The Next Person You Meet in Heaven(12)

“If I didn’t know them, how could they affect me?”

“Ah.” He patted his hands. “Now comes the teaching part.”

He stepped around the bed and looked through the window.

“Tell me something, Annie. Did the world begin with your birth?”

“Of course not.”

“Right. Not yours. Not mine. Yet we humans make so much of ‘our’ time on earth. We measure it, we compare it, we put it on our tombstones.

“We forget that ‘our’ time is linked to others’ times. We come from one. We return to one. That’s how a connected universe makes sense.”

Annie looked at the white sheets and the blue blanket and the heavily bandaged hand that rested on her childhood belly. This was precisely when her life stopped making sense.

“Did you know,” Sameer continued, “that hundreds of years ago, they used plaster and tape to reattach noses? Later they used wine and urine to preserve severed fingers. Reattaching rabbits’ ears preceded efforts on humans. And not long before I was born, Chinese doctors trying replantation were still using needles that took two days to grind down.

“People lament that if their loved ones had been born fifty years later, they might have survived what killed them. But perhaps what killed them is what led someone to find a cure.

“Chasing that train was the worst thing I ever did—to myself. But my doctors used their knowledge to save me. And I advanced what they did on you. We tried a technique with your hand that we had never done before, allowing better blood flow through the arteries. It worked.”

He leaned in and touched Annie’s fingers, and she felt herself rising from inside her young body, returning to the mostly invisible form she had been before.

“Remember this, Annie. When we build, we build on the shoulders of those who came before us. And when we fall apart, those who came before us help put us back together.”

He removed his white lab coat and unbuttoned his shirt, far enough to yank it down over his right arm. Annie saw the squiggly scars from decades ago, now faded to a milky white.

“Know me or not, we’re part of each other, Annie.”

He tugged the shirt back on.

“End of lesson.”

Annie felt a tingling. Her left hand reappeared. For the first time in heaven, she felt pain.

“It won’t hurt long,” Sameer said. “Just a reminder.”

“Of my loss?” she asked.

“Of your attachment,” he replied.



With that, they were back to where Annie had arrived in the afterlife, between the snowcapped mountains and the massive skyscrapers. A giant wheel of railroad track unfurled and Annie saw a train heading their way.

“This isn’t how I pictured heaven,” she said.

“Well,” Sameer said, “you get to pick your eternal setting. On earth, trains haunted me. I never rode one again. But there’s nothing to fear here. So I chose to flip my human existence. Now I ride this train wherever I please.”

Annie looked at him blankly.

“Do you understand?” he said. “This isn’t your heaven, it’s mine.”

The train arrived. Its doors slid open.

“Time to go.”

“Where are we going?”

“Not ‘we,’ Annie. This stage of heaven, for me, is finished. But you have more to learn.”

He rapped the exterior and put a foot on the step.

“Good luck.”

“Wait!” Annie said. “My death. I was trying to save my husband. His name is Paulo. Did he live? Just tell me. Please. Tell me if I saved him.”

The engine roared.

“I can’t,” Sameer said.

Annie looked down.

“But others are coming.”

“What others?” Annie said.

Before he could answer, the train whisked off. The sky turned maroon. Then everything that surrounded Annie was sucked up into the air and spilled back down in a storm of grainy sand.

A vast brown desert surrounded her.

And she was alone.





Annie Makes a Mistake


Her hand is still bandaged from the accident three weeks ago, and her arm is in a sling to keep it elevated. She sits on her bed. There is little else to do. She is not allowed outside, and her mother, for some reason, has disconnected the TV set and cut its cord with scissors.

Annie walks to the window and sees Lorraine in the backyard, smoking. She has papers in her lap, but is staring at the laundry lines of neighboring houses. Sometimes, Annie notices, her mother has a hard time looking at her. Maybe parents want their children to be perfect. Annie studies her left hand, swollen and grotesque. She is not perfect anymore.

She hears something from downstairs. A knocking at the door. Strange. People usually ring the bell. Annie walks down the steps and hears the knocking again, soft, tentative. She turns the knob.

A woman is standing on the porch. She wears a bright red blazer, lip gloss, and thick pancake makeup that makes her skin a single shade.

“Oh, wow,” the woman says. “You’re Annie, right?”

Annie nods.

“How’re you doing, sweetheart?”

“OK,” Annie mumbles.

“We’ve been worried about you.”