Until We Are Gone

by Gia Riley

  Copyright © 2018 by Gia Riley

  All rights reserved.

  Visit my website at www.authorgiariley.com

  Cover Designer: Cover Me Darling

  Editor and Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com

  Proofreading: Judy Zweifel, Judy’s Proofreading

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1721276455

  contents

  prologue

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  twenty-two

  twenty-three

  twenty-four

  twenty-five

  twenty-six

  twenty-seven

  twenty-eight

  twenty-nine

  thirty

  thirty-one

  thirty-two

  thirty-three

  epilogue

  acknowledgments

  about the author

  sneak peek of wrong side of heaven

  prologue

  MEADOW

  “Open your eyes.”

  The faint whisper is a little louder than the last time I heard it. That peaceful voice never leaves, and each time I hear it, I try to open my eyes.

  I haven’t had any luck yet because I’m trapped, a slave to the medication keeping me asleep.

  “I know you hear me,” he says. “Try harder.”

  As I focus every ounce of strength on separating my lashes, he squeezes my hand again, encouraging me. I need to find out who’s been talking to me while I lie here, a prisoner to my own body.

  “Just relax. Take it slow, Meadow.”

  Meadow. I like that name. It reminds me of all the summers I spent in the country at Grandma’s.

  My parents are devoted city people, working long hours at the office and spending very little time at home. When I was eight, they paid a fortune for a house they now barely live in. Despite the lack of activity, the cleaning lady comes every three days and runs the vacuum over clean floors. She dusts a mantel where the pictures never change and fluffs pillows on a couch that’s never been sat on.

  Growing up, I didn’t have one of those moms who stayed home and baked cookies while I played outside. She didn’t serve a homemade dinner at five o’clock on the dot.

  My mom inherited a real estate business, and from the day she graduated, it’s consumed every waking hour of her time. She works until she climbs into bed at night, and as soon as she’s awake, the phone starts ringing. Sleep is nothing more than an inconvenience, a blip in the day that keeps her from crunching numbers and closing deals.

  Deals and brokers were all I heard about as we ate the same takeout night after night. On the rare occasions Mom had time to cook, she usually burned the food. Her mind was always preoccupied, and though she swore she loved me, it was no secret that she hadn’t planned on having kids. I knew that because I’d overheard a conversation—well, more like an argument—when tuition was due, and she had been too busy to remember to pay it.

  “Tell my secretary to add it to my calendar,” she’d yelled. “I can’t keep track of everything.”

  Not even her own daughter.

  My parents forgot my tenth birthday. I turned another year older to the sound of a sobbing babysitter who had just broken up with her boyfriend. There was no cake, just a freezer-burned TV dinner. I bet my parents knew the birthdates of their clients’ children though, probably all their favorite things, too.

  “We’ll celebrate double next year,” they told me. No makeup celebration or any attempt at gift-giving to make me feel better.

  My parents are blunt. They don’t sugarcoat anything, not even for a child. That’s just how city life is—busy, reckless, and unpredictable. At times, I love the hustle and bustle, and other times, I long to be by the river, nestled in Grandma’s house without a care in the world.

  Grandma’s farm was huge, and she had this claw-foot bathtub on the second floor, next to a bay window, that overlooked the cornfields. There was no air-conditioning in her old farmhouse, and in the thick of summer, that tub quickly became my favorite place to relax.

  The porcelain was always cool to the touch, and once inside, my worries would fade away. All the anxiety I brought with me from the city would vanish, and I would be calm and at peace. There were no worries about school or parents, and all I had to do was wake up the next day, explore, and repeat. I liked that. Not thinking. Not worrying.

  In the city, I worry about everything. It’s just how I am wired.

  Not much has changed from my childhood. I’m still petrified of most things in life, always worrying about the outcome before the events even happen. But what scares me more than anything is finding out why I’m in this bed.

  I know I’m not that little girl at Grandma’s anymore, but I can’t figure out who’s been talking to me or why he’s keeping vigil next to my bed.

  Where are Mom and Dad?

  I’m about to find out.

  My eyes finally listen to my command and peel open, and the blurriness fades away.

  I can see.

  “She’s awake! Nurse, she’s awake!” he shouts.

  I wish he wouldn’t yell so loud. It hurts my head.

  By the time I turn toward his voice, all I can see is the back of his head as he claws at his messy hair. Even his shirt’s a wrinkled mess.

  He glances over his shoulder once, too quickly for me to take in any of his features, and then he disappears into the hallway.

  For a second, I panic that he’s not coming back, but less than a minute later, the same crumpled shirt returns, this time with a nurse.

  She stands on one side of the bed, and he takes his place on the other, grabbing my hand again. I didn’t realize how used to his touch I’d become. But seeing his hand in mine for the first time is a little strange.

  “How do you feel?” the nurse asks. Her voice is soft and cautious.

  I take a second to glance at her badge. I don’t recognize the hospital or her name.

  Each time I woke up, I would try to listen to the voices before I passed out again, but I don’t remember hers.

  “Not so good,” I tell her.

  My throat aches, and my lips are so dry, my tongue wants to stick to the roof of my mouth. I’m sure I’ve done a lot of sleeping already, but I still feel like I could sleep for a month. Maybe I have because one of the bruises on my arm is already turning yellow. I must have slept right through the black and purple.

  Nurse Brittany smiles and says, “Welcome back.”

  She adjusts the line poking me in the back of the hand. The medicine running through it is probably what kept my eyes closed every time I got close to opening them.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  “About a week,” she says, surprising me. “Your body needed time to heal, so the doctor wanted to wake you slowly
.”

  So, they did force me to stay asleep.

  “I heard some voices,” I tell her. “But I couldn’t talk.”

  “That’s perfectly normal,” she assures me.

  I turn toward the man, and he whispers, “I can’t believe you’re really awake.”

  “I heard you talking,” I tell him.

  He swipes away a few tears, and that scares me a little. He’s not dressed like a doctor, and he’s certainly not acting like one. But why else would this stranger spend so much time in my hospital room?

  “I knew you could hear me. I just knew it, Meadow.”

  “Am I going to be okay?” I ask him, afraid to find out the truth.

  My toes move, and so do my legs. I have control over my arms, and there’s nothing holding me down anymore. I’m not paralyzed.

  He brushes some hair off my forehead. It doesn’t hurt, but I wince anyway. I don’t think I like him touching me. Right now, all I want are answers.

  After he’s finished taking in every inch of my face, he says, “You were in an accident. Do you remember any of it?”

  “No,” I tell him. “But my stomach hurts a lot.”

  Brittany lifts the thin sheet covering me and then parts my gown. There’s a bandage across my skin, from one hip to the other. Gently, she lifts the corner and pulls it back, careful not to snag it on any of the staples.

  Staples.

  There are so many holding my skin together.

  She grabs a cotton swab and cleans around them, wiping away a little bit of dried blood and ooze. I imagine there was a lot of blood, probably more than I would’ve been able to handle, and for that, I’m glad I wasn’t awake to see it.

  “I’m sorry if this stings, Meadow. I clean the incision twice a day,” Brittany says.

  Either she didn’t speak to me when she cleaned my wound or I was asleep for her visits. I don’t remember hearing her voice at all.

  She hits an extra-sensitive spot, and that little jolt of pain has me gripping the bedrail. I see a sharp flash of light and then hear booming thunder that rumbles my insides. Scrunching my eyes closed, I try to figure out where it is storming.

  “What is it?” the man asks.

  “I’m not sure,” I tell him.

  I’ve felt the same surge of pain before. The last time I tried opening my eyes, the searing was so bad, I think I passed out.

  “Was it from the accident?” Brittany asks.

  “Maybe I dreamed it. Everything’s so foggy. But I feel like I’ve been here before. Like this either already happened or it’s happening again.”

  Both Brittany and the man pause and stare at each other. It’s an awkward glance, and I don’t know what their silent exchange means, only that their expressions make my heart beat a little faster.

  Before I can ask, Brittany says, “Tell us what you remember.”

  I take a deep breath and gather all the dreams I had while I was asleep, unsure if they’ll make any sense or not.

  The machine was beeping wildly, and cold, wet hands adjusted the patches on my chest. They were sticky, and my skin felt like it was ripping when they pulled them off and stuck them back on again.

  “Stay with us,” someone kept telling me.

  I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t move my body. My arms felt like bricks, and I wasn’t sure if my legs were still attached to my body. But my stomach, that was the worst. If I could open my mouth, I would scream and tell someone to take the knife out of me.

  Plastic.

  The taste was so strong, and I almost threw up when something cold was jammed between my lips. And then the voices that told me to stay, stopped.

  I wasn’t sure if that meant I was okay or if I’d passed out completely. I tried hard to find them again, but the warmth that lifted me up was so calming that I wanted to follow it instead.

  I floated away from the noise. I didn’t know where I was going or if anyone was with me, but it was quiet and peaceful.

  My insides didn’t hurt anymore, and my arms and legs did what I told them to do. If I had the time, I would do a cartwheel midair. I hadn’t done one of those since I was nine. I knew that because, once I’d turned ten and my birthday had been forgotten, I had decided it was time to stop acting like a little kid. I had to be strong and accept that disappointment was a part of life. Or so Mom and Dad told me.

  But, as fast as that warmth had swooped me up, it disappeared. I’d only gotten to enjoy it for a couple of minutes before a crushing heaviness took my breath away.

  I didn’t know what it was. I couldn’t really describe it. I’d never felt an energy so strong, like gravity had kicked in and the weight of a thousand men pulled me back down to Earth.

  A lightning bolt shot right through me, and it hurt. God, it hurt so bad.

  Whoever had made it happen, I begged them to stop. I wanted to float away again.

  I couldn’t speak, and I was in so much pain, so I tried to open my eyes and tell them to stop hurting me.

  Suddenly, the darkness disappeared.

  A bright light shone in my face. I thought it had come from a car maybe. We must have still been outside.

  When I swallowed, my tongue hit something hard, and I gagged so violently, I thought I’d throw up. I was gasping for air, reaching for my throat, but my hands were tied down. I couldn’t move.

  I saw a face.

  A man.

  I couldn’t remember what he looked like, just that he was there. His mouth moved in slow motion, and his words weren’t making sense.

  It was like being trapped underwater with little bubbles exploding around my ears. Every third word pushed through the energy, and I’d make sense of a sentence or two.

  He was dressed like a pilot.

  God, I must sound crazy. This isn’t making any sense to me.

  But he wasn’t an airline pilot. He looked like he was going to war.

  He shouted, “She’s back. Let’s move.”

  That was when I thought I must have died. I was afraid it was going to happen again, so I concentrated on the black blades swinging around above my head. I’d never been in a helicopter before. I was afraid of heights, and imagining being so high up in the air made me almost throw up again.

  The blades disappeared, and there was no shield from the rain anymore. The raindrops landed on my cheeks. They were so cold, and all I wanted was for the warmth to return and suck me back up into the air.

  I take a breath and try to remember what happened next, but there’s nothing else to connect me to the week I lost in this bed. Only the sound of the man’s voice.

  “That’s all I remember,” I tell them.

  I’m not sure if what I said made an ounce of sense to either one of them, but they look pleased. Pleased that I spoke about the accident or maybe that I still have the brain capacity to make up such an elaborate story.

  The man grabs my hand and laces his fingers with mine, careful not to jostle the IV. Nothing about his hand is familiar, and I’m left wondering if it’s okay to be touching at all.

  “Who are you?” I ask him, wondering why he still hasn’t told me his name. If he’s someone who saved me, then I want to know. I need to know. “Are you the pilot?”

  He sucks in a breath, and the tears flow harder down his cheeks. There’s a long, uncomfortable pause, and he barely blinks.

  A few seconds later, he clears his throat and says, “Cash. I’m Cash. Your husband.”

  I search his face for anything familiar. A dimple. A wrinkle. Maybe a freckle. But nothing about him triggers a single memory. I should feel more than this. I should have love for the man I married.

  I’m not sure how long ago, but we exchanged vows. Vows I don’t remember. And I’m sure I wore a white dress, probably my dream dress, and I don’t even know if it was made of lace or satin. My first Holy Communion dress was an expensive chiffon, and I hated that itchy material, so I’m sure it couldn’t have been chiffon.

  Cash brushes his finger down the side of my fa
ce, chasing away a tear. I didn’t realize I was crying.

  “I think I want to be alone,” I whisper.

  He pauses and then lets go of me.

  I wait for him to say something, but he just tucks closed fists into his pockets and stares at the floor.

  Brittany places a new bandage across my stomach, and now that I know I’m married, the location of the incision scares me.

  What if I was …

  No, I would remember that.

  Wouldn’t I?

  “Was I pregnant?” I question, as much afraid of the truth as I am of the unknown.

  She fixes the sheet and then places her hand on top of mine, like she’s preparing me for the shock of a lifetime.

  Looking directly into my eyes, she says, “Take a deep breath. I know this is a lot for you to take in all at once. It’ll get easier.”

  What if she’s lying? What if it only gets harder? And why didn’t she answer my question?

  I have a husband.

  I might have a child.

  “Did I have a baby?”

  He or she might have a name. God, I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl. I should know that.

  I swore, if I ever had kids of my own, I’d make them my life. They’d never be overlooked for a business deal or shipped off to a relative’s house because I was too busy to pay them the attention they deserved.

  I might have already messed that up.

  The monitor beeps wildly, and Brittany unsnaps the wires from my chest. It finally shuts up, and I can hear myself think.

  Cash is still crying, and the second our eyes meet, he turns and walks toward the window. His shoulders shake, and he keeps his hands stuffed in his pockets, like he’s afraid to touch anything.

  “You weren’t pregnant,” Brittany explains. “You were bleeding internally, so the surgeon had to open you up and find the source. For a couple of seconds, you flatlined, meaning your heart stopped pumping.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat, wondering if that is why I almost floated away. Could I have been on my way to heaven? Is that what dying feels like, cartwheels in the air, no gravity holding you down?

  “But I came back,” I whisper. Obviously, I came back. I’m in this bed, breathing and talking. “I can still have kids someday?”