The Color of Forever (3 page)

My husband—
his name was Chris
—gave me diamond earrings for our fifth anniversary.

I was hesitant to have another child. A part of me was still searching, longingly…for something. I felt lonely but I didn’t know why.

There was another man named Joe.

Chris was angry with me. He shouted and made threats on the phone.

My son seemed more tired than usual.
Was he coming down with something?

Constant hospital visits…needles…blood work…medications…

Suddenly I saw myself here in this very place, flying over the guardrail into the ravine below and waking in intensive care the next day, confused and in pain. My back was broken. I was paralyzed from the waist down, concerned about how I would care for my sick child.

No….it can’t happen like that. I have to be there for him. For Logan.

Somehow, with unfathomable strength and agility, I twisted my body downward and collided with the guardrail, which sent pain shooting into my skull but that shift in direction prevented me from tumbling down the steep rock face into the wooded ravine below.

When I opened my eyes, I was staring up at a rescue worker.

“Can you hear me?” he asked, shining a penlight in my eye. “Do you know your name? Do you know what day it is?”

While others writhed in agony on the road beside me, I managed to speak a few words. “Am I dead?”

He grinned with relief and sat back on his heels. “No, ma’am, you’re just a little banged up. You fell off your bike and hit the guardrail. Your star must have been shining this morning, because you just missed going over the edge.” He leaned forward again. “Now, can you tell me your name? And what day it is?”

“It’s Friday,” I said. “And my name is Katelyn Roberts.”

“Good. Where do you live?”

I gave him my current address in Seattle—the house Mark had left to me in the divorce—then wondered suddenly if that was indeed my house, because all the images I’d seen as I was flying through the air had me living in a different house entirely. With a son named Logan and a husband named Chris. I could still see their faces vividly in my imagination.

“I must have blacked out,” I said, trying to sit up and get my bearings, but the paramedic urged me to remain on my back.

“You sure did,” he said. “You were unconscious for about fifteen minutes.”

“I was dreaming, then.” I glanced around at all the mangled bicycles and riders lying on the side of the road with cuts and bruises, then pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. “Am I okay?”

“You’re better than you were five minutes ago,” he replied, “but you’ll need to get checked out at the hospital. Another ambulance is on its way and we’ll have a stretcher here in a minute or two. Just stay put, okay?”

Dazed, I blinked up at the sky. A part of me feared I might have broken my back, not because I was in pain, but because I remembered my wheelchair from the flashback—the black leather seat, the texture of the rubber wheels in my hands as I insisted upon rolling myself down the long hospital corridor in the recovery unit, rather than have someone push me.

Had that been a premonition?

“I need to call my mother,” I said shakily, “and my friend Bailey.” I felt desperate to speak to them and make sure I was the person I thought I was—a single, divorced television reporter who had been emotionally ravaged by her husband’s affair and the divorce that followed.

Because the life that had flashed before my eyes as I faced death had been something else entirely.

Chapter Six

Bailey was first to arrive at the hospital, while my mother had to travel all the way from Port Orchard. The paramedics had just brought me into the ER when Bailey hurried through the sliding glass doors and found me on a gurney with a neck collar and backboard.

“Oh, my gosh, Katelyn,” she said, rushing to my side. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m waiting to get checked out. The paramedic said the neck collar is just a precaution, but I’m really scared. What if it’s bad? What if I can’t walk?”

She gripped my hand and squeezed it. “Is there anything I can do? Have you called your parents yet?”

“Mom’s on her way.”

“Are you in any pain?”

“I’m achy from the fall and I have a few bad scrapes, but it could be worse. I’m just afraid that my back’s broken or something.”

She glanced around with concern. “Do you want me to get someone?”

“No, the paramedics are here to keep an eye on me. We just have to wait until a doctor can see me.”

For a moment, neither of us knew what to say.

“What happened?” Bailey finally asked. “Did a car hit you or something?”

I explained what caused the crash—that a cyclist had accidentally clipped the wheel of another. Then I described how I went flying over my handlebars. “That’s the weirdest part,” I said. “You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes in the moment of death?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s exactly what happened, except that I saw a totally different life. I was still me, but…” I paused and swallowed uneasily while a pregnant woman walked past us. “Nothing was the same.”

She frowned with bewilderment. “What do you mean, nothing was the same?”

I took a moment to shift slightly on the gurney and gather my thoughts. “I saw myself living a different life,” I explained, “where I was married to a man named Chris and we had a son, Logan, who got leukemia. When I woke up, I thought maybe I’d dreamed the whole thing because I’d been unconscious, but now I can’t stop thinking about that little boy—
my son
. Honestly, Bailey, I know it sounds crazy, but I think he exists. I can’t explain it, but I can’t get rid of this feeling, this awful melancholy—like he was my son and we were together, but now we’re apart. I feel like he’s waiting for me.”

Bailey regarded me with concern and glanced over her shoulder again. “I think you need to see someone. You hit your head pretty hard. It must have been a hallucination.”

“Maybe,” I replied, fully aware that I wasn’t entirely rational at that moment. “But it felt so real. There were so many details I can’t even comprehend. Things I find really upsetting.”

“Like what?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to find a way to admit what I didn’t want to admit. “After what happened with Mark, I can’t believe I would have done that.”

“Done
what
?” she pressed.

“The man I was married to…” I paused and took a breath. “I cheated on him. I had an affair, and then I asked him to move out so I could be with that other man. I broke up our family.” By then my stomach was churning with guilt and remorse. “How could I have done that, after what Mark put me through? I vowed I would never do anything like that to another person. That I would never be a cheater. You know I hate cheaters.”

Bailey laid a hand on my shoulder. “It wasn’t real, Katelyn. It never happened. It was just a dream.”

A nurse arrived just then and asked the paramedics to wheel me into one of the examination bays.

“I’ll be right here in the waiting room,” Bailey said with concern as they took me away.

Chapter Seven

Thankfully, the CT-scan showed no evidence of a spinal cord injury or damage to my brain—which caused a profound flood of relief in me. This meant I was not paralyzed, and the life that had flashed before my eyes was not a premonition of things to come. There would be no wheelchair in my immediate future.

My relief, however, was tainted by sorrow, for this also meant that the son I’d envisioned and loved in that apparent alternate reality did not exist. He was nothing but a fantasy.

At least I had never cheated on my husband.

As for my prognosis, the doctor informed me that I’d suffered a serious concussion from the accident, having lost consciousness for such a lengthy duration. On the upside, my cuts and bruises were minor. I required no stitches, just a few bandages. The doctor warned me that I would be stiff and sore for a few days. He recommended I take some time off work to recover.

When I was given the option to be discharged, it came with a condition that someone would be available to escort me home and remain with me for the next twenty-four hours. I was to be awakened every two hours throughout the night to ensure my speech wasn’t slurred or I wasn’t suffering any pounding headaches, in which case we were to return to the hospital immediately. Naturally, my mother volunteered for the task.

o0o

I fell asleep that night working hard to convince myself that the images of Chris and Logan on the sandy beaches of Maine were simply aspirations. It was the life I wished I’d lived, with the family I’d always longed for.

As far as the cheating was concerned, I decided that I’d dreamed about that as a reminder to never,
ever
do such a thing to someone I loved.

But this caused an uncomfortable turmoil in me—for I felt suddenly lost and displaced, as if I were spinning around in an unfamiliar world—searching for something, like an astronaut, hurtling through space without a tether. I longed for home, which seemed hopelessly distant. I longed for my loved ones.
Where were they? Was I really this lost? This far from true happiness?

o0o

I woke to the jarring sensation of my mother’s hands on my shoulders, shaking me hard. She shouted at me from the edge of the bed.

“Wake up, Katelyn! Wake up!”

My eyes fluttered open and I stared up at the overhead light. Heart racing, I leaned up on my elbows. “What’s going on?”

“It’s five in the morning,” Mom said. “I was supposed to wake you every two hours, but I fell asleep. Are you okay? Does your head hurt?”

I rubbed my eyes. “Yes, but only because you were shouting at me and shaking me like a martini mixer.” I flopped back down on my pillows.

“Do you know what day it is?” she asked, bending forward to gape at me, as if I were a peculiar alien from another planet.

“It’s Saturday morning.”

“Do you know who I am?”

Wanting to fall back to sleep, I groaned. “Of course. You’re my mother.”

She rose to her feet and blew out a breath. “Thank
God
. I was worried when you wouldn’t open your eyes.”

“I was sound asleep, Mom,” I replied. Flinging my arm across my forehead, I lay in silence for a moment or two while my mother stood over my bed. Finally, unable to go back to sleep, I tossed the covers aside and sat up.

“You were talking in your sleep,” Mom said apprehensively. “Were you dreaming?”

I tried to remember, but couldn’t. The past few hours of sleep felt like a black hole. “I don’t know. What was I saying?”

I hadn’t told her about the alternate life that had flashed before my eyes on the mountainside. I’d only told Bailey, because I knew I could trust her to keep a secret. My mother, however…not so much.

“You kept saying ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ Over and over.”

Though I remembered nothing from any dream just now, I suspected I was apologizing for my imaginary affair.

I began to wonder if I should return to the hospital and tell someone about all of this. A head injury wasn’t something to mess around with.

“I don’t remember,” I replied, wishing Bailey were here instead, because I knew she would listen with understanding. She wouldn’t panic like my mother would if she thought I was delusional.

Rising to my feet, I reached for my bathrobe. “I just realized I didn’t eat any supper. I think I’ll make some toast.”

Mom followed me into the kitchen, insisting that I sit down and wait at the table while she took care of it.

o0o

Five days later, after my mother returned home to Port Orchard and I returned to work, I found myself feeling increasingly stressed and anxious. I wondered if I should see a psychiatrist or something, because I still couldn’t purge, from my mind, the life I had relived on the mountain, as I flew like a human projectile over the handlebars of my bike.

Thoughts of that other life began to consume me like some sort of teenage obsession, and I couldn’t let go of the desire to reach it somehow. I felt a frustration like nothing I’d ever known. Night after night, I went to sleep praying that I would escape back to that world again, if only in my dreams, to be with the son who needed me.

I felt it deep in my gut—that Logan was waiting for me to be his mother again.

During the day, I wrestled with feelings of longing that led to feelings of hopelessness, which I feared might eventually lead to something darker—perhaps a serious depression that would swallow me up.

After a week of this torture—which I tried to convince myself was not rational—I decided that I needed to understand what, exactly, had happened to me on that mountain, so that I could move on and live the current life I had been given.

I googled “life flashing before your eyes” on the Internet and read all sorts of accounts from people who’d had near-death experiences, but no one described anything that came close to mine. They all, in their brief brush with death, revisited their own lives, which only left me more confused and uneasy.