“Isn’t he?” Pete said. “Would he be here if he wasn’t?”
I frowned. “But…this is just a dream.”
“Is it?” Pete asked, and now he was smiling and it took twenty years off his life.
There was something familiar about him. “Hey, do I know you?”
He was speaking in riddles, and I was starting to feel cold again. The sun was setting.
Reaching out, he stroked my cheek and a deep warmth filled my body. “You do.”
Who was he? It was on the tip of my tongue, but there was still a layer of confusion over my mind. I felt like I had drugs in my system or something. This reminded me of the time I’d tried to take a sleeping pill.
Bad idea.
“Will I remember this?” I asked, looking back at Jack, who had picked up the little boy Noah and was now carrying him to a beautiful white house perched on the water.
“I sure hope so,” Pete said.
A woman came out of the house and the boy ran to her. As she picked him up and peppered his face with kisses, a tear slid down my cheek.
It was me. She was older, but…it was me.
I turned to Pete, tears streaming down my face. “I know who you are,” I whimpered and bowed my head in reverence. He was an angel of God.
He tipped my chin up to meet his face. “I have a message for you. For I know the plansI have for you, plans to prosperyou and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Tears of joy flowed down my cheeks as I smiled, and then the dream fell away from me as I tried to hold on to it.
I gasped, coughing and sputtering as something scratchy was ripped from my throat. My eyelids flew open and a man in doctor’s scrubs loomed over me.
“Hannah?” He flashed a light in my eyes.
I squinted, trying to hold on to the dream. “Pete. Jack. Noah,” I muttered, but the words were a croak on my parched lips.
“I’m glad to hear you can speak. Do you know what year it is?” he asked.
He then asked me over half a dozen questions about who the president was and when my birthday was, which I answered.
“You were in an accident. You’ve been in a medically induced coma for a week,” the man told me.
“What?” A week? I frantically peered around the room. I was in a hospital.
“Honey!”
I heard her voice before seeing her.
My mother ran into the room and fell at my bedside, grasping for my hands. “Oh thank you, God.” She pressed my hand into her forehead.
“Mom,” I croaked, trying to sit up but wincing at the pain in my abdomen.
A female nurse walked in. “Hi, Hannah. How are you feeling?”
I squinted because the lights were too bright. “Like I need a hot shower,” I said. I felt disgusting. I looked down at my mom. “Are you okay, Mom?”
She was just sitting there with silent tears streaming down her face as she nodded.
“I see no problem with a shower,” the doctor said. “I want her vitals every thirty minutes.”
