Waking Up Joy Read online

  *

  Of course looking back now, I wish I’d not been in such a gosh-darned hurry to get up on the roof, but like all Talleys, I was always pressing my luck. So there I was, flying down the hospital’s hallway on a gurney leaving the sniffles of my sisters behind and wishing those girls had just a drop more faith in the possibility I wouldn’t die. Thanks to Rory, who mumbled something about bad luck, and River’s quiet agreement as they wheeled me away, they now had me worried and bawling in my own head, even though I couldn’t actually make any tears.

  Momma, I wish I could have one of your teas right about now. Or a magic chocolate. Chocolate was always good medicine.

  I hadn’t had any of Momma’s quieting teas or charmed candies when I felt the gurney move and an unnatural foreboding roll over me like night fog in the hollows near our house, thick and heavy. I got lost in that fog once when I was a little girl. I never even saw Daddy come to me through the murky haze, but I heard him say, “You can breathe now, Joy,” just before putting his hands under my sticky armpits and plucking me out of the mist. He knew about my nightmares and that they made me hold my breath when I was scared. I heard Daddy again, there in the hospital.

  “Breathe, Joy.”

  Daddy? I sensed him there, alongside the gurney.

  “Breathe.”

  I’m trying.

  I felt awake, as if I should just be able to walk out the swinging doors we’d just rolled through, but my limbs were as lifeless as Nanette’s were that time she found Daddy’s liquor stash and drank half a bottle of hooch. The lights on the other side of my lids dimmed and I started settling into a sleep that promised to be so deep I couldn’t really worry about much else. But then my eyelid was yanked up and a light aimed at my eyeball. A pair of dark eyes peered at me and then my eyelid dropped, but not before I caught a glimpse of a face with a strong jaw and a chiseled cheek.

  Gee willikers.

  Now, let me tell you one good thing about being single at an age when, let’s face it, gravity was not on my side: having time to read as many romance novels as I wanted. The number I’ve read is my business, but let’s just say it was high enough to know that a strong jaw and a chiseled cheek was always attached to a hunk. And the good Lord knows I needed some entertainment after so many years of having been discarded by the only man I’d ever loved.

  Momma always said I had an overactive imagination, and maybe almost dying was mixing up my brain signals, but I think the hunky doctor kept me from tumbling into that tunnel I was trying so hard to ignore. Call me shallow, but everyone needs a reason to live.

  Chapter Three

  ‡

  Now, I’ve seen enough TV to realize that with the trauma my neck and spine sustained, I probably should’ve been dead by the time the hunky (based on the strong jaw and chiseled cheek) doctor examined me in the emergency room of the small regional hospital that wasn’t exactly known for getting things right—a fact that made me about as comfortable as being wrapped up in a porcupine blanket, if there is such a thing. And I already know that I probably shouldn’t have been able to see anything at all, especially romance book heroes, unless I was already on my way up to heaven, and then it should’ve been the pearly gates. When the doctor lifted my other eye, I saw that he was determined to save me, and that he was a kind soul. I prayed he would see me, see my soul, and know I was in there. The problem was, I couldn’t keep that eye open either.

  I am so tired.

  What with grieving for Momma and planning her funeral, it’d been days since I’d slept at all. Frankly, I needed a nap, but not like this.

  Momma.

  Had it really only been two days ago when I got home from The Greasy Wheel to find Momma still sitting where I left her that morning beneath the apple tree’s magic branches at the edge of the little orchard? It was only the time of day that seemed odd. When I noticed her, she was still in the wooden rocking chair I’d carried out that morning—she refused to sit on anything plastic—with her head bowed down to her chest. Praying?

  No. I recognized the same lifeless pose that reminded me of when Daddy died, the way his head had slumped in a simple nod. So, I already knew, even as I started running toward her as she sat in her chair with the breeze tousling her silver curls sprinkled with the white apple blossoms like a tiara, that she was, simply and irreversibly, gone. None of her good luck charms, however magical, could bring her back.

  Momma really was gone, and even if all the doctors and nurses in the hospital could wake me out of the stupor I was in, she would still be gone. The truth gathered all the breath I had left and forced it into my throat. The sorrow of it made me want to give up. I didn’t know if I could make it without Momma, but when I felt my breath leaving me, I heard my father’s voice, the same way I’d heard him through the mist as he’d plucked me up when I was lost.

  “Breathe, Joy.”

  With a petite gasp, I drew it all back into my throat.

  *

  Life around me was a series of shadows that passed on the other side of my eyelids. I wasn’t sure of the day or time anymore and the pain in my neck throbbed, my head ached, and now a deep burning in my chest tried to pull me out of my dream of Momma. It hurt.

  I want Momma.

  I heard voices buzzing and a series of loud beeps, but none belonged to Momma. The skin on my head felt too tight, like it might snap, it hurt so much.

  So much noise.

  The gurney was moving again, this time gliding in slow motion.

  “Those idiot Talleys didn’t even stabilize her neck during transport.”

  Are y’all calling my brothers and sisters idiots?

  “It’ll be a miracle if she doesn’t have brain damage.”

  “If, she comes back at all.”

  Hey! I’m here, you idiots.

  I tried to process their words.

  Brain damage?

  By all accounts, I’d learn later, I’d been more than a little bit lucky when it came to my fall. I should’ve been carried into the hospital dead, or at least without all my faculties. I sure shouldn’t have been aware of what was going on around me, but I’m here to tell you that I was.

  It was like being numb, and even though I tried to lift my hands, I sure couldn’t touch anyone back. If so, I might have slapped a couple of them for the way they removed my clothes without even asking me. It was so undignified, and if I’d had any reflexes, I’d have gagged when they shoved that tube down my throat.

  I could hear more of those beeps and other strange noises coming from machines all around me. This all couldn’t be good, especially when I needed to help plan Momma’s funeral.

  And what about my funeral? Who’ll plan it?

  If I ever—no, when I got out of this situation—I was headed right over to the funeral home to do that plan ahead funeral thing. Just in case.

  Wake me up, please.

  Another sharp pain in my neck assured me I wasn’t dead. I had a deep urge to reach up and rub the pain away.

  Wake up. Wake up, my brain screamed to the lazy parts of me, but nothing happened. I continued in that silent screaming and yelling until I finally accepted the cold hard truth.

  Nobody could hear me, save for God, and he apparently wasn’t listening.

  “I wonder how long she can stay like this.”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Sometimes you have to turn the machine off, don’t you?” Was that Carey?

  Well, I never.

  Silence, except for someone shifting in the chair next to my bed. And the next thing I knew they were making tentative funeral plans. I guess I got my answer.

  If I do die, you’ll finally get haunted by a ghost, too, Carey. Only my ghost won’t be nice, like Daddy’s.

  Chapter Four

  ‡

  “We’re losing her.”

  Oh no, you aren’t. Can’t you people hear me?

  “Her pulse is dropping.”

  Please. Don’t give up on me.

  “Sh
e might have lost too much oxygen.”

  “Is her family still here?”

  “Waiting in the lobby. The whole crazy bunch of them.”

  “Okay, folks.” A different voice. One with authority. “This is the ER, not Trapper John, M.D.”

  There was more poking and prodding at my numb parts, but no more joking around.

  Small-time doctors.

  “We have a strong pulse, Doc.”

  “I can see that.”

  Things were quiet for a long time. I might have been asleep, but the authoritative voice, which I now assumed was the doctor in charge, pulled me back. Was he the one with the strong chiseled jaw? The man who used to love me had a chiseled jaw, too. Long Cherokee hair and caramel skin, but he made his intentions clear when he married someone else.

  “My, my. Stubborn woman. She sure is a Talley.”

  “She’s a Talley?”

  “Yes,” the doctor said. “Her father was famous around here for—”

  “—waking up from a heart attack after being medically dead for thirty minutes.” The younger man sounded rightly impressed.

  “And he was hit by lightning twice when he was a kid. It’s the damnedest thing.”

  “I hear they’re all afraid of lightning.”

  Wouldn’t you be, idiot?

  “Well, I heard they’re all crazy.”

  For the first time in my life, I was embarrassed of my family. I always liked to think of our family as believing in magic and having faith, but they were talking about us the way I’d heard people talk about hillbillies in Branson.

  “Now her pulse is rising too fast.”

  And then, the same chattering woman shouted from the side of my bed.

  “Her eyes! They opened.”

  They did?

  And she was right, so I took the opportunity to peer through the haze. All I could see were a bunch of lights shining in my eyes, so I abruptly, stupidly, shut them. That was a huge mistake. I concentrated very hard on my eyelids, willing the veiny pink shades to lift, begging them, to open again.

  “Come on, Joy Talley.” It was that bossy nurse with the squeaky voice. “Live.”

  Clara? My babysitter?

  For a moment, I thought I felt them crack just a little, but they sealed themselves tight. And then, just when that nurse had me filled with hope about living, it actually happened.

  I felt my heart stop.

  I can’t describe it very well, and of course not many would believe me, even to this day, but I felt my heart stop, as suddenly as my fall halted with a jerk when I hit the end of that gosh-darned rope. I felt the blood coursing through my body slow and ebb and I knew it, too, was going to stop flowing as abruptly as a river does when the flood gates close.

  And all this time, I thought my heart had already stopped when my lover married another girl.

  Now, anyone who has a problem with miracles might want to stop listening now, but I heard them, my brothers and sisters, right through the walls of the hospital. It wasn’t like in the movies where you leave your body and float around and I wasn’t blessed like Daddy was to see heaven. But I died, and I heard them talking about me.

  The words of my brothers, sisters, and Reverend Wilson’s prayers swirled as loud as the tornado that hopped over our house and slashed its way angrily through the hollows back in 1951. We hadn’t had time to get down in the basement, so Daddy herded us all into the large first floor Inglenook hearth of the chimney as dozens of luck charms spilled out of the chimney onto our heads. Momma tried to gather them, but Daddy’s voice roared at her.

  “To hell with the charms. Get down!”

  And then, out of nowhere, I felt something smooth and warm press down on my chest. Death?

  No.

  Something real: paddles, I guessed, like on TV.

  Oh, no. Not those.

  The blast rocked my body like an electrocution, or at least what I thought one might be like, but when it relaxed, I started slipping again. My portrait in the stairwell of the Talley house would be young like Daddy’s and not that of a wrinkled beloved aunt. I imagined my niece Ruthie saying, “It’s a shame all that beauty was wasted. She never even got married.” I know that might sound a tad conceited, but it was my dream. And it was true. Someone had thought me beautiful, once, a long time ago.

  “Come on, beautiful. Wake up.”

  Doc must have known some secret about bringing single, forty-something women back from the brink of death. Just call them beautiful and the compliment shoots straight into their broken, dying hearts like cupid’s arrow.

  Ouch, do you have to do that?

  “One more time.”

  No, please, no more paddles.

  I didn’t know if I was hallucinating or something else, when I looked up from my hospital bed and saw Daddy standing next to my pillow, a brick in one hand. He lay his free hand on my chest and the pain that reminded me of my nightmares and being sucked into the Spring of Good Luck subsided, but I still couldn’t breathe. He lifted his hand to touch my cheek and smiled as he cupped my face. He leaned in close to say something, but I couldn’t understand a word. All I could feel and hear was a blast of air. All I can tell you is that the air was there and I inhaled it deep, feeling it rush into my lungs.

  Chapter Five

  ‡

  The room was quiet except the whoosh of that fancy breathing machine that I didn’t feel like I needed anymore, but they must have had it on to be safe. Thank heavens the paddles were gone, but I could feel the pull of various tubes and things attached to me. My heart sank as I realized I might even have one of those bags sticking out my side.

  How undignified that would be.

  “Joy.”

  I heard tapping on the window. In my dream, I opened the window to see my boyfriend, nineteen at the time, tossing pebbles up against my window sill.

  “Joy.”

  The tapping continued until I realized it wasn’t pebbles, but rain pitter-pattering on the window pane. I remembered the chimney, the rope, and the hospital. I was still stuck.

  “Joy.”

  It was still my boyfriend’s voice that slid into my hospital dream as smoothly as black strap molasses stretching from a spoon in those sweet, rich threads that make a person’s mouth water. I’d heard Jimmy’s thick, rich molasses voice every Sunday coming from the stage of Hilltop Church as he led the congregation in song; and there’s no delicate way to say it, but at times, listening to that voice made my mouth water—like it did now. This was no dream.

  So, you came after all, Mayor.

  His rich voice hovered in the space between me and wakefulness. I remembered my dream and wondered if he’d been to the chimney since my accident. Maybe he’d come to me because of what he already found in there. But if that were true, then why was he singing to me? Odd occurrences, dreams can be, especially when one is trapped in her body, but I liked the song.

  I concentrated on letting the machines fill my lungs, while I allowed his song, something blue and heavy, to wash over me. That same baritone voice encircled my dreams for years, but it hadn’t been a dream that our eyes had met every Sunday, once he started leading the singing at church, a gaze held by a memory that couldn’t be forgotten, and torn away by the presence of the gold glinting off his wedding band as he lifted his hands to praise God. Every Sunday, it would happen, as our eyes sought each other’s and just as quickly end, as if we had never looked at each other at all across the distance of the small church sanctuary. And the distance seemed so wide.

  Oh, I know it was a sin, to pine after a man with a ring on his left hand, Spavinaw Junction’s mayor and our church worship leader no less, but there was something in both our pasts that tethered our hearts together. Maybe there wasn’t love anymore, but there used to be—before he married Fern Cornsilk, because she was pregnant. And even after that, his eyes always found mine each Sunday morning. As much as I hated him, his brief gaze still made my insides churn; and not in an unpleasant way. I’ve always
been a glutton for punishment, so needless to say, I never missed church.

  Oh, Lord, save me from that voice.

  The low sound of his song swam around my hospital bed, as it did my pew on Sundays. I tried to find his eyes, but mine were glued shut, reminding me that dream or reality, this wasn’t church. The soft whirs and whooshes of life-sustaining machines that surrounded me were an odd music to his melody, but gradually they guided me back to the hospital bed in which I lay trapped.

  Help me, Jimmy.

  I wanted him to see me—I was inside my body.

  I’m awake. Don’t let them shut me off.

  The song washed through my body, reminding me of all we had shared, and then, of how he had walked away, leaving me to deal with the skeleton in the cupboard, so to speak, all by myself.

  But then, why would you care, Jimmy?

  I tried to discern the words of the sweet song, but the saccharine sound of his voice turned to vinegar as the years of silent rejection engulfed my leaden body in an invisible vice. I tried my hardest to lift a hand, blink an eye, but nothing. A drop of sweat trailed down my temple, but it trickled its way into my hair to hide from anyone who might’ve seen it as any kind of sign that I might be inside, stressed, worried, and perfectly aware of what was going on around me. I wished I could reach a hand out to Jimmy.

  Why are you here?

  I was motionless, but not emotionless, and as I fully woke into the present, albeit with eyes tightly shut, the bouquet of antiseptic hospital room met my nostrils. I’d liked the sweet molasses dreams better.

  Another whoosh filled my lungs, invigorating me from the inside. I tried to focus on the words of his next song: something not so bluesy that reminded me of the morning sunshine on my face. I strained to open my eyes, to see him, but only my ears were privy to who was in my room.