Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student (Illusions 2)
Page 3
It was the first time I heard what she had said to the doctors, to the nurses, to me, for a week. She’d tell me again for a year. She would tell me again and again. It would be true.
She said that I’d recover perfectly. The medical staff thought that was highly unlikely.
I knew It was true. If I had been hurt, I would recover perfectly. I hadn’t been hurt!
I had a question. “Do you have a car?”
She shook her head, no. “Yes.”
“Can we leave, now?”
“You’re not quite ready to go, yet.”
Long silence. Next question. “Can I call a cab?”
“Wait just a bit.”
Questions settled on me like butterflies. What had happened? I have a charmed life. Why am I in a hospital?
I had friends who crashed airplanes, not me. Was there a crash? Why? I had no reason to hurt Puff, my little seaplane, she had no reason to hurt me. This was not my life. I made a perfect landing, no damage. What is going on?
I wondered who she was. Very close, yet not my wife!
I puzzled that, no answer. I disappeared into the coma once again. But she knew I’d come back. She knew I’d recover. Completely.
As I drifted away, she said You are a perfect expression of perfect Love, here and now. There will be no permanent injury.
Chapter 3
If we want to end this lifetime higher than we began, we can expect an uphill road.
The next day, my friend Geoff, a pilot and a mechanic, stopped by the hospital.
“Hi, Richard. You’re OK, I guess.”
“I’m fine, except for all these tubes in me.” My voice was better, now, still broken. “I’ve got to get them out, today.”
“Hope so.”
“What’s this about a crash? You picked Puff up? Took her home?”
“I did.”
“She have any scratch, from the landing?”
He thought about that, laughed. “A scratch or two.”
“What could have scratched her?” I remembered my image of landing. So smooth.
He looked at me. “Looks to me as if you hit the wires, way over the ground. The right wheel caught the wires. Things got worse after that.”
“Not true. I never saw any wires, never saw any crash. I remember, before it went black. I was just skimming the grass, about to land…”
“Some other landing, maybe. Not this one, Richard. Puff was out of control from forty feet up.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Don’t I wish. I took pictures, afterward. When the wheel caught the wires, Puff pitched upside down, dragged a couple of power poles over, there were fires from the sparks, little fires in the dry grass. She hit the ground with her right wing, then the tail, inverted. Puff took most of the force of the crash, a couple seconds. Not much of the impact left for you.”