Rewind
Rewind
by
Julia P. Lynde
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Hero and Anti-Hero
Chapter 2: Beginnings
Chapter 3: New Friends
Chapter 4: In which Shane meets a boy
Chapter 5: In which Shane meets a girl
Chapter 6: Turmoil
Chapter 7: Help in Strange Places
Intermission: Victoria's Story
Chapter 8: Learning the Ropes
Chapter 9: The Truth
Chapter 10: Family Sucks
Chapter 11: A New Plan
Chapter 12: Getting Along
Chapter 13: Time to Feed the Muse
Intermission: Shane's Story
Chapter 14:Making Amends
Chapter 15: Remaining Ripples
About the Author
Chapter 1: Hero and Anti-Hero
I remember the girl. She was young enough I thought of her as a girl but old enough I should call her a woman. She seemed unextraordinary. She was of moderate height wearing nondescript clothes. Jeans and a tee-shirt, I suppose. I’m not really sure now. In an earlier age she would have appeared out of place downtown during business hours, but with casual Friday turning into casual everyday over the years, the girl looked only slightly less dressed up than many of the people hurrying along the sidewalks during their lunch breaks.
Only she wasn’t hurrying. Maybe that’s why I first noticed her. Or maybe it was her hair. Long and almost flame red. One couldn’t help but notice her hair. It was unkempt and wind-tossed, but still very striking. I remember wondering whether she realized just how wonderful her hair was.
She seemed oblivious to what was going on around her. She stopped and knelt down, I suppose to tie her shoe. She must not have noticed the light rail train coming up behind her.
I don’t remember where I was going, what I was doing there. But I remember this. I was suddenly next to her, reaching down and wrapping my arms around her midriff, yanking her up to pull her out of the way moments before the train could reach her. She let out a quick screech. Or maybe it was the train.
I remember the impact. The train struck me in the back, really just a glancing blow, but it sent both of us flying. I hit something else. A parked car, perhaps.
Then all went black.
* * *
Time passed. I couldn’t have told you how much. I could only tell you that time had passed. Awareness came to me patiently. It started with sounds. None of the expected sounds, though. No traffic noises, no beeping of hospital machines, no footsteps of nurses hurrying to tend to patients.
I remembered the accident. I knew I had to have been badly hurt. I did a little mental check, wondering when the pain would kick in. I wondered briefly if I had been paralyzed in the accident, if that was the reason why I couldn’t feel anything. But I realized that I could feel my weight against the bed and a sheet pulled up to my chin. I eventually decided I must be on some really good painkillers. Gratitude seemed an appropriate emotion.
At some point I opened my eyes. It was dark at first, but then the room began to brighten. It was strange. Although I could see light, there was no form, nothing for my eyes to focus upon. It was as if I were seeing the entire world through frosted glass.
I heard a noise, the sound of someone shifting in a chair beside my bed. I turned my head to see who was watching over me. What I saw instead was a bright light, too bright to look into. I squinted, but that didn’t help. Then the light began to dim and a form began to take shape. Sitting in a comfortable chair beside my bed was a woman I didn’t recognize.
She was glowing with a white, golden, purple, red, silver light. I blinked. She was still glowing, smiling softly at me. I looked around, but all I could see was the bed I was in and the woman in her chair. There was nothing else to see.
I looked back at her, opened my mouth to speak. All that came out was a rough croak. I closed my mouth and swallowed. The woman continued to wait patiently, still smiling softly at me. I looked at her, waiting for my voice to come to me, and realized how amazingly beautiful she was. Here was a woman to steal the hearts of all mankind with just a glance of her eyes and a twitch of her mirthful lips. I was at least half in love with her immediately.
I tried again to speak. This time, the sounds made more sense. “Where am I?” I paused for just a moment. The woman seemed to know I had more to say. “The girl? Is she okay?”
As if pleased with my questions, her smile grew briefly before being replaced with a more serious expression. “Where are you? You are Between.”
The answer made no sense. “Between where?”
“Between Earth and Heaven,” was the reply. Which also made no sense. The woman just watched me, ever patiently, while I puzzled it out. I stared off in the distance, focusing on nothing for a moment, then my eyes snatched back to hers.
“I was wrong.”
“To be fair,” she replied. “You never really made up your mind one way or the other.”
I considered her words. She didn’t seem upset with me. “You’re…” I said, asking a question.
She just nodded once, slowly, almost as a mini bow.
“So, I died.”
“You weren’t supposed to,” she said. “Neither of you were. I’m sorry. I was…” she paused. “Distracted,” she said eventually. “If I had seen what she was going to do, I’d have intervened.”
“But,” I said, sputtering. “You’re God. You can do anything! Can’t you just roll back time, undo everything?”
She looked at me sadly, apologetically. “You shouldn’t believe all the propaganda.”
“You said, ‘What she was going to do.’ She knew the train was coming?”
The woman nodded again. “I knew she was troubled. She had much to be troubled over, but so much promise too. I had such hopes for her.” Then she looked at me directly. “And for you.”
“For me? I’m just-“
She interrupted me. “No one is just anything. You all cast ripples throughout the world with small actions sometimes having such profound effect. You had some ripples waiting inside you, ripples I very much would have enjoyed watching. And the girl, too. I needed her, needed her to seek help for her troubles.” She paused, smiled for a moment. “Help can appear in the strangest places, you know.”
I let her words sink in. “The girl died too?”
“No. And yes. Her body is in a coma. Very recoverable. I wouldn’t even need to nudge things along. Which I almost never do anyway. But her soul is a different story. It’s in tatters. I can’t send her back like this, not for a long time. Too long for her body to wait for her.”
A glass of water appeared in her hand. She stood up, cradling my body for me, and held the glass to my lips. I drank carefully. Then she laid me back into the bed and smoothed the sheet over my body again.
She watched me, allowing me to settle my thoughts, before she spoke again.
“So, where was I? Oh, yes. Ripples. I would really, truly enjoy watching those ripples from both of you. But the problem is, I have one working soul: yours. And one working body: hers. I can’t send her soul back to her body, and I can’t send your soul back to your body. So we’re left with one working solution.”
She sat back, looking quite pleased with herself. She let me figure out the rest on my own.
“You want to send me back into her body?”
“Exactly!” she said, beaming. “It’s a good body. Slightly bruised of late, but bruises heal. She’s troubled, and you’ll inherit those troubles. You’ll have her memories, and I’ll leave you some of your own. I can’t let you take too many details with you; leaving you with the temptation to contact people from your old life is far too cruel. And I hope you can embrace this new life rather
than pine for the old one.”
“You’re talking as if I have a choice.”
“Of course you do,” she told me. “I never send a soul to Earth if it doesn’t want to go.”
I considered for a moment. “Can I ask some questions first?”
“You want to know why I allow evil in the world.”
It was my turn to smile. “Of course I do, but I can figure that out on my own.”
She laughed, and it was if the heavens laughed with her. I suppose they did. “I gave you all brains,” she said finally. “I do so love when you actually use them.”
She sat, chuckling to herself for a few more moments, then quieted down and waited for me to ask my questions.
“Why me?” I asked simply.
“Oh, so many reasons,” she said. “But at the core of them is this: you have such a strong sense of right and wrong, and it all comes from within yourself. You don’t need me or anyone else to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. I love this about you.”
I considered what she said. She was right, I guess. I hadn’t lived my life worrying so much about what others thought was right and what was wrong, but I decided myself. “What about when I’m at a disagreement with the religious leaders?”
“Ah, the people who profess to speak for me, who know what I like and what I don’t?”
I nodded.
“Take those people with a grain of salt,” she said simply.
“One more question?” I asked. She nodded. “My dog?”
“Your brother.”
At that point, I started to cry. “Hush, hush,” she said, patting my hand. “Your brother is going to grow to love your dog.”
“I know,” I said, blubbering. “He’s good with dogs. I was just afraid no one would take her in.”
She crawled into the bed with me, cradling me in her arms, rocking back and forth and making soothing noises.
“I’m sorry,” I said after a time. “I shouldn’t be this upset.”
“It’s hard to give up everything you once knew,” she replied. She continued to rock me as a mother would a young child. As I calmed down, she laid me back into the bed and slipped into her chair again. I dried my eyes with the sheet. She smiled.
“So what do you want me to do when I go back?”
“Be yourself,” she said. “Would you like some advice?”
I nodded.
She raised one finger. “Don’t talk about any of this.”
“They’ll think I’m mad.”
“Exactly.” She raised another finger. “Follow your heart.” She raised a third finger. “Trust your instincts.” She waggled her fingers at me. “Remember, help is sometimes found in unexpected places.”
She continued to waggle her fingers, almost in a wave, and I felt myself slipping away from her. But then she spoke again, and it was is if she were whispering directly into my ear.
“One last thing,” she said. “I surely do enjoy reading your stories.”
I remember my last thought as everything disappeared.
God likes my stories?
Chapter 2: Beginnings
I woke slowly, awareness of my surroundings coming in fits and starts. At first I heard the sounds, the hissing and beeping of hospital machines.
I remembered the accident. I remembered kneeling down, waiting for fate to take its course. Fate arrived in the form of a pair of arms pulling me from the train’s path. I remembered seeing the girl, kneeling, and wrapping my arms around her to pull her to safety. I remembered my body shielding my body from the impact of the train.
Then, I remembered a very odd conversation.
“God likes my stories?” I said.
I slept.
Time passed. I couldn’t have told you how much. I went from unawareness to awareness slowly. I think my eyes had been open for a while before I realized what I was seeing.
She shifted, turning the pages of her book. I must have watched my mother for some time while she read. She turned a page. She turned a page. She looked up and saw me watching her.
“Honey?” she said. She dropped her book and flew to my bedside, leaned over me and wrapped me in her arms. I felt her breath against my ear. She shuddered as I wrapped my arms around her in turn.
“Mom.” I said. My throat cracked, and I couldn’t say anything else quite yet.
She murmured into my ear all the expected things, how worried she and Dad had been, how much she loved me, how they’d prayed for me. I let her hold me. I could feel her tears against my cheek.
“Mom?” I said again after a while. “Water?”
She tightened her hug for just a moment longer, whispered “I love you so much,” into my ear, then leaned back. “I’ll get the nurse,” she told me.
My thoughts drifted as the door closed behind my mother. I must have fallen back asleep for a few moments, but woke up again when a nurse began poking and prodding at me the way nurses do.
I opened my eyes and the nurse stopped her prodding. She looked quite fierce, but she had pretty eyes, eyes that were scowling at me.
“Can you hear me?” she demanded.
I nodded, just once.
“You’ve been in an accident,” she told me. “Do you remember what happened?”
I looked at her, deciding. I shrugged. She didn’t seem pleased by that response.
“Do you know your name?” she asked.
What a silly question. Of course I knew my name. It was. Pat? No, that wasn’t right. My brow furrowed.
“Her name is Shane,” said my mother.
Right. My name is Shane. “Shane Elizabeth,” I said. Mother smiled at me like I’d just won the Nobel Prize in name remembering. “Water?” I asked.
The nurse nodded. “Only a little.” She puttered for a moment with a small plastic pitcher and a cup then gave me a good case of vertigo by adjusting the bed up without warning me. She unceremoniously inserted the straw between my lips then stole it away again before I could get a good solid drink. Stingy nurse.
“Do you know where you are?” she asked me.
I looked around. I was clearly in a hospital. There was an IV drip on a stand to my left, the line disappearing under the covers of the bed, presumably to eventually terminate at a needle buried in my arm somewhere. I felt a blood pressure cuff wrapped lightly around my right harm – I learned later it automatically took my blood pressure far too frequently for a proper rest. There was a television hanging from the ceiling and a curtain pulled around the bed, shielding me from seeing whether there was anyone else in the room with us.
I looked drowsily at the nurse and said “Hospital”. I don’t remember falling back asleep.
I dreamt. I dreamt I was 18, young and troubled. I dreamt I was nearly 50, old, and in a job that paid the bills but left me unfulfilled. I yearned for the choices of youth. I wondered what would become of me.
Time passed. I woke. Mother was in her chair beside my bed, reading, the morning light from the window backlighting her.
“Mom?”
She looked up and smiled at me. It was a mother smile, the kind that says she loves you so much. “What day is it?”
“Tuesday,” she said.
That wasn’t very helpful. “Tuesday the what?”
She looked confused for a moment. “Oh honey, I’m sorry. Tuesday, July tenth.”
July tenth. I thought back. “A week. I’ve been here a week?”
She nodded. “Your father and I were so worried, but then you woke up yesterday.” She paused, looking at me with concern. “Do you remember what happened, honey?”
I nodded. “I was downtown. There was a train. Someone tried to save me.”
“Yes. That person died.”
Mother looked away, then looked back with a bright face, turning her back on the unpleasantness. That was typical mother. See no evil. That was the last time either of my parents ever mentioned the person who had died to save me. “Are you hungry? There’s Jell-O.”
* * *
No one gave me a mirror, but my mother brushed my hair for me the first thing she did every time she came to visit.
Nurse Sternly was my day nurse. No, that wasn’t her name, but it sure would have fit her. She could have been pretty if she hadn’t plastered such an unhappy scowl on her face all the time. She had strong hands, but they were gentle with me.
I thought of the night nurse as Nurse Bubbly. Her real name was Kristin. She was practically the opposite of Nurse Sternly. Well, except her hands were gentle, too.
My first trip to the bathroom was quite the experience. Bathrooms always have mirrors. I regarded my expression, trying to decide what kind of woman I was.
My hair was long, red and full. Mother had just brushed it, so it hung neatly. She had brushed it to fall behind my shoulders, but I reached up and tucked it around to fall in front of my left shoulder. I thought that looked much better.
I stared at myself in the mirror, not really recognizing myself. “Who were you, Shane Elizabeth Dowling, and what demons were chasing you so horribly?” The mirror didn’t answer, and Shane’s memories weren’t any help.
Eventually, of course, the doctor proclaimed me fit enough to go home. I was able to amble up and down the hallway a few times, feed myself, and use the bathroom without assistance. He told me to take it easy for a few more days and to slowly increase my daily activities back to normal level.
“College starts in September,” my mother told him. “Will she be fit to go?”
“Oh absolutely,” he said.
College? Hadn’t I finished college years ago? Oh, no, I hadn’t. I was Shane now, 18, entering my freshman year at Knightly College, an hour’s drive from home in a small college town. Knightly College? Shane had been pretty darned bright to get accepted there.
What had the woman said? Such promise Shane had held?
We lived in a modern home in a second ring western suburb. It was a two-story house with a walkout basement. Not quite a McMansion, but not far from it, either. Mom and Dad both picked me up from the hospital to drive me home, mother chattering away, Dad looking stern and saying little. But when we arrived home, he offered to carry me into the house.