by Meg Cabot
“Jesse!” I reached his side.
It was him. It was really him. The real Jesse, Alive Jesse.
Only he didn’t seem too alive just then. I reached out and felt for a pulse on his throat. There was one—my breath caught as I felt it—but it was faint. He was breathing, but barely. I was afraid to touch him, afraid to move him…
But more afraid not to.
“Jesse!” I cried, rolling him over and shaking him by the shoulders. “Jesse, it’s me, Suze! Wake up. Wake up, Jesse!”
“It’s no good, Suze,” Paul said. “I already tried. He’s there… but he’s not. Not really.”
I had Jesse’s head in my arms. I cradled it, looking down at him. In the moonlight, he looked dead.
But he wasn’t. He wasn’t dead. I’d have known if he was.
“I think we screwed up, Suze,” Paul said. “You weren’t— you weren’t supposed to bring him back.”
“I didn’t mean to,” I said. My voice was so faint, it was practically drowned out by the crickets. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“I know,” Paul said. “But… I think maybe you need to put him back.”
“Put him back where?” I raged. Now my voice was much louder than the crickets. So loud, in fact, that the crickets were startled into silence. “In the middle of that fire?”
“No,” Paul said. “I just—I just don’t think he can stay here, Suze, and… live.”
I continued to cradle Jesse’s head, thinking furiously. This wasn’t fair. No one had warned us about this. Dr. Slaski hadn’t said a word. All he’d said was to picture in your head the time and place you wanted to be in, and…
And not to touch anything you didn’t want to bring through time with you.
I groaned and dropped my face to Jesse’s. It was my fault. It was all my fault.
“Suze.” Paul reached out and rested a hand on my shoulder. “Let me try. Maybe I can get him back—”
“You can’t.” I lifted my head, my voice cold as the blade Diego had pressed to my throat. “It’ll kill him. He’s not like us. He’s not a mediator. He’s… he’s human.”
Paul shook his head. “Maybe he was meant to die, then, Suze,” he said. “Like you said. Maybe we aren’t supposed to mess with this stuff, just like you warned me.”
“Great.” I let out a bitter little laugh. “That’s just great, Paul. Now you agree with me?”
Paul just stood there, looking anxious. If I could have been capable of feeling anything except despair, at that point, I would have hated him.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t hate him. I couldn’t think of anything but Jesse. I had not, I told myself, saved him just so I could sit and watch him die.
“Go to the carport,” I said in a low, even voice. “And inside the house through the door there. They never remember to lock it. Hanging on a hook by the door are my mom’s car keys. Get them and then come back and help me take him to the car.”
Paul looked down at me like I was a crazy woman.
“The car?” He sounded dubious. “You’re going to… drive him somewhere?”
“Yes, you fool,” I snarled. “To the hospital.”
“The hospital.” Paul shook his head. “But Suze—”
“Just do it!”
Paul did it. I know he thought it was futile, but he did it. He got the keys, then came back and helped me carry Jesse to my mom’s car. It wasn’t easy, but between the two of us, we managed. I’d have dragged him the whole way by myself if I’d had to.
Then we were on the road, Paul driving while I continued to hold Jesse’s head in my arms. I didn’t think then that what I was doing was futile. Maybe, I kept thinking, the hospital could save him. Medicine had made so many advances in the past 150 years. Why couldn’t it save a man who’d just traveled to another time, through another dimension? Why couldn’t it?
Except that it couldn’t.
Oh, they tried. At the hospital. They came running out with a gurney when Paul went in to tell them we had an unconscious man in the car. They hooked Jesse up to an oxygen mask while the emergency room doctor grilled me. Had he taken drugs? Had too much to drink? Had a seizure? A headache? Complained of pain in his arm?
There was no medical explanation for the coma Jesse was in. That’s what the doctor came out and told me, hours later. None that he had been able to determine so far. A CT scan might tell him more. Did I happen to know what kind of insurance Jesse had? His Social Security number, maybe? A phone number for his next of kin?
At 6:00 in the morning, they admitted him. At 7:00, I called my mother, and told her where I was—at the hospital with a friend. At 8:00, I phoned the only person I could think of who might possibly have some idea what to do.
Father Dominic had gotten back from San Francisco the night before. He listened to what I had to say without remark. “Father Dominic, I did… I think I did something awful. I didn’t mean to, but… Jesse’s here. The real Jesse. The live one. We’re at the hospital. Please come.”
He came. When I saw his tall, strong figure approaching the hard plastic seat I’d been sitting in for hours, I nearly collapsed all over again.
But I didn’t. I stood up and, a second later, was in his arms.
“What did you do?” he kept murmuring over and over. He wasn’t talking to just me, either. Paul was there, too. “What did you two do?”
“Something bad,” I said, lifting my tear-stained face from his shirt. “But we didn’t mean it.”
“We were trying to save him,” Paul said sheepishly. “His life. We almost did—”
“Until I brought him back,” I said. “Oh, Father Dominic—”
He shushed me and went into the room where Jesse lay, so still, the blanket over him barely stirring with each shallow breath. Ghost Jesse, I now realized, would have looked better—more alive—than Alive Jesse did.
Father Dominic crossed himself, he was so startled by what he saw. A nurse was there, taking Jesse’s pulse and writing the results down on a clipboard. She smiled sadly when she saw Father Dominic, then left the room.
Father Dominic looked down at Jesse. For the first time, I noticed that the lenses of his glasses were kind of fogged up.
He didn’t say anything.
“They want to know what kind of insurance he has,” I said bitterly, “before they do more tests.”
“I… see,” Father Dominic said.
“I don’t see what more tests are going to tell them,” Paul said.
“You don’t know,” I snapped, lashing out at Paul because I couldn’t lash out at the person who most deserved it… myself. “Maybe there’s something they can do. Maybe there’s—”
“Isn’t your grandfather here somewhere?” Father Dominic asked Paul.
Paul lifted his gaze from Jesse’s unconscious form.
“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, yes, sir. I think so.”
“Perhaps you should go and pay him a visit.” Father Dominic’s voice was calm. His presence, I had to admit, was soothing. “If he’s conscious, perhaps he’ll be able to offer us some advice.”
Paul’s chin slid out truculently. “He won’t talk to me,” Paul insisted. “Even if he is awake—”
“I think,” Father Dominic said quietly, “that if there is a lesson to be learned from all of this, it’s that life is fleeting and if there are fences to mend, you had best mend them quickly, before it’s too late. Go and make amends with your grandfather.”
Paul opened his mouth to protest, but Father Dominic shot him a look that snapped his lips shut. With one final glance at me, Paul left the room, looking aggrieved.
“Don’t be too angry with him, Susannah,” Father Dominic said. “He thought he was doing right.”
I was too tired to argue. Much.
“He thought he was robbing me of Jesse,” I said. “Even his memory.”
Father Dominic shrugged. “In the end, Susannah, that might actually have been kinder, don’t you think? Kinder than this, anyway.” He n
odded his head at Jesse’s unconscious form.
Well, that much was true.
“He would have had to leave, anyway, Susannah,” Father Dominic said. “Someday.”
“I know.” The knot in my throat throbbed.
Which was when I remembered. There’d been a ghost in Father Dom’s life, as well. The ghost of a girl he’d loved, maybe even as much as I loved Jesse.
“I… “ I could barely speak, the lump in my throat had swelled to such gigantic proportions. “I’m sorry, Father Dominic. I forgot.”
Father Dom just smiled sadly and touched my arm.
“Don’t be too hard on him,” he said, meaning Paul. Then, with a final glance at Jesse, he said, “There isn’t much I can think of to do. But the insurance situation. That I think I can take care of. I’ll be back soon. Can I bring you anything? Have you eaten?”
The thought of trying to swallow anything down past the mass in my throat was so ludicrous, I actually laughed a little.
“No, thanks,” I said.
“All right.” Father Dominic started from the room. At the doorway, however, he paused and looked back.
“I’m sorry, Susannah,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when… it happened. And I’m more sorry than I can say that it had to end this way.”
And with that, he was gone.
I stood there for a moment, not doing anything, not thinking a thing. Then the true meaning of his words sunk in.
And I lost it.
Because Father Dominic was right. This was the end. I could deny it as much as I wanted, but this was it. Jesse was dying, right before my eyes, and there was nothing, nothing on earth, that I could do for him.
And it was my fault. My own fault he was leaving me. Sure, I could comfort myself that wherever he was, it had to be better than the half-life he’d had with me.
But that didn’t make it hurt any less.
I fell into the chair beside Jesse’s hospital bed. I couldn’t see, I was crying so hard. Not out loud. I didn’t want any nurse to come running with a bunch of tranquilizers or anything. What I really wanted, I realized, was my mom. No, not my mom. My dad. Where was my dad now, when I really needed him?
“Susannah.”
I thought about Jesse’s grave, the one marked by the headstone Father Dominic and I had paid for. What was in that grave now, if Jesse’s body was here? Nothing. It was empty.
But not for long. No, not for long.
“Susannah.”
And back in his own time? What were Mr. and Mrs. O’Neil doing right now? Probably combing through the rubble of what had been their barn. They’d find one skeleton for sure. But would they know it wasn’t Jesse’s? Would Jesse’s family have closure or would they wonder forever what had happened to their beloved son and brother?
No. They had no way of knowing the body was Diego’s. They’d think it was Jesse. The de Silvas would have a funeral. But for the wrong man.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Great. Someone was there. Someone was watching me cry my eyes out. Nice. Let the girl have a little time to grieve, would you, please?
“Go away,” I snapped, lifting my head. “Can’t you see I’m—”
That’s when I noticed that the figure beside me was glowing.
Chapter
twenty
I must have jumped about a mile and a half into the air, I was that startled. I know I sprang from the chair, so fast that I knocked it over. I stood there, my chest heaving, my eyes suddenly bone dry, and stared.
Because standing there beside the bed, looking down at Jesse’s prone body, was…
Jesse.
I looked from one Jesse to the other, not quite believing what I was seeing.
But it was true. There were two Jesses, the dead one and the live one.
Or, I suppose it would have been more correct to say the dead one and the dying one.
“J-Jesse?” I swiped at the tears coating my cheeks with the back of my smoky sleeve.
But Jesse wasn’t looking at me. He was staring down at…well, at himself, on the bed.
“Susannah,” he whispered. “What… what did you do?”
I was so overjoyed to see him, I wasn’t thinking straight. I went to him and grabbed his hand.
“Jesse, I went. Back through time, I mean,” I babbled.
He tore his gaze from the figure on the bed and focused all of that intense dark gaze on me. He didn’t look too happy.
“You went?” He glared at me. “You went after Slater? After I told you I could take care of myself?”
He was furious. I was so happy to see that fury, however, that I let out a little burble of laughter. I didn’t realize, then, what seeing him here in the hospital meant.
“You did take care of yourself,” I assured him. “I-I told you—the past you—about Diego, and he didn’t kill you, Jesse. You killed him. But then… then… there was a fire.” I swallowed, not feeling like laughing anymore. “In the barn. The O’Neils’ barn…”
His eyes narrowed.
“The O’Neils,” he murmured. He appeared to be in as much of a daze as I was. “I remember them.”
“Yes,” I said. “There was a fire, and Jesse… Jesse, you saved me. Or, at least, you tried to. But… but…”
My voice trailed off. Jesse had dropped my hand. He was moving closer to the bed, looking down at the body that lay there, barely breathing.
“I don’t understand,” Jesse said. “How did this happen?”
I bit my lip. There was no time for explanations. Not when, any minute, I knew we were going to have to be saying good-bye…
“I did it,” I blurted. “I didn’t mean to. I meant to save you, Jesse, not… not this. But I was still touching you when I shifted back to the future, and you… you just got caught.”
Jesse finally looked at me like he was really seeing me, maybe for the first time since he’d come into the room.
“You really went back?” He stared at me. “To the past? My past?”
I nodded. What was there to say?
He shook his head. “And Paul? I went to the basilica to look for him, but he was gone. You followed him?”
I nodded again.
“I wanted to stop him,” I said. “From… from keeping you from dying. But in the end… I couldn’t, Jesse. It wasn’t right. What Diego did to you. I couldn’t let it happen again. So I told you. And you killed him. You killed Diego. But then there was the fire and… “ I looked down at the figure in the bed. I couldn’t stifle a sob. “And now I think this is good-bye. I’m sorry, Jesse. I’m so, so sorry.”
My vision clouded over again with tears. I couldn’t believe any of this was happening. I had always thought of my “gift” as a curse, but never, never had I hated it as much as I did just then. I wished I had never heard of mediators. I wished I had never seen a single ghost. I wished I had never been born.
Then I felt Jesse’s hand on my cheek.
“Querida,” he said.
He placed his other hand on the bed to balance himself as he leaned across it to kiss me. One last kiss before he was ripped from me forever. I closed my eyes, anticipating the feel of those cool lips against mine. Good-bye, Jesse. Goodbye.
His mouth had barely touched mine, however, when I heard him gasp. He jerked his head from mine and looked down.
His hand had touched his living body’s leg.
Something seemed to jolt through him, then. He flared more brightly for a second, his gaze on mine more intense than it had ever been in all the time I’d known him.
And then he was sucked down into his body, like smoke pulled into a fan.
And was gone.
Oh his body was still there. But the ghost of Jesse—the ghost I had loved—was gone. In his place was…
Nothing. I reached out, desperate to grab some small piece of him, but my hand clutched only air.
Jesse was gone. He was truly gone. He was back inside the body he’d left so long ago… the body that,
even as I watched, shuddered all over as if to reject the soul that had just entered it….
Then went still as death.
I knew then what had happened. Jesse’s body had come forward through time, yes. But not his soul, because two of the same souls could not exist in the same dimension. Jesse’s body had been without a soul just as, for so many years, Jesse’s soul had been without a body.
Now the two were united at last….
But too late. And now I was going to lose them both.
I don’t know how long I must have stood there, holding Jesse’s hand, gazing down at him in utter despair. Long enough, I know, that Father Dominic came back, and said, “Don’t worry, Susannah, it’s all taken care of. Jesse will get the tests he needs.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I murmured, still holding his hand…his cold hand.
“Don’t give up hope, Susannah,” Father Dominic said. “Never give up hope.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “And why is that, Father D.?”
“Because it’s all we have, you know.” He placed a hand on my shoulder. “You did what you did because you loved him, Susannah. You loved him enough to let him go. There’s no greater gift you could have given him.”
I shook my head, my vision still blurred with tears.
“That’s not how it’s supposed to go, Father Dominic.”
“What’s not, Susannah?” he asked gently.
“The saying. It’s supposed to be, If you love something, set it free. If it was meant to be, it will come back to you. Don’t you know? Haven’t you read it?”
When I looked up at Father Dominic to see what he thought of this, I saw that he wasn’t even looking at me. He was staring down at Jesse on the bed. Father Dominic’s blue eyes, I noticed, were as tear-filled as my own.
“Susannah,” he said in a strangled voice. “Look.”
I looked. And as I moved my head, I felt the fingers of the hand I was holding suddenly tighten around mine.
Color that hadn’t been there a minute before had flooded Jesse’s face. His face was no longer the same color as the sheets. His skin was the same olive tone it had been when I’d first seen him, back in the O’Neils’ barn.