Until I Die Again [On The Way To Heaven] (Soul Change Novel) Read Free Page A

distorted nightmare.
    The picture filled her mind, this time vividly. Her twisted body, the blood, oh, the blood. But there was so much more than that. She remembered floating above her body, feeling detached from it. The clear, bright light telling her that it wasn’t her time yet. He’d said something about a new task. She had been given another chance as… Chris’s gaze fell to the plastic band on her wrist: H. DiBarto . She was in another woman’s body!
    “Hallie! You’re awake.”
    The man who had been talking to her earlier rushed to her side, followed by a tall woman in her fifties. Chris looked at them blankly, the reality of her situation crashing in over her.
    “Hallie, it’s Jamie, your husband. This is your mother. Are you all right?” Then he shook his head, smiling. “You’re okay. I knew you’d come back.”
    Jamie leaned over and hugged her, followed by a crushing hug from the woman who was supposed to be her mother. The woman touched Chris’s face, hair and arms, as if to assure herself she was really seeing her daughter and not an apparition.
    Chris tried to talk, but nothing came out. Finally a sound croaked from her throat. “Why am I in here?” She gestured to all the equipment around her.
    Her mother leaned forward and gripped her hand. Chris wasn’t sure whose hand was shaking, but their clutched hands quivered. “You had a brain hemorrhage, sweetheart.”
    Chris’s weight pulled her back to a prone position. All the while, she kept staring at Jamie, keeping her focus on one person to keep her mind from exploding into a thousand directions.
    His face was finely sculptured, and his eyes were the lightest shade of blue she had ever seen. He had one of those regal noses from advertisements for cologne and blue jeans. He must have been staring at her with the same disbelief that filled her face. Then he smiled, and the whole room seemed to light up. Maybe she was in Heaven after all, and he was an angel.
    The illusion of Heaven was disrupted when a nurse pushed her way in after looking through the large glass window. Everything happened quickly after that. She called the doctor in, ushered Jamie and her “mother” out of the room, and put her through a battery of embarrassing and lengthy tests. All the while, the doctor kept asking her questions.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Hallie…” She stole a glance at her bracelet. “DiBarto.”
    “How old are you? Where were you born?”
    The questions kept coming, and she didn’t know the answers to most of them. At least the answers that belonged to the body she was in. Her own life was clear and the memories vivid up until the day she died. She squeezed her eyes shut. Who am I now?
    “Are you all right?” one of the nurses asked.
    Chris shook her head. No, she wasn’t all right. She would never be all right again.
     
    Jamie, his mother, Theresa, and Hallie’s mother all gathered in the closet-sized room with Dr. Hughes. The bad news room. He tried to keep telling himself that Hallie was all right now, but another dark thought kept pressing into his mind, spurred on by the memory of that blank look on Hallie’s face: brain damage. What would he do if she never recovered mentally?
    Dr. Hughes looked at his paperwork, then set it down on the desk with a short sigh. “I have been a doctor for fifteen years, and all I can tell you about Hallie’s recovery is that it is a miracle. I have never seen someone in so deep a coma awaken so suddenly. Her movements are purposeful, hand and eye coordination much better than anyone could ever expect.”
    “So she’ll be okay?” Hallie’s mother asked, nervously fingering the frosted hair piled on top of her head.
    “Well, Mrs. Parker…”
    “Please,” she interrupted, placing a hand on Dr. Hughes’s sleeve. “Call me Velvet.”
    Jamie always cringed at the mention of her mother’s name, Velvet. Her real name was Hedda, but she kept the stage name she used when she had been an exotic