Fly Away (Firefly Lane 2)

“Why are you here, Kate?”

You called for me, remember? I came because you need me. And to remind you.

“Of what?”

Memories are who we are, Tul. In the end, that’s all the luggage you take with you. Love and memories are what last. That’s why your life flashes before your eyes when you die—you’re picking the memories you want. It’s like packing.

“Love and memories? Then I am double-Oreo fucked. I don’t remember anything, and love—”

Listen.

A voice is speaking. “Will she be herself when she wakes up?”

“Hey,” I say. “That’s—”

Johnny. The way she says her husband’s name is full of love and pain.

“… if she wakes up is really the question…” A male voice.

Wait. They are talking about my death. And the chance of something worse—a brain-damaged life. An image flashes through my mind—me, confined to bed, held together by tubes, unable to think or speak or move.

I concentrate hard and I am in the hospital room again.

Johnny is standing by my bed, looking down at me. A stranger in blue scrubs is beside him.

“Is she a spiritual woman?” This from the stranger.

“No. I wouldn’t say so,” Johnny says tiredly. He sounds so sad I want to take his hand, even after all that has happened between us, or maybe because of it.

He sits down by the bed where my body is. “I’m sorry,” he says to the me that can’t hear.

I have waited so long to hear those words from him, but why? I can see now that he loves me. I can see it in his moist eyes, in his shaking hands, in the way he bows his head to pray. He doesn’t pray—I know him better than that; it is defeat, that lowering of his chin to his chest.

He will miss me, even after all of it.

And I will miss him.

“Fight, Tully. ”

I want to answer him, to let him know that he has reached me, that I am here, but nothing works. “Open your eyes,” I say to my body. “Open your eyes. Tell him you’re sorry, too. ”

And then he starts to sing in a cracked, croaking voice. “Just a small town girl…”

God, I love that man, Kate says.

He is halfway through the song when someone else walks into the room. A beefy man in a cheap brown sport coat and blue slacks. “I’m Detective Gates,” the man says.

I hear the words car accident and images flash through my mind—a rainy night, a concrete stanchion, my hands on the steering wheel. It almost becomes a memory. I can feel it coming together, meaning something, but before I can put it together, I am hit in the chest so hard I fall back against the wall. The pain is crushing, excruciating.

CODEBLUECALLDRBEVAN.

“Kate!” I scream, but she is gone.

The noises are thunderous now, echoing and banging and beeping. I can’t breathe. The pain in my chest is killing me.

ALLCLEAR.

I am thrown into the air like a kid’s rag doll, and up there, I burst into flames. When it’s over, I’m floating again, falling alongside the starlight.