Canon Ch. 10

The boyfriend, an obese, coarse-looking man with closely cropped hair and heavily tattooed arms, had kicked in the door. He burst into the room, his eyes wild.

"YOU BITCH! I'M GONNA KILL YOU!" he bellowed, and lifted a black, squarish pistol and leveled it at the woman. Glock, thought Jeff automatically. He was already moving.

Jeff reacted without thought; he had already jumped to his feet, and he moved to protect the woman - between her and the gun. He was reaching for his own weapon when he saw the muzzle flash. He was not conscious of hearing a shot.

Time seemed to slow down to a crawl. He had time to think: So this is what Amy felt like when those three punks attacked her... that gun is a Glock, probably a 9mm... front sight to center chest... Look at those tattoos...

He felt a sudden, hard blow to his chest, followed by a curious numbness; even so, he was still able to finish drawing his own weapon from its inside-the-waistband holster and double-tap the boyfriend in the chest. The big man went down, firing another shot at Jeff as he fell; Jeff saw the flash, felt a blow to his face, and darkness fell.

Jeff fell to the floor insensible, with a red stain spreading rapidly across his chest and his face covered with blood. The second shot had struck him in the right eye.

---

The woman whose life he had just saved was already on the phone, and the police and an ambulance were there in minutes. The helicopter arrived shortly after, and Jeff was airlifted to the nearest trauma room in critical condition.

There was no need for hurry with the boyfriend. He was dead.

As the chopper neared the circled cross of the landing pad, one EMT looked at another over the fallen cop and shook his head. "We're losing him," he said.

"Not yet," said the other.. "Let's let the docs in the ER decide that." He applied chest compression again, risky so near the wound, but there was nothing else to do. He was rewarded with a weak, thready pulse. "If we can just keep him going till we get him in the OR, he still has a chance. Keep that oxygen on him."

"How come he's not dead? He got shot in the eye."

"Look at his face. It hit him at an angle, blew out his eye socket and exited in front of his ear. Didn't hit his brain, but it might still kill him... There, I've got a pulse again. How long, Ivan?" he called toward the front.

The pilot shouted back, "We're here. Landing now." The two techs turned back to their patient as the aircraft settled onto the landing pad.

The chopper doors opened, and a team from the ER took over and rushed him inside. Within minutes, Jeff was on an operating table with his chest wide open. Another team was working on his head.

"Whaddya think?" asked one of the surgeons from behind his mask.

The man with his hands in Jeff's chest was working too hard to answer. "Get that bleeder, will you? No, over here. That one can wait." He worked feverishly, but precisely. "Brenda, see if Dr. Wine is available. We need him." He wiped perspiration from his brow with a sleeve and finally said, "Don't know, Ed." As he worked, he added, "This is pretty bad. The bastard used hollowpoints. There's another bleeder... How's his head look?"

"Bad, but not life-threatening. He's lost the eye, but that's all. Shattered eye socket - it's just going to take time."

"Well, let's give it to him. If the head can wait, come help us with this chest."

---

Jeff saw the flash, felt a blow to his face, and darkness fell...

....And the darkness was moving. Jeff felt that he was being pulled through a tunnel or passage of some kind at enormous speed, though he felt, heard and saw nothing - no wind, no light, no sound. Suddenly he burst out of whatever it was, and found himself back in that trailer - but he was high up, near the ceiling, and looking down.

It took a moment to comprehend what he was seeing; three men in EMT uniform, crouching over someone on the floor -

And the someone was himself.

Jeff had no time to wonder. Suddenly he was moving again, at infinite speed, and could see nothing. It was neither dark nor light, warm nor cold; it was Nothingness, empty, a blank. He felt no pain; he felt nothing at all, but that strange sense of very rapid movement.

Then he began to see his own life, as if projected in front of him on a 3-D screen. The old wive's tale turns out to be true, he thought - your life really does pass before your eyes.

Jeff watched his life, from the outside, as if he were watching a movie. It seemed to pass by in a split-instant, like a lightning bolt, and at the same time to linger lovingly over every moment of his life, from his birth to those shots in the trailer. He experienced his own life through the eyes and hearts of other people, knowing and feeling how he had affected the lives of every human he had ever encountered or whose life he had touched. It seemed to last seconds, and at the same time to last for many lifetimes.

He was vaguely pleased that he mostly seemed to have affected people in a positive way; few seemed to have been hurt by him - and seeing himself through Amy's eyes, and those of his children, was a revelation. He felt their love from the inside, and saw how they trusted him and depended on him and admired him.

Then there were the many, many intimate encounters with the love of his life. Feeling his lovemaking through Amy's mind and body was overwhelming - but it was no more intense than he remembered. It was her pleasure and love reflected back at him, echoing his own.

In looking back on his work, he felt the terror, and then the gratitude, of all the people he had helped - and finally, the gratitude of the woman whose life he had saved. The strange, unhurried but lightning-quick review of his life ended then, and he returned to the moving nothingness.

After what might have been seconds or centuries - there seemed to be no time in that place - he saw, far in the distance, or something like distance, a light. It grew brighter, or perhaps nearer, slowly. He sensed a deep and abiding warmth from the light, affection, love, caring. It was only a light; he saw no human face, heard no words...

*eyeblink*

*discontinuity*

It was as if one reel of a movie had ended and another reel, from a different picture, had begun; one disorienting instant in which everything changed. Jeff could suddenly feel again. Indeed, he was overwhelmed with sensations.

He was standing barefoot on wet sand, a warm salty wind in his face and sun on his back. He realized that his eyes were closed; he opened them. A white-sand beach, palm trees, a grass shack, an infinite blue ocean...

I know this place, he thought. This is Juicy Island.

He and Amy hadn't been to the island for more than a year; coordinating a trip with the kids was difficult, and the twins were still not yet at an age where they could enjoy it. They missed their TV shows and video games, not to mention McDonald's....

Someone was approaching him, walking along the beach. He blinked and looked more closely - his vision seemed to be sharper, as it had been when he was a child. It was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a weathered face, bald and clean-shaven -

Jeff blinked, and then smiled. He knew that face; it was more than half his own face. It was his father's face.

Geoff came closer, till they stood at arm's length. "Dad?" said Jeff.

The old man smiled, but said nothing. He was taller than Jeff, and heavier. Amy would have said he looked the same as the last time she had seen him, or a bit younger.

But Jeff, of course, had never seen him before. "Dad?" he asked again.

Geoff nodded. "Hello, Akiro."

Somehow he wasn't surprised that his father knew his birth name.

"Am I dead?"

Geoff grinned. "Not yet. That's what we need to talk about."

"What? Where is this place? What's happening to me?"

"This is a sort of in-between place, Akiro. Like a doorway. You can go on, or you can go back."

"It's up to me?"

Geoff nodded. "It's not often like that. But this time it is. Walk with me."

The two men set off down the beach. They had not embraced, nor even touched each other. It hadn't seemed to occur to them.

"I want to go back," said Jeff.

"It'll be hard," said his father. "More pain than you've ever experienced, and a long time before you're back where you were - if you ever get there."

"How long?"

"That's up to you, too. How hard you work, how hard you fight. How much it means to you."

Jeff thought. "I still want to go back. You know what I have to live for."

Geoff nodded. "Amy and the kids. I wouldn't want to leave either." He grinned. "Hell, I didn't. But nobody gave me the choice. It was tough to give her up."

"It's not about that, Dad." Jeff shook his head. "It's not for me. I want to take care of them. That's my job. To teach Harry what it means to be a man - to teach him to be like you, like his dad. To teach the girls to be tough as well as pretty, and kind as well as smart." He looked out at the ocean once more. "And I don't want Amy to be left alone, not again. She's had her share of mourning."

"You ARE my son," said Geoff, his old gray eyes warm. "But she's had her share of being a caregiver, too, Akiro, with me. If you go back, she'll be doing that again, for a long time. You're going to need a LOT of care. Do you want to put her through that?"

Jeff looked down at his feet shuffling through the sand. He wondered if it was real sand, or only an illusion of it in his mind.

He was troubled. That, he had not thought of. He wanted to go back to care for his love, and for his kids - not to be cared for.

"What's happening to me now, Dad? Really, I mean?"

The old man spoke bluntly, as he had in life. "You're in surgery. It's touch and go. If you want to go on, your heart stops and doesn't start again. If you want to go back - well, that's when the hard part starts."

The old man finally put his arm around his son's shoulders. "There's no guarantee that you won't be back here tomorrow, or next week. But if you want to try, this is when you decide." He released him. "Think carefully - son."

Jeff thought as they walked for a while. Seabirds called above them, and the waves broke on the sugar-white sand. Jeff looked out at the ocean, then at the sky.

Then he smiled. "I'm going back," he said.

The two men looked at each other. "You know what it was, don't you?" asked the younger man. "You know why I have to go back."

His father looked at him, then smiled and nodded, slowly. He, too, looked out at the sea. "Her eyes."

"Yes. Blue like the ocean, brown like the earth."

"I remember," said the old man, without sadness. "I never felt anything in my life like what I felt when she looked at me." And then he looked at his son. "And I'd have done anything to keep those eyes from crying."

"Anything," Jeff agreed. "She'll be caring for me, Dad - but she won't be crying for me. And eventually I'll be able to care for her and the kids again. Take my place, again. We can go on as a family."

"And it's important for a boy to know that his father's a hero," said Geoff, nodding.

"I know - I've told Harry what you did -"

"I meant you."

Jeff blinked. "Oh," he finally said. "Uh... Thanks, Dad."

"You risked your life to save a woman you didn't even know. You almost lost it. You still might." He looked into his son's eyes, so similar and yet so different from his own, and said, "I'm proud of you, son. You made a good man. I wish we'd known each other. Harry, too - but a boy just needs one father."

The old man smiled. "If you want to go back, Jeff -" the first and only time he used the name - "the time is now."

Jeff squared his shoulders and nodded. "I guess l'm ready." He looked at his dad. "Anything else I need to know?"

The older man looked at him, his expression curiously blank. After a moment, he said, "Look up in the attic when you get home."

"The attic? What am I going to find?"

"Just look. You'll see. Time to go, Akiro."

"Okay." The two men finally embraced. "Goodbye, Dad."

The old man grinned as they parted, and good-naturedly clapped a big hand on his son's shoulder. "We'll see each other again, son. Count on it."

As the vision of his father faded, Jeff heard him say, "You take care of that girl, now," he said. Then, with a grin that lingered like the Cheshire cat's, "And take care of Honey and the Jag, too...."

Dreamless sleep followed; though when Jeff finally woke, much later, he would remember almost everything.

---

Amy and the children, all of them red-eyed and fearful, were huddled in the waiting room hours later. They were surrounded by cops and a few old soldiers, friends of Geoff's, as they waited. Her parents had driven in, and were trying to comfort the children. The twins wept occasionally, Harry tried not to, and Amy held onto them all as if they were all she had. They were.

Jeff was in surgery for fourteen consecutive hours. His family was exhausted by the time the pale and disheveled surgeon came out to speak with them at 2:00 AM. Harry and the twins were sleeping fitfully on the sofas, and Amy was sipping coffee and nibbling on a sandwich that one of the cops had brought. Jeff's friends and coworkers had stayed with them in shifts, never leaving them alone. Frank and Ellie, Amy's parents, had been dozing as well, but roused themselves to join her as the doctor approached.

Amy's heart sank when she saw the solemn expression on the surgeon's face. "He's dead, isn't he?" she burst out. Ellie put out a hand to touch her daughter's back.

The man smiled tiredly and shook his head. "No," he said. "He's not dead." The three adults sighed with relief, but the physician continued: "He won't be out of danger till this time tomorrow, or later; but he's stable, we've repaired the damage, and he's strong. I think he has a very good chance."

Amy knew he was overstating the case, but she clung to his words anyway. "He's going to be all right?"

The surgeon nodded firmly and without hesitation. "I think so," he said. "The road back is going to be a long one, though. He's badly hurt..."

The surgeon - who was that Dr. Wine who had been called in to consult, and had ended up taking over - sat down with Amy and gave her the details of her husband's injuries. The head wound, though ugly, was less dangerous than the injury to his chest. The hollowpoint bullet had ripped through Jeff's left lung, grazing his heart and causing considerable damage as it expanded and tore through his flesh. He had lost a great deal of blood, and besides two or three times on the helicopter, his heart had stopped on the operating table four times. The healing would take months.

"He's lost the sight in his right eye, of course," said the surgeon. "And he's probably going to need some cosmetic surgery. Right now, that's the least of his problems. Let us watch him through the night, and we'll have more to tell you in the morning."

The tired surgeon looked around at the family and the three cops who were listening. "His chances are good. My trauma team is the best, and he was stable and strong when we were done - strong heartbeat, breathing well, BP excellent. That's blood pressure," he added. After receiving some effusive thanks, he left to attend to his patient.

Amy and her parents decided to let the kids sleep. The news would, she hoped, be even better in the morning. She knew they'd be worried and fearful till their father spoke to them again. Ellie sat down by the girls and Frank next to Harry, and they both put up their feet and stretched out to try to catch a few winks.

Amy settled down on a sofa herself, wrapping herself in a blanket and trying to sleep.

And pray...

---

Amy, or her parents, or some of Jeff's friends from the Police Department were at his bedside around the clock while he was in the hospital. Since Amy herself was an RN - a registered nurse - the hospital staff allowed her to come and go at any hour. She gladly helped when it came time to bathe Jeff, change his catheter bags and IVs, change his sheets, and so on; and the nurses were glad of the help. City General, like most hospitals, was woefully understaffed.

Jeff remained in Intensive Care for more than a month. He had not regained consciousness; the surgeons had induced a coma to deal with the swelling in his skull. Though the bullet had not penetrated Jeff's brain, his skull had suffered a complex fracture, and the impact and the trauma to surrounding tissues were devastating.

---

When Geoff had told his son that this would be difficult for Amy, they were both thinking of his long convalescence; neither of them had thought of her time alone. She and Jeff had never been separated for more than a few hours since their marriage, and she found the loneliness and uncertainty to be painful - as painful as anything since her first husband's death.

Amy sat by his bed and watched him through the morning and early afternoon, then picked up the kids from school and made them dinner. After they were tucked in at night, she often left them in the care of her mother and went back to the hospital. At other times, she sat in the living room and watched TV alone, till the wee hours; she disliked going to their bed by herself.

When she did, she often found herself thinking of the love they had made there. Her hand would slip into her panties, and she would stroke herself - gasping with pleasure, but with tears in her eyes. Then, she'd roll over, hug her pillow, and cry herself to sleep.

She missed him. She didn't only miss their lovemaking; she missed his affection, his closeness, the intimate sharing of her time and space and life with the man she loved. She didn't only miss shuddering on his cock, both of them slick with sweat in the steam room - she missed laughing with him over breakfast. She missed sharing her favorite comic strips with him as they read the paper together. She missed looking forward to his coming home from work. She missed rubbing his feet as he relaxed on the sofa after dinner. She missed the way he played and laughed with their children. Hell, she missed the way he belched.

Amy was lonely. It would be so nice, she thought now and then, to be held again...

She always dismissed the thought. She'd be held when Jeff was better.

---

One night, she sat on the sofa they had shared so often and didn't dismiss the thought. What if Jeff NEVER woke up? What then?

Did she have to be lonely forever?

She didn't exactly think it all through then, or even have a real fantasy, but her mind did begin to wander a bit...

There was a fellow who volunteered at the nursing home, a bit younger than she, but tall and attractive. And obviously interested; he had paid a lot of attention to Amy when he first began, then backed off a bit when he learned she was married - but he still seemed to seek her out more than necessary. They talked often, and though Amy was consciously and deliberately a bit cool toward him, she was polite and friendly enough.

She wondered what would happen if she warmed up to him a bit... Maybe...

Amy blinked, then her eyes widened. She inhaled deeply, then let it out.

Then she smiled, wryly.

"Hello, Geoffie," she said. She was conscious of his scent, strong, masculine and familiar, all around her. There was no sense of his "presence," but the scent was unmistakable. She knew he was there.

She sighed. "Okay, I get it. That's not me, and that's not what I need." She nodded. "What I need, is Jeff back. And that's all."

Then she felt it; warmth, affection, love. He was all around her, comforting her, soothing her fears, calming her nerves.

She leaned back on the couch, relaxing in the warmth. She snuggled, unconsciously, against nothing, eyes closed, smiling softly. In minutes, she was asleep.