The Color of Forever Read Free Page B

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