“I don’t just see through Patrick’s eyes in the memories. I feel what he felt. He meant it when he said nothing would keep him from coming back to Ben. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, he’d use it, and he’d come back to him.”
“So how did that work? Patrick lived to be 130. Then you were born and came to find Ben?” Time for Daniel’s part of the conversation, apparently. He sat up tall and ticked off his fingers as he asked his questions. “Why forty-some odd years? Why didn’t Patrick’s memories come back earlier in your life? What about all those years in between? Why didn’t he come back right away and run right to Ben?”
“Okay, I don’t have all the facts yet.” He ticked off his own fingers and answered Daniel’s questions in order. “No. Patrick died in the Civil War. I don’t know if reincarnation is immediate or if the soul hangs out in limbo or heaven or nirvana or someplace first. If it’s immediate, then obviously there’s been other lives. He clearly didn’t find Ben in any of those. Maybe he didn’t realize he’d literally be waiting for him in the last place he left him. Maybe he didn’t remember. I didn’t start remembering until I already found Ben.” His voice was getting slightly louder with each point. He threw up his hands. “I don’t know how it works, Daniel.”
“Why else do you think you’re Patrick?” Daniel apparently wasn’t going to comment on Elliot’s slight outburst.
“Because Ben is my soul mate. I’ve never felt that connected to anyone—” He reached out toward Daniel, belatedly aware of how that would sound. “−no offense.”
Daniel chuckled and waved it away. “We were never like that. I knew that. Go on.”
“But Ben is
Patrick’s
soul mate.” Elliot’s eyes pleaded with Daniel to give him another explanation. “You can’t have two soul mates, Daniel. Can you?”
“I wouldn’t think so, no.” He scooted his chair closer to Elliot’s bed.
“It was killing me to think I’d have to give Ben up to Patrick.” He suddenly found the hemmed edge of his blanket absolutely fascinating where it was draped across his stomach. “I was willing to do it if that’s what Ben wanted because I love him that much, but it would have killed me.” He looked up. “But Ben never asked for that. Even after I told him I found Patrick, he didn’t get excited about it. He only wanted me to come home. Not bring Patrick home. He wanted
me
to come back. He kept going on about how I wouldn’t be able to be with him if I died here. Why would he be more interested in me being there than having Patrick back?” Elliot clenched and flexed his fingers, not knowing what to do with all the anxiety and emotion running through him. “He adored him, Daniel. I saw that in Ben’s memories, and in Patrick’s. He wouldn’t simply replace him with someone else. Unless I
am
Patrick.”
“I had wondered about that too, actually,” Daniel had to admit. “Why Ben seemed to be so gone over you if he was Patrick’s soul mate and he thought he was coming back to him.”
“And, thinking about it now, Ben has never once called me Elliot.” Elliot had let up the pressure on the damned pillow during his anxious sort-of outburst. Just the tiniest bit and the possessed piece of foam and fabric capitalized on its advantage, slipping to one side of Elliot’s head. He grabbed it, shook it like a wolf with its latest kill, and tossed it behind his head again. “He hasn’t called me anything. Well, sometimes, I think. But he’s been careful not to call me by any name. And he’s said ‘you always this’ or ‘you always that’ a couple of times. I thought he meant
always
since I got there. But, what if he didn’t?”
“Do you look like Patrick? Have you seen pictures?” Daniel picked up the nurse’s call button that had fallen off the side of the bed during Elliot’s epic battle with the pillow from hell.
“That’s Hollywood.” Elliot echoed Ben’s long-ago reference to the industry’s misconceptions. “Why would the body look the same? The soul is what comes back.”
“No, I know.” Daniel turned the button around on its cord this way and that as though it were a rare tome that held the secrets of life. All he had to do was stare at it long enough and it would tell him everything. “I just mean, how does he know it’s you? If you are Patrick, I mean.”
Elliot had to think. “I don’t know. I’ll ask him. But he does.” He paused, gathered his thoughts again, and went on. “Daniel, I’d bet anything I’m right about this.”
“You thought you were right about Patrick’s ghost too.” He pointed the call button at him accusingly.
“Well, in a manner of speaking, it is Patrick’s ghost. Sort of. I mean, it’s memories of the spirit that was Patrick.
Is
Patrick? Shit, I don’t know.”
“So what does that mean? If you’re Patrick?” Daniel leaned forward, serious, laying the call button on the bed beside Elliot’s hand.
Elliot wasn’t sure what he meant. “I go back to Ben, see if he thinks I’m right?”
“Then what?”
Elliot hadn’t realized until then that Daniel hadn’t removed his hand from the bed. “What do you mean, then what?”
Daniel sat quietly for a moment, letting Elliot think about it, but must have decided Elliot wasn’t going to understand the question. He let the tips of his fingers brush the very ends of Elliot’s. “Ben’s dead, Elle. He’s not reincarnated. Even if there was some way he could magically reincarnate right now, now that he’s found you, he’d be a baby, and you’re already in your forties. That’s not going to bring you together either. How are you going to be together?”
Elliot still didn’t get it right away, then suddenly his jaw fell open. He grabbed Daniel’s hand. “No, Daniel. I’m not suicidal or anything. I’m not going to do anything to cause my death just to be with Ben.” Elliot loosened his grip, but still covered Daniel’s hand with his own and made deliberate eye contact. “But, let’s face it, this heart thing is bad. Sooner or later—probably sooner—I’m going to die. And before you start again, I know that’s not necessarily true for all people with congestive heart failure, even ones in Stage D. I’m sure some live a long time. I could have years yet. But I don’t think so. I just get the feeling that this is happening fast and will continue to happen fast. Maybe it’s happening fast
because
I’m Patrick and have finally found my soul mate. Maybe that’s how it works? Who knows? I just want to be with Ben when it happens, so I can… be with Ben.”
“So, you’re going to hole up in that house and never leave? You’re not going to go to doctor’s appointments or hospitals when you need it? You’re not going to go out with friends?”
Elliot patted Daniel’s hand, then moved his own away. “Let’s get me home first. Let me talk to Ben. I may be way off base. He may laugh in my face.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
Elliot shrugged a shoulder. “Let’s take it one step at a time.”
“Elliot.” Daniel took his hand again. “I don’t want to see you cut yourself off from life.”
Elliot studied Daniel’s face. “You believe me, though. Don’t you?”
It was Daniel’s turn to shrug. “Weirder shit has happened.” Then a smirk slowly spread across his face and he pulled his hand away. “I just want to be here when you explain all this to Sheri.”
Elliot slapped him.
SHERI AND
Malcolm came in later that morning, but neither Elliot nor Daniel said anything about the reincarnation theory. They didn’t need to in order to know what her opinion would be about it. Elliot concentrated on making plans to get back to Ben. With all his friends in Pennsylvania now, there was no one to go to the plantation house, so Elliot couldn’t ask Ben anything by phone, even if he wanted someone else to be there for his conversation.
“I just want out of here as soon as possible.” Elliot sat in the recliner the hospital staff seemed to like to torture him with. From the chair he could see out his window much better than he could from his bed. The manicured grass rolled over a wide expanse lined with shrubs and flowers. Every single flower was in bloom in that bloom-or-get-replaced way that meticulously landscaped spaces have.
Elliot’s room was too high up to see detail, but in his mind’s eye he could imagine curious butterflies flitting from one flower to the other, trying to decide which to kiss first. Bees would pollinate the prettiest flowers and head off to a nearby hive to make their nectar of the gods. Elliot loved honey.
Birds were soaring in the sky, trees were bending in the breeze, and Elliot was stuck in a fifth-floor semiprivate hospital room.
At least he had plenty of company. No other patient, for which he was eternally grateful, but all his closest friends were there. Sheri sat in the hard plastic chair beside him, alternately reading a book and yammering on about something to keep Elliot from getting bored. Daniel and Malcolm sat on the bed, playing cards. They had become fast friends and often ganged up together to pick on Elliot. Right then, though, they were picking on each other about who would win the latest hand of rummy.
“I know, Elle.” Sheri answered the statement that had almost become a mantra. “Maybe the doctor will have good news when he comes in.”
As if summoned by his mere mention, Dr. Sowder appeared.
Elliot inclined the back of the chair as soon as he saw the doctor. “When can I get out of here?”
“Well.” Dr. Sowder grinned. “Feeling restless is actually a good step toward being released.”
“Great.” Elliot put the footrest down and leaned forward. “So, tomorrow?”
Dr. Sowder smiled but looked at his chart. “Maybe not quite that soon.” He flipped a page. “You’re doing a lot better since the second surgery. The ICD is doing well. But there is still more arrhythmia than I’d like. Let’s see if we can get you to have a few days in a row where your heart is pretty steady.”
“Two days tops?” Elliot rubbed his hand over the blanket covering his knees and used his best negotiation voice.
“That’s not what he said, and you know it.” Sheri smacked his knee.
“Okay, yes, I know that.” Elliot pushed Sheri’s hand off his leg. “But I want to get back to South Carolina.”
Dr. Sowder paled. “I’m not sure you should be traveling so soon after you get out. Don’t you have a place to stay here in Pennsylvania?”
“Yes, but I’m going home. As soon as I get out of the hospital.” Elliot made fists in the blanket. This wasn’t something he was willing to argue about. He was going back to Ben, and he didn’t care what the doctor thought about it.
Sheri came to his rescue. “He has a private plane and pilot, doctor. So it won’t be like he has to stand in line or walk long distances to and from the plane.”
“Well.” Dr. Sowder tapped his pen on the clipboard. “That’s a little better, but I don’t want him traveling by himself.”
“Oh, he won’t be by himself. I thoroughly intend to travel with him on the plane.” Sheri turned from the doctor to face Elliot. “Whether he wants me to or not.”
Elliot threw up his hands. If that was what it took to get him out of there, he’d take it.
“Well, we have a couple of days at least before it’s an issue, but that might be okay.” The doctor brought the pen to his mouth, and Elliot thought he was going to start chewing on it like Elliot himself did sometimes when he was deep in concentration. But Dr. Sowder didn’t. He simply tapped the thing at the side of his mouth and finally said, “I can go over with you things you need to know for the ride back. And I’ll contact your cardiologist and get an appointment for as soon as you get back.” When Elliot opened his mouth to protest, the doctor added, “Nonnegotiable.”
Elliot shut his mouth. He could live with that.
But the doctor added, “And I don’t want you in the house by yourself. At least not for the first several days or until your doctor clears you.”
Sheri started, “I can stay w—”
At the same time, Elliot said, “I won’t be by myself. Ben will be there.”
“Oh hell no. Don’t even start that.” When she saw the confused and mildly disapproving expression on the doctor’s face, she explained. “I don’t give a damn that he’s in a relationship with another man. But Ben is… well, he isn’t in a position to care for Elliot’s needs.”
“He helped last time.” Elliot was enjoying Sheri’s predicament. It was obvious the doctor thought her to be a homophobe and didn’t like it.
Daniel jumped in on Sheri’s side, though, literally scooting on the bed so that he was closer to her. “You’ve got to admit, Elle, Ben’s bedside manner is a little… transparent.”
Malcolm joined in. “He’s a little light in the medical training department.”
“You can see right through his motives.” Daniel turned toward Malcolm as they tried to one-up each other with bad puns.
“You can even say he’s haunted by his own limitations.” Malcolm was enjoying this too much.
“Oh for crying out loud.” Elliot pushed his head against the headrest and reclined his chair. This might take a while. “Alright. Ben isn’t the best nursing assistant.”
The poor doctor would, of course, have no idea why these people thought it was so funny to tear down an absent friend, but he obviously put it aside and repeated his position. “Well, I think you need someone with you. I’ll leave it to you to decide who that will be.”
“We’ll see,” Elliot finally capitulated, raising the foot of his chair. “But if you think I need that much medical care, then keep me in the hospital. Once I’m out, I want my life back. And that does not include having a shadow 24-7.”
Malcolm chuckled and slapped Daniel’s shoulder. “That’s a whole line of jokes we forgot, Daniel.”
Daniel slapped him back. “Shadow, shade, all sorts of material there. Why didn’t we think of that?”
Elliot couldn’t even imagine what the doctor was making of all this, but like any good professional, he seemed determined to stick to the main conversation. “Well, that’s all in the future anyway. Right now I want you to stay where you are.”
“Great, doc,” Elliot deadpanned.
The men chuckled and Sheri patted Elliot’s hand, trying to cheer him up.
THE DAY
finally came when Elliot walked through the front door of the plantation house in SC. Malcolm and Daniel had flown back the day before, and Sheri had accompanied him on the plane as threatened. He knew Sheri planned on staying with him at the house for at least a little while, but he hadn’t realized he would have three escorts. Malcolm and Daniel met them at the private airport and drove him out to the house.