The Next Person You Meet in Heaven(35)

SUNDAY, 3:07 P.M.

As the police car approached the hospital, Tolbert looked out the window at the long streaks of clouds. He said a silent prayer. This, he knew, would be the last moment hope could overshadow fact. Once he got inside, whatever he saw would be undeniable.

The car stopped. He took a deep breath, then opened the door, tugged on his jacket, stepped out quickly, and walked beside the policeman. Neither man spoke.

They entered through the emergency entrance. As they approached the desk, Tolbert spotted, through a side curtain, his assistant, Teddy, sitting on the edge of a gurney, with his head down and his hands over his ears.

For an instant, Tolbert felt relief. He’s alive. Thank God. Then came rage. He stormed through the opening.

“Whoa, hey—” the officer said. But Tolbert grabbed Teddy by the shoulders and yelled, “What the hell, Teddy? What the hell?”

Teddy’s mouth was an oval. His body trembled.

“Wind,” he muttered. “An electrical line. I tried to avoid—”

“Did you check the damn weather?”

“I—”

“Did you check the damn weather?”

“It was—”

“Why did you go up? Who were these people? What the hell, Teddy?”

The police officer pulled Tolbert back, saying, “Easy, pal, easy.” Gasping for breath, Teddy pulled a business card from his shirt pocket.

“They said they knew you,” he croaked.

Tolbert froze. The card was frayed, as if it had been rained on. Tolbert’s name was handwritten on the back.

“Excuse me, are you the balloon owner?”

Tolbert spun. Another officer was in front of him.

“We need to get a statement.”

Tolbert swallowed. “Why?”

The officer flipped open a notepad.

“There’s a fatality,” he said.





The Final Eternity




Annie slumped on a cold, hard surface, her soul torn in half. She had held her baby. She had felt at peace. For one blessed moment, she thought she had found her eternal rest. She would live forever in the starry sunshine of Ruby Pier, with her son, Laurence, with Eddie, the old man, with the other children he had kept alive. That would be her heaven.

But she was gone from that heaven now, and it was clear there was no going back. She felt gutted. Hollowed out. She lacked the will to even open her eyes. When she did, no colors moved across the firmament. Blackness draped as if the air were opaque.

Why go on? she thought, slumping back. Her life had been revealed by the people she’d met, and her deepest secrets had been ripped open, abandoned by the sentinels her brain had once sent to protect them.

She knew everything that had happened now. She knew why others had been involved. What she did not know was how it all fit together, or, most agonizingly, how her life had ended. Is this it? she thought. The sum of her existence? A cut cord, loose and dangling?

As a child, Annie had been taught that when she died, the Lord would take her in and all would be comfort and peace. Perhaps that was meant for those with completed missions. If you didn’t finish your story on earth, how could heaven do it for you?

She ran her hands around her body and winced. Her head hurt, her shoulders were sore, and her lower back was tight, recalling the pain after she fell from the balloon. When she pushed her palms towards her thighs, she felt a familiar fabric, soft and satiny, and as she pushed lower, it widened and frilled.

She knew, without seeing, that she was back in her wedding dress.



Get up, she heard her inner voice tell her. Finish this. Weak and dazed, Annie rose in the darkness. Her feet were bare. The dress clung to her body. Looking down, she saw specks of light through the clear surface. Stars. First a few, then thousands, a galaxy’s worth, all below her heels.

She took a step.

The ground rolled.

Annie stopped.

It stopped as well.

She took another step and it rolled with her; she was walking atop some sort of globe—a massive glass globe with an entire universe inside it. At another time, it might have interested her. But she was blank now, a shelled husk. She trudged ahead with no peace, no clarity, none of the “salvation” that had enlightened Eddie.

Just when she imagined this was her permanent fate, she began to pass objects scattered here and there: a beige lawn chair lying on its side, a music stand turned upside down, white ribbons that were cut between two metal stanchions. A new feeling overtook her, raw and unsettling, a feeling that this was less someone else’s heaven than the remains of her earth.

Up ahead, she saw a canopy. Under the canopy, she saw the backs of several people, men and women, in suits and bridesmaid dresses.

“Hello?” she yelled.

Silence.

“Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

“Please, someone, tell me where I am,” she pleaded, drawing closer. “Do any of you know me?”

The figures dissolved into tiny particles, revealing a single tuxedoed man who lifted his head.

“I do,” Paulo said.





The Fifth Person Annie Meets in Heaven




Love comes when you least expect it. Love comes when you most need it. Love comes when you are ready to receive it or can no longer deny it. These are common expressions that hold varying truths of love. But the truth of love for Annie was that, for a long time, nearly ten years, she expected none and got none in return.