Ain't No Mountain High Enough

"Knockin' On Heaven's Door"

Strange things kept happening. I couldn't tell if I was dreaming or not, but sometimes I thought I could hear my father's voice. But...maybe that meant I was dead. It would have to mean that. Why was everything so cold?

Other times, I heard different voices. Ones I didn't recognize. Sometimes I heard Arjun's voice, or his mother's. I could hear them arguing. But that couldn't be right, if I was dead.

I went on in this strange, dark limbo for what seemed like ages. If I was dead, I couldn't decide if this was better than what I had in life. I had thought the afterlife would be so much better.

Eventually, I realized I was breathing. I became aware that I was laying in a bed that couldn't be my own (the sheets were scratchy). The light was dim, but it wasn't completely black as it was in my dreams.

More importantly, I realized I wasn't dead.

My eyes popped open, and I found myself staring up at the ceiling of a hospital room. For a terrifying moment, I thought I was starting over from the point where I woke up in the hospital after the accident. Did that kind of stuff happen?! I couldn't breathe. I tried to sit up as a quick beeping sound started to get louder in my ears. If this was some sort of time loop, I wanted out of it. Now.

"Calm down," a familiar voice broke through my fuzzy mind. I looked up and saw Arjun trying to get me to lay back down.

A nurse burst in and started checking the monitors around my bed. I realized there were no IVs stuck into my arm, and no tubes up my nose. Was...was this not me going back in time?

The beeping sound went quiet once I began to calm down. I let Arjun push me back down on the bed. "Arjun?" I asked. My voice was terribly raspy.

"Get my mother," Arjun said to the nurse, and she nodded and hurried out. Once she was gone, he plopped down in a chair beside my bed.

"What...what happened?" I asked. I tried to search through my memories, but everything was so mixed up in my head that I couldn't remember how I got here.

Arjun gave me the most relieved expression I'd ever seen on him. "Randall," he said. His voice was shaking. I was terrified he'd start crying or something. I hadn't seen him cry since I was ten years old. "You fell, bad. Did you try to walk?"

I rubbed a hand over my forehead as I tried to recall what had happened. A migraine was starting to set in, and it made me wince. "I...I don't remember," I said. I felt the panic start rising in my chest again. I honestly couldn't remember a single thing.

"You're lucky I forgot something at home," Arjun continued. "We hadn't been gone for more than ten minutes. You hit your head hard, and I thought you were...." He trailed off and ran his hands through his hair, taking deep breaths.

I bit my lip. What could I say? I squeezed my eyes shut against the pounding in my head. The more I tried to remember what happened, the more it hurt.

Arjun opened his mouth and I knew he was about to let me have it for supposedly trying to walk, but he froze when Ms. Harlow rushed in.

"Oh, thank God!" she cried as she practically fell onto my bed and wrapped her arms around me. She had been crying, and that did not help how I was feeling. When she pulled back to study me, her lips pressed into a thin line. Then she put her hands on my face and forced me to look at her. "Don't you ever scare me like that again Randall Riggs! Do you understand me?"

Dang it, I felt tears stinging my own eyes. "I-I'm sorry," I said, and that was all it took for me to lose it. I crumpled like a piece of paper. Ms. Harlow held me like I was a little kid again.

Once I started crying, I couldn't make myself stop. Everything I had been holding in was bursting out like a dam had broken. And I had to admit that I felt a little better for it, even though crying like a baby made me feel a bit shameful afterwards.

Eventually, I stopped crying and accepted a wad of tissues from Arjun to wipe my face. "I'm sorry," I said again, this time because I got Ms. Harlow's shirt wet with my tears.

She shook her head. "Don't be sorry, Randall. We shouldn't have left you alone. I should have-"

"It's not your fault, Mom," Arjun said. "Can I talk to him for a minute?"

Ms. Harlow nodded and got to her feet. "I want to talk to the doctor," she said, and she quickly left the room.

I braced myself for whatever lecture I was about to get from Arjun.

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Listen to "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" by Guns N' Roses!

Peace✌️~ A.J.