Comfort & Joy

“I did. I prayed every day that you’d wake up and come back. ”

Somehow, I saw that real broadcast from a fake world. “And you were wearing the yellow outfit I bought you. ”

Stacey nods slowly, then leans forward, rests her arms on the rail. “You never saw that broadcast. You were in a coma. ”

Who can I tell if not my sister? And I need to tell someone. I’m like the “I see dead people” kid. If I try to handle this all alone, I’ll go nuts. “After the crash, I woke up . . . ”

She shakes her head. “No. You never regained consciousness. The paramedics . . . ”

“Crazy, remember?”

“Oh. ”

“Anyway, I was in this clearing. There was smoke everywhere, and fire, and loud noises, and . . . Mom. ”

Stacey goes very still. “You saw her?”

I nod.

“And?”

“She knelt beside me and told me it wasn’t my time. ” I lean forward slightly, desperate to be told I’m not insane, even though I know I must be. “Tell me I’m wacko. ”

“In the field . . . Your heart stopped for almost a minute. You were legally dead. ”

I release a deep breath. There’s a strange sense of peace that comes with the news. “She made me wake up. When I did, I saw how alone I was, how far from the survivors. At first, I was going to go to them and get rescued, then I thought of you and I changed my mind. I walked away from the crash and ended up in some little town in Washington. ”

“You know the plane crashed about one hundred miles northeast of here?”

It shakes me, that new bit of information. “I was never even in Washington State?”

“No. ”

I’ll think about that later. For now, since I’ve started on my mad story, I want to finish it. “I found a run-down resort called The Comfort Fishing Lodge and got a room. There was a boy there, and a man. ”

Stacey holds up a hand to stop me. “Wait a second. ” She runs to the corner of the room, where my purse is on a mustard-yellow plastic seat. Beside it is my camera.

“My camera,” I whisper. “Did you develop my film?”

“Huh? No. ” Stacey digs through my black leather tote and finally pulls out a magazine, then hurries back to my side. “I read this while you were in surgery. ” She opens it to a page, hands it to me.

It’s the article on The Comfort Fishing Lodge. “I was looking at this in the airport. ”

I feel as if I’m unraveling, coming apart. This is where it began. In my subconscious. I looked at the pictures of this place and longed to go there. And a morphine drip made it possible.

“This article says the lodge was torn down in 2003, to make way for a corporate retreat. ”

Torn down.

“Does it mention a Daniel?”

Stacey scans the pages. “No. The resort was built by Mr. and Mrs. Melvin Hightower. They moved to Arizona when the Zimon Corporation purchased it. The new place hosts corporate shindigs and self-help seminars. ”

There is no Comfort Fishing Lodge.

I was never there.

No doubt Daniel is my neurologist and Bobby is some nurse’s son who darted into my room for a second while I was sleeping.