Life After: The Complete Series

by Julie Hall

  Logan’s dad stepped forward and extended his hand to me. I clasped it and received a firm handshake. There was an upturn to the corners of his mouth, but so slight, I wouldn’t call it a true smile.

  “Audrey, I’m Richard, Logan’s father.”

  I nodded.

  “Thank you for taking the time to visit my son. That was very kind of you.”

  “You’re welcome?”

  “And these are your parents?”

  I nodded mutely and stared while our parents introduced themselves. I never would have expected this was the way they’d all meet, but the introductions needed to be made one way or another. Might as well get the formalities out of the way since I was going to be a fixture in Logan’s life moving forward.

  “Celeste tells me Audrey will be leaving to go home shortly.” The words snapped me out of my reflective daze.

  “Well, that’s what we were hoping for, but Audrey seems to have made some plans of her own.”

  Four heads swiveled in my direction. The urge to start backing away slowly was strong, but I held my ground. The scrutiny of four sets of eyes on me was no joke.

  “Could someone please tell me what’s going on in here?” I asked, again. “Is Logan okay? Has there been a change? Is he waking up?” There was no way to hide the hopeful note in my voice, but one look at his mother said I had gone down the wrong rabbit hole. Her eyes started to fill, and she brought a tissue to the corners to keep the tears from spilling over.

  Panic welled inside my gut, churning at a fevered pace and making it feel like I was going to vomit my lunch all over the floor.

  “He’s not getting better.” It wasn’t a question. “He’s getting worse? How could he get any worse?”

  I looked back and forth between his parents. Celeste’s eyes continued to well with tears. Richard’s face was a stoic mask—so reminiscent of Logan’s go-to when he hid his feelings.

  My heart pinched as Logan’s parents shared a look, seemingly communicating without words. My gaze ping-ponged between the two of them until finally Richard stepped away from his wife and faced me.

  “I know Celeste wanted to tell you this herself later today, but I think considering the circumstances, now is probably the best time. As you know, my son is brain dead.”

  I flinched at the matter-of-fact way he used the perfectly acceptable medical term.

  I hated those words. Celeste and I never used them to describe Logan.

  “I’m sure you know that means that although we can keep his body alive, he’s not really with us anymore.”

  I had a very bad feeling about where this conversation was going.

  “You don’t really know—”

  “We do. We do know that’s what it means.”

  I was too shocked at being railroaded to continue.

  Richard went on, “We have two choices here. We can continue to keep up this charade of him returning to us someday, or we can bring some good to this awful situation, which will also bring some closure to his mother and myself.”

  I shook my head. Celeste wouldn’t let this happen. She wouldn’t let Logan’s father take him off life support.

  I looked to her for confirmation that what her husband was saying was just a review of what they considered to be the situation, not a decision that had already been made. But tears were free flowing down her cheeks now. No amount of tissues could hold the tide back.

  They had decided.

  “No. No you can’t seriously be thinking of doing this.”

  “It’s what’s—”

  Celeste laid a hand on her husband’s arm, silencing him with her touch and a soft look in his direction. He nodded and took a step back.

  “Audrey, you have to understand this wasn’t an easy decision to make. But Logan can help a lot of people.”

  No, what? Logan already did help a lot of people. I’d been by his side as he defended humanity. He was owed the chance to return to us . . . to return to me.

  “Help a lot of people?” My voice came out high pitched and shrill. I was half numb and half hysterical.

  She nodded.

  “We’ve decided to take him off life support and donate his organs to people who need them. This way his death won’t be in vain.” Her eyes begged me to understand.

  I stood shell-shocked for several moments. They were going to let him die. I didn’t think or care about anything else they said. My chance to live a life with Logan in it was slipping through my fingers.

  I’d made a terrible mistake by not telling Celeste the whole truth. If she just knew that Logan was out there and could possibly wake up like I did, she wouldn’t be allowing this. She wouldn’t be giving up.

  I had to make her understand. I had to make them all understand.

  “No.” My whole body vibrated with pent-up anger and fear. “No, you can’t do this.” My voice rose over the low din of voices conversing around us. “You don’t understand what you’re doing!”

  The room became eerily quiet except for the noise from the machines as I garnered the attention of everyone present—people who were here to either oversee the process of taking Logan off life support or to harvest his organs afterward.

  Logan’s parents gawked at me with wide eyes. I didn’t even spare my parents a glance but rather beseeched the ones who were moving this process forward.

  “You don’t understand because I haven’t told you the full story.”

  Logan’s father snapped out of the shock caused by my outburst first. His tone wasn’t cruel, but it was unyielding. “I’m truly sorry, dear. I understand you’ve formed some sort of . . . mild attachment to my son, but that doesn’t give you any right—”

  “Attachment?” I let out a hysterical laugh. I’d formed more than just a mild attachment to Logan.

  “Look”—his voice hardened to steel—“this is obviously not a healthy attachment. A few surfing lessons and spending some time with my son while he is completely unresponsive doesn’t give you any right to tell his mother and I what’s best for him or our family.”

  How could I explain this without sounding completely insane? My mind scrambled to come up with a plausible way of making them understand . . . without getting myself committed. I was truly worried someone would force a psychiatric assessment on me. The last thing I needed was to see another therapist. But that was a small price to pay if anything I said could sway their minds.

  “Listen, I know Logan better than what you think. I know he can still wake up. He can come back to us, just like I did.”

  “Sweetheart”—my mother stepped up and put her hand on my arm—“your situation was very different than this young man’s. You can’t say things like that. It’s not fair to his loved ones. It’s not—”

  “I’m one of his loved ones,” I practically yelled in my mom’s face and pounded a fist to my chest.

  She blinked and took a step back. My father wrapped his arm around her shoulder. Their faces were twin masks of shock and concern. I couldn’t hold back the tide anymore. Everyone was against me, and no one was fighting for Logan. I’d fight for him until my last breath.

  “Out!” I yelled to all the medical professionals in the room. “Everybody, out! This whole thing has been canceled.” I pushed my way past Logan’s parents and started shoving doctors away from Logan’s body. There were plenty of gasps around the room, but I ignored them all.

  Keeping Logan safe was my top priority. I’d fought through Hell and back for him; I wasn’t going to lose him now.

  Nobody left the room. They all just stared at me. I’d taken a position at Logan’s head and growled at anyone who tried to touch him.

  “Tell them to leave!” I shouted at his parents.

  Fresh tears poured down his mother’s face, and a look of stubborn resolve came over his father’s.

  I didn’t like that. His expression was too similar to the look Logan got when he was determined to get his way.

  Now I knew where that stubborn streak came from.
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  “We most certainly will not.” Richard looked at my parents. “Go control your daughter. She’s not welcome here anymore.”

  “Hey”—my dad stepped forward—“my daughter has been through an incredibly trying ordeal over the last year. Let’s all take a beat for a moment.”

  Yeah, way to go, Dad.

  “Your daughter’s been through an ordeal?” Richard barked a humorless laugh. “You get to leave here in a few days with your child. You get to go and resume a perfectly normal life. We’ve been living in a nightmare that started four years ago that we can’t wake up from. Whatever infatuation your daughter has with our son”—Celeste reached for her husband, probably to stop his words, but he pulled away from her grasp and glanced at her—“yes Celeste, it is most certainly an infatuation. From what you’ve told me, I’d say this girl is borderline obsessed with Logan.”

  I sucked in a painful breath of air and reminded myself they didn’t know how well I knew Logan—but that barb still hurt.

  And Richard wasn’t finished with his rant. “My son has been lying here, day after day, with no hope of waking up. To come in here and question our decision, one that was unimaginably hard to come to, is insensitive at best. I want you all out of here, for good. If you cared at all for us, if you cared at all for Logan, you’d leave us to grieve in peace.”

  My dad nodded. “I apologize, Mr. London. You’re right. We were all out of line. Regardless of what Audrey’s been through, this is a family matter.”

  Wait, what? No. I tensed, ready to fight anyone who tried to make me move.

  “Audrey, come on. It’s time to leave.” Dad held his hand out toward me from across the room.

  My breathing picked up as I eyed all four parents.

  I didn’t have a magical sword to protect my loved one in this situation. I couldn’t physically fight my way to a victory. All I had was a story no one was likely to believe.

  The shell chimes in the corner of the room started to softly move back and forth, even though the window wasn’t open. The sounds reminded me that I didn’t just have a story. I had the God of the universe listening, the Holy Spirit living inside me, and the Savior of mankind protecting me.

  I took a deep breath to steady myself. Time to lay it all out on the table. Time to trust that I wasn’t the one in control.

  I’d fight for Logan in the only way I could—by trusting his future to the One who created it.

  37

  My Story

  “Wait, please.” I held a hand out as if the gesture alone could stop the momentum of what had already been set in motion. “There’s something I need to tell you all. I haven’t been completely forthright about how I know Logan.”

  My gaze swept the room. Everyone was staring at me. From my parents, to the doctors, nurses, medical technicians, and finally Logan’s parents. That was where my focus landed. That was who I needed to convince I wasn’t lying. I’d deal with the fallout from my parents after.

  Richard’s face was still hard. His arm was wrapped possessively around his wife’s waist. His lips pressed together in a tight line as if it took effort not to talk. His brow was pulled low over eyes that blazed.

  I wasn’t too proud to admit I was intimidated.

  Celeste was a hot mess, and I realized the arm around her waist might be there to help her remain standing. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying. Tear tracks ran down her face, and her normally perfectly coiffed hair was in disarray—the bun was half out and off-centered. She held her hands to her chest, and her shoulders were slumped as if she was protecting herself.

  With a stabbing pain, I realized she was protecting herself from me.

  This was not how I wanted to explain my experience in the afterlife. Under duress with at least twenty people staring at me.

  But I was out of choices. I took in a fortifying breath and started my tale.

  “When I got hit by that car, I thought I had died. And not because I realized the severity of my injuries on the road; I knew something monumental had happened because when I closed my eyes here on Earth, I opened them again in a whole different world. And in that place—that whole different world—I met and I fell in love with your son.”

  Miraculously, they listened—maybe because I didn’t give them an option. I talked and talked and talked some more.

  I went back to the beginning and explained how disoriented I’d been when I first woke up in a different realm, without my memories. I retold my first meeting with Logan and how contentious our relationship as mentor and mentee had been. And then how things had slowly changed. I left out a lot of private details because—awkward—who wants to talk about their first kiss with someone to their parents? But I revealed most of what had happened to me, especially the parts relating to Logan, in the months my body had been lying in a coma in this very building.

  I poured my heart and my soul out in a desperate hope that something I said would give them a reason to hold on, at least a little bit longer, to the possibility that their son could come back to us.

  And then when I was finished with my tale, I waited.

  My cheeks were wet with the tears I’d spilled.

  This whole time my attention had been on Logan’s parents, but now I took a moment to survey the room. The medical staff gaped at me. My parents appeared shell shocked. Their hands intertwined, eyes wide, and silent. And finally I took a good look at Logan’s parents—not just to tell my story but to gauge their reaction. I’d confessed the truth as if I were on trial, and they were the judges.

  Richard’s face hadn’t softened, but the anger that had brewed there seemed to have morphed into confusion. Celeste brought a shaky hand up to cover her mouth. Fresh tears dripped down her cheeks.

  “You really saw our baby?” she asked, her voice trembling and muffled by the hand she held in front of her face.

  I nodded. “Yes, I truly did. He is . . . amazing, and . . . I love him. I know if there is any way he can come back to us, he’ll move heaven and earth to do so.”

  Celeste turned into her husband’s chest and sobbed.

  “Oh, sweetheart.” My father lifted his arm and offered his hand. There was a suspicious shine to his eyes. His silent invitation was clear, and I was too raw to turn it down. I rushed into his embrace. He squeezed me tightly while my mom rubbed her hand up and down my back.

  They knew the truth, and they weren’t rejecting me.

  “Please, leave now.” Richard’s voice was cold and commanding.

  I jerked my head up in response.

  “Wh-what?”

  He was still holding his crying wife in his arms, but his face was unmistakably hostile.

  “You’ve said your piece. I think it’s clear your delusions go deeper than any of us expected. Now I want you to leave us alone. You’ve done enough damage.” He said the last part with a pointed look at Celeste.

  “No. I told you the truth. I do know your son. He can come back—”

  “Stop!”

  I took a step back at the sharpness in his tone. Even Celeste went rigid in his arms. “I will protect what’s left of my family.” His focus transferred over my head. “I think your daughter needs some serious help, but that’s up for you to decide. For right now, you need to remove her from this room.”

  It hadn’t worked.

  Despite everything I’d told them, they were going to go forward with it. They thought I was delusional. Or that I’d made it all up. Or . . . it didn’t matter really what they thought, except they didn’t believe me. They didn’t believe I’d met their son. They didn’t believe that my love for him was real. They didn’t believe he would ever come back to us.

  My body felt like a giant ice cube.

  How could it have come to this? How was it even possible that I’d found him, alive, on Earth, only to lose him again? It was . . . too cruel to be true.

  I vaguely registered my father coming to my defense and my mother soothing his temper. He gently clasped my arm and tried to pull me t
oward the door. I took an obedient step in his direction before what was happening really and truly sunk in.

  Logan.

  They were going to let him die, and I was just going to walk out that door and let them?

  No way, no how.

  I ripped my arm from my father’s grasp, hearing my mother gasp in surprise.

  “You can’t do this,” I yelled, and tried to push my way past people to reach Logan again. But this time, arms caught me—restraining me from going any farther.

  “No, let go.” I fought against people I didn’t even know or see. I didn’t bother to take in their appearance, as my gaze was fixed on Logan’s prone form.

  It didn’t end like this. It couldn’t.

  I maneuvered out of one person’s grasp, just to be caught by another. Frustration churned deep in my gut. My muscles retained the memory of their training, but I was so weak, all of my defensive techniques were useless. It was like trying to restrain a bunny.

  “No.” Tears streamed down my face. “Don’t do this,” I begged. Begged.

  I heard voices behind me, but the entirety of my conscious focus was on Logan.

  “Audrey, please stop fighting.” My mom’s pleading voice broke through my hurt-filled haze.

  I spotted her to my right. She wrung her hands, and tears fell from her eyes as well.

  “Baby, please. Just let it go. We need to leave the Londons to make this decision. This isn’t your fight.”

  Isn’t my fight?

  I amped up my struggles.

  This was the most important fight of my life. If the situation were reversed, Logan wouldn’t have let me go. He would have stood guard over me night and day if he had to. He would give anything to make sure I was protected.

  And I was going to fail him.

  Premature grief crushed my lungs.