The Next Person You Meet in Heaven(10)

SUNDAY, 10:30 A.M.

The man named Tolbert signed a receipt. The woman behind the counter slid a copy back his way.

“All set,” she said.

Tolbert waited for his wife’s car to be brought around. Earlier, at the house, he had nudged her awake.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” he whispered.

“Hmm?—”

“Your tire was flat.”

“… it was?”

“I gotta buy a new one.”

“… OK …” She rolled over. “Be careful.”

Now, as he glanced at the walls of the auto shop, Tolbert thought about the newlyweds who had stopped to help him last night. The groom, who changed the tire in his tuxedo, said the whole thing was his wife’s idea. Nice guy. Funny guy. The incident had made Tolbert feel good about people. He didn’t always feel that way.

A mechanic pulled up in the car.

“Good as new. Spare’s in the trunk.”

“Thanks,” Tolbert said.

Once inside, Tolbert grabbed his cell phone and pressed the preset number for Teddy, his assistant.

It went to voice mail.

He dialed it again.

Same thing.

He dialed the office.

Voice mail again.

“Uch,” he mumbled. “That damn kid.”

He glanced in the rearview mirror, then turned the car around, heading for the balloon field instead of home, the good feeling about other people now gone.





The First Lesson




Annie stared at the wounded boy, lying in the gravel, missing an arm and bleeding profusely.

Why are you showing me this? It’s awful.

“Yeah,” Sameer said, “I never cried like that before. I sounded like a wolf.”

Did you die?

“I would have. But …”

He pointed, and Annie saw a head poke out the train window, an older woman wearing black cat’s-eye glasses. She ducked back inside.

The train slowed.

People jumped off.

They ran to the boy.

The woman ran, too.

She grabbed his severed arm, removed her jacket, and wrapped it tightly.

“Let’s go to the next part,” the boy said. “This is gross.”



Instantly, they were in a hospital waiting room, where men smoked and women sewed and magazines on low tables were picked up without comment.

“This is 1961,” the boy said. “That’s my mom.” He pointed to a woman in a red coat, her hands clasped against her lips. “And my pop,” he added, noting a heavily whiskered man in a brown suit, hair the same black shade as his son’s, his left leg shaking nervously. Annie saw the woman from the train. She was standing in the corner, arms crossed over her jacketless blouse.

When a doctor emerged, everyone turned. He exhaled and said something. Then he smiled widely, and the mother and father hugged and rose to grab the doctor’s hands in gratitude.

Everything seemed to quicken then, like a movie being fast-forwarded. There were men with cameras and flash-bulbs exploding and the mother and father beside the little boy in a bed.

“I made history,” he told Annie.

History?

“First successful full reattachment of a limb.” He grinned. “Pretty good for being stupid, huh?”

Annie watched the scenes unfold, the boy putting on his jacket, posing with a football, leaving the hospital, all of it captured by photographers and reporters.

Why am I seeing this?

“Because you went through the same thing.”

How do you know?

“Know what?”

What happened to me?

“That’s easy.” He took her single hand. “I was there.”



With that, he pulled Annie down a hospital corridor. The ceiling rose and the windows stretched like cellophane.

“The technique my doctors used became a new standard,” the boy said. “Thanks to my ignorant chasing of a train, many future patients were healed.”

Annie noticed his improved vocabulary. She looked at the narrow bridge of his nose and the thick bangs that fell loose and unkempt.

Why do you sound so …?

“What?”

Grown-up?

The boy smiled.

“You got me.”

Suddenly, the corridor rumbled and the two of them flipped and bounced as if shaken through a tube. The boy in the striped shirt was changing. When they dropped back down, he had morphed into a middle-aged man, his dark hair slicked back, his shoulders broad, his midsection large enough to push out a white medical coat.

What just happened?

“Remember that Bible verse? When I was a child, I spoke as a child, but now that I’m a man, la-da-da …”

You’re a doctor?

“Well, I was. Heart attack. High blood pressure. Never think doctors take care of themselves better than patients.”

He tugged on his coat and pointed to a name tag. “As I said, ‘Sameer.’ Or, if you prefer, Dr. Sameer. Titles seem kind of silly up here.

“By the way, sorry I called you stupid earlier. I picked my kid self to greet you. And I was a fairly obnoxious kid.”

Annie felt dazed. She could barely keep up. She realized this was a different hospital now; the corridors were brighter. There was newer artwork on the walls.