Jamie thought as Tommy came into her. Nothing. Nate and 2013 were very far from her mind. She had decided that Tommy’s accident and medical school and Nate were the dream. She was living in reality now. This was the real life, the tangible life. She could touch it. She could feel it.
On June 23rd, Jamie held on to her father’s arm and walked down the straw path in Tommy’s garden. When they reached the far side of the garden and the pasture beyond it, people were sitting in chairs on both sides of the path. Tommy stood at an arbor of roses he had been growing for several years. She took Tommy’s arm and her father sat down on the front row of seats.
Pastor Rickens from the Baker Baptist Church performed the ceremony, which was traditional. But Tommy had told the pastor beforehand, when they were having pre-marital counseling, that he did not want the word “obey” in the ceremony. Pastor Rickens had laughed then. “We don’t do that anymore, son.”
After the reception and the bird-seed throwing, Jamie and Tommy drove to the beach in Georgia and spent a week in the sand and water. They consummated their marriage as soon as they got in their cottage, and then many times after that during the week. They ate seafood every night and spent the days on chaise lounges under an umbrella. Wait staff came out periodically to replenish their drinks. They held onto each other in the water, kissing, tasting the salty ocean. They couldn’t get enough of each other.
When the week was over, they drove back to Baker tanned and happy. They played the radio loudly and sang along with every word they knew. Even the words they didn’t know. They sang and laughed. They stopped at a fast-food drive-through and ate onion rings and barbeque sandwiches as they drove down the road to home.
Tommy spent his days working on the cash crops with his grandfather. Jamie spent her days tending the acre of organic vegetables that was Tommy’s garden, and now her garden. In the afternoons, she usually walked up to the farmhouse to visit with Granny. She was the sweetest woman, and she showed Jamie how to can vegetables. It was a skill and one that Jamie needed to know. She worked with Granny, taking the skin off the tomatoes by boiling them for a minute, then plunging the fat red fruit into big bowls of ice water. They were so busy canning tomatoes or making pickles that often Tommy and his grandfather came inside for the day as the cans were beginning to pop, letting her and Granny know they were sealed.
Jamie was able to spend a lot of time with her parents and Bobby, though he was preoccupied most of the time with video games. She walked down the path to their house or drove Tommy’s truck. Everything in Jamie’s life was about family—Tommy’s family or her own. And at the end of the day, she and Tommy ate the meal that Granny and Jamie had prepared and then walked back to their home. They were alone in their little cottage, and it was enough for them.
Then one day, when Jamie was in Tommy’s grandparents’ farmhouse working with Granny, Tommy and his grandfather came into the kitchen.
“It’s hot out there,” Grandpa said. And then he dropped to the floor.
Jamie rushed over to him and felt his pulse. None. She started to pump his heart. Pump pump pump. “Call 911,” she shouted. “He’s having a heart attack.”
Jamie never let up on the pumping. Before the ambulance arrived, Grandpa had a pulse. She sat beside him on the floor. Tommy stared at her. Granny looked completely freaked out. “He’s got his pulse back,” she said. “I think he’ll be all right. He needs to get to the emergency room right away.”
The ambulance arrived then and brought the stretcher inside. Grandpa was starting to come around. “Where’re we going?” he asked.
“It’s okay, Grandpa,” Jamie said. “They’re taking you to the hospital. You’ll be okay. Your pulse is strong now.”
The EMTs moved Grandpa through the front door and put him in the ambulance. They drove away with their lights flashing.
“We’ve got to get to the hospital,” Jamie said. She walked over to Granny, who had been standing there without talking for several minutes. “Come on, Granny,” she said. “We need to leave now.”
Tommy walked over to his grandmother. He took her arm and led her out to his grandfather’s car. He put her in the front seat and Jamie got in the back.
“We need to let your parents know,” Jamie said as they drove down the dirt road and past his parents’ house. “I’ll call them.”
At the emergency room, the same hospita
l where Tommy had been taken in that far away world, Tommy and his grandmother went back to the room where his grandfather was. Jamie waited in the waiting room with Tommy’s parents.
“I think he’s going to be okay,” she assured them. “His pulse was strong when the ambulance got there.”
Tommy’s mother looked at her gratefully. “Thank you,” she said.
Eventually, Tommy came out through the doors and sat down with them. “He’s doing pretty good,” he said. “Mom, you should go back now and see him. Granny won’t leave and they only let two people at a time.”
Tommy’s mother got up and walked through the swinging doors into the emergency department. Jamie knew how it would be back there. A nurses’ station, people on hospital beds in the hallway waiting for x-rays, people in rooms waiting for the doctor.
“I think I’ll go outside for a smoke,” Tommy’s father said getting up from his orange plastic covered chair.
After Tommy’s father had left the waiting room, Tommy turned to her.
“The doctor said you saved his life,” Tommy said. “I told him what you did when Grandpa passed out. The doctor wants to know if you’re a doctor. I told him no.”
“I’m just glad I could help him,” Jamie said. She wanted to say that she was, in fact, a doctor. She had been forgetting about that, pushing that to the furthest reaches of her mind for several months. But at the end of the day, Jamie was a doctor. She had attended medical school, followed by an internship, then a residency. She had worked in emergency rooms. She was a doctor.
Tommy took her hands in his. “Thank you, sugar. I’m going to be grateful to you for the rest of my life for saving Grandpa. I don’t know how you knew what to do, but I’m glad you did.”
“Me too,” she said.
“I’ve never seen you so in charge,” Tommy said. “It’s like you knew exactly what you were doing.”
She wanted to tell Tommy that she did know exactly what she was doing. That she was a doctor. But she didn’t know how to tell him that she had lived another life that went on for over a decade after high school. She didn’t know how to tell him that he had died on their graduation day. For the first time since the beginning of her strange journey, Jamie wondered if she needed to explain things to Tommy. For the first time since then, she realized that she really had been living another life. That she really was a doctor.
Tommy’s father came back through the emergency room doors and the three of them sat in the waiting room for a long time. Finally, Mrs. Grisham came through the swinging doors.
“They’re moving him to the cardiac ICU now. Granny wants to stay with him tonight,” she said. “I can’t talk her out of it.”
“I’ll stay with her,” Tommy said, looking at Jamie. She nodded her head.
“He wants to see you,” Mrs. Grisham said to Jamie.
“I’ll go up with Tommy,” she said.
Tommy’s parents left then and she and Tommy asked the nurse what room his grandfather was being moved to. “Room 307,” she said. She and Tommy walked over to the elevator and took it to the third floor. Grandpa was being wheeled into the room when they walked up.
The attendants moved Grandpa from the rolling bed onto his permanent bed. Grandpa was wearing a hospital gown by that time and he wasn’t happy about it.
“I don’t know why I have to wear this,” he said. “I’ve got pajamas of my own.”
“It’s the hospital rules,” Jamie said. “It’ll be okay.”
A nurse came in and Tommy, Jamie, and Granny moved out of her way. She attached oxygen to his nostrils and checked his vital signs.
“What’s his oxygen level?” Jamie asked the nurse.
“It’s 98 percent,” she said.
“What about his vitals?” Jamie asked.
“His temp is 98.9, his blood pressure is 140 over 90. We’ll be doing some ABG work soon.” The nurse had responded to Jamie without question.
“Please let me know what the ABGs are,” she said to the nurse. The nurse nodded and walked out of the room.
Tommy was staring at her. But Grandpa spoke up then.
“Jamie, words really aren’t enough, but thank you for saving my life,” he said.
She walked to Grandpa’s bed and leaned down to kiss him on his cheek. “I’m just glad you’re still with us,” she said, sniffing a little as tears threatened to fall. “I’m so grateful for that.”
Grandpa held onto Jamie’s hand. She looked at Granny, who was sitting in the vinyl-covered chair that she was going to sleep in that night, if she had her way. “Granny, I know you’re going to stay with Grandpa all night. I’ll stay here with you.”
She looked at Tommy and he gave her a grateful smile. “Tommy, you should probably go home to take care of things there.”
“Oh, I think I may’ve left the stove on,” Granny said frantically. “I’ve probably burned the house down.”
“I got it before we left, Granny,” Tommy said. He hugged his grandfather as best he could with all the tubes around him, then hugged his grandmother. “I’ll see y’all first thing in the morning,” he said. Jamie followed him out the door.
“I don’t really understand how you know all this medical stuff,” Tommy said. “But I’m glad you do.” He hugged her and kissed her.
“Call me if anything at all happens,” he said. “I’ll miss you tonight, sugar.”
She watched Tommy walk down the long corridor, then went back in the room.
“I’m glad you’re staying,” Granny said. “I feel so much better with you here.”
Grandpa had fallen asleep, which was the best thing for him right then.
“I’m going to get us some food, Granny. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Jamie walked down the long, well-lit corridor to the elevators. She went down to the ground floor and followed the signs to an all-night eatery. They mostly had hamburgers and French fries and ham and cheese sandwiches. She got a cheeseburger with fries, a ham sandwich, and two cups of sweetened iced tea. She carried it all back to the room.
“I wasn’t sure what you wanted, so I got a cheeseburger and a ham sandwich. You pick,” she said to Granny as she pulled the food out of the bag. She handed a plastic cup of tea to Granny, who accepted it and picked up the ham and cheese.
“I sure wish we were all at home eating that roast I was making,” she said.
“Me too, Granny,” Jamie said.
They talked quietly as they ate and afterwards. Jamie could tell Granny was exhausted so she helped her push the chair back into the bed it was supposed to make. She got a blanket out of the closet and covered Granny.
“Honey, how are you going to sleep?”
“I’m going to ask the nurse if they can bring a cot in here,” she said. When she worked in hospitals, they had often been able to provide a cot. When the nurse came in a little later to check on Grandpa, she asked her about it.
“I’ll see what I can find,” she said.
“Could I look at his chart?” she asked the nurse as she was walking out. The nurse handed it to her and Jamie studied the numbers. Everything was looking pretty good for a man who had suffered cardiac arrest a few hours before.
An attendant brought a small cot and another blanket in a few minutes later and Jamie set it up as close to Grandpa’s bed as she could. She lay down wearily. She was too tired to talk, but she wanted to text Tommy. Then she remembered that people weren’t really texting yet, weren’t even using the word. She closed her eyes and didn’t wake up until the next morning when the sun shone through the blinds.
She used the restroom and splashed water on her face. When she emerged from the bathroom, Granny was sitting up. She went straight to the restroom after Jamie walked out. Grandpa was starting to stir.
“Hey, Grandpa,” she said. “How are you feeling today?”
“Hey, Jamie girl,” he said smiling. “It’s good to be alive.”
Tommy walked in carrying a bag of sausage biscuits and three Styrofoam
cups of coffee. Luckily, an attendant followed him in the door with Grandpa’s breakfast tray. He took the top off the plate and stared at it. He sighed.
“Guess I’ll have to get used to eating oatmeal,” he said. “But y’all enjoy your biscuits. They sure do smell good.”
As she had with her father when he had his heart attack, Jamie reassured Grandpa that he would get to eat good food again, with some minor changes.
“I’m not complaining,” he said. “Because I’m alive and looking at your pretty face.”
As they were finishing their biscuits, a middle-aged man strode through the door. He had an air of authority, so Jamie knew he was the doctor.
“I’m Dr. Stallings,” he said shaking Grandpa’s hand, then Granny’s, Tommy’s, and Jamie’s. He looked over Grandpa’s chart, looked at the cardiac monitor, and checked his heart with his stethoscope. With a pang, Jamie remembered her own stethoscope that was so much a part of her everyday life—every doctor’s everyday life. Her stethoscope was somewhere in the year 2013. She missed it.
“Mr. Lewis, you’re in remarkable shape for someone who suffered a heart attack,” Dr. Stallings said.
“That’s the girl who saved my life,” he said, pointing at Jamie. Dr. Stallings looked at Jamie.
“I heard about that,” he said. “You’re to be commended, Mrs. Grisham.” It felt weird for someone to call her that, even if it was her name. “I heard you pumped his heart like a pro.”
Jamie blushed. She had only done what came naturally to her as a doctor, but everyone else thought she was a saint, because to them, she wasn’t a doctor. “I saw it on TV,” she said.
When Dr. Stallings left, Jamie followed him out the door. “Dr. Stallings,” she called to his retreating figure. He turned and she walked up to him. “Can you tell me what the percentage of damage is to his heart, if any?” she asked.
“I think you’re too young to be a nurse or a doctor, but you seem to know things anyway,” he said.
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