The Broken Meadow

PROLOGUE BOUNDED BY THE BONDJosh pulled himself off me and fell to the floor, tears in his eyes, as he rested his forehead in his hands. He saw it all, every memory that came back. He rocked back and forth in shock, refusing to meet my stare, recognizing he was Lucas. “Josh,” I said, behind tears. Still, he wouldn’t look up at me. I ran over to him and dropped down next to him, throwing my arms around his shoulders as he buried his head in my neck and sobbed. “I always knew I was being punished; I am so sorry, Cali,” he cried. I ran my hands through his hair until they rested on his neck. “Look at me,” I begged. He lifted his head slowly, his watery blue eyes fixated on mine. “It was never that I couldn’t love; it was only you I couldn’t love….” “Because love spells backfire,” he finished my sentence. I held him tightly. “You were my first love, and you’ll be my last love,” I whispered as I kissed him tenderly and felt nothing but love for him. I could taste the mixture of both of our tears blended in with our saliva. Suddenly he pulled his lips off mine. “They’re coming!” “What? Who?” I asked. “Amethyst’s boyfriend, and he’s not alone. I feel it; I know it. He’s with someone, and it’s going to get bad. Get him out of here!” he warned. I stood up to make my way to the rooftop door to go get Mason when I heard “Cali, wait,” in the most solemn tone I had ever heard come out of Josh. I slowly turned around to face him as he stood paralyzed, staring at me with his mouth hanging slightly open, and tears in his eyes. I gradually made my way back to him as he grabbed me in his embrace and held me tighter than he ever had before. He kissed me passionately as if it were going to be the last time he would ever kiss me. “I love you so, so much,” he said, choked up. “I love you too,” I said. “I’ll call you later.” He nodded as I ran downstairs and grabbed the car keys. “Mason, come with me, no questions,” I ordered. Mason followed me out to the car. “Didn’t you lose your license?” he asked. “Not the time for that. Get in the car,” I said as I got in and started the engine. I didn’t know exactly where I was driving. I only knew I needed to just drive. Something awful was coming, and I needed to get Mason far away from it. As I raced down the streets, my mind rattled with all the recollections that had just occurred. “Where are we going?” Mason asked. I turned my head to look into his eyes when my mother’s words came flickering back to me. I hope that when you look into the eyes of your son, you realize the unconditional love I have for you, and you find it in your heart to forgive me. Unconditional love. Suddenly, everything clicked, and all the dots connected. This was my mother’s vision, the same one that haunted her, the same one that Josh had before I left the roof. Josh thought he was being punished for his past, but he wasn’t. He redeemed himself; he became everything Lucas wasn’t, humble, modest, unselfish. Lucas and Jacob both died because of my affair, not Lucas’. And at the hand of my own son, my firstborn. In the end, we all need to pay for our sins. Jacob was the one haunting me, tormenting me for my mistakes. I closed my eyes and silently tried to reach Josh telepathically, praying his mind was open. “Josh?” “I’m here,” he said. “We did it. We broke the spell.” “Yes, we did.” “I love you, Josh. I truly love you with all my heart,” I said. He didn’t say anything at first. “I know you do,” he finally said. “We will never have to fight to be together again in any lifetime. This is just our separation; I look forward to our reunion.” I closed my mind before he could say anything else. “Put your seatbelt on,” I said to Mason, urgency in my voice. He clasped his seatbelt in place. It was never Elijah with the karmic debt; it was me. Every single lifetime Elijah would die, and I would be tormented with trying to save him. Not this time. Mason, along with any future version of himself, would never be cursed with my punishment again. This was the lifetime my karmic debt would be paid. “Close your eyes,” I said. “What? Why?” he asked, petrified. “Close your eyes!” I ordered as I watched a ball of light form in my hand, and I threw a protective bubble around him. I could see what was coming for the first time in my life, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. This is the part my mother couldn’t watch one more day. Josh was correct; I was about to break him. I made the same light of protection and threw it in the direction of the car heading toward us at full speed that just blew the red light—the part my mother couldn’t watch, the part that would t*****e Josh, the part where I die. I tried to turn the steering wheel as I stomped on the brakes, and the car skidded out of control. I closed my eyes and saw my mother. “I forgive you, and I love you,” I whispered before the world went black. * * * “Flatline!” I hear as I bolt up from the bed, IVs plunged in my arms. Doctors are scurrying to the bed next to me. I can’t see beyond the curtain, but I can hear them desperately trying to revive her. Finally, a sigh of defeat as a doctor says, “Time of death, 3:05 p.m.” I watch three doctors emerge from behind the curtain, heads buried in sorrow. As they walk out, I catch eye contact with one of the doctors, who stares at me in shock. “Oh my God, she’s awake,” he says in disbelief as he hurries over to me. He holds up two fingers in front of my face. “How many fingers am I holding up?” “Two,” I say. “Do you know your name?” he asks. “Britney Johnson,” I answer. “Britney, this is going to be hard to hear, but you were in a terrible accident.” “My brakes failed,” I say, horrified. “You’ve been in a coma.” “Is that Calista Reed?” I ask, pointing over at the curtain. “I’m sorry, patient confidentially, I am not at liberty to say,” he answers, but I can see in his eyes that the answer is yes. I can feel her in my veins, like I had some crazy connection to her. Lying back down, staring at the curtain next to me, I remember the last thing I saw when I was wheeled in here. The faint sound of beeping woke me. As I tried to open my eyes, I suddenly felt as if each eyelid weighed ten pounds. Struggling to push them open, I felt dizzy and nauseous as the room seemed to spin. I heard my breath against a plastic mask covering my face that appeared to be in sync with my heartbeat. I was panic-stricken as I overheard a police officer on the phone in the near distance: “Mrs. Johnson, this is officer Russo of the NYPD. We have your daughter…” he is immediately cut off by the intercom, “Doctor Chin, Ext 102.” I managed to open my eyes just enough to see the IV in my arm. I was in a hospital, I knew that much, and I was moving fast. I could barely move my head as I tried to focus my eyes on my surroundings. A nurse was at the foot of my stretcher, pulling me with urgency. She was head to toe in blue scrubs, a paper mask, and plastic goggles, but for a quick second, we made eye contact, and her eyes screamed fear. “Relax,” I barely heard the nurse behind me, who must have been pushing the stretcher, say to me just above a whisper. Another nurse rushed to open the door to a room as a team pushed a different stretcher in and mine followed behind. I should have been in pain; however, I suspected whatever they had been feeding through the IV was exceptionally strong, which was most likely adding to my state of sedation. They placed the first stretcher under the window and laid mine parallel to it. I managed to tilt my head to the left as the patient next to me, in a similar state, tilted hers to the right. The last thing I saw was her emerald green eyes staring back at me with sympathy, before everything faded to black. The day we were transported into a private room. It must have been done intentionally, so she could keep me in her trance, so she could tell me her story. “How long have I been in a coma for?” I ask. “A year and a half.” I look back over to the curtain. “How many days?” He looks at me with confusion on his face. “What?” “How many days was I in a coma for?” I repeat, desperately. He pulls my chart and looks down at it, searching for the date I came to this place. “542 days,” he states. She saved my life when she threw that bubble of light over me, the same as she saved Mason’s. She knew in the end when she died before he did this time around, it was the only way of preventing history from repeating itself. I wasn’t in a coma; I never was. It was always her holding me under. “Let me call your mother. She has been here every single day waiting for you to wake up,” the doctor says as he hurries out, and I stay in bed motionless, trying to process what just happened. Josh and Cali spent years trying to find out the significance of 542 days. They had thought it would start at a certain point and lead to an event. Nothing happened, though. Nothing was ever going to happen. 542 days was the exact amount of time Cali needed to tell me her story. Like she told Colleen in San Diego that night, she was just an actress portraying a role in a world the writers created. If there was one thing I learned from Cali’s story, it is that everything happens for a reason. It wasn’t chance I was in the car that hit her; it had to be me. She needed me to build her world. She needed me to tell her story. Because like Barbara had told her when she wrote The Broken Meadow, an author isn’t taught to write. The story derives from within.