Nine Minutes in Heaven

by David Connor

  I nodded. “I heard Laura say something like that after your rehearsal the night I was there.” I could barely say it. “I didn’t do anything. I should have. I was a coward. I should have been your hero then.”

  “You are my hero, Goose. What good would it have done, really? Nothing is going to change her.”

  I thought of my Tom, and then of Jefferson’s Thomas. “There might still be hope.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have much without you. Where would I be if you and Patrick hadn’t taken care of me that night of the blizzard at the store? What you’ve done for me every day since is way more important than what you think you should have said that night.”

  “I hope so.”

  “It is. Anyway, Miss Q has offered to let me play Tuptim.”

  “Cool. What are you thinking?”

  “My voice is too deep.” Carrie smiled. “Really. There’s more to it, of course. Part of me wants to do it, but I think I should stick with the role I have this time.”

  “We’re behind you no matter what. In front of you. Front row.”

  “Maybe next year,” Carrie said. “Maybe when I get to Tennessee, I can start all over there, for my senior year.”

  “You’re moving to Tennessee?” Rip looked to Carrie, and then to Shelby.

  “I figured I would, now that Aunt Shirlene knows and accepts me. I mean, it’s not like I can just, you know, live with you guys a whole ‘nother year.”

  “Um, yeah. It is like, you know, you can live with us a whole ‘nother year if you want to,” Rip said.

  “We’d love it,” Shelby added. “You’ve been great to have around.”

  “Yeah, but with a baby and everything…”

  “Carrie, even in just such a short amount of time, a few months, we’ve formed a family. That’s how we feel. You’re kind of the perfect teenager. I mean, the decision is yours. If you want to be with your aunt down in Tennessee, we won’t pressure you to stay, but if you want to stay, we’re all for it.”

  The hugging after that took a while to come to an end. I received three, two from Carrie and one from Rip, for some unknown reason.

  When I finally got in to see Patrick again, he had just finished up an evaluation with his speech therapist. Maureen gave me a quick rundown of what the doctors had discovered. He was having some issues with word retrieval, vision in his left eye was fuzzy, and they had to watch him for seizures. His recovery was still rather miraculous, and, frankly, unexpected.

  Patrick was nearly bald. The stitches in his head, three different incisions, looked red and almost medieval. Plus, he didn’t have his glasses on. The image of Tom going after him with the baseball bat kept flashing in my mind even more, now that I knew it had actually happened just like that, according to Tate Wishum from Florida. As I wheeled up close to the bed and laid my head on Patrick’s shoulder, however, I decided to play as if everything was normal, all chipper, mushy and goofy. “You’re a miracle, they tell me. I already knew.”

  “I love you,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to say that for hours, and then kiss you.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “It’ll hurt worse if we don’t.”

  Our lips barely touched.

  “Good?” I asked.

  “For now. Stay close, so I can see you.”

  “How close?” I leaned in.

  “Closer.”

  “How’s this?”

  “Closer.”

  “Better?”

  “Even closer.”

  With much of my body on the bed, our lips brushed again.

  “That’s good,” Patrick said. “I can’t wait to get new glasses. Dopey me, I went through all my spares. Mom’s going to pick up a pair in the morning.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’m going to have to wear an eyepatch four hours a day.”

  “Argh.”

  “Good thing I still have the beard, if not the hair.”

  “I have a titanium peg leg on the inside. I’ll be setting of airport security…if I ever get on a plane again.”

  “We’ll be pirates together.”

  “Pirates, angels, and ghosts. We know what to be for the next three Halloweens.”

  “I’m going to still look like Frankenstein for Easter, though.”

  “I always thought he was hot,” I said.

  “Mmm.”

  Patrick liked my next kiss. “I can’t wait to sign your cast, once I learn how to write again. I’m glad you can still draw.”

  The sketches I’d left behind were back on the bed.

  “Me, too. You sound good.”

  “I feel okay,” Patrick claimed. “Groggy. Occasionally frustrated when I see an object and can’t think of the name of it. They tell me that could last a while.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For?”

  “For knowing Tom. For bringing him into your life.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t make him stay at the pharmacy, to keep him from getting to you. I kept him arguing, until I blacked out.”

  “I wish you couldn’t remember that.”

  “Well, we’re not going to waste time on any of that stuff.” Patrick washed his hands of it, then brought mine to his mouth and kissed my ring. I did the same to his.

  “You remember why you have this silly piece of plastic on your finger?” I asked.

  “Because I was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle for an evening, and you and I are getting married.”

  “Right.”

  “They’ve given me flashcards to get back the other stuff,” Patrick said.

  “Ah.” I picked them up and shuffled through them.

  “Show me one.”

  “Okay.” I went through a couple and chose a horse. “What’s this?”

  Patrick stared at it a moment. He pursed his lips, then turned them down in a frown. “A dog?”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just turned it face down on his tray table.

  “You have to tell me when I get it wrong.”

  “Who says you got it wrong?”

  “Your expression. Otherwise, I’ll never learn.”

  His words came so well when speaking. It was hard to believe he didn’t know a horse from a dog, but that was not unusual, he claimed, according to what his speech therapist had told him.

  “It’s a horse,” I said. “How about this one.”

  “Ah. That’s easy. That’s a heart.”

  “Very good.”

  “I know about those.” He pulled his hospital gown down from the top. “See?”

  “You got it fixed.”

  Both initials hung from a new chain from Patrick’s neck.

  “My sister, Kimmie, bought a new chain from down in the gift shop. We have to get one for you.”

  “Already did.” My gown was tied too tight at the top, so I raised it from the bottom, after checking to make sure no one was around to see me flash my acorn underpants at Patrick. Tucking the hem of the gown under my chin, I showed him the necklace with two brand new letters on it. “Rip and Shelby stopped at Cost-Mart on their way over this morning. I told them about giving both to you, and how you woke up then, like a miracle. So, they bought me two, and the chain.”

  “Nice.” Patrick had looked at the letters only a moment. Now, he was staring at my crotch. “Nice.”

  I let the gown fall back to my knees. “I don’t want to over-excite you.”

  “Grr.” Patrick growled. “I was just trying to remember what was in your underwear.”

  “Oh.”

  “On,” he said. “I swear, I meant to say, ‘on your underwear.’ I do fondly recall what’s in them.”

  “Happy to know that. Look again.” I showed him, uncovering only one leg. “Anything coming back to you?”

  “A lot of stuff.” He smiled. “A whole lot of stuff about being in bed with you on Valentine’s Day. How long ago was that?”

  “About seven weeks or so.”

  “I remember you without underwear on. With nothing on.�
�

  “That’s good.”

  “But still, I can’t think of what those things are called.”

  I fixed myself and wheeled closer again. “Acorns.”

  “Oh.”

  “For Jefferson and Calvin…Daniel, I mean.”

  “Excuse me.” Detective Tate Grumpy Pants was at the curtain.

  “Yes. Daniel,” Patrick said. “Calvin is Daniel, now.”

  “Right. Whoa. How did you know that?”

  “I’m not sure, but is that him?”

  “This again?” Tate asked.

  “Except this time, there’s someone else who can back up my story.”

  “Another guy with a hole in his head?”

  “Three holes.” Patrick tilted forward to show them off. “But that’s beside the point.”

  “I talked to you about the wedding before you woke up,” I reminded him. “The whole story. Daniel and Jefferson got married. You and I were there.”

  “We fell down!” Patrick exclaimed.

  “Yes!” I shushed myself.

  “The drawings…,” Patrick said.

  “Oh, yeah.” I’d forgotten he was looking at those.

  “But I think I was there, too, Goose, and in Heaven…with you on a boat?”

  “Singing the theme from Titanic.”

  “Well, that’s bad juju,” Patrick said.

  “Which is exactly…”

  “What you said. I remember! Is that possible? That I was there for real this time, to all those places?” he asked.

  “Look, I’m not interested in any of that,” Tate told us.

  “I forgot you were still there.”

  “All I really care about,” he said back to me, “is the crime allegedly perpetrated against you, not your love story, and certainly not your fantasies.”

  “He’s definitely not Daniel,” Patrick decided.

  “Definitely not.”

  I stayed while Tate Wishum asked Patrick many of the same questions he’d asked me. We discussed more shared recollections of the prior days’ events afterward, but then, suddenly, Patrick’s awed and happy expression fell away. “The last time, Daniel and Jefferson were saying goodbye?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” he asked me.

  I shrugged. “I wish I knew.”

  “It sure felt like goodbye.”

  “It did,” I said. “Maybe only because you were coming back to this side of the light. We don’t get to hang so much, with two of us here and two of us there.”

  “You think?”

  I shrugged again. “Maybe we’ll find out soon. There are always signs.”

  “Patrick needs to rest, now.” It was Angela, with a little cup and a pitcher of water.

  “No,” Patrick said.

  “Yes.” I was on Angela’s side. “You need to get stronger…better.” Leaning in for a gentle kiss, my hand ended up under Patrick’s pillow, as I went back to him for two, then three, then a fourth.

  Angela cleared her throat but was still all smiles.

  “Okay, okay. What’s this?” I gasped.

  “My, how I’ve missed that sound.”

  “As I recall, I gasped several times, even on the other side. Look.”

  Patrick gasped, too.

  “Apparently we’ve been together long enough to start picking up one another’s habits.”

  “Where did that come from?” He took the perfect, green oak leaf from my hand. I still held a few pieces of straw. “From you?”

  “I wish,” I said. “It would have been romantic as hell. Except, I haven’t been out of this wing of this hospital, and I wouldn’t know where to get an oak leaf in New York in April even if I was. It was all just…there.”

  “From Daniel or Jefferson, straw from the wedding reception in the barn. Two leaves?”

  I checked. “No. Just the one.” That was somewhat disappointing. “Like the cardinal on the branch. Just the one.”

  “Unless there’s one under your pillow.”

  “I’ll check there, too, when I get back to bed.”

  I did. The gift of a single oak tree leaf was special, just for Patrick. Did it mean something, or was it just a sign for him that he could communicate with Jefferson and Daniel now, too?

  * * * *

  I was released the next morning. One day dead, two alive, my insurance company was ready to give me the boot. I couldn’t blame them. The tiny room and uncomfortable bed cost more per night than Patrick and I would have spent on one for our honeymoon, had it not occurred on a boat in heaven. I hated leaving him behind, but I knew I could visit him, and I’d be back there the next day to continue physical therapy for my leg. I was all packed, waiting for Rip and Shelby to come pick me up, when Steve, the EMT stopped in.

  “Hey, Blue Eyes, remember me?”

  “I do. How you doing?” I wheeled over to shake his hand.

  “Doing well. Glad to see you and Patrick are coming along, too.”

  “They call him a miracle,” I said.

  “I believe in those.” Steve sat on the corner of my bed. Though officially, it wasn’t mine anymore. “I like to follow up on them, sometimes,” he said. “We had a guy a few years ago who was gone. Dead. Kaput.” Steve cringed. “Sorry. Occupational hazard. Sometimes I’m too blunt for my own good. But the poor guy, there was no way he should have made it, no medical reasoning at all.”

  “But he did?”

  “He did. Alive and kicking, and will continue to for quite some time, according to his doctor.”

  “Another miracle.”

  “Exactly. Remember us talking about the ghost stuff when you were in and out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I follow all that. There’s so much contradictory information out there. I devour it, though. I’m a glutton for any piece I can get. So, the day this all happened with that other guy, I get home from my run, shower, and crawl into bed, still thinking about how he must have had some sort of guardian angel that saved his life. I’m scouring the internet, and stumble upon this podcast I have never listened to in my life, never even heard of. The topic is…guardian angels.”

  “Nice dramatic pause.”

  “I thought so. This woman is on there, talking to the podcaster about how she was hit by a car two days before she was supposed adopt this baby over in Cambodia. Finally becoming a mother was like her dream come true. After so many years of going through a bunch of red tape, she is finally going to get on a plane and bring home her brand-new daughter, but—Bam!”

  “Dang.”

  “Right? She dies. She swears she does, but then, she just wakes up, with hardly any injuries, and miraculously, she is able to make her flight the next night.”

  “What?”

  “Hey, this is what she claims. Who am I to judge?”

  “True that. Who am I?”

  “She tells the podcaster this angel who helped her cross over was a beautiful blond woman with one blue eye and one green. ‘I’ll never forget those eyes,’ she says. She also claims she told said angel all about how excited she was to finally be able to rescue this precious baby and fill her own heart at the same time.”

  “Aww.”

  “So, after that, saying all that to her angel, next thing you know, she’s awake, like I said. She gets her baby, and is on the flight coming home, and who do you suppose her flight attendant is?”

  I leaned closer. “I don’t know.”

  “She didn’t either,” Steve said.

  “Well, that was anticlimactic.”

  “Except, she was a beautiful blond woman with one blue eye and one green, eyes that were recognizable immediately.”

  “Hmm.”

  “This woman swore her guardian angel gave up her afterlife, so she, the woman who died, could come back to this one. Sorry, I don’t know the names.”

  “No prob. That might be a leap, though.”

  “Maybe. This podcaster claims it happens, though. He calls himself gifted, like you.”

  “I ain�
��t never called myself that.”

  Steve smiled.

  “What proof did he have, of the guardian angel theory, I mean?” I asked him.

  “Well, not much. He says people think he’s nuts,” Steve relayed. “The woman on the show that night said people called her the same thing.”

  “A lot of people would. That, or they’d blame the trauma to her head.”

  “He swore he was going to follow up, but he hasn’t reported anything back on the situation, yet.”

  “You think he’s a con?” I asked.

  “No. Just the opposite. I think he would have invented some BS, just to try to prove he wasn’t. The fact he says he hasn’t gotten anything more says to me he’s maybe being honest. He does readings and stuff for other people, though, so, who knows?”

  “You should call in sometime, or log in, or whatever. Share your story or get a reading.”

  Steve stood. “Maybe I will. I have two stories now, if you wouldn’t mind me talking about you a little.”

  “Give me an alias. Call me…Milo Ventimiglia.”

  “Ha. Or something else.”

  “You found that podcast out of nowhere. Look for other signs, listen for communication from other places,” I suggested. “Maybe you’re gifted.”

  “Maybe.” Steve moved toward my window and looked up at the sky. “That’s, like, incredible to think. If a person dies, but they have more to do here on Earth, their guardian angel will give up his afterlife, so his ward or dependent…the being he’s in charge of, whatever you call it, can live? Talk about second chances.”

  “Right?” While Steve was quiet, staring into the blue, I kept trying to pull down my pant leg, the one no longer there, because we had to turn one side of my other pair of black jeans into shorts to fit over the cast. It looked funny whenever I would catch my cardinal boxers sticking out. “The ultimate sacrifice.”

  Steve turned back to me. “You think it’s true?”

  “You’re asking me?” At that moment, I did think it was true. “Sometimes, I’m certain what I see is real as can be. Other times…”

  “Yeah. I can understand that, because as I listened to this show live, I was all in, a hundred percent, because of this guy I was talking about. Other guys in my field have had other cases just as unexplainable. It would be kind of cool to think someone is around to protect us all and care so unselfishly like that.” Steve headed for the door.