Nine Minutes in Heaven

by David Connor

  “Going somewhere?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get back in that bed.” It was Sunny, the ER nurse.

  “Aren’t you out of your jurisdiction? This is ICU, not the ER.”

  “Anyone in the know calls it the ED these days. And I go where I’m needed. Get back in that bed.”

  “No. My orthopedic surgeon wants me to walk up and down the hall.”

  “Does he?”

  “Yes.”

  She checked my orders and notes. “Says here you’re to get up tomorrow.”

  “Close enough. Come on. I want to see Patrick.”

  “Do you even know where he is?” Sunny stared me down.

  “He’s close.” I felt it. “I’ll check every room until I find him.”

  “The patients who aren’t Patrick will love that.”

  “Maybe I’ll find him on the first try.” I wondered if Sunny could tell I was about to collapse just from trying to stand up for fifteen seconds.

  “I know where he is.”

  “And?”

  “If you let me check you over…I’ll maybe take you to him in the morning.”

  Another choice. Did I trust Sunny or didn’t I?

  She took a step closer. “Come on. I don’t want to have to pick you up off the floor. You’re not a large man, but still…”

  “I miss him.” My legs gave out just as my resolve did, and I crumbled, body and soul. Fortunately, Sunny was there to break my fall.

  “I know you do, boo.” She helped me get all the way back in bed. “Tomorrow. I promise. We’ll even make sure your underwear isn’t on backwards, first.”

  “Yeah. Well, getting them on by myself wasn’t easy, so…”

  “Someone would have helped you with that, too. Stop being so stubborn.” After checking me all over and giving me some Advil, Sunny tucked me in, either to make me more comfortable or to make it harder to escape. I wasn’t sure which. “Anything else?”

  “My sketch pad, if you don’t mind.”

  “No problem.” She looked at the one I’d been working on last. “You’re very good. This looks just like him.”

  “Thank you. I’m glad the accident…I’m glad Tom didn’t take that away from me.”

  “Oh. I almost forgot. Here.” She reached into the pocket of her Tweety Bird scrubs. “Your ring.”

  “Wow. Thank you.”

  Sunny handed over the braid of four colorful paperclips, which I slipped on my ring finger. “Patrick…”

  “Yes. Not your little boy.” She smiled.

  “The man I’m going to marry.”

  “I picked this up, too.” She went back to the pocket. “It seemed as if you wanted it. I don’t get why. I almost threw it away, but then I didn’t.”

  “Patrick’s ring!” When Sunny looked at me funny, I told her the story.

  “That is dumb as hell and just as sweet.” She put the round tied strip of vinyl in my hand and closed my fingers around it.

  “Sums it up, I guess. He made me this.” I showed her mine again. “And that was what he got in return.”

  “Tomorrow, you can slip it back on his finger.”

  “Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.” I held it in my hand as if it was the Crown Jewels.

  “We can hope, though. Now, lie back down and sleep.”

  “It’s seven-thirty.”

  “Then draw some more. Just don’t move from that bed. It’s not just the leg, you know. You banged your head up pretty good, too. If you don’t heal, or if you hurt yourself worse, what will Patrick do then?”

  “I’ll behave.”

  “You better.”

  I had no choice. I couldn’t move without help.

  Unable to sleep, I wore down the points of several pencils, creating picture after picture, until my hand started to hurt. Then, I tried to watch TV. Bored with that after ten minutes, I fell asleep, woke up, and then sketched some more. I was right in the middle of a family portrait, when I noticed a shadow at the door.

  “Hi.”

  “Oh. I didn’t mean to stare. Paddy said he never liked to disturb you while you’re drawing.”

  “It’s okay. Come in, Mrs. O’Hanlon…or…”

  “Maureen, please.”

  “Maureen. How is Paddy?” That made me smile.

  “No worse.”

  Like her son, she was a glass half full kind of person.

  “Do you call him that?” she asked.

  “Uh…no. I haven’t, not yet. Please, sit down.”

  “Nicknames take a while, sometimes.”

  I thought of him calling me Love Camel but didn’t think that would be appropriate to share. I almost cried, then, thinking about how I might never get the chance to come up with one for him.

  Maureen pulled the chair closer to the bed, then broke the awkward silence with, “O’Hara, to O’Hanlon, to Ohashi, just by chance, I swear. I didn’t marry either of my husbands just to keep the same initials on my fancy scarves and purses.”

  “Maureen O’Hara…was that on purpose?”

  “Yes. My mother loved old movies. It could have been worse. I could have been Scarlet.”

  When I went to sit up, the sketch I’d been working on fell to the floor. Maureen reached for it before I could even think of trying to bend that far.

  “You’re very talented. That’s Paddy.”

  “Yes.”

  “With a lot less hair than he used to have. They only took off one patch, but I had to even it out. Such a motherly thing to do.” She shrugged. “He cared about his appearance.”

  “Yes. So many different neckties.”

  Patrick had a bunch.

  “So many. Have you seen him since he’s been here?” Maureen asked.

  I didn’t know how to answer that.

  “I like the way you see him,” she said, making it so I didn’t have to. “So handsome and happy.”

  “He makes it easy.”

  “And that’s you.” She pointed.

  “Yes.”

  “And the children?”

  “Ours,” I said. “Someday…Patrick said he wanted six.”

  “He does love children, and he’s good with them. He has siblings now of every age from forty to six, and nieces and nephews, too. I hope he gets to be a father.” Maureen shifted in her seat. “Has he told you much about our…my…reaction to him being bisexual?”

  Patrick’s words came back, like before. “My dad doesn’t really get the concept of fluid sexuality. He liked my ex-wife but wasn’t keen on the next person I was serious with. His name was Estefan. Mom is okay with it, though, especially Monday through Saturday. On Sundays, she prays I’ll be forgiven.” Once again, not wanting to share them, I was left not knowing what to say.

  “I probably said all the wrong things at first, Goose. May I call you Goose?”

  “Everyone does.”

  “I didn’t get it. I prayed and prayed for Paddy to fall in love again. Paddy loves to be in love. He loves everyone, and dated a lot of men and women, but not until you came along did I see that spark in him again, maybe even for the first time. My prayers were answered. I wasn’t about to question it. I was taught a lesson. Do you want to go see him, or would that be too hard on you?”

  “No.” I shot up and forced a smile to hide the grimace the act brought on. “Yes. I want to. The nurse said tomorrow.”

  “It is tomorrow. Let’s do it now.”

  “I can’t walk.”

  “I’ll carry you.”

  Maureen laughed before I could form a response. I was pretty sure my expression had said it all, anyway.

  “They give me professional courtesy around here, because I told them I’m a nurse. No one is kinder, more loyal, or bossier than a nurse. There are four in our family.”

  I’d been told Maureen owned her own beauty salon.

  “Yes,” she said, seeing my wheels turning. “I lied. Such a motherly thing to do.”

  Maureen exited around the corner for barely three seconds, and the
n returned with a wheelchair.

  “What do you need?” she asked.

  “Umm.” I grabbed Patrick’s engagement ring. “My sketches, I guess. I want to show them to Patrick.”

  “Excellent. All of them?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Definitely. He’ll want to see all of them.”

  Maureen helped me settle into the wheelchair, checking my IV, first at the rack, and then on the back of my hand, as if she actually was a medical professional.

  “A little cheap with the tape around here,” she commented. “What’s this?”

  Her hand was on the small lump on my chest. “The rest of the tape from my hand,” I said.

  When left alone earlier, I’d been holding the initial charms that Carrie had returned to me. I wanted them close to my heart again. Since both chains were broken, I’d taken a strip of the tape from my IV needle and had used it to attach the letter G and the letter P to my chest. When I explained that to Maureen, she stopped what she was doing down by my feet and took a deep breath.

  “Oh.” After just the one word, she lifted my cast and gently fit it into the leg support on the wheelchair. “No wonder he loves you,” she added after that. “I’m going to position myself right in front of the ICU nurse’s desk. I know their routine. Both of them are away from it right now. When they return, I will make sure neither heads down to Paddy’s room. Everyone else is gone. I’m bossy, too.”

  I smiled.

  “It’ll be just the two of you for as long as you want.”

  We made it to Patrick’s room without being detected.

  “Hey, you.” I tried to keep my voice steady as I took in his injuries. A large lump on one temple was purple and black. The eye beside it was swollen in a way that made it look as if he wouldn’t be able to open it, even if he could awaken.

  “Please, wake up.”

  The hair, the full head of red, was down to a buzz cut, which allowed so many scrapes, cuts, and raw looking incisions to show, and the tube between his puffy lips looked really uncomfortable and invasive. More bruising and abrasions discolored the fair skin on his still handsome face. He would always be that to me. I reached out to touch there but feared it might hurt him. Even one of his ears was mangled and raw.

  “God. What did he do to you?”

  It was way worse in this realm than it had looked when I hovered as a ghost or something like it.

  “Please, wake up.” I wanted so desperately for Patrick to close his fingers around mine when I took his hand, but he didn’t. “I love you, Patrick.” There was life there. I felt it, even without the machine that announced every breath it was helping him take. “You are still beautiful to me.” I kissed his hand, and then my own, three fingers I touched to his lips. “If I could stand, I’d give you a better one. Give me a minute to rest, and I will.”

  All of Patrick’s injuries were from the neck up. I imagined Tom going at him with the commemorative baseball bat from the wall, and then did everything I could to get that scene out of my mind.

  “I’m so, so sorry.” I fought back tears, because I wanted to try to only put out positive energy. I believed in that now, because of Jefferson and Daniel. Energy was powerful. When arms, and hands, and fingers couldn’t be used for touch, energy was powerful. I had both. I kissed Patrick’s hand again, and then squeezed it gently.

  “So, I brought some pictures—our past, our present, our future…”

  As best as I could, I made my way around the tiny room, spreading out my sketches, placing them everywhere possible, on the dresser, on the small sink’s vanity counter, on Patrick’s bed, on the floor, and upright against every wall when I could get them to stand. I put the one of our wedding, how I imagined it, and then the one of our family—our kids, Wilbur, and some cats—up on the window seat against the pulled down shade. Patrick’s room was just like mine.

  “Remember our night in the tent? That tent seemed bigger than where we are now. There’s the lake, where I first got to see your big, fuzzy, beautiful body.” I pointed to each drawing. “Here’s the store, where we made love; Valentine’s Day, when you promised me happily ever after; Jefferson and Daniel’s wedding, where we fell down before they said ‘Forever…’” I said the word again, “Forever.” No magic came in it for us. “I hope they’re with you, at least. Do you know about Daniel Porter, Jr?”

  I told Patrick all about Carrie and her Aunt Shirlene’s phone call.

  “If I can find some sort of records that prove it, I want to go back to that headstone in Tennessee I saw the night of the reenactment. I’ve always had a feeling that was for Calvin. I want them to place one that says Daniel Porter, Jr, instead. We’ll do that, when we get married by the tree, just like my sketch, just like they did.” I remembered Patrick’s engagement ring. “Oh, yeah.”

  I’d shoved it down into my sock.

  “Mismatched…I got a white cast and a black sock. I told Shelby to bring me some white socks tomorrow. She’s pregnant! Gramma promises this one will be okay. I told Shelby that. I hope nothing goes…Anyway, Gramma said I might have to play superhero. Superheroes save lives.” I’d just remembered saying that to Patrick in Heaven. “That’s something to watch out for. So…your ring. I wish I could be your superhero.”

  There was a part of me that believed just by slipping Patrick’s ring back onto his finger, I would save his life. I half-expected him to open his eyes and be okay, just like that.

  “With this ring…”

  It didn’t happen.

  I sighed. “Six kids, right?” I picked up the family portrait and held it so both of us could see. “We should start right away, so ours and Shell and Rip’s can grow up together. Actually, ours doesn’t have to be a baby. There are so many older kids in need of homes.”

  I took a deep breath, then lifted myself up out of the chair. I offered Patrick a kiss on the cheek, then, the eyelids, ever so gently. Finally, I gave him one on the lips, as best I could, where the tubes were.

  “The ring didn’t do it. The kiss…? Come on, Patrick…Paddy…Big Red.”

  I waited.

  “No, huh?”

  None of the blips on any one of five monitors changed their rhythm.

  “I have been faking my way through the last two days or so, laughing, so other people wouldn’t feel like they had to make me feel better. I was like that all the time, Patrick. Most of the time, before we met. I smiled when I meant it, and more when I didn’t. Both ways, I paid attention to it. ‘Oh. Look. I’m smiling.’ The past few months, I smiled a lot more. I smiled so much, I stopped keeping track. I maybe stopped noticing, because I felt like smiling almost all the time, except when my old habits would take over, and I’d worry. I’m better, not done. Maybe we can work on it some more together. Maybe.”

  I wanted to throw something.

  “Fuck!”

  The force I put into tearing up the drawing of the future that would never be now hurt my busted ribs.

  “I don’t know how to say goodbye to you, so you can’t fucking leave me. It’s selfish, but I don’t even care. I saw our Heaven together, Patrick. I can’t wait that long, though. I saw yours. I saw you standing on that boat surrounded by people, and I’m pretty sure you’ll be happy there without me, but son of a bitch, I want you here.” Twisting my hospital gown in my busted up hand, I tried to make the pain there even worse. I wanted to feel anything except the feelings I felt. “The man that put us here made me feel like no one could ever love me. You made me feel like someone could. I love you back, Patrick, so wake up, now, okay? Please…”

  Nothing happened.

  “You would if you could. I know that.” I looked up at the ceiling. “Jefferson. Can you do something for us? A favor. I wonder if you’d play wedding officiate for us? ‘Dearly beloved,’ and all that?” I wiped my eyes. “If you’re staying in Heaven without me, Patrick O’Hanlon, I’m going to make sure we’re married, just so someone else doesn’t try to snatch you up. ‘Do you take this man to be your l
ovingly wedded spouse?’ Just like that, Jefferson. We’ll say, ‘I do.’ Can you say that, Patrick? I’d do anything to hear your voice. I’d give you mine, even if I had to stay silent forever.”

  I raised my gown, flashing quite a bit of body luckily no one else was there to see. The adhesive pulled my chest hair when I yanked at the tape to get to the letter charms. “I didn’t bring another set of rings, so these will have to do.”

  Rather than give Patrick back the G, the one he’d worn for barely a day, I decided to offer the P.

  “I know this isn’t how we wore them before, but hear me out. Maybe I’m being selfish again, but I want to keep the one that was against your skin, there where your heart beats. The P was against mine. My heart is beating just fine, so, maybe that will help yours, okay?”

  I pulled back the blanket covering Patrick, bit my lip, and then went up his gown from the bottom. Warmth came from his leg, and then below his pelvic bone. Though temptation and desperation had had me considering something else, I lingered there only a moment.

  I put my palm to his chest when I got there, against the prickliness of new hair, with the letter charm touching both Patrick’s skin and mine. Surely, that would create a miracle, especially with the aid of my very own angels, who had promised several times to always look out for me.

  “Come on, guys. I’m running out of fairy tale moments. I’m running out of ideas. I’m running out of hope.”

  I fixed Patrick’s gown and then his blanket. I took his hand, and put it to my own heart, and then my cheek. Resting against it, IV drugs and Advil got the better of me. My eyelids got heavy, and I let myself go back to Tennessee in the 1800s, where the celebration of forever continued.

  Good dreams. Good dreams.

  “One more time around!” Jefferson hollered.

  Though my legs were weary, and my arm was sore from linking at the elbows and swinging three grown men one at a time, I’d suck it up. It was, after all, Daniel and Jefferson’s wedding reception, a happy occasion on a day that was anything but in another place in time. Even if the party had dwindled to only four guests, the two grooms and Patrick and me, I was willing to dance all night, if the other three wanted to.

  We stomped and hooted, swung some more, and staggered from just a little bit of whiskey. 1860s booze was hardcore. The kind Jefferson’s brothers supplied was strong enough to melt a horseshoe, I would have betted.