Heaven or Hell

by Roni Teson

  “I guess you’re hearing things, or your dad’s here.” JJ laughed.

  “Stop that nonsense,” Teresa snapped.

  “Okay, okay,” JJ responded.

  Dazed by the news of her father’s death, and a little confused, Teresa drove like an automaton to the hospital. Which seemed a lifetime away. The unpleasantness of the situation seeped into her bones as she maneuvered the car through the hospital lot, and out of habit looked for a safe place to park.

  How could Joe have done this to her again? The man seemed to be continually abandoning her—Joe’s perpetual motion.

  JJ and Teresa entered the hospital and went directly to Joe’s room, where Aunt Jessie stood outside the door. The priest must’ve called both of them. Well, of course he did; he must have their numbers on speed dial—judging by the urgency with which he’d tried to get them to visit her dad, and that was only yesterday. Had it been just about twenty-four hours since she’d learned of her father’s illness, and now he was gone?

  “Aunt Jessie, you’re here early.” Teresa hugged her aunt.

  “I woke up, got dressed, and came right over. I felt like I had to. I didn’t know he was going to die while we were talking.” Aunt Jessie dabbed at her bloodshot eyes and frowned. “I know it was inevitable. I suppose it’s inevitable for us all. But I wasn’t ready for him to go just yet.”

  “I know,” Teresa said.

  “Aunt Jessie, I’m sorry.” JJ hugged her.

  “He’s still in there, if you both want to say your very final good-byes,” Aunt Jessie told them.

  CHAPTER 23

  JOE OPENED HIS EYES AND STRETCHED his arms without any restrictions imposed by the hospital equipment. Then he sat up on his own. The hospital room, his noisy home for the previous week, was unusually quiet. The lights were dim, as if some type of power failure had occurred in the hospital and the back-up generators had kicked in.

  The unbelievable heaviness of his body seemed to have disappeared and was replaced by a freer, airier feel. Joe stood next to his bed and wondered why he wasn’t hooked to the machines anymore. Had he gotten better?

  With one foot in front of the other, he walked from his bed to the other side of the room and smiled. It seemed like years since he’d been able to walk so upright and strong. Grinning from ear to ear, he danced a few steps to the door.

  “Wow,” he whispered, and then put his head through the door. “Hello. Where is everyone?”

  The hall was empty, and the hospital appeared to have been abandoned. Joe trembled and tried to shake off the foreboding feeling that had snuck up on him. He looked at his arms, no needles or marks from the IV bag. In fact, his skin was a smooth tan color, glowing, and no longer yellow. The burning in his throat and stomach was completely gone along with the pain that had pervaded his entire body. He hadn’t realized how bad the pain had been until he felt its absence.

  “Angela, Angel, are you here?” Joe walked the hallways of the vacant hospital, unsure of his new reality, but more than happy to be out of that tired, sick body.

  “I must be dead, or someone’s playing a cruel trick on me, because … I feel good, like I knew that I would … now … and … I feel nice, like sugar and spice. So good.” Joe laughed at his James Brown impression as he continued to dance his way down the hall.

  Joe picked up the phone at the nurses’ station—no dial tone. He moved to the light switch—no control of the lights. What kind of heaven was this, anyway? Out of the corner of his eye, Joe saw movement—sort of like a ripple over reality—as when a pebble breaks the surface of clear water. Yes, the world rippled a little.

  His head turned quickly to the right when he witnessed another ripple, but he only caught the tail end of the movement. And it seemed as if this entire setting was fake, that the world he now inhabited was like a window blind or some type of veil. Then the hospital rippled, and the world appeared to be something completely and totally counterfeit at that moment—like a liquid movie set, one that Joe was somehow walking and living in.

  The front doors to the hospital reflected beams of sunshine that seeped into the empty lobby. Joe stood in front of the exit. He felt no fear; his life had brought him to this point and he was ready to continue with the plan his dead wife had assigned him to. He’d tried to make it right with his daughters before he’d died, and hopefully his next steps would complete the attempt. He really wasn’t bothered that he was encircled now only by silence and stillness. In fact, his solitary state was kind of relaxing. Perhaps the benefit of his journey through the pit was that the experience somehow enabled him to live in this moment.

  Suddenly, the interior of his body lit up, and he wanted to laugh because he felt as if he were being tickled. The light inside his being gave him a sense of invincibility, and the strength of his body felt good—like an old memory from many years ago.

  At the same time, the airiness of his being and the absence of constraints caused by the heavy human frame were marvelous to experience. He enjoyed a sense of freedom he’d never known during his life as Juan Joseph Torres. Oh yes, by now he fully understood that he’d really died, and it suited him just fine.

  The world rippled in the corner of his eyes, again not letting him see this special effect directly. He sensed this strange veil had to do with the place his wife called home, which was much closer than most living people were ever aware of.

  Heaven was not a million miles up. Oh no, it was about three feet—or maybe three inches—from the physical dimension. Not directly up but sort of diagonally set—or simply moving at a different speed. And so, Joe’s vacation, or his education, was about to end and he was finally going home. Some vacation, he thought, and then he changed his mind and told himself it wasn’t a vacation after all; it was simply time he’d spent in the flesh, having a range of experiences.

  Joe sat on the couch in the lobby contemplating his next move. He didn’t want to leave his mission with Teresa so unfinished. If he’d only had a few more days, he might have gotten through to her. As stubborn as she was, he felt as if she would eventually have come around.

  His concern was exactly what Jessie had suggested: Joe had come back into Teresa’s life, only to leave again and without making an impact. He wasn’t ready to go through those doors, not yet.

  He closed his eyes and thought of the cloud and his daughter, Angela. When he opened his eyes, he was still in the lobby. A ripple, he thought, to his left—and then again to his right.

  “Umm.” Joe felt a tremor in the depth of his being. Something didn’t seem right. This wasn’t exactly part of the plan, although the plan hadn’t really been laid out in detail.

  Joe stood up and headed back to his room. In his peripheral vision he saw ripples trail behind his movement. The ripples seemed to follow him down the hall and become more frequent, yet the vision was still too elusive to catch full on. With each turn to confirm what he thought he saw out of the corner of his eye, the world flattened again as if the ripples were a part of a sort of daydream.

  As he approached his room, he noticed the door was closed, yet he didn’t remember shutting it. Odd that he could touch the door and feel it. Based on his time with Angel, Joe thought he wouldn’t be able to feel anything solid. He moved through the door—but then to his amazement he entered a room that wasn’t part of the hospital.

  He recognized the old couch and the special bed to the left in the living room of his family’s home. Joe was standing in his wife’s hospice room, the room he’d set up over twenty years ago. Beep, whirr, fizz went the familiar sound of the machines that appeared to be attached to his wife’s body in the bed. Joe closed his eyes for a moment—he thought for sure this was a hallucination. He opened his eyes and understood immediately that this wasn’t an illusion, after all. He was there.

  Joe watched the young woman, well, the girl, administer a wet cloth to his wife’s forehead. He heard Marion whis
per to her daughter, their daughter—and he suddenly recognized the girl was Teresa at nineteen.

  “Hello,” Joe said standing next to the bed, hoping they’d be able to hear him speak.

  Teresa bit her lower lip, turned, and wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “Dad will be home soon, Mom,” she said with a forced smile.

  Joe’s heart dropped, and he was overcome with sadness. Tears spilled over the rim of his eyes. The contents of his stomach churned as he burped up the flavor of … tacos? He knew he hadn’t eaten a taco before he’d died; in fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a taco. Then, when he saw the Taco Bell wrapper on the dinner table, he realized this experience wasn’t about him. A deep sorrow seeped into his gut.

  Teresa touched her stomach, bent over, and threw up in the wastebasket below the bed, out of sight from her mother. At the same moment, acid reflux or some type of stench erupted from Joe’s stomach, and a sickening, regurgitated flavor filled his mouth. Joe coughed, and spittle flew down his chin. He wiped his mouth with his shirt. Sweat covered his forehead as his body reverberated with an aching, deep pain, unlike anything he’d ever experienced in life. Marion moaned loudly while the pain spread through Joe’s body.

  “Okay, Marion, I’m on to you now. We can do this together,” Joe whispered. Unable to bear the pain standing, he bent down on one knee and doubled over, gripping his stomach. He remained close to the bed, but below eye level, so that he couldn’t see Teresa or his wife. “Oh crap,” Joe whispered as his body spasmed involuntarily. The pain was worse than what he’d been through during his own dying process. He lay in a ball on the side of Marion’s bed.

  “We don’t have any more pain medicine.” Teresa’s voice trembled as she spoke. “I’ll call the hospice nurse and the doctor. They didn’t leave any more morphine, Mom.”

  “Okay,” Joe answered from the floor at the same time his wife, Marion, whispered a response.

  “It’s okay,” Marion said in a low, almost inaudible voice.

  Teresa held a washcloth to her mother’s forehead. “I’ll be right back, Mama.” She left the living room, grabbed the phone with the long cord, and walked down the hall to the bathroom. She shut the door behind her, the phone cord fitting neatly under the door.

  Somehow, Joe continued to feel the pain with Marion in the living room, and at the same time he was in the bathroom with Teresa. He knew he wasn’t at eye level or within viewing distance of either one, but he could see both of them. A feeling of loss and despair mixed with complete confusion rumbled through his body. He was literally in two places at the same time.

  “Aunt Jessie?” Teresa cried as she spoke into the phone. “Dad is nowhere to be found. He didn’t go to work and I can’t locate him.”

  Teresa sat down on the toilet seat, pulled some toilet paper off the roll, and blew her nose. “Mom’s hurting and I can’t get in touch with anyone. The doctor or the nurse.”

  Teresa wiped her eyes and blew her nose again. “Okay, okay, I will. Hurry, please.” Teresa put the phone back in its cradle, wiped her nose again, and moved quickly through the house toward her mother’s bed, placing the phone back on the counter. Joe stared for a moment at the phone. Something seemed out of place. “Oh yeah,” he whispered. “No cordless phones back then.”

  Marion lay still in the bed. Her body must have shrunk with the illness, so much so that the bed almost looked empty. Her pale, gray face blended in with the color of the blankets, while the red-flowered scarf on her head was the most visible item on the bed. At first it looked as though a stuffed animal was lying there.

  Joe still wasn’t sure how he was seeing all of this, as his body remained at the side of the bed, his breathing labored and his insides feeling that they’d been turned facing out.

  He wasn’t sure how much time had passed; it was as if he’d fallen asleep on the floor under the bed. Eventually, Jessie’s voice woke him up. She hadn’t been there earlier, hmm? Teresa was asleep in the chair next to the bed, so Jessie was essentially alone with Marion. Joe seemed to hear her voice in his ear.

  “This will help you.” Jessie leaned over Marion with a cup, then put a straw in Marion’s mouth and said, “Drink.”

  A bitter flavor filled Joe’s mouth. It took several minutes, but eventually the pain faded, never quite leaving his body but becoming more tolerable. After more time passed, Joe was able to stand. It was at this point that he saw both Teresa and Jessie sleeping in chairs next to Marion’s bed. Jessie’s shirt was ripped and she had a few bruises on her arm and face.

  He went to his wife’s bedside and held her hand in his.

  “I’m sorry, Marion. I didn’t handle this well at all,” Joe said.

  He touched her cheek and was about to speak again when Marion’s eyes opened. Joe stiffened from the shock—it’d been twenty years since he’d seen his wife’s beautiful brown eyes.

  “Joe,” she whispered.

  “I’m here, I’m here,” he responded with a sniffle.

  “Thank you. I feel better now. The pain …” Marion said.

  “I know. I felt it too,” answered Joe. “God, I’ve missed you.”

  “Don’t be so silly, Joe. I’m not dead, yet.” Marion sighed.

  “I’m such a fool,” he whispered.

  “Yes, you are. Teresa needs you. You need to put the bottle down, now. Enough.” Marion seemed to have lost her breath, and she closed her eyes.

  “I have. I promise you I have,” Joe said squeezing her hand a little.

  Suddenly Marion’s eyes opened with complete clarity. “You bastard.” She sat up, pulled the needle from her arm, and detached the heart monitor. “I can’t believe you’d let me think this actually happened. You didn’t stop drinking.”

  Marion stood up with confidence. The scarf was gone and her hair was in place as she tapped her finger on Joe’s chest. “You listen to me, Juan Joseph Torres, both of your daughters need you now. You cannot leave this undone again.”

  Joe backed up with each tap on his chest, his eyes wide open and all of his senses on alert. “I did stop drinking. I know it took me a long time. God, I’m trying to make this right.” He stammered and backed up all the way to the far wall in the living room. Fear filled his veins.

  “What now, Joe? You died too soon.” Marion sat down on the couch in the living room. Her lips puckered, a look Joe recognized as anger. “Did you know your sister, Jessie, paid a huge price when she got those drugs for me? And she didn’t tell a single person about what happened.” Marion’s tone lightened a little. “I think she gave me heroin. It worked though, didn’t it?”

  Joe took a deep breath and stepped away from the wall.

  “I’m confused,” he whispered.

  Marion turned to Joe and looked back at her body in the bed, and then she turned toward Jessie and Teresa sleeping in the chairs. “I think you know what this is. What’s so confusing about it?”

  “You’re not real.” He stumbled over his words.

  “Oh, I can assure you that I am. I’m more real than they are in that state.” Marion pointed at the women.

  “What is this?” Joe moved toward the couch, but as he bent to sit down, he landed hard on the ground in his empty hospital room. His tongue bled from the pinch between his teeth when he hit the tile floor. “Damn.”

  He stood up and walked out the hospital room door. And to his surprise, he entered the same living room again—only this time it appeared to be the next day. Teresa and Jessie stood at Marion’s side, and he overheard their conversation. “No, he wasn’t here, Mom,” Teresa said.

  “He was here. He said he stopped drinking,” Marion whispered, and then in a stronger tone, she continued. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Oh, Marion,” Jessie said. “I’m sure he’ll be back sometime today. But I’ve got to go to work right now.”

  Teresa followe
d Jessie to the front door and spoke directly in her ear. “She’s seeing things again. Yesterday, it was Angela in a cloud.”

  “We need to get some morphine from the nurse,” Jessie said. “She’s not doing good, Teresa. You need to be prepared for the worst, and we can’t let them leave her without medicine, ever again.”

  “I know. I’m trying to keep it together for her. Where is he? Where’s my dad?” Teresa whined.

  “I think she needs to return to the hospital,” Jessie said. “I’ll be back later today. Let’s get the doctor over here, too. The hospice nurse will be here soon, right?”

  “Yes. But can’t we get my dad back here?” Tears flowed from Teresa’s eyes.

  “I think you should stay out of school today. I’ll try and find him, again.” Jessie exhaled.

  Joe closed his eyes. Oh God, he knew what came next. He remembered this one. Passed out on his own front lawn in a pile of puke—he’d walked home after a night of bingeing.

  Joe opened his eyes to find himself back in the hospital lobby. What was going on here?

  If he remembered correctly, it wasn’t long after this incident that his wife passed away, or maybe his memory was playing tricks on him. Marion may have really seen him during her illness, because time wasn’t linear on the other side. Of course, he suspected he was on the other side himself, yet he was beginning to feel a bit like Angela, stuck in between.

  He should’ve held it together and been there for his wife all of those years ago.

  The front door to the hospital rippled and this time Joe witnessed the effect. Outside, a normal day moved along. Cars drove by, people walked. It was as if the world was right in front of him, a stone’s throw away. Joe hesitated at the door, because he wasn’t sure if this led away from the world as he knew it or back into the world.

  He sensed a finality in going through that door.

  Behind him, a vacant hospital; in front of him a thriving world: The choice was obvious. Joe pushed through the door and stepped onto the sun-drenched sidewalk. His smile widened at the noise and activity outside the door, a day like any other day.