Strange Girl Read online

  “I told you that you should have taken her straight home!” he screamed at me. His venom threw me off guard.

  “She was just taking a nap,” I said.

  Yet Bart had a right to be concerned. Suddenly I could see Aja was far from all right. She was having trouble staying awake; she kept sagging into Bart as they went up the stairs. Finally, and this really scared me, he lifted her off the ground and carried her into the house. Jumping out of the car, I tried to follow but he shouted for me to leave.

  “You’ve done enough for one day!” he cried, slamming the door in my face. I stood there for several minutes feeling like a complete fool. I wanted to knock, talk to him, explain that I had kept my word. What made it worse, of course, was that I had no idea what was wrong with her.

  In the end, though, I accepted that I was not wanted and trudged back to the car. Driving back to town seemed to take an eternity. The weird thing was, I suddenly felt more worried about Aja than I did Mike.

  CHAPTER NINE

  GOOD NEWS CAME later that day. When I returned home, I passed out on the living room couch and was only awakened at six o’clock, about an hour before I expected my parents home. Janet was calling.

  “He’s awake!” she cried into my cell. “He’s talking and everything. Dr. Rosen can hardly believe it. He says it’s a miracle.”

  I sat up, wiping the sleep from my eyes, relief swelling in my chest. I’d passed out thinking I’d never see Mike again. “Thank God,” I said.

  “And Allah and Krishna and the rest of them!” Janet exclaimed. “Seriously, Dr. Rosen said in thirty years of practicing medicine he’s never seen anyone recover so fast from such a severe head wound. The swelling in Mike’s brain has totally stopped. Except for being tired, he’s not showing any side effects of the surgery. Think about that! He was on the table ten hours with his skull sliced open!”

  “I don’t know what to say. It does sound like a miracle.”

  Janet lowered her voice like she didn’t want anyone else to hear. “Fred, you’ve got to get back here. Since he woke up Mike’s been saying he has to talk to you. That it’s real important.”

  “Do you know what it’s about?”

  “No. I only know he’s desperate to talk to you.”

  “I’ll leave now. I’ve still got your car, you know.”

  “Glad you brought that up. I’ve got Bo’s car. Could you swing by and pick him up? He wants to see Mike and, besides, he needs the Camry back. I can drive you home later in the Mustang. Bo has somewhere he has to go tonight. I’ve already told him to expect you.”

  “No problem. I’ll pick him up,” I said.

  Bo was waiting on the porch when I drove up; he hopped in the passenger seat. Janet had given him the full scoop on Mike, and Bo kept shaking his head in wonder.

  “If something like this doesn’t force Mike to clean up his act I don’t know what will,” Bo said. “He’s been given a second chance in life. Tell him those don’t come around too often.”

  “I will. Hey, do we know yet who attacked him?”

  “From what Janet told me, it sounds like an entire SWAT team surrounded the house seconds after Mike went inside to collect his dope. The SWAT leader called out on his bullhorn for them to surrender. The dealer and his gang figured Mike was working for them. They tried using him as a hostage to help them escape. You can imagine how that worked. The SWAT team swept in and opened fire. One guy was killed, two others besides Mike were wounded. The SWAT leader says the dealer hit Mike over the head with a baseball bat. The dealer says it was the cops who did it.”

  “What does Mike say?” I asked.

  “I don’t know if he knows.”

  “Were any police hurt?”

  “No.”

  “There were no cops at the hospital after the raid. That’s pretty odd, don’t you think?”

  Bo shrugged. “They were probably avoiding the press. Your main problem now is Mike was the catalyst for the shoot-out. Chances are he’s going to do time. Your band’s going to need a new drummer.”

  “I’m not worried about the band right now,” I said.

  The others were still at the hospital: Janet, Dale, Shelly. Dale was so relieved Mike was going to make a full recovery he wept as he hugged me. “That bastard,” he said. “That goddamn bastard. I’ll never forgive him for the hell he put us through.”

  “Yes, you will,” I said. “You always forgive him.”

  Dale came close and whispered in my ear. “Mike’s going to tell you something bizarre. Trust me, you should believe him. Everything he has to say checks out.”

  It took permission from Mike’s mother—who looked to be holding up better than we had expected—for me to be let in to see Mike. I was led by a nurse to the critical area, where he’d been given his own room. Before leaving, the nurse warned me not to tire him.

  I couldn’t believe this was the same person I’d seen that morning. The ventilator had been removed and he had regained his normal color. Actually, he looked like he was glowing. It made no sense; he was sitting up in bed, drinking a bottle of apple juice, and grinning away. His bloody bandage from that morning had been replaced with fresh gauze and there was no sign of further bleeding.

  “Hi, Fred,” Mike said and shook my hand like he hadn’t seen me in years. His grip was firm.

  “Welcome back,” I said. “You gave us quite a scare.”

  He spoke in a tone I’d never heard before. It was like another miracle; he sounded mature. “I know exactly how you and the others felt. That’s why I told Janet to get your ass back here. I need to tell you what happened during the surgery.” He gestured to a nearby chair. “Pull up a seat.”

  I sat down. “Don’t tell me you went into the light.”

  “I saw something. I saw a lot of things.”

  “Mike, I was joking.” I saw he wasn’t. “Tell me what happened.”

  He considered before speaking, something I’d never seen him do before. Whatever he’d experienced had moved him.

  “At the dealer’s house, I remember the SWAT leader calling to us on his megaphone. There were six of us inside; three were carrying. But we could all hear the sound of the cops loading their clips. They wanted us to hear. They wanted us to know we were surrounded. I remember thinking how screwed I was—that I’d probably end up spending years behind bars. I thought how that would break my mom’s heart. I thought of you and Dale, too, and how much I’d miss playing in the band. Then I felt a huge bang on the back of my head and everything went black.”

  Mike sipped his juice before setting the bottle aside. He cleared his throat. It sounded hoarse, probably from the ventilator.

  “The next thing I knew I was here in the hospital,” he said. “But I wasn’t in the operating room. I was floating along the hallways, looking into different rooms. I knew I was looking for someone but I wasn’t sure who it was. I wasn’t worried or upset. If anything, I felt real peaceful. It felt so cool to move without walking. It was like I could fly. I didn’t stop to worry about what had happened to me. I just went with the flow. But I wanted to find the person I was searching for.

  “Then I saw you guys: Janet, Shelly, Aja, you, and Dale. I could tell you were worried about me and that bothered me. That was the first time I felt anything negative. I was mainly concerned about Dale. I could feel his pain like it was my own pain. Like I was inside him.” Mike paused. “Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah, sure. Go on.”

  Mike was thoughtful. “I wanted to do something to make you guys feel better but when I tried talking to you I saw that you couldn’t hear me. It was then that I thought I might be dead. That this was what death was like and I wouldn’t have a chance to say good-bye to any of you. It shook me up pretty hard.

  “Then Dr. Rosen came out and spoke to you. I heard every word he said. I already compared what I heard with what Dale said the man told you guys. It was identical—you can ask Dale when you go out. But right then, at that moment, what the doctor was s
aying sounded pretty bad. So I wasn’t dead yet, I realized, but I was going to be pretty soon.

  “I followed you and Dale when you went into the recovery room. It was then I saw myself from the outside. Saw how messed-up I was. I could feel how little life was left in my body. I touched my hand and it was like holding a dead battery or an old lightbulb. You just know it’s not going to work. I knew my brain was so messed-up that even if I tried to slip back inside my body, I wouldn’t be able to talk or move around. It sounds crazy, I know, it was just something I sensed. Something I was certain of. You following me so far?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Keep talking.”

  “I was still tied into Dale’s emotions. I could feel your grief but it was his pain that overwhelmed me. For the first time I saw how connected we were. That we’d always been connected all our lives, ever since we were kids. More than anything else I wanted to tell him that I was right there beside him. It was so frustrating—that I couldn’t talk to him or to you. By then I was pretty sure I was going to die and I wanted you both to know that God, or the universe, or whatever, hadn’t erased me and that a part of me was going to go on. But I didn’t stop to think where I was going.

  “You guys didn’t stay very long and when you left I wanted to go with you. But now I felt stuck to my body. You know how some people, when they get in accidents, they talk about how there’s a silver cord that connects them to their body? Well, I didn’t see anything like that but it was like it was there. It was like some force was keeping me near my body and forcing me to feel how mushy the left side of my brain was. It was scary. I didn’t like it, I wanted to get away. I prayed to God to let me go.”

  Mike paused for a moment before continuing. “This next part’s hard to talk about. If you don’t believe me I understand. I mean, if you told me what I’m about to say, I would have said, ‘Yeah, right, Fred. You got hit over the head with a bat and you saw your guardian angel. What else is new?’ ” He paused. “You know what I mean?”

  “Not really. Did you see your guardian angel?” I said.

  “Maybe.” Mike coughed again to clear his throat. He grabbed his bottle of apple juice and sipped it. Finally he was ready to go on.

  “Something entered the recovery room. I didn’t know what it was but I sensed right away it was what I had been looking for when I first woke up outside my body. It hadn’t been you guys, it was this being, this creature. I don’t know what to call it. If I had to describe it I’d say it looked like a pinpoint of blue light. It was indescribably loving and kind. It was so—you know I never use this word—charming. It was like the most precious thing in the universe. A jewel of some kind. When I looked at it I didn’t want to look at anything else. I was mesmerized.

  “But as it drew closer I realized it wasn’t small. No, it was actually huge. It was so big it frightened me. I must sound like I’m contradicting myself but this is just what I experienced. It was terrifying. I’m sure you remember that old Nietzsche quote where he says, ‘When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.’ You should remember because you’re the one who gave me his book. This thing—this wonderful terrible thing—was the abyss. And it had come for me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It had come to ask me to make a decision.”

  “To die or to go on living?”

  “Yes. I mean, that was the question. But suddenly I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go on living. The thought of leaving this thing was unbearable. It scared me but it was like a billion times greater than any angel or god you could imagine. Now that I’d found it there was no question I could leave it. Except for . . . Dale. His pain haunted me. I knew it would kill him if I died. I didn’t want to do that to him. And the more I thought about it, I didn’t want to leave you, either, or my mother, or Janet or Shelly. So I told the being I wasn’t ready to go. At the same time, I told it I didn’t want to come back a drooling, brain-damaged vegetable.”

  “It’s good you remembered to mention that . . . Carrot Head.”

  Mike nodded seriously. “I felt like I got my message across. But then another weird thing happened. Another being came into the room. It was similar to the first one. I’m not a hundred percent sure there were two of them they were so much alike. Except this one seemed to touch my body.”

  “Touch you? How?”

  “With its hand.”

  “I thought it was a point of light. I didn’t know it had hands.”

  “That’s what’s confusing. It didn’t have hands. It didn’t have a body, it wasn’t a human being. But, for a moment, I saw it reach out and touch me—with a human hand.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “It gets weirder. Somehow, I knew when it touched me that I was going to be okay, physically. That I wasn’t going to come back with my brain scrambled. I felt so grateful I could have wept. The glowing blue point of light, the second one, seemed to pick up how I felt. It seemed to smile at me.”

  “Now it had a mouth?”

  “A mouth, hands—what the hell do I know? If it really was the abyss, couldn’t it take any shape it wanted?”

  “I suppose. Why not?”

  Mike looked at me. “You think I’m crazy. Say it. Don’t worry, I can take it. I know what I saw.”

  I considered before answering. I wanted to be honest.

  “I don’t think you’re crazy. I saw Dale outside and he told me that I should believe what you told me. Which means you did hear everything Dr. Rosen told us. Which is physically impossible. So you’re a lucky guy. You not only got healed by an angel, you returned with proof that you saw him.”

  “Or her,” Mike said.

  “Or her,” I agreed.

  Mike continued to study me. “But you still don’t believe it.”

  I shrugged as I stood. “Give me some time to absorb it all. You have to admit, it’s a lot to take in.”

  The nurse came and told me it was time to scram. Outside in the waiting room, I cornered Dale and had him repeat what Mike had said Dr. Rosen had told us. Unless Dale was lying—and he had no reason to lie—Mike had heard every word the neurosurgeon had said even while his comatose body lay a hundred feet away in the recovery room.

  “It makes you wonder, doesn’t it,” Dale said.

  “That’s the understatement of the year,” I said.

  Bo had already taken the keys to the Camry and left the hospital. The nurses had told Bo that Mike couldn’t have any more visitors. Janet was preparing to drive me back to Elder when we spotted Casey Morall, the reporter who worked for the Rapid City Journal, entering the building. We knew what she looked like from her YouTube video. We lowered our heads and tried to look the other way as we crossed the lobby but she saw us and hurried over. She had a professional-quality digital video camera hanging around her neck.

  “Hello, Fred Allen, Janet Shell. I’m glad I ran into you guys. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about a story I’m working on.”

  “We’re not interested in your stories,” Janet said, while keeping us moving toward the exit. But Casey had no intention of letting us go; she quickly matched our pace.

  “You’re the one who invited me to the Roadhouse,” Casey shot back. “I just wrote what I saw.”

  “And posted a bogus video on YouTube while you were at it,” Janet snapped.

  “The video spoke for itself. The same with the soldier. He spoke from his heart.”

  Janet groaned. “Gimme a break.”

  “It can’t be a coincidence that wherever Aja shows up, people get healed,” Casey said.

  The reporter’s remark stopped me cold, much to Janet’s displeasure. She wanted me to keep moving. But suddenly my legs weren’t cooperating. I realized I was missing something.

  “Why are you here?” I said.

  Casey spoke a mile a minute. “Ms. Shell hasn’t told you? I was here earlier this afternoon. I spoke to several nurses in critical care. All of them confirmed that Michael Garcia underwent a miraculous healing after being to
uched by Aja Smith. His vitals immediately stabilized and he began to cough, indicating he no longer needed to be ventilated. In fact, Aja was still in the room when they took him off his ventilator.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  Casey continued. “They also believe that other patients in their ward were healed by Aja. Mr. Alex Spender had a tibia break so severe his doctor feared he might eventually lose his leg. At the very least the nurses and his doctors knew he’d have to undergo several more surgeries. But now the bone in his leg is almost completely healed. The nurses can’t explain it.” Casey gestured to her camera. “I have all this recorded.”

  I looked to Janet. “You knew about this?”

  “This is bullshit!” Janet said. “This woman is turning gossip into miracles. The only reason Mike’s awake and talking is because of the skill of one of the best neurosurgeons in the country—Doctor Albert Rosen. He worked on Mike for over ten hours. He’s the one who picked the pieces of bone out of Mike’s brain. He’s the one who stopped Mike’s brain from swelling. To ignore all the work he did and to say Mike’s better because a girl who’s only attended high school for a few days happened to touch his head is utterly ridiculous.”

  “Aja touched Mike’s head?” I mumbled, totally confused.

  “When she went to the bathroom,” Janet said.

  “Ah!” Casey Morall said. “But Aja didn’t actually go to the bathroom, did she? She went to the recovery room instead. Where she was seen by RN Kimberly Leroash and RN Barbara Spinoli. They’re the nurses I have on tape who verified that it was only after Aja touched Mike’s head that he began to show sudden and remarkable signs of improvement. How do you explain that?”

  “Very easily,” Janet said. “You swoop in here and give everyone the impression that you’re some big-shot reporter that was sent here by the New York Times. You act like some miracle has already occurred and that you’re just here to verify it. And because most people love being in the spotlight, and you know all the right questions to ask, you manage to get these two nurses to lend credence to your bullshit story.” Janet paused to catch her breath. “Forgetting all along that Aja has said over and over again that she’s never healed anyone in her life.”