To Me You Are My Life, My Soul Companion

Once the guy left the room to go get a doctor, I immediately reached for the phone and dialed the first number that popped in my head, which happened to be the house phone. "Hello?" Johnny asked in a somber tone.

"Johnny?!" I squealed, "It's me it's Sam! I don't know how, but I'm alive!!"

"Wait, what?! Who the hell is this?" I heard him lower the phone and check the caller ID. "Ok, so this is the hospital, but where do you get off calling us and joking like this?!" He didn't believe me? Well, I guess it would be kind of hard to believe.

"Johnny, I'm serious, this is Sam. Uh do you want me to prove it to you? I'll tell you something that only I would know. . .um, ok, you sleep with a little blanket that you had since you were a baby and his name is Mr. Snuggles and you told me that a couple months ago when you were drunk and I know that not even Melissa knew that!" It was silent on the other line.

"Oh my God, Sam, it really is you!! Hold on a sec," he lowered the phone and said, "Hey guys come here! Guess who's on the phone?"

"Who?" Janet asked.

I could practically hear the smile in Johnny's voice, "It's Sam! She's calling from the hospital and she's alive."

Matt said, "What the hell is your problem Johnny? How could you even joke about that?!"

Johnny said, "No, I'm being serious, I know it's her, she knew about Mr. Snuggles!"

Zacky laughed a little and said, "Who the hell is Mr. Snuggles?" Johnny was totally embarrassed, I could tell, and I felt bad for him.

"Uh, it's nothing, its an inside joke, yeah that's right! So if you don't believe me, you can freaking talk to her!" He handed the phone over to someone else and I realized it was Zacky.

"Um, who is this?" he asked.

"This is Sam, for real! I know it's probably impossible, but I'm. . .I'm alive again. Tell everyone and bring them to the hospital now, ok? That will be enough proof!" He agreed and told me they'd be there in a few minutes.

The doctor walked in the room moments later and said, "Wow, I've never seen anything like this before. Do you mind if we do a few tests and X-rays? I'm sure you'd like to know what happened as well."

I nodded my head and he began to do blood tests, X-rays, everything. He told me it would be a couple hours before the test results would be complete, so I could just relax or go to sleep, but after everything that just happened, I'm almost even afraid to go back to sleep, so I just decided to watch TV until everyone got here.

*Brian's POV*

I figured that sleeping on the couch would help clear my mind, but it didn't do anything. Suddenly, Jimmy came running down the stairs and shouted, "Brian, c'mon we gotta go to the hospital!" I sat up and looked at him like he was crazy.

"Why the hell would we need to go there?"

He grabbed the keys off the table and said, "Sam's alive!"

Was he being serious?! How could she be alive when I watched her die? I still followed him up the stairs despite my confusion and doubt. Everyone was already in the car, so Jimmy and I had to take my car.

"Do you mind explaining what's going on?" I asked as I turned out of the neighborhood.

"She called from the hospital and apparently she's alive. We don't know much other than that, so I guess we'll just have to find out when we see her. Can you believe it?! She's really going to be ok." If this was all true, then I'd be the happiest person in the world!

Within a record time of 8 minutes, we all arrived at the hospital and ran inside. The receptionist told us she was in room 412 so we'd have to take the elevator. We piled in there and hit the number 4. We ran to the room and busted down the door pretty much.

"Sammie!" Janet shouted, running in ahead of everyone else. I couldn't believe my eyes! Sam really was alive and was sitting right in front of me. This has to be a miracle.

*Normal POV*

I was flipping through the channels on the TV and came to the conclusion that there was absolutely nothing on during daytime TV! I just left the channel on ABC who was playing some soap opera. For some reason, those kinds of shows were always funny to watch back when Adam, Mark, and I lived at the vacation home...we'd always watch these shows and make fun of them. I couldn't really pay attention to the show, though, because it sounded like a stampede was coming down the hall, and I think I know who it is.

The door flew open and right away I saw everyone standing there, either smiling or really shocked. "Sammie!" Janet shouted as she was the first one to actually come into the room. She ran over to my bed and gave me a great big hug. "Wow, you're really alive! This is so freaking awesome," she declared.

Everyone else drifted in and began asking questions about how I feel or how did it happen, things that I didn't know the answer to. Eventually, the doctor came back and had to push his way through all the people.

"Ok, Miss Hartman, your blood tests have all come back ok. The X-rays have revealed what happened to you, and might I say, you are one lucky person. You see, before you 'died' blood started to pour into your lungs, which began to block your breathing and caused you to cough up the blood. All of this caused a sufficient lack of oxygen to your brain, which may have made you feel light-headed. Then, for a temporary amount of time, your heart stopped beating, which made it seem like you were really dead. The body can survive a day or two purely on oxygen, which explains how you were able to survive. If you hadn't woken up sooner, you really would have died. For some reason, the current X-rays show that the blood has slowly began to drift out of your lungs. There must have been some other holes in your lung that we did not see before. I'd say all we have to do now is patch up those holes, and you'll be just fine!"

"That's great!" I said smiling. It didn't really matter to me how I am still alive, I'm just so thankful that I am alive.

Everyone came over to me and told me how glad they were that I was ok and stuff like that, until they all decided to wait in the waiting room and give me and Brian some time alone.

"I bet you weren't expecting this one, huh?" I asked him smiling a little.

"You got that right. I just wish that you would have been ok to start with."

"Why? What happened when you went home?" I asked him with concern.

"Well, I . . .I saw some blood splatter in the bathroom that was from you in August and I just felt as if all of this was my fault and I was the reason why you died. I was seriously about to shoot myself with Matt's gun, but Zacky came down and stopped me right in time." He was really going to kill himself?! That would have been horrible! I grabbed onto his hand.

"Brian, don't say things like that. None of this was your fault. In fact, I wanted to tell you something. Before I died or however you want to say it, my life literally flashed before my eyes and I saw tons of events from my life, even when I was little. But the one thing I didn't see was the night from high school or the time in August. You helped me get past all of those nightmares! You saved me from all of that and I wanted to thank you for that."

He looked stunned. "Do you really mean that? That's so great! And let me tell you something, in the day that you were dead, I missed you so much."

He smiled a little and the next thing I knew, we were making out right there in the hospital room. The doctor cleared his throat as he came inside to begin the procedure; Brian and I smiled at each other one more time before they gave me the drugs and I fell asleep while they performed the stitching on my lung.

The new surgery went perfectly and I was able to go home the next day. Everyone was always sure that if I needed to pick something up or do anything, they would do it for me. I was heating up some macaroni and cheese in the microwave and went to go sit down and then all of the sudden Jimmy sat down next to me eating some Trix right out of the box. He grabbed my fork before I could and said, "I wanna feed you!"

"Uh, I think that if I could use a microwave, then I can lift a fork too, sorry, Jimmy." But he wouldn't give up.

"Oh c'mon, pwease?" I don't know why he was so set on feeding me, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to let him do it once or twice. "Ok, here comes the choo-choo!"

Then he started making train noises until the fork was in my mouth. I chewed on my food, but then started laughing cause that was so funny. "So was that why you wanted to feed me?" I asked, taking my fork back.

He nodded his head and then held the box of Trix over his head and tried to dump some in his mouth, and it went everywhere but his mouth, including on the floor and down his shirt. He immediately stood up and tried to shake the cereal out from his shirt.

"Ahhhh this feels so weird!" he complained as he continued dancing around and I kept laughing. Matt walked in the room, took one look at Jimmy and he had to lean against the wall cause he started laughing too.

"Yeah, let's all laugh at the drummer!" Jimmy said.

"Dude, you should see yourself. What the hell are you doing?" Matt asked.

I explained, "He got cereal down his shirt and now it won't come out. . ."

After a couple of minutes, Matt and I just decided to leave.

"How could you?!" Jimmy shouted in despair as we left him in the kitchen.

I saw Brian sitting on the couch playing video games with Zacky, so I decided to sneak up on him. I covered his eyes and said, "Guess who?" in some kind of fake accent.

"Hey, is this Johnny?!" he guessed. I hit the back of his head and jumped over the side of the couch into his lap.

"Do I look like Johnny?" I asked.

"Nooo...but you do kinda sound like him."

"Haha I win!" Zacky shouted pointing at the TV screen.

"No fair, you should have paused the game when you saw that I was being secretly attacked!" Brian complained.

Zacky stuck his tongue out and said, "Someone's a sore loser," and then went back upstairs.

"Do you wanna watch a movie or something?" he asked.

"Hmm, how about Spiderman 3? I'm in the mood for a superhero movie."

He nodded and got up to get the movie loaded. Then he sat back down next to me and I leaned up against his chest and we held hands. Right in the middle of the movie, he said, "Hey, you're still wearing that engagement ring?" I looked down at my left hand and saw it.

"Well, it is our engagement ring, so I didn't want to take it off."

"Even though it's covered in blood?"

"I guess. . .but I don't want a new one, I guess we could just clean this one off?"

After the movie we did our best to get the blood off of the diamond, and for the most part it came off. There were just 2 tiny spots on each side of the diamond that, if you looked close enough, seemed to look like hearts. Those two 'hearts' wouldn't come off no matter how hard we tried, but in a way I guess it was ok.

In my mind, it represented us being together forever, no matter what obstacles are thrown in our direction. We can handle anything as long as we do it together. I never really believed in the whole 'soul mate' concept, but Brian proved me wrong.

Someone had the stereo playing loud upstairs and the song 'Second Heartbeat' began to play. We laid down on the couch, I was on top of him, and we kind of smiled at each other and then he wrapped his arms around me to pull me into a passionate kiss. And when we separated, we both said at the same time, "To me you are my life, my soul companion."

And that's how it was going to stay forever.