Until I Die Again [On The Way To Heaven] (Soul Change Novel)

  UNTIL I DIE AGAIN

  by

  Tina Wainscott,

  writing as Jaime Rush

  (originally published as On the Way to Heaven in 1995 under Tina Wainscott, from St. Martin’s Press)

  Winner of the 1993 Golden Heart Award

  from Romance Writers of America

  Copyright © 1995 Tina Wainscott

  For more information, sneak peeks, and contests, go to www.Jaimerush.com and www.tinawainscott.com

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  Thank you for respecting the author’s hard work.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to those who were such a big part of this book, including my grand inspiration, God; my husband, Dave, who never tires of hearing about my endless ideas, but encourages me always; my Dad, who has always believes in me; Michael Lawton for “giving” me California (and Miguel); Debbie, Vie, Debbie (too), Betzi Abram, Kris, and all my fellow writers who gave me feedback, good and bad; and especially to my mother, Christine, for always being there, for always loving me, and for giving me the most precious gift on earth: happiness.

  CHAPTER 1

  Seventy-five miles per hour. Chris Copestakes shifted her eyes from the speedometer to the narrow portion of her face in the rear view mirror. Worried brown eyes stared back. She watched the road ahead, her fingers gripping the worn steering wheel tighter than necessary. Her gaze shifted to the map scrawled on the scrap of paper.

  She shouldn’t be meeting her boyfriend, Alan, at some strange address. Instead, she should be going straight to the police. Couldn’t the flat tire have been an omen against going? Shifting on the cracked vinyl seat, she found it hard to get comfortable—her uneasiness of mind manifesting itself in the physical.

  Would her life with Alan become shattered pieces of a sinister lie? She already knew the answer. There was no denying what she had just discovered. Alan—handsome, charming, and full of secrets. He was her one voyage into murky waters, and now she was drowning. He had begged for the chance to prove his innocence. What kind of proof would he have? Could there be some plausible explanation for it all?

  The change in the sound of the tires brought her back to present. Not another flat tire, she hoped. She swallowed hard, her fingers gripping the wheel. No, the Crystal Bridge. That irrational fear of driving over bridges returned full force. She laughed aloud, trying to force the building tension away. Hah! A fear of bridges and born and raised in Colorado.

  She slowed down and stared straight ahead, careful not to look at the deep pit of rock that dropped hundreds of feet on either side. Her throat was suddenly dry, and her heart beat a little faster.

  Rapid movement in the rear view mirror caught her attention, a black semi zooming up behind her. Too fast, she thought as her stomach clenched. It’s too early for drunk drivers to be out. Just wait ten more seconds, and then you can be on your way. Don’t you dare pass me on this bridge!

  In seconds, its huge chrome grill filled the mirror. She jumped at the blast of a horn but didn’t go faster. Her gaze kept shifting between the thin strip of road ahead and the truck in the mirror. With a squealing of tires, the rig swerved around her, roaring up beside her car. Her GTO rocked in the heavy current of air as the semi revved its engine and started rumbling past.

  Chris’s fingers froze on the wheel, holding the car steady. Damn you, impatient jerk! You’ll get us both killed.

  Determined to file a complaint against the driver, she shot a glance at the truck for identification. Two painted elf shoes caught her attention a fractured second before the truck slammed into her sideways.

  The resounding thunderclap ripped through the car. Oh my God, oh my God. She jerked the wheel to the left. Disbelief turned to panic—the trailer was blocking her. Metal grated against metal. She couldn’t swallow or breath. Grinding breaks. Shattering glass. She smashed through the guard railing. Then a whooshing sound as she dropped down, down. Silence before the scream tore from her, releasing the terror inside. The world turned black as she mercifully fell unconscious an instant before impact.

  “We’re losing her,” a controlled voice called out. “Come on, come on!” another voice urged.

  Chris looked around at the icy whiteness of the room, at the doctors and nurses rushing frantically to retrieve instruments from various tables. She tried to listen to their quick, efficient dialog over the roaring noise. What is happening? Where am I?

  No one looked at her or gave the slightest clue that they had heard, too busy doing whatever it was they were doing.

  A long steady beep pierced the air, and the orderly chaos halted. With defeated faces, they moved slowly away, and Chris now saw the body below her, a tangled mass of blood and torn flesh, legs twisted into bizarre angles. No. Not me.

  The person on the table had no recognizable features. The face was so swollen, it barely looked human.

  “I was amazed she made it here alive in the first place,” a voice softly said.

  “She must have had one heck of a will to live,” another voice uttered. “Call it.”

  “Time of death: 4:35.”

  Panic gripped her as some of the orderlies left the room. What about me? You can’t just leave me here! I’m still alive. Can’t you see me?

  No one looked at her, no one heard. She tried to move toward the floor, toward the body on the operating table… and then she screamed, a hollow sound that faded the second it left her throat. That twisted flesh was her! She was dead.

  The “body” she occupied now was misty, like a cloud. She struggled to move toward her physical body. I have to get back! I have to talk to Alan. He may have done something horrible, and I have to tell someone. I have to tell my sister, Paula, what happened. She knew no way to accomplish it.

  Panic subsided, turning to regret. I haven’t done anything with my life yet. I haven’t finished school so I can help rejuvenate the state forests; I haven’t really and truly loved a man; I never got married and had a baby. I never told my sisters how much I love them.

  How much time passed, she had no clue. Time didn’t exist in this place. Floating just below the white ceiling tiles, she watched a young woman unhooking the IV’s, trying not to look at Chris’s body as she did so. Chris wasn’t afraid to look at her body. Even as she saw her mortal wounds, she felt no pain. That body is not me; I am here, floating above it. That was a shell, but this, this is my soul.

  A man walked in the room and covered her body with a white sheet. When he opened the doors and wheeled her out, heart-rending sobs poured in from the waiting area. Her mother and sisters. She knew their voices, felt their grief. She knew those voices, felt their grief. Getting the hang of moving around in her disembodied state, she moved toward the wall, wondering if she could go through it.

  At that moment, a dazzling light filled the room and pulled her gently into its warm embrace. She turned toward the source and found that the light did not blind her. With the light came a sense of overwhelming peace and love. God.

  He spoke to her, not in words she could hear but thoughts. You are not ready to die?

  Her own voice was the same, not spoken, yet heard. There are things I need to do. Things I want to do. But I will come with you.

  Your willingness is appreciated, child, but it is not your time yet.

  Even with
the light, she could clearly see the room below. She looked at the space her body had once occupied. But my body is broken. How will I live in it?

  You will not. You have a new task.

  I will do whatever you wish. What is my task?

  Find his heart.

  Before she could ask what He meant, she felt herself fall backwards as a blanket of darkness wrapped around her. Gone was the freedom of her spiritual body; she felt blood pumping through her veins again, the rhythm of her heartbeat, and dull pain. Then the deepest, darkest sleep she had ever experienced claimed her.

  Jamie DiBarto’s wife was not dying beyond those doors. He paced in the hospital waiting room, glancing every two minutes toward the operating room doors. He refused to believe the paramedics’ mutterings about a brain hemorrhage and coma. The feeling that he’d had riding with her in the ambulance…

  Jamie shook his head.

  He wanted to attribute it to the shock and panic of her collapse, the fear that built in him as he watched the blood drain from her face. Yet the feeling still lingered, the feeling, knowledge almost, that she was gone. While he had held her hand in the ambulance, he could feel her soul—her essence—slip from her body. He ignored it, yet afterward the body that lie in front of him seemed empty.

  He shook his head again, refusing to believe it. She was alive, her heart was beating, her lungs breathing. By machine, but she was alive, dammit. It seemed like hours since some stone-faced entity told him the doctor would be out soon. He was almost glad that his mother and Hallie’s mother wouldn’t be arriving for another few hours. He wanted to take the news alone.

  “Mr. DiBarto?” a soft male voice asked.

  Jamie jumped at the sound of his name. “Yes, that’s me. How is she?”

  The tall, dark-haired man held out his hand, and Jamie grabbed it as a drowning man might clutch at a rope. The doctor’s healthy, California glow looked out of place in a hospital filled with sickness.

  “My name is Doctor Barrett Hughes. I’d like to talk to you in private. Please follow me.”

  In private. Those words made Jamie feel cold all over. It wasn’t good news. The doctor gave you good news right there in the waiting area. They gave you bad news in private.

  Jamie followed the doctor down another corridor to a closet-sized room with a large window that let sunlight filter in. There was a tiny desk, and chairs for up to five people to receive bad news at the same time. He chose the one farthest from the desk, as if that could put distance between him and the words on the papers Dr. Hughes held so tightly in his hand. Instead of sitting behind the desk, the doctor took the seat next to Jamie.

  “I’m afraid the news isn’t good. We can’t be hopeful about your wife’s condition.”

  Jamie’s throat tightened, and he couldn’t swallow. He suddenly felt warm, then cold as a chill possessed him. The doctor continued.

  “Hallie suffered a massive intracerebral hemorrhage near her brain stem. She had a stroke. Right now she’s in a coma.”

  The ocean roared in his ears. The room spun around, leaving him disoriented and clutching the arms of his chair. Suddenly he wasn’t feeling so brave about taking the news alone.

  Jamie found his voice. “It sounds… bad. But she’s going to be all right, isn’t she?”

  Dr. Hughes’ dark eyes were blank, his mouth a grim line. “Your wife had one of the most serious kinds of stroke. Of the many patients I have seen with this massive a CVA, that is, cardiovascular accident, most don’t live very long. It’s usually fatal, perhaps within an hour, a day. It’s hard to determine.”

  Jamie stood up, his balance precarious. “There must be something you can do. You’re a doctor. All this instrumentation, these gadgets and machinery… there has to be something that will save her.”

  Dr. Hughes touched Jamie’s arm in a silent request for him to sit again. “We have on staff one of the best neurosurgeons in the country. His judgment is that surgery is useless. And possibly dangerous at this point. The worst of the bleeding is already over.”

  Jamie staredsat staring into space, feeling cold turn into the heat of despair and anger. He thought of that warmth, soon to be absent from Hallie’s body. Finally he tuned into the present and asked, “She’s going to die?”

  “Yes.”

  Jamie’s chest turned to stone.

  The doctor rested his chin on steepled fingers. “Most people go through a whole range of emotions while the realization process takes hold. Give yourself time to accept each one.”

  “It sounds so damned clinical.”

  Dr. Hughes smiled faintly. “I’m sorry if it seems that way. Comes with the territory.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Of course. And I would suggest you call her family and let them know that there isn’t much time.”

  “Her mother is on her way now. No one has any idea where her father is. That’s all the family she has.” Jamie’s voice sounded flat, as if it came from a cardboard box.

  “Follow me to ICU then.”

  He couldn’t believe he was walking down the sterile corridors of the hospital to say what might be his final words to his wife. Their marriage had shattered long ago, but the thought of her dying still ripped him apart.

  Dying. Hallie dying.

  Hallie lay in a glassed-in room, a fragile creature in a protected environment. Jamie stood alone by the door for a few minutes, sustaining a hope that perhaps this was the wrong woman. As long as he didn’t see her face, there was the smallest chance that Dr. Hughes had gotten Hallie mixed up with this dying woman. But soon he was drawn to her side, and the limp hand he held was definitely Hallie’s.

  His mind tried unsuccessfully to erase the tubes from her mouth and nose, the IV stuck in her arm. The respirator issued a soft, wheezing sound every time it gave her a life-sustaining puff of air. He couldn’t understand the green scribbles on a nearby monitor but was thankful that something was happening.

  Life flowed under the serene exterior, but where was her soul? Right there, he told himself, still locked inside her body. He squeezed her hand hard, as if by holding on, he could keep her from slipping away. He envisioned himself in a tug of war with Death. Of course, Death would win. Jamie had to keep reminding himself of that; it hadn’t sunk in that she would actually die.

  He had heard that people in comas could sometimes hear the sounds around them. So, he would talk to her then and try to pull her back. Starting from the first time he’d ever seen her, he told her how stunning she’d looked in that sparkling blue dress.

  Throughout the night, in between the times when her mother spent time alone with her, Jamie went back and forth between forgiving her for the heartbreak she’d caused, and asking her why she had betrayed him. How he wished he would have asked her before. Now he might never know why she wouldn’t fully open herself up to him, or give her heart to him.

  Chris swam up from the depths to consciousness, lured by a man’s voice. She didn’t have the strength to open her eyes or respond, but slowly her mind began to recognize his words and put them into logical order.

  “You actually died last night. You were gone and then you came back to life. That has to mean something. Dammit, it has to mean that you’re going to come out of this coma.”

  I’m here, Alan. Or is it Dad? Then she realized what he had just said. She had died and come back. She had gotten her second chance! Only vaguely did the memory of her twisted body return. She felt no pain, only a spear of panic as she wondered what her life would be like now. It didn’t matter, she was alive! She clenched her fists, testing.

  “You moved again.” He took her hand in his, and his warmth felt good on her chilled skin. “Oh, Hallie,” he said, drawing it out into a sigh. “Dr. Hughes keeps reminding me that it’s not unusual for people in deep comas to move or twitch. He calls it posturing or something like that. But I can’t help wondering if you’re trying to tell me you’re in there.

  “So many times…” He took a deep breath, and his
voice sounded more strained when he continued. “So many times in the last two years I wanted to rip that wedding ring off your finger. I couldn’t, God help me, I just couldn’t do it. Now that it’s not there, it seems strange. The hospital sent all your jewelry home with me.” He forced a laugh. “You’d be hollering how naked you feel without it.”

  Wedding ring? Chris groped for memories of her life. Alan. They were dating, but not married. She slowly opened her eyes, focusing in on her surroundings. The machines didn’t surprise her; she had expected that. But the man did. His arms were outstretched on the wall opposite her, his head was pressed against the glass. His breath made a circle of fog in front of him.

  He was not Alan, nor her father. She could only see him at an angle from the back, but she already knew she had never seen him before. His blond, straight hair tapered down the back of his neck. His wrinkled shirt and jeans outlined a lean, muscular body.

  When he started to turn around, her eyelids fell shut under the weight of fatigue. Why was he in her room, talking to her like this? She needed more time to figure it out.

  It took little effort for Chris to keep perfectly still. He came close and gently rubbed one hand, then the other. When he laid her hand down, she had to quell a desire to reach for him.

  “I guess I should tell you that Mick is not on the list of people allowed to visit you. Maybe you’d be mad at me for that. I don’t know. As soon as he heard, he came right here. Then he blew up in the lobby when he was refused admittance. Family only. Color me old-fashioned, but I just don’t think it’s right, your lover being in here.”

  Chris could hear his shoes scrape the floor as he paced next to her bed. Her lover, Mick? Now she was sure this man had the wrong room. She wanted to open her eyes and tell him he’d made a terrible mistake, tell him how crazy it was, his thinking she was his wife. But all she could do was listen.