Rachael's Return Read online

  She glanced through the slits of her swollen eyes at the window. It was open, but the blinds were closed and pulled all the way down. The outside air sucked at the aluminum, causing it to beat against the window at odd intervals. She could hear the neighbor’s television set. Wheel of Fortune was just starting. She envisioned the wheel now with the arrow pointing to bankrupt with her behind it, slumping her shoulders and frowning.

  She lay helpless as she saw Vito reenter the room. She’d hoped he had left, but there he stood, a sandwich in one hand, his gun in the other. He was wired—his eyes popped out of his skull. She hated it when he got like this. He waved the gun in the air and bounced like a boxer from one foot to the other.

  “You worthless piece of garbage,” he said under his breath, his mouth filled with half-chewed sausage and white bread. Before she could even panic, he pointed the gun at her and fired. A sharp, searing pain ripped through her left thigh and groin. She heard herself scream: a disembodied, harrowing, bloodcurdling scream. Then she passed out again.

  The emergency room at Westerleigh Medical Center was crowded even for a Monday evening in mid-May. The weather in the San Fernando Valley was mild and partly cloudy during the day, with temperatures not rising much above seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit. But the evenings turned chilly after the sun went behind the mountains, with temperatures dropping sometimes ten degrees or more in half an hour’s time. Dress in layers. That was the motto of people who lived in the areas in and around Los Angeles.

  Dr. Nancy Kelley stood on the back steps of the hospital, looking up at the hazy dusk sky. She pulled her sweater tight around her, crossing her arms over her breasts and tucking her hands under her forearms. She was on a break, and all she wanted to do was think. She hated it when things got so busy she didn’t have time to reflect. She had gone into medicine because she wanted to help people, not so she would stay so busy she would be exhausted at the end of every day. She reasoned it was better than being bored, but she really didn’t like the hectic pace of being an emergency physician. She would rather deal with patients who had problems not so life threatening. Obstetrics would be nice. The money would probably be better too. She looked down at her watch: 8:15 p.m.

  “Time’s up,” she said. She took one last look at the sky and remembered a nursery rhyme from her childhood.

  Star light, star bright,

  First star I see tonight;

  I wish I may, I wish I might,

  Have this wish I wish tonight.

  Just for fun, she focused on the only star she could find and made a silent wish to herself. When she turned to open the door leading back to her workstation, she noticed in her peripheral vision the flashing red lights of the ambulance as it traveled in the direction of the hospital. Then she heard the siren as the driver coerced his way through the intersection against a red light: whoop, whoop.

  “Here we go,” she said.

  “She’s got a gunshot wound to the left thigh, she looks almost full term, and she’s been beaten within an inch of her life,” shouted the paramedic wheeling the gurney holding Mary Anne Maynard as he directed it through the automatic doors leading into the emergency room.

  “Get her in room four, stat,” Nancy commanded. “Who’s the OB on call tonight?”

  “Goodwin, I think—no, Stewart,” a nurse answered.

  “Call him; we’ll need him. And get Dr. Rand too. We’ll need an ultrasound and a baby monitor.” Nancy looked at the paramedic, noticed he was new, read his nametag. “Sean, what are the vitals?”

  “Heartbeat’s stable, BP’s low—ninety over fifty—she’s lost a lot of blood, and she’s unconscious. Looks like just one shot entered through her thigh, maybe lodged in the glute. I can’t get a reading on the baby.”

  “Thanks, Sean. We’ll take it from here,” Nancy said.

  CHAPTER 2

  She hovered near the ceiling for a little while, underneath the vaporous formations of gray formed by leaky pipes on square tiles speckled with black. When she started to get a little restless, she found herself roaming the corridors of the hospital. She was able to do this only because she had not yet gone through the process of joining her spirit to the fetus in her chosen birth mother. Most birth mothers were claimed by souls well before conception, with reincarnating souls often hovering over prospective hosts months in advance. Yet the irreversible process of joining the spirit to the fetus usually didn’t occur until sometime in the last trimester of pregnancy, oftentimes not until the actual moment of birth. She had even known of one soul entering the body as late as the fourth week of the baby’s life after birth. That was a rare exception though, and usually it was due to the soul not being certain about joining with an undesirable fetus. Most souls were eager to go through the joining process as soon as possible, except for the undesirables.

  Undesirables were usually taken by desperate souls; souls who had lost their way, or souls with such great emotional attachment to their last incarnation, they were willing to accept any host as a means to get back to life again as soon as possible and complete their unfinished business. These souls resisted all signals from the spirit realm to return and be rejoined with their soul group for a rest and evaluation period. Unfortunately, there were too many of these restless souls to fill the undesirable vacancies. And while most mother hosts were completely clueless about such things, they needed only to hold to a spirit of peace and harmony in order to ward off any such restless souls. Like always attracted like.

  She found herself back in the operating room. As soon as she’d had the thought, she was there. She would miss the immediacy of the spirit world. Or maybe not. Something told her she wasn’t going to be able to follow through with her chosen birth mother. She felt the prickling vibrations of danger and a melancholy isolation telling her something had gone wrong. This was highly unusual, since at her soul level, these things were always planned well in advance. Caroline and she had chosen each other; in fact, they had chosen each other in many lifetimes, usually in a parent/child relationship, sometimes as siblings. Yet it seemed their particular karma could be worked out better when they took turns parenting each other. They usually ended up as best friends, anyway, regardless of the actual roles they assumed. If it was true she was in danger, she knew well what her choices were at this stage. She could look around and find another woman who was already pregnant or about to conceive—provided she wasn’t already claimed by another soul—merge herself into her aura, and wait it out until the last trimester. She would have time to see if she definitely wanted to be going into this particular family or group of souls—whether their karmic purposes suited one another, as different soul groups had different lessons they incarnated to learn. Her other choice was to call upon her guides to assist her in returning to her particular celestial realm, where she would be able to reevaluate things from a much greater perspective than she currently possessed. Once there, she could wait for Caroline to join her again in the spirit world after her current lifetime or possibly choose to be born later in Caroline’s family, perhaps as her granddaughter. She knew every soul did not have the choices she had. Less evolved souls were buffeted around by their own fears after death, never reaching their appropriate heavenly plane, frantically searching for any route to immediate rebirth, often with disastrous consequences. Those souls usually had multiple incarnations ahead of them before they learned the things she knew.

  If she did chose to stay and look for another birth mother, she would not have the guidance from above to help her make the best possible choice. In her present state, she had no way of seeing the future or the past. She could only guess—based on what she was able to observe firsthand—which way the winds of fate would blow. One advantage she did have was she could be anywhere she wanted to be in the world within seconds just by thinking about it. She was able to spy, if you will, on extended family, to see who her cousins would be, who lived next door, how her perspective father treated her mother. Doing this helped to avoid problems down t
he road—problems that would make it hard for her as a child. While she knew some hardships were chosen purposely by advanced souls so they could challenge themselves, other problems, depending on the soul’s particular purpose for incarnating, only served as barriers to one’s true objectives and were best avoided at all cost.

  One distinct disadvantage: she could only intuit a person’s intentions. She could not hear or understand language in her current state. So she wasn’t sure if her birth mother was having an abortion right now or some other procedure that would be beneficial in helping her keep her baby. Judging from the way she felt, it didn’t look good. She would just have to wait it out and see.

  The telephone in Dr. Goodwin’s office rang at 9:00 a.m.

  “He’s in surgery this morning,” the receptionist said. “I can try to fit you in sometime this afternoon if you like. We’re all booked up, but if you just want to come in and drop off a urine sample, we can make an appointment later for you to discuss things with the doctor.” After a few minutes, she hung up the telephone. “It’s going to be another one of those days.”

  The receptionist put her keys in her purse and placed it in the bottom drawer of her desk. Patients filled the waiting room, all for the other doctor who shared the suite of offices. Dr. Goodwin’s first patient was scheduled for 11:00 a.m. Since the office was within walking distance of the hospital, he usually made it back in time unless something unanticipated happened during surgery.

  “I can’t find Caroline Martin’s file. Do you have it?” Fiona Carlisle, Dr. Goodwin’s nurse, approached the receptionist just as two telephone lines started to ring at once.

  The receptionist held up her finger as she reached for the receiver with her other hand.

  “Dr. Goodwin’s office, please hold.” She answered another line. “Dr. Goodwin’s office, please hold.” She picked up the first line. “Thank you for holding, can I help you?”

  Fiona frowned and looked around the receptionist’s desk, steeped in paper and too messy to see anything. She knew the receptionist wouldn’t want her rifling through her things, so she walked back to her desk and started looking through her own files yet again. This was not good. In her hands she held the file of Caroline Martinez, a young woman who had been trying and failing to conceive for almost a year now. A week ago, she had dropped by to give yet another urine sample. Much to Fiona’s surprise, Mrs. Martinez tested pregnant this time. The woman was ecstatic. Just this morning, however, as Fiona looked over her file, she noticed something wrong with the report. The name at the top read Caroline Martin. She didn’t know if this was just a typographical error, or if indeed the report belonged in Caroline Martin’s file. The address and patient identification number on the report matched those in the computer database for Mrs. Martin. She wanted to find the file to see if perhaps Caroline Martinez’s report was in Mrs. Martin’s file. If this was the case, then one woman who thought she was finally pregnant was not, and another woman who believed she was not pregnant, actually was. She could lose her job over this. She prayed it was only a typo, that the person who had typed the report had just confused the two women. Or perhaps the doctor had when he dictated the report. She just needed to find the file, and then she would know.

  “You’re welcome; we’ll see you next week.” The receptionist hung up the telephone and sighed audibly. “I’m sorry, Fiona, what was it you wanted?”

  “Caroline Martin’s file, do you have it?”

  “Martin.” She paused, turned to look at her calendar, then turned back again to Fiona. “Dr. Goodwin has her file with him at the hospital. She’s the one in surgery this morning. Hysterectomy.”

  “What time was her surgery scheduled?” Fiona asked.

  “Eight a.m.,” the receptionist answered. “He’s due back at eleven. You can get it from him then.”

  Fiona’s chest felt heavy, and she inhaled deeply, breathing out slowly, deliberately. But that will be too late.

  “Thank you,” she said to the receptionist, and she turned and walked back to her desk.

  She grew more restless as the clock ticked. Now she was almost certain she would have to change her plans. Sadness overwhelmed her. There was only one way to be sure, and she hesitated to act, but she knew she must. She had seen the doctor remove something from Caroline’s body: large pieces of tissue. Caroline’s aura was much less colorful than usual. Certain colors—those usually associated with pregnancy—had disappeared altogether. In addition, Caroline’s aura had become very small and close to her body. Some of this she knew was caused by the anesthesia.

  She didn’t want confirmation though. She would put it off and hover for a while until Caroline awoke again. There was no rush. She was patient. It was just too hard to be so close to success and then have to let go. The love she had for Caroline was so strong as to attract her like a giant magnetic force. She knew Caroline had felt it. She had read it in her dreams. She had been hovering over her as she slept at night, hoping her close proximity would affect Caroline. And it had. She had sensed Caroline’s emotions. What had made her do this?

  She knew she would have absolute clarity if she went back to her station in the higher dimension of what humans on Earth called heaven, but she wasn’t ready yet. Going back and forth from heaven to Earth was not a particularly pleasant experience. And she feared her guides would try to change her mind, urge her to choose another life with another mother. Maybe there was another way. Maybe Caroline would get pregnant again. No, she was only fooling herself. This was it. She had to confirm it.

  She moved close to Caroline’s body and hovered just above her heart.

  “Wow, it’s suddenly cold in here,” the surgical nurse said. “Anybody else feel that?”

  “Yeah, I did,” answered the anesthesiologist. “I just got the chills big-time.”

  “We’re almost done here,” Dr. Goodwin said from the end of the gurney. “Then you can all go get your hot mocha lattes or whatever.”

  The surgical nurse exchanged a glance with the anesthesiologist. They locked eyes for a second before the anesthesiologist shrugged and looked away.

  She tried to merge her aura with Caroline’s, but Caroline’s was closed off to her utterly and completely. It was over. And by the looks of things, it was over for good. She knew, however, that Caroline had not had an abortion. At this stage they would have used a simple suction device. She had seen tissue removed—vaginally. Large pieces. Caroline had had a hysterectomy. She felt hopeless. She knew it was bad to let feelings start to affect her. Once a spirit allowed negative feelings to take over, it became extremely hard to return to the heavenly realm. One could become trapped on Earth with the other negative souls—ghosts—who were unable to see the light, which was always available to guide them home. They became hardened and closed themselves off to it. She could not let this happen. But she wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming sadness she felt having failed to connect with her chosen birth mother. Maybe there was another way. She knew she had the ability to affect others with her presence if they were receptive. Certain people were more sensitive, particularly those who chose to think positive thoughts for others. Such people were most open to her signals. Maybe she could find a way to reach Caroline through another, to let her know how much she loved her. She just wanted to connect with her in some small way. Then she would leave and return to the heavenly realm.

  “Our girl’s in trouble down there,” said Thor. “She’s hanging on too long. She didn’t even notice my first signal to her to come home. If she keeps this up, we are going to lose her.”

  “Apparently, she always has been a little hard headed,” said Aurora. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, and she is having a hard time accepting it. It was supposed to be a given she would be born to Caroline.”

  “Well, something went wrong. This is Earth we’re dealing with here. The vibrations are considerably slowed down. Shit happens.”

  “Watch your language,” Aurora said.

  “What language? I�
��m speaking to you telepathically. If you heard a bad word, maybe you should rethink your interpretation,” Thor said.

  “Don’t start with me,” Aurora said, smiling. “We have some serious work to do, and I don’t have time for your warped sense of humor. If we don’t get through to her soon, she will end up hanging around, haunting Caroline like a ghost, or panic and take the first available route to rebirth.”

  “So what do you suggest?” Thor said.

  “Concentrate,” she said. “We’re going to have to pull out all the stops.”

  When Nancy Kelley began her shift, she placed her personal belongings in her locker before checking in with the front desk. She hadn’t been able to keep her mind off the pregnant woman with the gunshot wound. The last time Nancy had checked on her, the woman’s condition had been stabilized, but they weren’t sure about her baby.

  “How’s the pregnant woman?” she asked the nurse behind the counter.

  “The gunshot wound? Maynard.” She looked down at a chart on her desk. “She’s still in ICU. Holding her own, I guess. Blood pressure’s still low. They gave her a transfusion. Lucky for her that bullet didn’t lodge in her spine. Baby’s not doing too well though. Heartbeat’s sporadic. GOK,” she said.

  Nancy paused and looked at the nurse. “God only knows,” she translated. “Thank you,” she said. “I was just curious. I’m going to check in on her.”

  Nancy walked toward ICU. She felt an unusual urge to pray for the woman and the baby. She hadn’t prayed on her hands and knees since she was a child, and she rarely attended church anymore, but she was almost always engaged in another form of prayer: her thoughts. In her mind, she seemed to give and receive information regularly. She wasn’t sure if she had some kind of gift, or if that’s just the way it was supposed to be with everyone if they only tuned in enough. She was ultrasensitive to the needs of others and could sense the unspoken. If she sensed someone needed help, even someone she had no way of contacting personally, someone maybe she had heard about on the news, she would think good thoughts and send them their way. This was her way of praying. And she believed it worked. Sometimes she felt compelled to speak directly to a person’s soul after they had died. She would send them peace and light and calm for their journey home.