Nine Minutes in Heaven Read online

  “Sorry.” Jefferson put it at his side. “Would you like to see more of what’s around you?”

  “With you two as our guides?” I asked.

  Calvin took my hand in one of his, and one of Patrick’s in the other. “Absolutely.”

  Two more steps had us in the middle of the field, in amongst the colorful carpet of flowers, some tall enough to tickle my knees where my jeans were torn, leaving a gaping hole there. Green stems with purple blooms, red ones, yellow ones, orange, yellow, and blue waved and shimmied, as if they were happy to see me, too.

  “A rainbow!” Every color from the ground was represented in the arch of stripes all aglow when I peered ahead toward the horizon. We ran in that direction, like little boys playing on a summer day, and then I fell, as Calvin let go of me. Once on the ground, I giggled, like that little boy, still, as a several dozen big and little paws climbed and fumbled over me. “My babies!”

  Seven cats and two dogs wagged, wiggled, and kneaded.

  “How? How are we here?” I wanted to know, but it was hard to concentrate on anything other than whiskers, bright eyes, toe beans, and soft fur right then. “Why don’t I have cats now?” I asked. “Wilbur would love cats, I bet!” There was that. Wilbur was never far from the forefront of my mind.

  The kitty cats purred, Funny Face, Sandy, Smokey, Molly, Black Cat, Kitty, and Boy Cat. Shelby and I had never been great at coming up with names for cats. Max, a huge black lab mix with the same name as my given one, had some believing I didn’t do any better as an adult. He and TJ, a soft mop of a sheepdog, nuzzled into my cheeks, getting me all wet with their noses and tongues. “I love you, Maxter. You, too Teej. I wuv all of you!” Every one of them, canine or feline, was spry and healthy, happy and agile.

  “That looks like fun.” Patrick joined me down in the splendor of the meadow’s tall, green spikes and fanciful petals. I kissed him. I tried to, but the dogs wanted in on it and one of the cats, Funny Face, the calico, was already kneading on his broad chest. “Hello, precious little one,” Patrick said to her. “Hello, precious big one.” He managed to get his lips to mine. “Not so big, actually.”

  “A short joke, here?” I asked, feeling a smile that would show I wasn’t the least bit angry.

  “If I haven’t mentioned this before…” Somehow not disturbing the cat, Patrick shifted closer, so all of him touched me somewhere. “Like Baby Bear’s everything, my Love Camel is just right in every way.”

  I was about to explain the term Love Camel to Jefferson and Calvin, but then assumed they knew. I assumed angels were all-knowing, omniscient, at least when it came to those to whom they were attached on Earth. “It’s The Rainbow Bridge,” I said upon the realization. “It has to be. I guess we’re visiting you, after all, Jefferson.”

  “Uh-huh.” His response as brief and vague as most of the others he’d offered, this time, I blamed Apple.

  “I guess it pays to be personally connected to residents of Heaven.” My eyes locked on Patrick. “Though I hope they don’t get in trouble for bringing us here.”

  “I think it’s okay,” he said.

  “Yeah. Like a gym membership. Maybe we’re here on a visitor’s pass.”

  “A visitor’s pass to heaven…” Patrick drew an imaginary heart on my forehead. “I like the way you think.” Then, he traced the letter P inside it. “Never forget me.”

  “Forget you? How could I?” I turned Kitty’s butt away from my face. “There are none here for you?”

  “I was allergic to the furry ones, remember?”

  I stroked Patrick’s beard and peered into his eyes through glass. I was glad he still wore glasses, even in Heaven. I liked Patrick’s glasses. “Right. And scared of cats.” Then, I felt his heartbeat against my palm.

  “I no longer remember why,” he said, allowing me to feel his words with my fingertips now on his lips. “You never had an antelope as a pet, I trust?”

  “Nope. Gramma wouldn’t allow them in the house.”

  “Phew.” He turned onto his back again but was not about to let go of my hand. I was fine with that. “Goldfish, turtles, and lizards await me, perhaps.”

  “And bees?”

  “And bees,” Patrick said, snuggling up to the black tom named Boy Cat, as Funny Face finally put her head down for a nap. “Look.” He inhaled deeply at each of their necks. “Not even a sniffle.”

  I leaned over and did the same, my face in Patrick’s beard. “None for me, either.”

  “Good thing. My existence would suck if you suddenly became allergic to me. Though if it was only the beard, I’d shave it right off, like the rest of my hair.”

  I had to check that out, the hair—or lack thereof—on Patrick’s chest, so I slipped two fingers between the second and third buttons of his dress shirt, the color of orange sherbet. “Nice.”

  “For me, too.”

  “How come you guys aren’t down here with us?” I asked Calvin, looking up at him.

  “Jefferson is busy.”

  He was once again enamored with the phone.

  “I could leave it here, if it wouldn’t annoy you or get him in trouble. That way, he could phone home, like E.T. My home, so we could talk every single day.”

  “I don’t know what E.T. is,” Calvin said.

  “Show them.” Patrick tried to roll onto his side, but the two dogs and Funny face wanted him right where he was, so he obliged.

  “Jefferson?” I held out my hand.

  “Yes?”

  “Can I borrow the phone a sec?”

  “Sure.” Reluctantly, I thought, he passed it to me, once he was down on the ground with the rest of us.

  I stopped the music to Google E.T. “Heaven has Google,” I said to Patrick.

  “Good to know.”

  “And the Wi-Fi is excellent.”

  “One would hope.”

  “Though I assume we’re technically still on the outskirts, right?”

  “Technically,” Calvin said with a smile as bright as the warm sun above that got me to wondering if we could get way up there via the rainbow.

  “Here he is. E.T. stands for extraterrestrial,” I explained to our angels. “E.T. Get it?” I held the screen up to give them a better view. “We can watch the whole movie. Would you like that?”

  “That would depend on its duration,” Jefferson said.

  “Ah. Well, here.” I handed the phone back over. “Watch anything you’d like.”

  “Back to the puppy dogs!” Patrick went a few more rounds with the animals, but then lost his playmates and lap buddy, when Funny Face decided hopping grasshoppers could no longer be ignored. Half the cats joined in the fun, while the other half watched, the dogs, too. Patrick wasn’t idle for long. Still exuberant and playful, he rolled right at me, bringing me into his orbit, like a snowball down a mountain. Switching direction, we captured Calvin in our movement, and then went back the other way for Jefferson, four grown men tumbling and spinning, like we were back in our younger days on the playground.

  “Watch the letter I phone,” Jefferson scolded.

  “Jefferson doesn’t want to play,” Patrick said.

  “I never knew him to be a party pooper.” I stuck my lip out in a pout, unsure he even noticed. “Maybe phones shouldn’t be allowed in Heaven.”

  “Maybe nothing but an mp3.” Patrick nodded. He liked his idea. “Heaven needs music, or I could just sing.”

  I kissed him before he could start, a kiss that was cut short by the sound of three men’s heavy breathing, sex sounds surprisingly loud from such a small phone speaker. “Shit. I mean…shoot.”

  Patrick tried to hide a snicker.

  “Am I in trouble for real?” I snatched the phone from Jefferson.

  “What was that?” Calvin asked.

  “Three men engaged in sexual intercourse,” Jefferson told him.

  “Am I going to get the boot?” I was certain I would. “For bringing porn into Heaven?”

  “You’re fine,” Jefferson
promised.

  “Good.”

  “Why would watching two, three, or four men expressing their love for one another with pleasure be bad?” he asked. “We enjoyed having you watch us in the woods when you came back to our time in autumn, and would quite enjoy watching you, also, here, there, or anywhere.”

  “It was good for me, too,” I said. “And, well, maybe, we can get into some of that during this visit, if it’s not against the rules. I haven’t needed to watch guys on my phone as much, lately, not since Patrick and I have gotten closer.”

  Patrick smiled at me.

  “And when it comes to those particular three men you had on, I’m not so sure about the love part.”

  “I’m sure about ours,” Patrick said.

  I kissed him once more. “Me, too. And yours, Jefferson and Calvin. I really thought you guys would be married, you know, since you’ve been here so long.”

  “Maybe I haven’t been here as long as you think.” Jefferson brushed my beard, like I had his. Calvin picked up the phone, once I’d set it down.

  “Over a hundred years,” I said.

  “Or not.” Patrick put two fingers to the fluff at his chin. “Not if Jefferson just crossed over last October, when we helped him.”

  “Oh. Oh, yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Sort of.”

  Calvin chucked the phone, as if it was possessed, when it suddenly asked, “How can I help you, Goose?”

  “It’s supposed to do that,” I told him. “That was Siri.”

  “Is she your mother?”

  I laughed, despite my circumstances in that department. “No.”

  “She’s his friend.” Jefferson remembered me calling Siri that from when he’d come home with me after the reenactment. Maybe he’d called her that, and I just hadn’t corrected him.

  “It’s all rather strange.” Done with the phone, Calvin gathered a colorful bouquet to present to the man he loved. “Though not quite a tree, still as lovely as thee.”

  “Aww.” They tickled my heart and always would.

  My two layers on top suddenly too much for the weather, I pulled them up, baring my torso. With Patrick’s hand on my gut and mine on his chest, inside his dress shirt again, we breathed in synch. Then, the questions came.

  “When I had my vision, that night at Cost-Mart in the snow, I remember how glad you were to see Jefferson again, Calvin. He hadn’t crossed over when he’d first passed away, right? You hadn’t, right, Jefferson?”

  Jefferson shook his head side to side. “Right.”

  “What’s happening now isn’t like my vision, though?” I asked again. “Jefferson told me that,” I said to Patrick.

  “Right.” Calvin answered this time. He held Jefferson’s hand, and I took Patrick’s.

  “What happened in that vision was real, either way. Wasn’t it?”

  “I told you that, too,” Jefferson said.

  “This is also real…but different.”

  He confirmed that again as well.

  “I just wanted to make sure. Who died first?” I only considered the question after I’d asked it. “Forgive me if that’s indelicate. I never got the whole story. If you had died together, would Jefferson still have had trouble crossing over?”

  “I passed first,” Calvin said.

  “So, Jefferson wasn’t in Heaven when you got there.”

  “No.”

  “Would he have been, if he hadn’t been trapped on this side?”

  “I would not have been there,” Jefferson said. “For the fact I was still alive.”

  I remembered everything, then. The dark night came rushing back, where I’d come from and what had happened there, to me and to Patrick. “But Patrick is here?”

  Part of me wished he wasn’t, because it was all my fault.

  “Yes,” Jefferson said.

  “I am.” Patrick offered proof in the form of a kiss.

  “We’re not here for a special visit, are we?” I scrambled to my feet and stepped from the flowers back onto the grass. “The Rainbow Bridge comes first, because that’s a nice distraction to make it easier to process what’s happening, huh?”

  Calvin stood as well. “Perhaps.”

  “I still have images of back there, though. I think I’m…” I looked to Jefferson, now up with us. “And Patrick is…” I looked to Calvin. “We’re both dead, aren’t we?”

  “You have crossed over,” Calvin said.

  “Whoa.” I crouched to hug my dogs. TJ and Max had come to lie down at my feet. Patrick, maybe because it was the first time he was able, was still sitting in the middle of the flowery field petting cats, one and then another, as no less than five of them rubbed all against him again. Even now, the cat that followed me wasn’t cooperative enough to cuddle, except on her terms. Cats made their own rules, I learned when I tried to pick up Kitty. They behaved as cats, on Earth and, apparently, in Heaven. “What about Wilbur, Shell, Rip, and Carrie?”

  Jefferson shook his head. “They won’t be here.”

  “Oh.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “Can I go back and forth?”

  “Not in the way you would want to, not as your human self, with all that entails, not once you’re here for good.”

  “And…how will I feel about that? How will they?”

  Jefferson’s smile dimmed. “Missing a loved one is always difficult for someone left behind.”

  Calvin kissed his cheek.

  “The choice to stay or go back is yours right now, Goose.”

  “There’s a limited time to decide, however.” Calvin offered his hand. “The tick of a clock is different here, but back where you came from, recovery is not assured after a finite number of minutes,” he warned.

  “I see. How far into that countdown are we?” I asked.

  “Farther than you would want,” Jefferson said.

  “And when that time is up, I’ll be dead-dead forever?”

  “We’re at that crossroad.” Jefferson took my other hand. “Do we stay here, or do we go back where Shelby, Rip, Carrie, and Wilbur are?”

  “What about Patrick?”

  He seemed so settled, there on the ground amongst the beauty of nature and the love of furry creatures.

  “We need an answer, Goose,” Jefferson said. “We need it now. Do you want to stay in Heaven, or do you want to go back?”

  Chapter 2

  Decisions, decisions. I was never really good at those. Before that moment in April, the day I was forced to face my own mortality, I’d been obsessing over another choice, another back and forth, another question.

  “Goose Tucker, will you marry me?”

  The marriage proposal had come in the dead of winter. Little did I know, that word—not winter—would be playing with my head just a couple months later.

  Patrick and I made love for the first time during a snowstorm Cost-Mart overnighter back in January. Shortly thereafter, we’d discovered Carrie trying to sleep in her car outside in the middle of it. Following a night of games and fun, once she’d agreed to come inside, we’d all settled down, Patrick and I on a couch in the breakroom. When I awoke after just a couple of hours sleep, things went nutty—nuttier than dressing two mannequins as ghosts, and then finding those mannequins dozens of feet from where I was certain I’d placed them.

  “That’s a pretty clear message,” I whispered.

  I stood beside them at the Cost-Mart jewelry counter. Seeing two men’s golden wedding bands aglow in warm white illumination, its source obviously otherworldly, not electrical, with the power out due to the blizzard, something came to me. After a bump on the noggin due to a fall from a ladder while playing superheroes, I’d found myself out cold in this realm, while transported to another, the one where Jefferson and Calvin were finding their happily ever after life. I’d spent days with them there, only to return to 2019 here on Earth to discover I’d only been unconscious a matter of minutes. It was just like when the Pevensie children went through the wardrobe into Narnia. Edmund, Susan, Peter, and Lucy were wi
th Tumnus and the others much longer than their caretakers on the other side of the armoire doors ever noticed. That C.S. Lewis knew how things worked.

  I’d called that particular universe hop a vision, rather than a near-death experience. Someday, I might look back at The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to see what the Pevensies called their trips. I didn’t see any half-man, half-horse, half-naked hotties in my travels but did witness a vow of commitment—another one, like the planting of the oak tree—between my two sexy, heavenly angel hotties. Each had taken a knee to speak of a union not unlike the kind a man and woman might enter into in either of our eras. When I’d returned to Patrick, awakened from my unconsciousness there in the store, I’d been sure there was something I was forgetting, something major. Seeing the wedding rings all lit up, now, I remembered.

  “Hey.”

  I spun around to see Patrick rubbing sleep from his eyes. His pajama pants sagging and the matching button-up shirt all askew, his belly showed some. I loved Patrick’s belly.

  “What are you up to?” he asked.

  Before I could say anything, he spoke again. “Oh. Oh, no.” He covered his mouth.

  “Patrick…”

  Then, he smacked his palm to his forehead. “I spoiled your surprise.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “Patrick…”

  “I can go and come back.” He remained all smiles, walking backwards away from me. “So you can finish.” He didn’t get far. “Why, though?”

  “Patrick…”

  He rushed back and grabbed me, grabbed me and twirled around in a circle, his big arms hugging me around my ribcage, me a foot off the ground. “Yes. Yes, Goose, I’ll marry you.”

  No, no, no, no, no, I thought, still in the air. “Patrick…” He was reading it all wrong, and I was freaking out.

  “I know. I was afraid it was too soon to ask, way too fast. But if you’re asking…”

  I wasn’t.

  “If you’re asking, I must have been wrong. I’m glad the whole thing with my divorce didn’t freak you out.”

  This was freaking me out. I loved him. With all my heart, I did. My brain, my heart, and my body. But marriage? Already?

  “Your face…”