Jamie stared at the woman, and her heart skittered back into a normal rhythm. “So you don't think there's been a mix-up?”
“No, of course not. I've never heard of such a thing.” The woman looked over her shoulder at Jake and then back at Jamie. “But you would know better than any of us.”
Jamie nodded, and the nurse gave her one more smile before returning Jake's clipboard back to the hook at the end of his bed. When she was gone, Jamie sat motionless and straight, watching Jake with an uncertainty that hadn't been there before. Was there no end to the wild emotions she'd suffered since the terrorist attacks? First thinking Jake was dead, and then getting the call that he was in the hospital. The race to be by his side, only to have him wake up not knowing her or anything about his life. Never in the midst of the whirlwind of tragedy and sorrow did she ever consider there might've been a mix-up.
That the man lying there beneath the hospital sheets was anyone other than her husband.
She studied him and tried to remember the strapping, jovial man who'd walked out of their bedroom early Tuesday morning. The man in the hospital bed had Jake's size, the right length and body structure, from what she could see. The muscled arms and shoulders were his, the narrow feet. Certainly his eyes were the right color, though without the benefit of memories there was nothing familiar about them.
The nurse's words ran in Jamie's mind again. No, of course there hadn't been a mix-up … something like that had never happened before.
But it could, couldn't it? Wasn't it possible?
Suddenly, Jamie remembered something she'd seen on television that morning while she was getting ready to come to the hospital. Grieving family members were flocking to the V.A. Hospital on First Avenue, taping photos and flyers of their loved ones to the hospital's red brick wall. Hundreds were being added each day as desperate people held out a fraction of hope that maybe … just maybe … their son or daughter or husband or wife was not among the thousands feared dead.
“Missing …” the flyers read. As though perhaps one of those who went to work at the World Trade Center Tuesday morning might have found his or her way out alive only to lie unidentified in a hospital or to wander the streets, the victim of a traumatic head injury.
Or mistaken identify.
A shudder worked its way down Jamie's spine. There was only one way to know for sure, to be certain there wasn't some desperate soul roaming Manhattan looking for a man who had Jake's build and appearance. She left without saying good-bye and took a cab to the area near the hospital where the flyers were posted. If she'd been a praying woman, this would have been her direst hour, the moment when she would've begged God to let this be the craziest thing she'd ever done, to assure her that not one missing person pictured on the wall looked even remotely like Jake.
But she wasn't someone who prayed, and she was hardly going to start now. Especially in light of all that had happened.
Jamie paid the driver and stumbled from the cab, her feet and head moving at frantic but different paces. She'd once watched a scene from a movie where the main character's child was missing. The actress darted first in one direction, then another and another, her eyes shining with raw fear.
That was how Jamie felt now.
She wore brown loafers, tailored jeans, a turtleneck, and a navy pullover sweater, the type of tailored outfit Staten Island mothers wore to do their grocery shopping. But there was nothing conservative about how she worked her way through the crowd, darting and weaving herself closer to the place where the flyers were posted.
Finally, she found a spot near the beginning of the wall, and she stopped, stunned. Only then did she realize how desperate the situation truly was. Smiling at her from the wall were hundreds of faces, one after the other. Pretty young women in the arms of their lovers, proud men with babies cradled against their chests, happy-faced gray-haired folks captured at a recent vacation spot or sitting with family at a barbecue.
Everyday people who'd done nothing more crazy than show up for work one day. And now they were gone. Clearly most of them were dead. Yet somewhere in the city someone had loved them enough to print up the flyer and post it, missed them enough to hope against all reason that somehow the person they loved might somehow still be found.
Jamie was barely breathing. She worked her way down the wall, taking in face after face after face. Most of the flyers listed the person's name, their height and weight, and the company and floor they worked for at the World Trade Center. Every few steps Jamie took, she'd have another two dozen flyers to look at. Finally, after an hour she'd looked at every single flyer, let her eyes wash over the faces of more missing people than she could possibly fathom.
And not one of them looked anything like Jake.
Jamie turned to summon a cab, but she could manage only to fall onto a nearby bench. For all the times she'd run a race or played a basketball game or ran a jet ski all afternoon without a break, Jamie had never felt more exhausted. Her arms and legs shook, and her temples pounded. As bad as she felt, as awful as the wall had been to look at, one bit of truth sustained her.
Jake was alive.
He had to be. Captain Hisel had found him under the fire truck and recognized him immediately. No doubts whatsoever, and that was before they'd bandaged Jake's face. Clearly the man must've been Jake—his hair and build and eyes, his way of carrying himself. Otherwise, the captain wouldn't have known him.
And of course there was the other bit of irrefutable information—the fact that Jake knew Sierra—both her face and her name.
Jamie focused on the people milling about. Nothing about Manhattan looked like it had before the terrorist attacks. Ash and smoke still hung in the air, and groups of people stood in clusters along the wall and adjacent sidewalk. Many of them were weeping.
Jamie watched them until she couldn't stand to look any longer. She covered her face with her hands and closed her eyes, her breath jagged and shaky. Was she crazy, coming all the way down here to check a wall of missing people flyers? Of course the man lying in the hospital bed was Jake. All the proof was there. And the nurse had explained the situation with the blood type. Everything made perfect sense.
She lifted her head and peered through the spaces between her fingers. A woman about her age stood near one of the flyers, her head hung as quiet sobs racked her body. One of her hands was tucked deep in the pocket of a long jacket. But the other covered the face of the person on the flyer, as though by keeping her hand there this woman could somehow connect with the person she was missing.
Jamie wanted to go to the woman, put an arm around her and comfort her, promise her everything was going to turn out okay. But it wasn't—not for any of the people standing near missing persons' flyers or tacking them along the brick wall. Jamie inhaled, and pungent air filled her lungs. She stood, turned her back to the grieving stranger, and waved for a cab.
She had nothing to say to the woman, no words of comfort. After all, no matter how badly Jamie hurt for her, the two of them had nothing in common. Jamie was one of the lucky ones, and though she and Jake would face losses, none of them would be permanent. No, she need not spend any more time swimming in this sea of sorrow, fighting the tide of death. Not when her husband was alive in a hospital room a few miles away.
It was time to get back there and do whatever it took not only to teach Jake Bryan how to live with her again.
But how to love her.
That night when she was back at home, when Jim and Sierra were asleep, Jamie climbed into her sweats and T-shirt and crawled into bed. And there she began a strange sort of rehearsal, imagining how the coming weeks would go once Jake came home. How would she help him remember who he was, help him find the place where his laugh and smile came easily, the place where giving Sierra horsey rides was as natural as his name?
She thought of something then, something that hadn't come to mind since Jake had been hurt. Jamie leaned over, flipped on the bedside light, and sat up. Every morning as far back as sh
e could remember, Jake had spent the early morning hours reading his Bible and jotting things down in his journal.
A time or two, Jamie had been tempted to take a look, tempted to see exactly what thoughts stirred in the heart of the man she loved more than life. But the idea of looking at Jake's private thoughts had never sat well with Jamie's conscience, and the occasional notion had never been more than that—a simple, wayward idea that she quickly dismissed.
But now … now things were different.
If she was going to teach Jake how to be himself again, she would need all the help she could get. And what could be more helpful than having access to his deepest thoughts and writings, words that might indeed trigger the return of Jake's complete memory?
She slid off the bed and ran with light steps around to Jake's side. Then she stooped down and pulled two books from underneath the box springs, books that Jake had left there that Tuesday morning before he went to work.
One was black leather with Jake's name engraved in gold at the bottom right corner. It was the Bible he'd gotten from his father his first day with the FDNY. Part of the lettering was worn off, so that all Jamie could clearly see were the capital T and B
Appropriate, she thought. Since that's what the guys at the station called him. TB. She opened the front cover, and there inside, scribbled on paper that was transparently thin, was this inscription: To Take … No matter what else happens, the words in this book will keep you safe. I love you, Dad.
Did Jim Bryan know that Jake still had this old book, that he still read it every morning before work? And how come she'd never taken an interest before, never wanted to look at it or read the inscription written inside? It was one thing to stay away from his journal … but his Bible? That would've been okay, except for one thing.
She'd never wanted anything to do with it.
Jim Bryan's words caught her attention again, and then she knew the reason why she'd never touched it. Because as nice as it all seemed, there wasn't any truth to the sentiment Jake's father had written. The words in the Bible wouldn't keep a firefighter or anyone else safe. They were just words, after all, no matter how nice they sounded. Larry believed in God, didn't he? And where had Bible verses gotten him? Buried beneath the rubble of a hundred-story building, that's where.
Nothing safe about that.
A sigh slipped from Jamie's lips, and she thumbed through the thin, worn pages. Toward the back of the book, there were whole sections of text Jake had underlined or highlighted in yellow. Notations were written in the sidelines, and as she flipped, one page caught her attention. She stopped and held the Bible up a few inches closer to her face so she could see it clearly.
The heading at the top of the page read “Matthew.”
Jamie felt awkward, ignorant looking at the text now. Other than the time when she'd attended youth camp with Jake, she'd never opened a Bible, never taken the time to know the names of the various chapters or what they represented. Now—seeing Jake's notes and highlighted areas—she chided herself about the fact. Clearly, her husband's heart was very taken with the importance of this material. Couldn't she have at least shown some kind of interest? Even if she and Jake didn't agree about the significance it held?
Her eyes narrowed and she read the verse. It was from a section marked Eleven.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
A strange feeling worked its way into Jamie's heart, a faint but different kind of peace, a peace she'd never known before. For a moment Jamie almost wished the text were true. Perfectly true the way Jake thought it to be. Strange, really. Because Jamie had never believed the Bible to be more than a series of nice letters about a nice man. Some details true in a historical sense, some not true. But definitely nothing more than that.
She scanned the text a few verses up until she was clear that the person talking in that section of text was Jesus. Everything about the words seemed warm and wonderful—especially the part about getting rest for her soul. But that wasn't what Jake had underlined. The part that had apparently touched him the most were these three words:
Learn from me…
And there in the margins next to the verse, Jake had written, My goal: learn everything I can from Jesus.
Jamie's gaze shifted to the underlined text once more. Learn from me … learn everything I can from Jesus …
That was what had motivated Jake all these years, wasn't it? He kept no secrets from her. Some nights after they'd been intimate, in the quiet waning moments before sleep found them both, she'd whisper into his ear.
“I'm the luckiest woman in the world, Jake. You know that?”
But he'd only put his arm around her and hold her close, his starlit smile illuminating the depths of her heart. “God brought us together. All I want now is to be a man that makes Him proud. You know, a little more like Jesus every day.”
Jamie sat straighter on the edge of the bed. Those were the same words he'd said every time she complimented his skills as a father. “As long as I can be like Jesus, I'll be okay.”
Now it was all coming together in a way that made goose bumps rise along Jamie's arms. All his life Jake had studied Jesus Christ, and in the process—though Jamie didn't hold to her husband's beliefs—Jake had taken on some of the mannerisms and actions of Jesus. It was part of who he was as a man, a husband, and a father. And now … now that he'd forgotten who he was, what better way for him to learn than to read the highlighted sections of text in his old Bible—memorize it, soak it in, go over once more the notations in the margins? The information nestled between the leather covers of his Bible might actually be a road map of sorts, a guide to help him remember who he was and help him become that person once more.
Carefully, as though the book was worth more now, Jamie shut the Bible and opened the other book, Jake's journal. Again she was poked by pushpins of guilt, but nothing strong enough to stop her. The pages, after all, contained Jake's deepest stirrings, the thoughts and feelings at the center of his heart. Combined with the information in the Bible, there wasn't anything Jamie could say or do that would better serve to help Jake remember who he was.
She flipped through dozens of entries until she found the one he'd written that last morning, the morning of the terrorist attacks. The other entries, the ones she'd passed on the way to this one, were for the most part merely solid blocks of wording. But the one dated September 11, 2001, was a letter.
A letter written to her.
Tears stung Jamie's eyes and blurred her vision. She blinked them back, and when she could see clearly again she began to read.
Dear sweet Jamie,
I have this feeling, deep in my heart, that something's about to change for me and you. Maybe it's your questions about church or the way you seem to hang on to Sierra's Bible stories a little bit longer these days. Whatever it is, I've prayed for God to touch your heart, baby. He means everything to me, and I know that one day He'll mean everything to you too. On that day, you'll no longer have to be afraid because you'll have God Almighty to lean on. I want you to know, honey, that when you find that precious faith, I'll be smiling bigger than you've ever seen me smile. Because the thing I want even more than your love is the knowledge that we'll have eternity together.
I simply cannot bear the idea of being in heaven without you. I love you too much to lose you.
The letter went on, but Jamie's tears made it impossible for her to see. She shut the journal, stacked it on top of Jake's Bible, and slipped the books back under the bed where Jake had last left them.
Sweet, wonderful Jake. Always thinking about her.
He had always been so good about keeping his faith to himself, careful not to badger her or preach at her. Here, though … here was his heart. Not that she take up some ritualistic form of faith to appease him. But that she believe—so that by his understanding of life and de
ath and eternity, they would never, ever be apart. In his own crazy mixed-up way, he loved her that deeply. God, Sierra, and her. Those were his life, and together they made up the core of who he was. After reading his words, Jamie understood that better than she ever had before.
Now she would simply have to help him understand it too.
TWENTY-TWO
SEPTEMBER 18, 2001
The trip was Clay's idea.
A week after the terrorist attacks, Laura had nearly given up all hope. Yes, firefighters and police officers in New York City were still calling their efforts at Ground Zero a rescue, still desperately lifting one bulldozer scoop of debris after another off the pile of rubble that had once been the World Trade Center in hopes of finding someone buried alive.
But Laura couldn't believe there were many people who actually believed that would happen. How could anyone still be living in the smoldering heap of tons of cement and steel? Still, the rescue continued, and somehow Laura and thousands of others like her were supposed to stay close to the phone, praying for a miracle.
Something had snapped inside Laura after that Thursday night, the evening when Eric would've come home if he were still alive. Her conversation with Clay had been both painful and eye-opening. Since then there had been fewer moments when she would catch herself wondering about Eric and how his business trip was going, or when she would find herself looking out the window calculating his time of return. She still held out hope, but the reality of what she feared most was setting in. And with it a hole in her heart the size of the Grand Canyon. Somehow the details of their sorry marriage and the current state of their relationship were not in the forefront of her mind. Instead, her memories were of the two of them back in their early married days, back when they used to sit in the backyard near their garage apartment and sing together. Fond memories of the days when she was pregnant with their daughter, back when Eric would cuddle up against her and play songs he'd written on the guitar.
“So my baby will know my voice.” He'd grin and gently place his hand on her abdomen.
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