Even If Saving You Sends Me to Heaven

I was so scared, and I didn’t know what to do at first. I finally remembered the button on the side of the hospital bed that would call the nurses, and I pressed it fervently. Zane groaned in pain again, and I held his head in my arms. He clutched me tightly, and within seconds nurses came into the room. I tried to pay attention to them, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off of his pain-stricken face. Whatever they did, Zane started to relax. He started to babble unintelligible words in a soft, submissive voice.

Anyone watching Zane for the next few hours would’ve thought he was sleeping. I thought so too at first. I finally cautiously allowed his mind into mine and heard his confused consciousness. Whatever the nurses had injected him with did wonders for the pain, but it was still present enough to make me uncomfortable.

I had a lot of time to myself, and I got bored quickly. I tried to keep my mind from wandering to dangerous subjects, but with nothing else to do but think, it was difficult.

My confession to Zane made things easier and more difficult at the same time. On one hand, I was so relieved I didn’t have to hide my feelings from him anymore. He no longer had to feel awkward about his feelings for me. Our kisses had been incredible, but the affect he had on me scared me a little bit. Before his headaches started, I wasn’t sure how far Zane and I would’ve gone. No matter what I wanted, I needed to remember that I was here for a reason, and I needed to check myself on my actions.

On the other hand, my confession would only make things harder on us when the time came for me to leave. Even though Zane was keeping me with him now, I really didn’t know how long that could last. So how close should I allow us to become?

”You can’t stay here with Zane forever.”

The words played as clearly in my head as if Danny had repeated them into my ear. I felt that, one way or another, Danny’s prediction would come true. I pulled Danny’s feather out of the pocket I was carefully keeping it in and ran it through my fingers.

Danny had made a huge mistake in his life. He had taken, damaged, and hurt many lives. But during his life, he had paid the price he deserved in man’s eyes. And then after he’d died, he’d paid the price he deserved in God’s eyes. In the end, after everything he went through, he made it to heaven. That meant he hadn’t been a bad person. He had been a good person who made one terrible, horrible decision. How many people in the world were truly evil, and how many were only gravely misguided and lost?

As I held Danny’s feather, I knew he was in heaven now. I wondered what heaven was like. Was Danny happy? I thought everyone had to be happy in heaven, so he couldn’t possibly be longing and waiting for me like he’d insisted he would, right? I realized I wanted him to be happy.

Could people in heaven watch people and angels on earth? I shivered. Could Danny be watching me now? The image of me stroking his feather could be terribly misunderstood, and I shoved it back into my pocket. Could he know what I was thinking, what I was feeling? It made me feel awfully guilty.

Zane stirred. I grabbed his hand. The pain medicine was finally wearing off and I wanted him to wake up to me. As he became more conscious, I became discouraged. The first thing he became aware of was my hand, but the first person he thought of was his mom. I knew he’d lost his memory again, and I folded my wings – which were getting difficult to hide – behind my back in frustration.

“Mom?” Zane asked, his eyes still closed.

“I’m not your mom, but don’t be scared,” I said as gently as I could.

His eyes still shot open, and he pulled his hand away from mine. He tried to gather his surroundings without removing his scared gaze from me for too long. “Where am I?” he whimpered.

“It’d okay, Zane,” I assured him. “I am your friend Arianna. Your mom wants me to stay with you until she can come back. You’re just in the hospital because you’ve had a little bit of memory loss.”

He felt embarrassed and guilty for not remembering me. “I… I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him comfortingly. I left my hand on the edge of his bed, but he never took it back.

“When will my mom be back?” he asked.

I hid my grimace and replied, “Not for a while. Do you want to watch TV while you wait?” He nodded, and I handed him the remote. We sat awkwardly together while he watched TV.

It was very early in the morning when he glanced at me, and he felt a twinge of the confused emotions he usually felt when he looked at me, but he didn’t know why. It was a curious thing, him slowly regaining his memory while he was conscious. I waited patiently and silently until he finally blinked at me and asked, “What happened?”

“Your head started feeling like it was going to explode, and then they gave you intense pain meds, and then you woke up with half your memory,” I explained frankly.

He recalled the pain and winced, but then he thought about what happened before that. He began to wonder if he’d been hallucinating, and he frowned and said, “Well, that dream is embarrassing. Did any part of it actually happen?”

“Every part of it did,” I assured him, the corner of my mouth turning up.

“How do I know you aren’t just letting me believe that to make me feel better?”

I threw up my hands in surrender. “Do we really have to go over this trust thing again?” I exclaimed in disbelief.

Zane chuckled and replied, “If it ends the same way, can we do it over again?” He wiggled his eyebrow, and I couldn’t keep a straight face.

“Actually, if you recall correctly, it ended in you doubled over in pain,” I retorted between laughter.

“Oh, I’d forgotten about that, but you’re right,” he allowed. “That would happen to us, wouldn’t it?”

“Well it did!” I insisted.

Suddenly Zane sobered up, and he reached for my hand. I moved closer to him as he pleaded, “Any chance we can pick up where we left off?”

I grimaced sadly at him and replied, “You have no idea how much I would love to do that, Zane.”

His stomach fell, and he began to anticipate rejection from me, which really killed me inside. “So why won’t you?” he asked.

“Please, Zane, that feeling inside you is heartbreaking!” I exclaimed. “I’m only afraid of hurting you again, I promise.”

“You’re afraid of hurting me?” he asked in disbelief. “Do you really think that was what triggered my headaches?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, “But what if it did?” Conveniently, a nurse was just coming into his room to check on him. “Ask her, at least,” I insisted.