Chapter1
Death had stood on the doorstep and knocked on my door
– but I didn't answer. I didn't die. There were days
I wished I had – the pain was so great.
I don't remember very much except that I awoke once only
to open one swollen eye slightly to see Matt, my best
friend, reading to me.Over his shoulder stood Brannon, my
late husband, observing the both of us. Seeing me
conscious, Brannon said, "He's reading to you from the Book
of Ruth."
Ruth, my favorite story from the Old Testament, told the
tale of loyalty between two women facing starvation.When the
mother-in-law, Naomi, tries to turn Ruth away in order to
save her, Ruth says, "Where thou goest, I go; where you
lodge, I lodge; your people shall be my people;
your god shall be my god; where you die, there shall I
also be buried."
It was too bad Brannon had never understood this concept
of loyalty when alive. Now dead, he was nothing but a pile
of dust in a cardboard box stored in my walk-in closet.
What was he doing here now? Brannon turned so I could see
my daughter asleep in a chair lodged in a corner. Loyalty.
I smiled. At least, I think I smiled.
Matt turned a page and kept reading. I realized that I
couldn't hear Matt. I thought to myself – why can't I
hear?
"You're deaf, Josiah," Brannon said. "From the fall."
He held out his hand. "Come with me."
I'm not going anywhere with you. You abandoned me, I
thought in a huff.
"Where we're going, your anger won't matter. It will be
forgotten."
Go away, Brannon. Mad at you. Mad. Mad. Mad.
"Ahh, Josey, you were always stubborn," he chided, his
image fading.
Closing my good eye, I slipped back into a coma. I
didn't awaken until several weeks later. I couldn't stand
the intense pain and would have flung myself out a window
– if I could have moved.When my daughter begged the
doctors to put me back into a medical coma, they
refused.They were going to let me sweat it out. My daughter
couldn't stand the screaming – my screaming.
I must be rotten deep inside the way I hated them, the
very men and women who saved my life, but hate them I did.
I loathed the way they thought they were doing me a great
favor by prescribing measly dosages of pain medication. I
reviled their condescension, their tired jokes, and
heartless procedures. That suffering is good for the soul
is a fool's philosophy.I don't like pain and have no use for
suffering.
Neither has my daughter. I hazily remember bits and
pieces of leaving the hospital – Matt leaning over
me and
holding my hand, mouthing goodbye; the doctors arguing
with my daughter as she had the bandages, IV's, monitors,
and everything else, including me, packed up; the humming of
the plane engines as I was flown to Key West where the
medical profession doesn't frown on dispensing large dosages
of painkillers.
I was later told the decision to move me to Key West
was made on that day when I was shrieking like a lunatic
about the unbearable throbbing on my left side . . . the
side that impacted the cliff ledge . . . because the doctors
wouldn't give me more morphine.My daughter installed me in a
three-bedroom bungalow complete with a pool on the ocean.
She brought in her own physician's assistant to stay with
me. Then what pain medication she couldn't get legally, she
bought off the black market.I didn't scream again.
During the few times I was somewhat lucid, I tried
to ask her what had happened, but my lips wouldn't move.
The guttural noises spilling from my mouth were confusing
and animal-like, so I fell back asleep. I dreamt I was
falling, falling, falling from a cliff, plunging into the
murky swirling water of the Kentucky River . . .
I sat up. Somewhere a bell rang loudly. A man with a
military crew cut ran into the room and leaned towards me.
He frightened me, so I tried pushing him away with my hands,
but only my right hand would move and not in the direction I
wanted.
Who was this man? Was it O'nan? Were we still fighting?
Were we falling off the cliff together? No, that was
Sherlock Holmes falling off Reichenbach Falls with Moriarty.
The strange man morphed into Basil Rathbone as he turned
off a monitor. He was wearing a Key West T-shirt and
shorts. A chuckle bubbled up my throat thinking of Sherlock
Holmes in shorts. Sherlock turned towards the bed and
smiled. There was a gap in his front teeth. Now, his face
reminded me of Alfred E. Neuman's, but more exotic, more
ethnic. I couldn't place why. His lips were moving and I
concentrated to understand what he was saying.
Why couldn't I hear him?
"My name is Jacob Dosh. You can call me Jake. I am a
physician's assistant. I'll be taking care of you," he said
in loud, exaggerated tones. He held a silver pen light,
which he kept flashing into my eyes. "You've had an
accident, but you're all right. I need to check you.
Understand? Nod yes, if that is okay." The man smiled and
repeated what he had said – again and again.
It finally sank in. I nodded slightly. His hands were
warm and gentle, almost caressing as they moved about my
body. There were calluses on his fingers and a raised scar
down the length of his left forefinger. My skin was
extremely sensitive to touch.
I felt the vibrations of someone running into the room.
My daughter peered anxiously from the foot of the bed and
then spoke to the man. I whispered her name and tried to
keep my head up, but sank back into the pillows.I mumbled,
"Watson?" Sherlock and I were on a case in London.
He shook my shoulder again. "Hey, stay with us. Don't
go back to sleep."
Struggling to keep my eyes open, I attempted to smile at
my daughter but couldn't make my lips curl up.
"Well," said the man called Jake, checking my vital
signs. "Who's Watson?"
My daughter grinned. "The sidekick to my mother's
favorite beekeeper, Sherlock Holmes."
"Sherlock Holmes was a beekeeper?"
"He retired in Sussex Downs and kept bees. He wrote The
Practical Handbook of Bee Culture."
Jake scribbled on a chart and placed it on the end of the
rented hospital bed."I always thought Sherlock Holmes was a
fictional character. I didn't know he was real."
My daughter waved to me. "Cut down on the morphine.
She's ready to come back to the living."
But my daughter was wrong. I wasn't. I liked living in
the dream world of Morpheus, believing I was safe, knowing
that in real time, tragedy cannot be undone. Tragedy was a
bucking horse. Sometimes you were able to stay in the
saddle and ride it out – sometimes not.And I wasn't
even prepared to put my foot in the stirrup.