The Color of a Dream

by Julianne MacLean

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said. “And I hear you left your job?”

  “Yeah. I know it sounds cliché, but I had to get out of that LA rat race. I had enough money put aside in investments and Christine wanted to settle close to her parents, so I sold the condo. Did Mom tell you about Christine?”

  “She mentioned her,” I said. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. She’s an amazing woman. I hope you can meet her sometime.”

  “That would be nice,” I replied—again, because it was the right thing to say. “Listen, the real reason I’m calling…” I raked my fingers through my hair. “I need to talk to you about your daughter.”

  “You mean Ellen?” He was quiet for a moment. “Mom dropped a lot of bombs on you, didn’t she?”

  I tapped a finger on my knee and wondered how I was going broach this topic. Looking back on it, I suppose I could have pumped him for information and gotten him to tell me all sorts of things he might not have said otherwise, but I couldn’t bring myself to set him up like that. Despite everything, he was still my brother.

  “About that…” I said. “When I called Mom and Dad, I already knew you were suing the mother for custody. It’s why I’m calling you now.”

  “How did you know about it?” Rick asked.

  Rising to my feet, I moved into the kitchen and leaned against the counter. “Because I met Nadia Carmichael and her sister Diana here in Boston. They told me.”

  The coffee pot gurgled noisily behind me.

  “How the hell did that happen?” Rick asked. “Did they hunt you down? Or was it a coincidence?”

  “It wasn’t a coincidence,” I told him. “I got a phone call from Diana. Somehow she knew I was your brother and that I lived here. She wanted to ask me some questions.”

  “What did she ask you? And what did you tell her?” The shakiness in his voice had disappeared. He now sounded exactly like the Rick I remembered.

  Aggressive. Defensive. Determined to win.

  “She and Nadia wanted to know why you changed your mind about not wanting to be involved in Ellen’s life. I told them I couldn’t answer that because I hadn’t talked to you in years, but I think I understand it now, after talking to Mom and Dad.”

  “You don’t understand anything,” he replied. “You couldn’t possibly.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you haven’t been through what I’ve been through.”

  “And you learned so much from it,” I said with no shortage of sarcasm.

  “That’s right.”

  I shook my head at him. “Maybe I don’t need to have a terminal illness to know what you didn’t know before. Maybe I’ve always known what it means to care about people.”

  “I care,” Rick said. “That’s the whole point of this. I have a daughter and I should be a part of her life.”

  “I don’t disagree with you,” I argued, wanting to stay rational about this, “but have you considered the fact that you’re going to break a little girl’s heart when you take her away from her mother?”

  Rick let out a breath. “You’re still missing the point. Everyone knows what matters most is what’s best for the child and there is no doubt in my mind that Christine and I will be better parents in the long term. I’m not going to get into all the reasons why—we can do that in court—but surely, if you’ve met Nadia, you know she’s a ticking bomb. The fact that she has heart troubles is just the tip of the iceberg. She’s also a single mother with no education and a bad history with abusive men. Do you know what kind of upbringing she had? She was raised in foster homes, then had an alcoholic father who walked out on them. She’ll be a terrible mother.”

  It was lucky for Rick he was on the other side of the country, because if we’d been in the same room together I might have broken his nose again.

  “None of that was her fault,” I said. “And have you stopped to think that maybe she learned a lot from all those hardships? More than you could ever know? When it comes down to it, you don’t know anything about Nadia,” I said. “You’ve never seen her with Ellen. You’ve never even met Ellen.”

  “I know Nadia better than you do,” Rick spat. “You only just met her, for pity’s sake.”

  It was true, I hardly knew Nadia and maybe I was foolish to assume that I knew what kind of woman she was deep down.

  In the beginning, I thought I knew Angela. I let myself fall in love with her without caution or the smallest hint of vigilance. I remembered how Angela had become a different person when she told me she was moving out west to be with Rick. She’d turned out to be nothing like the girl I thought I knew. I didn’t recognize her and I certainly never suspected she was capable of betraying me as she had.

  Maybe I was presuming too much about Nadia as well.

  But wasn’t this just like Rick to make me doubt myself?

  “You’re wrong about her,” I said. “Nadia’s a good mother and you’d know that if you could see her with Ellen. I haven’t met Christine, but if she’s a decent person like you say she is, I’m sure she wouldn’t want to separate them.”

  “I’m Ellen’s father,” he insisted, “and as her father I will make sure she has a real family with two respectable parents and a stable home. It’ll be worse for Ellen later on if she stays with Nadia.”

  “I disagree,” I said, “and I’m asking you to reconsider. Please, Rick. You could ask for joint custody or visitation rights. Let Ellen stay where she is.”

  Silence. “That’s not going to work for us.”

  I scoffed. “Why not? Is it too inconvenient?”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Rick said. “Christine and I are going to start a family. A normal family without any of the problems Nadia will present. We want Ellen to be a part of that. She’ll be happier and far better off in the long run.”

  “And what about Nadia?” I asked. “Doesn’t she matter at all?”

  “She needs to recognize that this is for the best. Ellen will have a better life with us. It would be selfish of her not to let us take her.”

  By now my blood was boiling and I wanted to smash my phone repeatedly on the counter. Instead, I shut my eyes and counted to ten because I liked my phone.

  “If you came out here and met your daughter,” I said, “you would see that Nadia is what’s best for her. Not you.”

  Neither of us said anything for a long time. My heart pounded thunderously in my ears.

  “We’re done here,” Rick said. “Don’t call me again.”

  Shutting my eyes with defeat, I lowered my phone and ended the call. Then I quickly dialed Nadia’s number.

  Chapter Forty-five

  I wanted to tell Nadia everything about my conversation with Rick, but not over the phone. She didn’t answer my call, so I texted and told her I was coming over. A short while later, I was sitting on her sofa while she fetched me a glass of water.

  Her sister Diana had gone to a movie and Ellen was upstairs, asleep for the night.

  “Rick thinks he’s changed because he wants to be a family man,” I said, “but I don’t believe he’s changed at all because he’s not thinking of Ellen’s happiness. Not really. He’s certainly not thinking of yours. I know my brother, and he’s only thinking of what he wants for himself. He’s putting a mask on the whole situation by saying it’s what’s best for Ellen.”

  Nadia handed me the glass of water and sat down beside me. “Did you ask him if he would consider shared custody?”

  “Yes, but he was like a brick wall. He said no.”

  “And he knows about my health risks,” she said. “He plans to use that against me?”

  I saw the heartbreak in her eyes and wished there was something I could do to ease her pain. “I’m sorry. I’m mortified.”

  “Why would you be mortified?” she asked, frowning with bewilderment.

  “Because he’s my brother and I couldn’t make the smallest dent in his opinion. God! I’m fit to be tied. It takes me right back to how things were
ten years ago when I couldn’t believe the things he said and did. I tried to talk sense into him then but it made no difference. He just wasn’t capable of recognizing someone else’s pain.” I set the glass of water down on the coffee table and pressed my forehead into the heels of my hands.

  Nadia rubbed a hand over my back and squeezed my shoulder. The rapid beat of my pulse slowed down and the fire in my blood began to cool.

  “This isn’t your fault,” she said. “I appreciate that you tried, but he is who he is. I’m glad I know because at least I’ll be prepared for what he plans to bring to the courtroom. I’ll bring the same thing. If he wants to accuse me of being a bad mother, I’ll shine a very bright light on the fact that he wants to destroy a little girl’s relationship with her mother. I’ll make sure the judge knows how much Ellen and I love each other, and how happy she is here with me and Diana.”

  I sat back and tried to see clearly through my rage. “You don’t deserve this.”

  “Sometimes bad things happen to good people. I don’t think anyone deserves half of what gets thrown at them in life. Not even Rick. He had a rough year, too. It’s no wonder he’s feeling desperate.”

  “You’re far more understanding than I am.”

  She reached for my hand. “If there’s one thing I learned when I was in the hospital—it’s that life is short and we can’t waste precious time feeling hateful or carrying grudges. I love Ellen more than anything and I have to believe that it will all work out somehow. That the love I feel for her will win out over whatever Rick is trying to do. And I don’t plan on dying anytime soon. I have a new heart and I’m getting stronger every day. Surely this gift came to me for some greater purpose and I believe that purpose is Ellen. I was put on this earth to be her mother. She’s the reason I found the strength to live. It couldn’t have been for nothing. It couldn’t have been a false dream. And if she’s meant to be with her father, to know him, then so be it. I just hope he’ll see that she would better off being loved by all of us.”

  Whatever doubts I’d entertained about the true motivations behind my attraction to this woman vanished in that instant when I recognized the depth of her wisdom. I was not here because I wanted to fix what I couldn’t fix before. I didn’t want to save Nadia to make myself feel better because I was unable to save Angela. Nadia was nothing like Angela. She didn’t need saving. In fact I felt humbled sitting there beside her. I was in awe. She was all heart from head to foot, and if anything, I was beginning to believe she had come into my life to save me.

  “I want to be with you,” I said without thinking.

  “I want to be with you too,” she whispered in return.

  For a long time we held each other. Then finally, I kissed her.

  Chapter Forty-six

  Nadia

  When Jesse Fraser kissed me on the sofa that night it confirmed my belief in dreams coming true—but I had no idea how relevant that concept would become as we continued to share things with each other.

  “Nothing about this day has been easy,” Jesse said as he cupped my cheek with his hand, “until now.”

  “You think I’m easy, do you?” My smirk brought him closer for another kiss that caused my insides to jangle with excitement.

  Later he wrapped his arm around me and I rested my cheek on his shoulder.

  “That phone call wasn’t exactly a walk in the park,” he said, “and it was a rough day at work.”

  “Why? What happened?” I lifted my head to look up at him.

  He entwined his fingers around mine, then told me about the hunter who fell into a ravine and broke both his legs. “I wasn’t sure if we’d even be able to locate him,” Jesse said. “The rain was pelting the windshield and the fog was as thick as soup. At one point, I thought for sure the wind was going to flip us over and drop us into the trees.”

  My head drew back. “What time was that?”

  He thought about it. “I don’t know. Sometime between two and three, I guess.”

  A fire began to burn in my belly as I stared at Jesse. “That’s really weird because I had another flying dream today, and it was the first time I ever had one of those dreams during the day. I was taking a nap right here on the couch and I dreamed I was flying over a forest in the rain. It was stressful, not like the other times when I was flying at night.”

  Jesse sat up. “That is weird.”

  Our eyes locked on each other’s and my heart began to race.

  “What’s it like when you fly at night?” I asked, though it wasn’t an innocent question. I was fishing for information, exploring what was surely a bizarre and preposterous theory. Was I astral projecting in my dreams to wherever Jesse was?

  No, that couldn’t be true. It was crazy. They were just dreams.

  Clearly, I was still a skeptic.

  “If I’m flying over the city,” he replied, “it’s usually pretty calm. There’s not as much wind at night.”

  “You must fly over the hospitals,” I said. “You deliver patients, right? You land on the rooftops.”

  “All the time.”

  My breaths were coming faster and I sensed by the flash of light in Jesse’s eyes that he was thinking the same thing I was.

  But he wasn’t. He was thinking of something else entirely. Something far more incredible.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  “When did you have your transplant?” Jesse asked me. “What was the exact date?”

  I told him the date and he reached into his pocket for his phone. He stood up and searched for a number. “Excuse me for one second.”

  He left me there on the sofa while he went into the kitchen to call someone. I tugged at my shirt to straighten it and shifted to a more comfortable position while I waited.

  A few minutes later he appeared in the doorway looking white as a sheet. He stared at the phone briefly, then set it down on the coffee table.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” he said.

  I blinked up at him curiously. “Believe what?”

  He came to sit beside me again and took both my hands in his. “I think I delivered your heart to you.”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  I wasn’t quite able to comprehend what he was telling me. “That’s impossible.”

  “Why? I just called my supervisor. I asked him to check the schedule and reports for the day you had your surgery, and I was flying that day. It was all there in the report and I remember it now. I landed at Boston Mass to pick up a medical team and flew them to another hospital to retrieve a donor heart. I can’t tell you which hospital… That’s supposed to be confidential. But afterward I flew the team back to Boston Mass. How many donor hearts could have been delivered to Boston Mass that day? Not more than one, surely.”

  Though this was unbelievable to me, I was still fixated on another piece of this puzzle. “You must land on that helicopter pad all the time,” I said, “and you work mostly night shifts, don’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “I didn’t tell you this,” I said, “but over the past few months, every time I had one of those flying dreams, I thought I was dreaming about my donor. I thought maybe I was somehow remembering how his spirit floated out of the hospital when he passed. I know that sounds nuts, but the dreams were so vivid and real, and when I recognized the hospital here in Boston, I was kind of freaked out. Now I’m wondering if I was dreaming about you. If I was somehow there with you when you were flying those nights?”

  He took hold of my hand. “I don’t know about that, Nadia—and I’ll be honest, it does seem nuts—but I do know that I picked up a heart on the day you had your surgery and I flew it to the hospital where you were waiting for it.”

  His gaze dipped lower to my chest.

  I was no longer self-conscious around Jesse. Reaching down, I unbuttoned the top three buttons of my blouse, opened my collar and showed him the top of my scar. “Thank you for that.”

  Our eyes met, he smiled and I was filled with the most breathtaking s
well of joy.

  “You’re more than welcome,” he said.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Six weeks later

  The thirty-day notice to appear in court arrived when I was just heading out for a long walk with Ellen. Seeing the words printed on the page was like a knife in my heart, but I refused to let it defeat me. Instead I focused on the factors that stood in my favor.

  I’d had my parental evaluation. It had gone well. Ellen was happy and smiling the entire time, the house was clean and well organized for a growing toddler, and Diana and Jacob had been there to meet the evaluator as well.

  It didn’t hurt that my sister was a successful attorney engaged to a cardiac surgeon who lived a block away. They made me look good and the evaluator was duly impressed.

  On top of that the letter from my doctor made me out to be a transplant superstar. My pathology reports were excellent, my diet and exercise routine superb and all my regular cardiac biopsies over the past six months had showed no signs of organ rejection.

  Today, however, as I stood in the blinding sunshine with Ellen strapped into her stroller, I had to accept that despite all those triumphs, I was still required to face Rick in a courtroom and defend myself as a mother.

  And I might lose my daughter.

  I realized I was now facing a different kind of threat, but no less vital. Just over a year ago I survived heart failure. Now I had to fight to keep my daughter, and that was a life or death situation as well, because if I lost Ellen, how could I possibly go on?

  Determined to maintain a positive outlook, I texted Jesse and told him about the notice, then I stuffed it into my bag. As I withdrew my hand, I noticed some redness on my forearm. Was it some kind of rash?

  Under normal circumstances I would have called Dr. Reynolds and arranged to have him look at it immediately because I was at high risk for infections that could become life threatening if left untreated. But this wasn’t the best time to introduce something dodgy into my medical reports, so I decided to keep a close eye on it and hold off making an appointment for now.