by D. J. Holmes
* * *
At the Beach House, Julia hears the bell ring. She runs down the stairs to the Hall of Corridors and sees Daniel walking next to the recuperation pod.
“He’s here, Julia. My staff and I will get him situated.”
“Is he ok?” she asks.
“Yes, Julia. We got him just in time,” Daniel, quietly answers.
Going up to the pod, she says, “Evan. Evan, can you hear me?”
“Julia, he can’t hear you. It will take a few days until he’ll be able to talk again. There’s a lot that he has to finish working through from the last time that he was here.”
“…The last time? I mean, I never thought of the Beach House as I know it to be now,” she looks shocked as she tries to make sense of why Evan was here at a prior time.
Dismissing her comment Daniel says, “We’ll take care of his bruises first and then his real recuperation begins…Say, Julia, since, Evan, needs to rest, would you please go and see if, Jon, needs anything? He’s having his eyes unwrapped today.”
“…Evan is going to be ok, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he’ll be ok. Would you please help, Jon?”
“Sure, but will I be able to see Evan, later today?”
“I think that tomorrow would be better,” Daniel says as he vigilantly watches Evan.
Julia leaves Evan’s room speaking to herself, “He must have really gotten hurt considering how hard they are working on him. Daniel knows what he is doing though. I’ll check on Evan tomorrow.”
Walking a few steps down the hall, she enters Jon’s room. “Jon, Daniel, said that you will be getting the bandages off of your eyes today.”
“Yes. The nurse should be in here in a couple of minutes to remove them.”
“Jon, what is the first thing that you would like to see when your bandages come off?”
“I would like to see the face of my true love. Without her, I really don’t care if I see or not.” Jon pauses. “Julia, I’m not trying to be difficult. I am so very thankful for everything that you have done for me….”
Julia interrupts, “its ok, Jon. I understand. What’s the second thing?”
“I’d like to see, and feel the ocean as I walk in it.”
“Ok, we can do that. As soon as you get permission from, Daniel, I’ll take you out to see the ocean and walk in it with you.”
“Thank you, Julia.”
“Are you ready to get your bandages off, Jon?” the nurse questions as she is walking into the room.
“Yes, my Lady. I’m ready.”
“Would you please sit up and turn your legs so that they are hanging over the edge of the bed, in the direction you hear my voice coming from?” Julia, stands behind Jon, and watches the nurse.
“Jon. I’m going to take your bandages off. But I don’t want you to open your eyes until I tell you to, ok?” the nurse cautions.
“That will be fine, my Lady,” he politely answers.
The nurse carefully takes the bandages off of Jon’s eyes. Julia is shaken to see Jon’s entire face. Her heart is pounding. He looks so much like the Jon that Evan had brought to her apartment door. She thinks to herself, “What’s going on here?”
“Now, Jon. I’m going to put some drops into your eyes. After I put the drops in, I still want you to keep your eyes closed,” the nurse instructs.
“Yes, my Lady.”
After a few minutes, the nurse says, “Ok, now slowly open your eyes. At first everything will be quite blurry. Then slowly your vision should start to clear up.”
“Yes, my Lady.”
Jon slowly opens his eyes and little by little everything begins to come into focus.
The nurse hands him a mirror, “Look into this mirror, Jon. Look at your eyes and your face. See if you can see things that are up close to your eyes.”
Jon takes the mirror. He looks into it, looking closely at his eyes. Everything is fine. Then he notices someone behind him. He looks closer in the mirror. “Katherine!” His eyes widen and he practically yells while at the same time quickly turning his head around to get a better look at Julia.
“Katherine, you’re here. You’re ok. Oh, my love, you said that we would see each other again.”
Julia is so shocked, she doesn’t say anything. She just stands there while Jon gets out of his bed. He moves around to where she is standing and gives her the most adoring hug she has ever received.
“I told Julia that the first thing that I wanted to see was your face. Why didn’t she tell me that you were here? Where is Julia anyway? I want you to see her. She’s done so much for me. I can’t believe that you’re here, Katherine.” Jon takes her face in his hands, and affectionately kisses her.
Julia is stunned. She can’t remember ever feeling the way she is feeling at this moment. Jon is good looking, respectful, kind, caring, compassionate and very affectionate. What more could a girl want?
“I need to talk to Daniel, but how can I leave Jon at this moment?” Julia thinks to herself.
“Why didn’t Julia tell me that you were here?” he asks again.
“Julia wanted to keep it a surprise,” she finally blurts out.
“Katherine, I thought that day on the gallows that I would never see you again.”
The word “gallows” sparked a light in her mind. She began to silently say to herself, “Jon? Katherine? Gallows? This sounds a lot like the story that Jon, the Jon that Evan had introduced me to, had written. But how can that be? He’s dead. I saw him…I saw him throw himself in front of me as the bullets from the perpetrators gun were fired toward me. I was by his side as he died from those bullets. So, how can he be here, standing in front of me now?” Her head was swirling in a million different directions, trying to understand what was really happening.
“Katherine, are you ok?” Jon’s question brought her back to reality. “Why don’t we go for a walk on the beach? Would you like that, Katherine?”
She looked up at him and said, “I’d love to walk with you, Jon. Would you mind if I asked Daniel if it would be ok for you to go to the beach?”
“I’ll wait for you, Katherine. But please don’t be too long. I never want to be parted from you again.”
Julia left Jon’s room and walked to where Daniel was still working on Evan.
She looked through Evan’s hall window into his room. At that same moment, Daniel looked up as she motioned for him to come out into the hall.
Telling his staff, “I’ll be right back,” he came out to see her.
“Daniel, Jon just had his eye patches taken off. When he saw me, he called me Katherine.”
“Yes, that’s right. You are Katherine, his Katherine.”
“…The Katherine from Jon’s notebook that I just finished reading?”
“Yes.”
“How can that be? She was taken to the gallows and she was beheaded.”
“This is going to be hard for you to comprehend but the notebook that you read…Jon’s life story…that was your past Julia.”
“But Daniel, the Jon that wrote his story in the notebook that I read. I saw him die at the Crime Scene. I witnessed his death. How can he be alive now?”
“This will also be hard for you to understand right now Julia, but what you saw him experience at the crime scene… that’s his future, Julia. For him it was like a dress rehearsal. It hasn’t happened yet,” Daniel quietly, but emphatically tells her.
“I don’t understand,” she says with a confused look.
“I know. It’s hard for most people to comprehend Julia. Time doesn’t go in a straight line. It’s like a pretzel, with many dimensions. I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to explain this in any more depth than that. I have to get back to Evan. We’re going to have to talk about this at some other time. I promise you Julia, we’ll talk about this subject at another time and you will understand then.”
“So what’s my name?”
“To Jon, it’s Katherine.”
“Is it ok if Jon and I go fo
r a walk on the beach?”
“Yes. You both have a lot to catch up on.”
Walking back to Jon’s room, she begins to talk to herself. “Can it be that if I really am Katherine, the Katherine that Jon wrote about in his notebook? Can it be that we are finally together? Have we come around full circle? How have we both apparently died, yet now we are both alive?”
“According to his notebook, we both lived centuries ago, in a different country than this one, across the Atlantic Ocean. Yet here we are in Southern California, by the Pacific Ocean, and in this very moment at the same Beach House….”
Julia decides, “This is all too much for me to grasp, so I’ll take it a moment at a time.” By the time she enters Jon’s room, she has decided, that, for Jon, she would be called Katherine. Everything seemed so natural when she was with him.
“Jon, Daniel said that it was a great idea for both of us to go for a walk on the beach.”
“Katherine, we’re finally together. It’s safe here. Don’t ever leave me again. I need you,” he says as he holds out his hands to her.”
Walking on the beach, through the sand and into the surf, Katherine says, “You’re right Jon. We are in a safe place. While we’re here I will promise you that I’ll be with you as much as I can.”
The water seems to be so calming and familiar. As they hold hands, and occasionally look into each other’s eyes, they both feel a type of electricity that binds them together; a feeling of eternity; a feeling of universal essence; a feeling of oneness. There is no need to talk. The feelings and electricity between them express everything.
As the sun sets, they walk to the back deck and lie on the lounge chairs, watching the darkness settle into the night sky.
“Oh, look, the first star.”
“Yes. Our guiding star that meant so much to both of us, it finally brought us together.”
Jon contemplates, “The stars that we both made our wishes on, for so many years. Our wishes finally came true, Katherine, in a way that both of us never thought that they would. …Finally!” Jon says with excitement while Katherine looks at him thoughtfully.
Daniel instructs his staff, “Would you please start a fire on the back deck and bring out trays of food, so that Jon and Katherine can continue their reunion?”
“Yes, Daniel.”
As Daniel leaves, he expresses his appreciation to his staff, “Thank you, so much, I’ll go back to Evan.”
Julia turns to Jon, “Are the things that you wrote about me really true?” she questioned.
“The reason that I wrote the notebook, Katherine, was to remember everything that we did together, everything that you said and did. After the day at the gallows, I rode to all of the places that we had been. I thought that maybe the morning had only been a bad dream. That if I could find you, everything would be ok. We’d be able to continue to be together. I looked and looked, yelling your name, but I couldn’t find you. Suddenly I had this urgent need to write down everything; every experience that we had had. Katherine, I felt that I could keep you with me, if I could just write it down.”
“Did it really help you, Jon?”
“It did, while I was writing it. But, as soon as I was through writing, my heart was empty again. If you weren’t here any longer, then I didn’t want to be here either. So, I got on my horse and let him lead the way.”
“The next time I realized that was I was still alive was when, Daniel, and his staff had come through the portal, put me in the dome, and brought me back here, and then, Julia’s, kind voice. It connected to my heart and somehow gave me the strength to continue. When I first saw you after the bandages were taken off, I knew the reason I had been brought to the Beach House.”
“What do you think the reason was, Jon?”
“I think that we were brought together because we had both wished for several years on the first star of the evening, to find each other so that we could be together. We are meant to be together, Katherine. We have been granted our wish.”
Dawn approaches quickly. As it becomes brighter, Daniel and his staff are standing in the surf, facing the rising sun, as its rays reach out to touch the earth, signaling a new day, and a new beginning.
“Jon, just yesterday a friend of mine was brought through the portal. His name is Evan and he is beginning his recuperation process.”
“Katherine, don’t worry. Daniel and his staff are experts in healing. He is in good hands.”
“I have faith in Daniel. I’m just worried about, Evan.
You know a person can only do so much to help someone heal.”
“Daniel, will do everything that he can, Katherine.”
“What I am feeling right now Jon, is that, Evan must be ok, or Daniel, wouldn’t have left his side. Let’s go down and see how he is doing,” Katherine suggests.
As they get closer to Evan’s room, the activity that was evident the previous day has slowed down. As they look into his room they notice a huge television monitor just above his bed.
It seems like a movie is being projected through the screen. As they stand and watch it for a moment, Daniel comes down the hall.
“Daniel,” Katherine calls. “If Evan is well enough for a movie, don’t you think that the monitor should be turned around so that he can watch it?”
Daniel replies, “Katherine, Evan is still unconscious. What you call a movie, are images of what he is thinking about and working through. Those pictures are coming from his memory. We’ve hooked his brain, the memory part, to this monitor because it will help to bring his memories to the surface. Once his memories are brought to the surface, he’ll be able to work through them.”
Daniel continues, “Along the bottom of the monitor are sections which are attached to specific parts of his body. These electrodes will show us what is happening in every part of his body. When his body is out of balance, or his blood pressure rises or lowers, or he goes into shock, we will be shown what has caused this imbalance. Then we can take the appropriate actions to bring him back into balance.”
Looking back at the monitor, she asks, “Who is that beautiful woman?”
Daniel responds, “That’s his wife.”
“He never told me he was married.”
“There is a lot about, Evan that you don’t know.”
CHAPTER 8
