The Color of Destiny (The Color of Heaven Series Book 2) (9 page)

A half hour later, after I finished filing my report, my shift ended. I was about to head home, but felt strangely compelled to take the elevator up to the seventh floor and ask about the woman from the lake, who I couldn’t seem to get out of my head.

“How’s she doing?” I asked at the nurses’ station. “Any improvement?”

“Afraid not,” the male clerk replied. “She’s had lots of visitors, though. There’s a guy who comes and plays guitar for her every night. Nice family.”

I peered down the hall. “What room is she in?”

“Second on the left. I think her sister’s in there now if you want to say hello. I’m sure she’d like to talk to you, since you’re the one who brought her sister back from the dead.”

“It wasn’t really me,” I clarified. “It was the defibrillator that brought her back. I just warmed her up.”

The clerk gave me a look as if to suggest I was being too modest, then gestured for me to go and pay a visit.

I don’t know why I was so uneasy about it. I suppose I didn’t want to face the woman’s sister, who might want to ask me questions about what happened—or thank me, when I had just been doing my job.

Besides, what was there to be thankful for? Life could be total shit sometimes. The woman had been down for at least forty minutes. Odds that she would ever recover, and live a normal life, were slim to nil.

Nevertheless, as if by some irresistible force, I was drawn to that room.

I knocked softly on the open door. When no one responded, I ventured inside to find the room vacant—except for the woman lying comatose on the bed.

The heart monitor beeped a steady rhythm. Vases of flowers covered every available surface, and magazines were spread out on the windowsill. My gaze remained fixed on the woman, however, as I moved closer to where she lay.

She looked far more alive than she had in the back of my ambulance, though she wasn’t exactly radiant at the moment. She was flat on her back with her hands folded across her abdomen, as if she were laid out for a funeral wake. Her lips were dry and cracked. Her complexion was the color of ash.

I leaned over her and studied her face. “What a fighter you must be,” I softly said, “but really, what’s the point?”

She offered no reply.

“Are you even in there?” I asked. “Can you hear me?”

“I think she’s in there,” a voice said from the doorway, and I jumped.

Swinging around, I locked eyes with a slender blonde-haired woman who looked to be about my age. “I’m sorry,” I replied, mortified by the questions I had just asked. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

She glanced down at my uniform. “It’s fine. You must be the paramedic.”

I nodded, and she walked toward me. “I’m Jen, Sophie’s sister.”

“It’s nice to meet you.” We shook hands, and an awkward silence descended upon the room. “I’m sorry about what happened to her,” I said. “The roads were really bad that night.”

Jen backed up to lean against the windowsill. “That’s what they tell me. But listen... thanks for what you did. For bringing her back. We’re very grateful.”

Again, I waved a dismissive hand through the air. “All I did was warm her up in the ambulance. It was the trauma team that brought her back, here at the hospital. They’re the ones you should thank.”

Jen shrugged, as if it was all the same to her. “What do you think her chances are?” she asked me.

“I honestly can’t say,” I replied, not wanting to crush this woman’s hopes, even though I had very little faith of my own that Sophie would ever return to the world of the living, much less to the woman she once was, for I had quit believing in miracles a long time ago. “Every case is different.”

“That’s what the doctors tell me,” Jen said, “but it’s hard, you know.”

I glanced at Sophie and remembered exactly how it felt to wake up in a bed just like this one, then hear the news that my baby was dead. And my sister. And my aunt.

Was there any life left inside of
me
? I wondered. Any hope? Sometimes I felt like a crazy person. I wanted to run screaming down the street, calling out for Mia and my baby.

Sometimes I woke from a dream where I heard my child’s laughter, just as I had in the hospital that day when I chose not to have the abortion. I wanted so badly to go to her.

Did that mean I wanted to die?
That I wanted to go to heaven to be with her?

There were times when the answer was yes. Glenn had certainly given up on living. Once he said, ‘I’d be better off dead. I just hope that when it happens, our daughter will be there at the pearly gates to greet me.’

It had become my task these days to try and prevent the loss of Glenn, too. Maybe that’s why I became a paramedic. Maybe I knew I would one day need these skills to save his life. I certainly didn’t want to lose anyone else that I loved.

I was always looking for the reason behind things. The purpose.

Why, this? Or why, that?

It had been almost twenty years since my accident, but I was still haunted by it—by all that I had lost that night. What was the purpose of that? Of all the suffering? Had I done something to deserve it? Or was it some sort of test?

“Yes, I know.” I quickly shook the memories away and faced Jen. “I really should get going. My husband’s waiting for me at home. It was nice to meet you. I’m sorry about your sister. I hope she’ll be okay.”

Jen appeared startled by my sudden compulsion to leave, but I just couldn’t stay in that room any longer. It was too close to death.

When I arrived home, it was the usual scene. All the lights were off, but the television was on.

I set down my purse and keys and walked through the kitchen. Glenn was passed out on the sofa with an empty bottle of vodka on the floor beside him. I saw the disturbing telltale signs of a cocaine binge—the hand mirror on the coffee table, the straw, and the credit card.

God...!

A sudden violent rage rose up within me. Why was Glenn doing this? I understood that life hadn’t been easy on either of us. We got married too young, hoping to replace the child we lost and find happiness again. But that wasn’t in the cards. Not for us. I’d had a string of miscarriages. My mother was gone now, and we didn’t even speak to my father. We had no family to lean on. There was nothing but grief.

Yet somehow, I managed to cope. Managed to go on living.

Tonight I saw a woman who had fought hard enough to come back from the dead, and she was still fighting to live.

Meanwhile my husband was slowly killing himself, and ruining us financially in the process, for he had been fired from his job three weeks ago, and there was nothing left of our savings. A hot and bitter anger swept through me.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t go on enabling his addictions. It was time to make a change, and I vowed I would not accept any more false promises. Tomorrow I would ask him—one last time—to enter rehab. If he refused, I would tell him to leave. I would cancel all our credit cards, change the locks on the house, and consult a lawyer.

That night, I didn’t cover Glenn with a blanket. I didn’t care about him, or anything. I left him there in the dark, and went straight to bed.

It was a decision I would later regret.

Another Life

Chapter Thirty-two

Ryan Hamilton

I’ve often wondered why bad things happen to good people. Is it simply a matter of luck and timing? Or are certain people born under a shining star that emits magic fairy dust of good fortune? Maybe some folks have superstars for guardian angels, while others get stuck with slackers. It’s simply the luck of the draw. Or unluckiness...

My name is Ryan Hamilton and I should begin by explaining that I am a man of science. I hold a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience, which I received with high honors. I also hold a medical degree. I have been an emergency medicine doctor for twenty-two years and I’ve saved many lives. Should I therefore know more than the average person about life and death, and the endurance of the human spirit? I wish I could say yes, but unfortunately science can only answer so many questions—those that can be tested and proven.

But what about all the magic that surrounds us on a daily basis? What about fate and destiny and crazy, impossible good luck?

We’ve all witnessed miracles of some kind or another in our lives. I’m sure you’ve experienced something that makes you wonder about the existence of a higher power? Cosmic forces? The electrical energy of life? Or God?

I don’t know if God exists, but I do know one thing.

There is much in our world that can’t be explained. Certain events defy reason or possibility. What seems unbelievable can occur before our very eyes and leave us speechless with awe.

For this reason, I feel compelled to tell you my story, because I will continue to be awed by what I witnessed until I draw my last breath.

Chapter Thirty-three

I’m sure, if you’re like most people, you sometimes wince when you remember certain stupid things you did in your youth. Things you’re not proud of, things you would never do today, knowing what you know now. In fact, you probably consider yourself lucky to have gotten away with those bad decisions, but you’re thankful you learned something in the process. For me, those lessons came at a very high price one fateful night in Ontario.

“Pass me another beer,” John said as he glanced over his shoulder at me in the car.

We were seventeen years old. I was seated in the back seat, slouched low with the cooler at my feet.

John was in the front passenger seat, and his girlfriend Lisa was driving. We were on our way to a party we’d gotten wind of earlier that day, way out in the country.

Lisa was our designated driver, but that didn’t count for much. When I handed the beer to John, he broke the seal on the can and passed it to Lisa, who guzzled half of it before handing it back.

“Ahh!” she said in a great exhale. “That’s good, but now I need to burp.” She fisted her chest, opened her mouth wide, and belched like a trucker.

“That’s my girl,” John said, leaning close to kiss her neck. She smiled and turned to kiss him on the mouth, then swerved alarmingly when she returned her attention to the road.

Luckily we were in the middle of nowhere, so there was no oncoming traffic. It was pitch dark and we were speeding along a flat, straight country road with cornfields on either side of us.

I was so drunk I could barely focus on the yellow lines illuminated by the headlights, so I leaned my head against the side window, folded my arms across my chest, and closed my eyes.

o0o

I’ll be the first to admit that I was an idiot when I was seventeen—a quintessential angry young man but I was also a product of my environment. Financially speaking, I came from a world of privilege. My father was a corporate attorney and my mother was a successful real estate agent. I am an only child because they waited a long time to start a family. First, they wanted to get all their social ducks in a row—to be in the right house, the right neighborhood. Since my mother was the one who would sacrifice the most in terms of her career, she put it off for as long as possible. She was thirty-seven years old and CEO of a multi-million-dollar real estate firm when she gave birth to me.

She took a three-month maternity leave, but worked from home the entire time, then hired a live-in nanny to care for me, cook the meals, and keep the house tidy. Basically, my mother had what she said all working women needed—a wife to keep the home fires burning.

Unfortunately, when I was two years old, the home fires burned a little too hotly when my father began sleeping with the twenty-one-year-old nanny. A messy divorce followed, and my father lost everything. Not only did my mother get the summer lake house in the Muskokas and the downtown penthouse apartment, she also kept the Mercedes and received full custody of me.

My father received limited visitation rights—I don’t think he fought hard for anything more—and a year later, the nanny left him for a younger man. My father lived alone in a Queen Street flat for about six months. Then he put a pistol in his mouth one night after eating a frozen pizza for dinner. When I was older, I was told he had been charged with embezzlement that day.

What followed was a string of nannies who all left me eventually, to move on to other things. My mother was a workaholic who viewed me as another material asset to invest in, so I think it’s reasonable to conclude that I had some issues with abandonment.

o0o

When I was twelve years old, my mother decided that a twenty-four-hour, live-in babysitter was no longer required.

“Ryan,” she said, “you’re perfectly capable of making your own breakfast and lunch, and getting yourself to school on time.” She told me she wanted to raise a capable and independent young man who knew how to take care of himself, so Mrs. Puglisi was hired as a housemaid and cook, with instructions to keep an occasional eye on me when I was around. She was not to prepare my snacks, wash my clothes, or ‘coddle’ me in any way. It was time I learned how to do things on my own.

With this new independence, and a lack of any personal connection to Mrs. Puglisi or my mother, I usually went to my friends’ houses after school, because their mothers worked, too—but they didn’t have cranky housekeepers with eagle eyes.