Until I Die Again [On The Way To Heaven] (Soul Change Novel) (3 page)

Jamie turned to his mother, squeezing her hand in question, trying to read those beautiful, icy blue eyes of hers for an answer. As usual, they revealed nothing, but the slightest nod of her head confirmed it.

“She’ll recuperate at my mother’s home in Los Almeda,” Jamie announced.

Velvet spoke up. “I don’t think that’s appropriate, considering the circumstances. She should…”

“She’s staying with us. You don’t have the time, nor the room, to house her comfortably.” She also didn’t have the wits, but he wasn’t going to get into that. “Besides, she’ll be closer to the hospital. When she’s up to it, she can do whatever she pleases.”

Dr. Hughes stood up, holding his clipboard against his chest. “Good. We’ve moved her to a regular room, 425. You can go in to see her now if you’d like.”

After hours of being treated like a lab specimen, Chris was escorted to her new room. All those tests had only confirmed one thing in her mind. No one had a medical explanation for her miraculous recovery, except that it
was
a miracle, as one doctor had whispered reverently. Oh, how she wanted to tell someone about her experience, about the love and peace, and the light.

As soon as the nurse tucked her into her crisp, cold sheets and left her alone, Chris shoved out of bed and studied herself again. It still wasn’t her body. Her hands moved up to her face, touching her cheeks, following the lines of her bones. What did she look like now? She had to find out.

After a wary glance toward the door, she climbed out of bed and walked stiffly to the bathroom. She felt the hesitation of meeting someone new.
Being afraid is silly. It’s still you, Chris.

For the first time she was able to do more than snatch a vague reflection off the face of some monitor. A deep breath served to inject a few ounces of bravery into her, and she stepped up to the mirror and stared. A stranger stared back. She touched the mirror, just to make sure it wasn’t a window into her neighbor’s bathroom. A long, slender hand moved with her to touch the glass.

Chris moved back, taking in the stranger’s reflection. Blonde hair hung limply around her face, looking flat and oily. Her nose was petite; her lips shapely, not too large, not too small. Her eyes were a deep blue, set just a little too far apart. And her body… Chris shook her head. Pulling the thin, cotton gown tight from the back, her curves showed through. What was she going to do with a body like that?

“What are you doing out of bed?”

A concerned male voice rocked her out of her thoughts, and she whirled around. The man was definitely not a nurse, dressed in a red shirt and black jeans. He walked right into the bathroom with her and hugged her fiercely before pulling her back to bed.

“Leave it to you, Hallie, to come back from the brink of death and be worried about how you look. Don’t you know you’re beautiful, no matter what? Come back and lie down, dear.”

Chris had been about to object to this stranger’s forwardness when his familiarity indicated he was someone else she was supposed to know.
Oh, boy.
She followed him to her bed and let him tuck her back under the sheets. His hair hung in strands around his face, and beneath thick glasses, she saw worry and strain grow into love. He knelt on one knee beside her bed and took her hand in his, planting a long, wet kiss on it.

“I would have been here sooner, but that damn husb—” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m here now, you’re here.” He squeezed her hand, and his brown eyes grew shiny with tears. “I thought I’d lost you. My heart would have shriveled up like a pea without you.”

“To match your brain?” Jamie’s flat voice asked from the doorway.

The man stood, still gripping Chris’s hand. She wanted to pull free but was too mesmerized by the fire in Jamie’s eyes to move.

Jamie stepped forward, power in his strides. “Who let you in here, Mick?”

“You can’t restrict her visitors anymore, James. Besides, she needs me.” Mick tilted his head up, as if daring Jamie to challenge him.

Jamie’s gaze flicked to her, then back to Mick. His slight smile was a bit crooked. “How can she need you if she doesn’t know who you are?”

Mick’s panicked expression heightened when he looked at her. He leaned closer and stared into her eyes. “You know me, darling, don’t you?”

Fatigue was beginning to shroud her, and she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and not answer any more questions. But she couldn’t ignore the earnest face hovering in front of hers. “You… you’re Mick, Hall—” She’d started to say
Hallie’s lover
, as if talking about someone else’s life. It was, of course.in a sense. Jamie’s expression bit into her, though, his obvious disappointment in her remembrance of Mick. Actually she’d only deduced his identity.

Mick grinned triumphantly. “When she’s released, I’m taking her home with me.”

Jamie’s voice returned to the flatness it had earlier, and his eyes narrowed. “As long as I’m her husband, she’s my responsibility. At least until she gets better.”

Mick’s face reddened. “Hallie’s a grown woman. She can do what she wants.” He turned to her and asked, “Do you want me to take care of you?”

“She can stay with me, too,” Hallie’s mother added from her place behind Jamie. “Who do you want to stay with, darling?”

Chris looked at the faces around her as they waited for her response. Mick appeared as though his life hung on the balance of her answer. Honestly, he gave her the creeps. Velvet didn’t inspire much confidence in her caretaking skills. Jamie looked resolute, despite offering a choice. She looked at each face, not sure where they fit into Hallie’s life. Her gaze drew back to Jamie. “I want to stay with you…”

Mick dropped her hand and took a step back. Velvet crossed her arms over her large chest and pursed her lips. But Jamie looked the most surprised of all. She left them all and slipped into a haven of darkness.

Sometime later, Jamie’s voice pulled her from sleep again, much like the day she had come out of her coma. This time another male voice spoke to him, in soft, hushed tones. It sounded like Dr. Hughes’ voice. “Have you given any thought to our earlier conversation?”

“You mean what to do with her if she’s… brain damaged?”

Chris strained to hear their whispers coming from the far side of the room. She kept perfectly still, holding her breath.

“Right now all we know for sure is that she’s lost a good deal of her memory. Her friends and family can deal with that. But if she experiences lapses in logic and reality, or starts having seizures, it may be too much to handle. Remember, thinking about it won’t make it happen. It’s better to be prepared.”

“I know that.” After a pause, Jamie said, “What about the Sharp Rehabilitation Center in Sacramento? You said that was the best in the area.”

“Absolutely. They’ll work with her, take care of her as long as she needs it. She’d make friends there. And maybe some of their advanced methods would help her to eventually become independent again.”

“But we don’t know that she has any damage, right?”

“There seems to be no indication yet. But keep an eye out for unusual behavior in the next few weeks. If she…”

Dr. Hughes’ voice drifted out into the hallway and was swallowed in hall noise as the door opened, then closed. Her eyes snapped open. The Sharp Rehabilitation Center? A mental hospital? What would they think if she told them that her real name was Chris Copestakes from Colorado, that she had died, and God had given her a second chance in Hallie’s body? Would that be considered a lapse in logic? They would surely think she was brain damaged. Or just plain crazy. Then off to the Sharp Rehabilitation Center they would send her, just like her Uncle Tom.

She had vivid memories of Tom, playing tag with her and her sisters in the yard, helping in the kitchen during the holidays. He hadn’t acted crazy, but her mom had confided that he was manic depressive. He had an episode that put him in a mental hospital.

Her mother visited him every Saturday afternoon. She told Chris that if she didn’t go, he would cry out for his sister at the top of his lungs, pounding on the walls until the orderlies restrained him. Chris went with her mother one time, for support. And curiosity.

The sprawling one-story building had smelled like a hospital, sterile with the faint odor of decay and urine. What struck Chris the hardest was the absence of hope in everyone’s eyes. Nurses and doctors looked as much like zombies as the patients did, bringing the gown-clad man who had once been a baseball player into the visitor’s room with mechanical efficiency.

The sight of him had horrified her: not the Tom she remembered but a shell of the man, vacant eyes, fits of irritability over nothing. She had stared at his fingers, covered with spots of red flesh where he continually picked at the cuticles. He had chewed his nails to the bloody quick.

It was the medication, her mother said, trying in vain to get it changed to something better.

Chris shut the memory away, as she had done so many times during her life. She would not go to a mental hospital.

CHAPTER 2

Chris’s stay at the hospital was finally behind her; four miles behind her to be exact. Los AlmedaAlmeda sprawled lazily among the hills and valleys of Southern California. Chris immersed herself in the scenery, trying to absorb the life that pulsed everywhere around her. Everything had a new vibrancy, a new meaning to her. Where did each tree fit into the scheme of life? What of the creatures that depended on that tree to live? There were so many things to think about now, so many different ways of looking at everything around her. She watched the wild shadows dance across Jamie’s face as they passed a park with towering eucalyptus trees.

The town looked as if it had been plucked from Mexico and cleaned up for the wealthy, with its picturesque red tile roofs and adobe-style shopping centers. Flowers bloomed everywhere, and palm trees swayed on their ridiculously tall, skinny trunks in the afternoon breezes.

As they headed inland, the town quickly turned rural, and shopping centers turned into country clubs and nurseries. Sprawling homes were perched on hillsides to catch a glimpse of the ocean, and she felt even more out of place from her middle class, small town origins.

She had seen little of the cast of characters in her new life during her last three days at the hospital. The Sharp Rehabilitation Center All plagued her thoughts. Now she had a chance to prove that her mind was intact, if in the wrong body. Jamie had picked her up at the hospital that morning, but a glimpse of Mick lurking near the lobby had sent an eerie panic pulsing through her. After the scene in her room that day with Jamie and Mick, she was glad Jamie hadn’t spotted him. Now she occasionally glanced back to check for suspicious cars.

“Mick’s not back there,” Jamie said in a matter of fact way.

Chris looked at him with widened eyes. “You saw him at the hospital?”

Jamie stared ahead. “Did you?”

“Only in the lobby. He looked like he was hiding.”

“He was spying on you. He likes to do that.”

She tried to still the shudder that ran through her. “Why?”

His shrug was pronounced, perhaps not as casual as he might have intended. “I never could figure the guy out. Or your attraction to him.”

She looked at his profile, at the blond bristles that covered his chin and jaw, the faint darkness beneath his eyes for lack of sleep. Even so, he was far better looking than Mick could ever be.

“You’re not angry about… the affair?” She didn’t want to claim it as her own by saying ‘
my
affair’.

“We all make our choices. Sometimes they’re not the right ones, but we have to live with them.”

Was he talking about Hallie’s choice to cheat or his choice to marry her? The short conversation left tension in the confined space of the car. Chris wasn’t sure what else to say. Exactly where these two men fit into her life wasn’t clear yet. In fact, where
she
fit into her life wasn’t clear.

They drove farther up into hills spotted with brown and green sagebrush in bloom, white stalks reaching for the sky. Red tile roofs dotted the hills to the south, and huge boulders created bald spots on the mountains to the north and east. The wavy, beige strip snaking horizontally along the side of one of the mountains caught her eye. She had heard about the flumes that brought water to cities with none of their own.

Jamie drove between two wrought iron gates and onto a zigzagging drive. Through the haze, she could see the deep blue of the ocean in the distance. The grounds that stretched out on either side looked like a golf course, with rolling hills, ponds and perfectly manicured grass. The house itself was magnificent, a fortress of the rich. It was set off from the other homes in the distance by its charcoal tile roof. She closed her mouth and tried to hide her awestruck expression.

When they pulled into the circular drive, one of the massive front doors opened, and a tall, thin man dressed like a butler stepped outside. She realized that he actually was a butler when he walked over and opened her door before Jamie could get around the car.

“Good to see you feeling better, Mrs. DiBarto,” he said in a dull voice, no smile to indicate he felt the least bit glad to see her alive.

Jamie helped her out of the car, and she stood a little shakily in the sunshine. The butler pulled a couple of suitcases out of the trunk and walked inside. A short, blonde woman in her early fifties passed him on the way out. She issued some instructions to the butler, then continued walking toward them. The woman’s face glowed with a smile as she reached up and bussed Jamie on his cheek.

Chris could see some resemblance between them, and guessed her to be his mother. She looked like the perfect Italian mother, warm and loving. It made her ache for her own parents, still alive and mourning her death. When the woman turned to her, that warmth froze over, and her steel blue eyes were colder than Jamie’s when he’d walked in and seen Mick at the hospital.

Jamie turned his mother toward Chris. “Do you remember her?”