Nine Minutes in Heaven

by David Connor

  “Patrick…”

  “Is Patrick with you?” Rip was out there, too.

  “He was.” I was aware of every bump as the stretcher was taken from the back of the vehicle, despite Sheri and Steve promising me they’d be careful. I had no doubt they were. If I survived, I promised myself I would shout my accolades for EMTs from every rooftop I was brave enough to climb. “But not here.”

  “Is Patrick okay?” Shelby asked Steve.

  I was also aware enough to see him shake his head in answer to my sister’s question, and then to see her cover her mouth not quickly enough to hide a sob of despair. “Your eyes are open,” she said to me.

  “Wait.” Suddenly, I was aware of something else. “Patrick…Tom was with me.”

  “Tom?” Shelby asked.

  “His bike crashed. He hurt Patrick.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  Rip put his arm around Shelby and kissed her atop the head.

  “The pharmacy…Patrick is…is there.” I grappled for Steve’s arm. “Help him.”

  “Someone will get to him,” he told me.

  “O’Hanlon’s,” Shelby said.

  “Oh. A call went out, already.” Steve leaned in. “Someone found Patrick there, okay, Goose? They found him.”

  “Good. He’s alive? Back here, now?”

  “At the hospital?” Steve asked. “I’ll find out. We have to think about you, now, though…get you inside, right?”

  “It’s my fault.” The pain of that was worse than that from all of my injuries combined. Bad thoughts came back on Earth’s side of the light. “Tom went after Patrick because of me.”

  “No, Goose,” Shelby said.

  “It’s true. If Patrick is taken away from his family, from all of those people who love him, I did it. His sister, Carrie, ours, too, and Meagan, Han, Sawyer, his mothers and fathers…I don’t deserve to live or to go to Heaven if they can never see him again. I don’t deserve to be with Patrick, if they can’t.”

  “You stop that.” My sister’s voice wasn’t stern, not at all, but rather weak and sad.

  “Patrick wouldn’t want you thinking like that, Bro-ham.” Rip’s smile was pretty grim.

  “You’re Bro-ham. I’m Bro-ford.”

  “There ya go. He’ll be fine,” Rip said to Shell.

  “We have to get him inside,” Steve told them again.

  Shelby took my hand and ran beside us the whole way. The ceiling tiles above passed in a blur, like the guard rails just before the crash. I’d been at that hospital a few times before, because of Tom, for my sister after several miscarriages, and when my father died of a heart attack in one cubicle as my mother was treated for injuries he’d inflicted upon her in another.

  There was a lot of talking.

  “We lost him twice,” Steve told the woman in blue scrubs who greeted us, “once in the ambulance and once at the scene. The passerby who first found him performed CPR and brought him back.”

  “How many minutes?”

  “Too damned close. He’s lucid though, charming as hell and with it.”

  “Aww. Thanks, Steve.”

  “You got it, buddy. We got him back in under three.”

  My time with Patrick on the boat had felt much longer than three minutes, like my time away from this reality always did. It was another one of those, “You had to be there” deals I wished I could laugh about with Rip.

  “The injuries are serious,” Steve continued, “but he’s showing no signs of brain damage.”

  That was good to hear. It also meant Steve really did believe in ghosts.

  The long list of medical terminology and things I likely had wrong with me—contusions, abrasions, fractures, head trauma, signs of internal bleeding and swelling in the brain—was met with nods all around. Those and my vital signs were scribbled on a clipboard by a woman who hadn’t introduced herself.

  “What about the other guy?” the triage nurse asked.

  Steve shook his head. “Behind us. Dead at the scene.”

  Hearing Tom was dead, it hit me like I’d hit the pavement after slamming into the guardrails. Even if the news wasn’t new, even if I’d started to process it while on the other side, in this realm, it did. Once again, I felt like kind of a jerk, though, like I had in the parking lot at the high school after hearing what was said about Carrie and doing nothing about it. Tom’s family, I worried about them, and I truly did wish peace for him and learning, if that was possible. I thought of Tom only a moment, though, and then my chest tightened, as I realized how much I missed Patrick already, and how I might never get to feel, hear, or even see him again. Being in the light, at The Rainbow Bridge with my furry pals and him there, making love on the boat, it had all felt so…heavenly. But what about my sister, Shelby, and Rip, and Carrie, and my sweet, sweet Wilbur? What about them?

  “We have to get him looked at,” the first woman said.

  “I want to grab you, but I better not.” Shelby’s finger barely brushed my messy hair that now felt wet and sticky in places. “You’re gonna be okay. You will.”

  “You pull through this, Little One, I’ll grill for you every single night for the rest of your life,” Rip said. “You hear me?”

  “Deal.” Seeing the smiles flash across his and my sister’s faces, even for the briefest moment, made the effort it took to offer one of my own before being whisked away worthwhile.

  A different nurse swooped in the moment I was backed into the ER cubicle. She introduced herself as Sunny and explained everything she was going to do before she did it, starting with the blood pressure cuff and the finger clip thingy that could somehow read my oxygen levels. I’d often wondered how oxygen saturation could be determined from the tip of someone’s finger. I’d have to ask Siri, I decided, or maybe Sunny could tell me. Before I could ask, she was covering my face.

  “This mask will make it easier for you to breathe.”

  The clip’s reading must not have been so good.

  As Sunny’s scissors cut up my pant leg, the thought that came to me was funny. I scoured the Cost-Mart Men’s Apparel section in my mind for a replacement. I remembered Patrick and me joking about my wardrobe just that evening on the phone, mere hours before we both ended up at death’s door and were both invited in. I couldn’t wait to make fun of myself with him again. Maybe I’d step out of my rut and buy a pair of red pants, maybe orange, like Patrick’s beard.

  Oh.

  “Patrick…” Thinking about him made it hard to breathe.

  “Deep breaths,” Sunny told me.

  “I can’t.”

  “Try,” Sunny said.

  I still wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  Another woman in scrubs showed up—the doctor, I presumed.

  “I’m Dr. Cabot.”

  “Hey.”

  “You’re responsive.”

  “Yup.”

  She gave me a cursory check and immediately determined, “We need to get him to the OR, stat.”

  Responsive, apparently, was on the low side of a passing grade.

  Sunny asked me before removing my ring. Though she didn’t wait for permission, she did say, “We’ll take good care of this. Did your little one make it in school?”

  I jumped when she whipped back the curtain between me and another bed in the same cubicle.

  “Patrick…” My eyes, as unbelievable as it was, as unreliable as they were at that moment, caught something miraculous. “Patrick.”

  “Patrick?” Sunny asked. “How old is he?”

  I managed to pull off the oxygen mask. “Old…like me.” I tried to sit up.

  “Easy, there.”

  “No.”

  She tried to cover my mouth again, but I fought her with everything I had.

  “Patrick.”

  “We’ll get you back to him.”

  “There…” I pointed. I was sure I did, but Sunny didn’t look. “The floor.”

  “Try not to talk.”

  There was strip of olive-green vinyl s
mack dab in the middle of one of the speckled tiles. Not a bandage or a package a syringe or something else had been in. It was a circle, with a little knot, the opening just big enough to slip over a finger. If I wasn’t mistaken or hallucinating, it would have a G from the word Teenage and a P from Power. It was Patrick’s engagement ring. I knew it was. He’d been in the same ER cubicle. So, where was he now, at the hospital, in Heaven, or somehow both? Could I get to him, if I tried? Could he get to me? “Patrick…” I felt myself drifting off, with no idea where I would end up next. All I knew for sure was how much I wanted him to be there, too.

  Chapter 7

  “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join these two men in holy matrimony.”

  I ended up in Tennessee. I knew from a sign at the side of the road, Welcome to Tennessee. It was beautiful in April. There was no need to wait for May, unless it was May. Just because I knew where, that didn’t mean I was certain of when. I was in the 1800s, I surmised, judging by my attire, the architecture, and a lack of motorcars around me. Had I been afforded a GPS for time and realm travels, Tennessee in the 1800s would have been my second choice after Heaven.

  The sky was a mix of blue and light gray, the sun bright and warm, and the trees as green as Patrick’s eyes.

  “Are you practicing your lines?” Yes. He was there, too.

  “I am,” I said.

  “I have a sense you’re going to tell me you brought me here.” Those beautiful eyes sparkled as he spoke.

  “I wish I wasn’t as aware of that as I am,” I replied.

  “Another vision?” he asked.

  “With the help of anesthesia, I presume.”

  How did I know that, too? The fact I recalled being wheeled into surgery was a clue. I’d gotten really good at knowing when a dream was a dream. Self-preservation, my therapist once called it. We worked on behavioral techniques I could use to protect myself from the nightmares brought on by war and my home life. IRT—imagery rehearsal technique—was one of them. I would write down the plot of a recurring nightmare, change it into something less frightening, and then read it a couple times throughout the day and before getting into bed in the morning. For instance, explosions in the dessert became fireworks in a grassy park. In real life, I didn’t care for those, either, but they were a lot less frightening than the alternative in actuality or during sleep.

  I also had a mantra that worked for me. “Anything that happens before I wake is a dream.” I said that to myself every time my head hit the pillow, several times, especially when I rolled to my right side. I knew that was my sleeping position. Once there, I would drift off soon. The words and thought often followed me into slumber, now. Even if I didn’t recall every detail of a dream when awake, I sometimes did remember reciting the sentence in my mind while in one.

  This, however, hopefully wasn’t that. I also now knew Jefferson came to me in the most vivid way possible when my mind was clear and restful. I believed it. That didn’t happen often. The drugs would have made it possible.

  “Last I recall, I was going into surgery. Now, I’m here, hundreds of miles and hundreds of years from where that’s happening, preparing to perform my very first wedding.”

  While counting down from a hundred for the anesthesiologist, I’d had the foresight to be thinking of love, of Patrick, Jefferson, and Calvin.

  “I also recall Jefferson telling me my visons were real and accurate depictions of events in his afterlife. If he can feel and see me here, and I can see and feel him—and you—that’s all we need.”

  “Let me see if I can feel you, then.” Patrick touched my beard. “So soft.” He touched my lips. “So inviting.” He kissed me. “So tasty. You do look great in nineteenth century finery.” He straightened my tie, which was black, more of a scarf, really, fashioned into a bow at my neck. The shirt was white, not pure white, as from my generation, but more natural, almost beige. The unbuttoned suit jacket hung low at the back of my knees. It was wool, if I wasn’t mistaken, and quite warm for such a mild day, even open. Patrick looked every bit as dapper as he claimed I did. His clothing was nearly identical, except for the adornment at his neck and his suspenders, which were both green, to match his eyes. I assumed that was my doing.

  “Look at the tree,” I said.

  “I’m not finished looking at you.”

  “There will be plenty of time for that later.” I stood on tiptoe to steal a kiss, but then took a moment to straighten his top hat, instead.

  “We’re wearing top hats.” He tipped it, like a Victorian gentleman on the street. His giddiness while doing so made me laugh.

  “Yup. Cool, huh?”

  But then, his expression changed. “Will there be plenty of time?” he asked.

  Sometimes mindfulness annoyed me. I kissed Patrick, desperately so, just in case the answer was no, making the hat quite crooked again, and his glasses as well. My last visit with Jefferson in his world had ended as abruptly as my visits to my own Heaven—both of them. I had no idea how long I would be where we were. Therefore, I wanted to kiss Patrick some more.

  “I thought the kissing came at the end.” Though Jefferson’s smile was as bright as the sun overhead, he fidgeted as he approached from the old, white church on the bank of the river.

  “Hello, Jefferson.”

  Our splendiferous backdrop resembled an illustration from a history book. Cone Heads was nowhere to be seen. The white siding of the church that stood in its place was worn to gray in spots. Its tall, rickety steeple had seen its better days as well, and the bell that hung there was dull and black, no longer golden and shiny. Still, its beauty could not be denied.

  The church was important to Jefferson and Calvin. Their faith was. Though the ceremony would take place outdoors and not under the roof in the house of God, they would want their union blessed. Ahead of their time, or perhaps just filled with hopeless romanticism without the slightest hint of prejudice between them, they fully believed a union made in love would receive it.

  “Goose.” Jefferson hugged me. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  The moment the embrace was over—I held on longest—he went back to tugging on his cuffs and smoothing down the front of his jacket, which, as far as I could see, had not a wrinkle in it.

  “You’re nervous.” I brushed the softness of his thin beard.

  “I have no idea why. This is what I’ve always wanted, ever since I was old enough to know of love. Even before that, when playing as a child, I dreamed I would one day be a husband, and truth be told, I also dreamed I would one day have one.”

  “Weddings are supposed to fill one with jitters,” Patrick said, one hand on my back, one on Jefferson’s. “It’s excitement, anticipation, promise, and joy. All of those emotions at once, the body doesn’t know what to do with them.”

  “We’re so blessed both families are happy to become one.”

  “Will I get to meet Calvin’s family?” I asked.

  “You have,” Jefferson said. “You just didn’t realize it at the time. He, himself, was unaware. The whole thing turned out to be a miracle, of sorts. Family bibles are wonderful keepers of history. Just moments ago, this day became more blessed.”

  “Tell me everything.” I literally held him still, as he had started to shift, one foot to the other.

  “I shall let him do that. It will be part of the ceremony, in fact.”

  “I assume you’ve written your own vows, then,” Patrick said. “That’s very twentieth and twenty-first century.”

  “No standard ones quite pertain to us,” Jefferson stated matter of fact. “That left us little choice.”

  “Here comes the groom.” Patrick bowed, flipping his tails and tapping his brim as Calvin approached. Patrick really got a kick out of his ensemble. “The other one.”

  “You both look so very handsome.” I straightened two more hats. “I wish I had a camera to capture the image forever.”

  “You have your brain and your talent,” Jefferson reminded me.
“All you have to do is remember.”

  “I shall do my best.” Beaming smiles, eager eyes, and subtle loving touches still made me wish I was in my own era with some video equipment or at least my letter I phone.

  Each era, each stop in my ethereal, otherworldly journey seemed to have its own set of rules and boundaries. In this one, my trouser pockets were empty, so I continued to study the happy, handsome, fidgety men before me, in order to take back with me as many mental images as I could, to later draw them. The tickle at the end of a sleeve, two hips touching when they stood side by side, and fingertips at the small of one another’s backs indicated a hunger for sex as well as affection, unless I just had a dirty mind.

  “Something is missing,” I decided. “A wardrobe accessory, I think, will make your outfits perfect.”

  At the tree, I ran my hand over its rough bark, touching what was in front of me, and then reaching around to the back.

  “Oh, yeah. It won’t be here yet.”

  “What’s that?” Jefferson asked me.

  “My tribute to you.” I searched my jacket pocket. I just had a feeling. “Ah. Thank you,” I said to whoever was in charge of such things. I had a knife. “Give me a moment.”

  I moved to that side of the towering oak. At my height, some shrubbery was towering, but Calvin and Jefferson’s tree had already reached at least fifteen feet, either by heavenly magic or because their wedding took place a few years after they’d arrived in paradise. Maybe I should have asked what year it was, but I was far too excited.

  At shoulder level, at least my shoulders, I made the inscription I would do again in a hundred years. “Come look.”

  “JE plus CG,” Jefferson read aloud.

  “I carved that into the trunk last October,” I told him. “Or October a century and a half from now, depending on how we look at things. I wanted it here today, though.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Calvin said. “Appropriate for this tree that means so much to us.”

  “If I may make one little change?” Jefferson asked.

  “Of course.” I handed over my pocketknife.

  “Don’t look. I want it to be a surprise,” he said.

  I bit the corner of my lip. “Well, it is your day, so I suppose I must follow your directive.” I reached for Patrick’s hand. “You, come with me.”