Enchanted ways

Chapter 3 - Nova

Chapter 3 - Nova

I came to on my bed as a paramedic took my pulse. “There you go, easy now.” He said as I tried to sit up. “You need to lie down. You fainted and might have hit your head.” He continued and looked at his watch.

In that moment, Jake came running through the door. “What happened, Honey?” He asked as he ran to my bed and knelt down beside it, taking my other hand.

“Who are you?” One of the officers that had given me the news asked.

“I’m her boyfriend.” Jake said as he looked angrily at the officer.

“And how old are you?” the same officer asked.

“I’m twenty-one.” Jake said exasperated and looked at the officer with kinder eyes. The officer looked at him with raised eyebrows but said nothing. I was eighteen and he couldn’t touch Jake for being with me now, sexual or otherwise.  

“My…. My…. She’s dead.” I sobbed and started crying. He had absolutely no idea who I was talking about but from the tone of my voice he had deduced that it was serious.

Jake shushed me silently and stroked my cheek. “What were you thinking?” Jake said coldly to the officers. “There are protocols when informing a person of a death. Why isn’t the dean here?” He continued and I could hear the ice in his voice. No answer came from the officers.

“Are you staying?” the paramedic asked Jake after a while.

“Of course.” Jake answered, and his tone changed from icy cold to soft and warm.

“Okay she might have a concussion so you need to sit with her and wake her every hour. I’m giving her a mild sedative and you need to watch her breathing and check her pulse every hour.” He wrote down a number on a piece of paper. “Her pulse must not be below this number of beats per minute. Understood? If this happens, call 911 and say this.” He wrote down a line on the paper and left it on my bedside table. I felt a jab in my upper arm as a warm feeling started to flush over me. I got too tired to talk, but not tired enough to sleep. “Will you bring her to the station tomorrow?” One of the officers asked as the paramedic packed up his gear and walked out the door.

“Yes if she’s feeling better.” Jake said and I heard the door closed after.

We were sitting on a plane on our way to California. I had finally gotten around to tell Jake what had happen, and he had been laying with me on my bed for two hours, just comforting me. It had all been kind of a blur. He had wanted to come with me to the wake for moral support. He had booked himself into the hotel in the small town where my mother had lived as a child.

My mother was to be laid to rest next to my grandmother and grandfather. He had been a police officer and had died on the job a month after their wedding and seven months before my mother had been born. My grandmother had lived in a small town called Sequoia Valley, a small town 100 miles southeast of Sacramento, on the edge of the Sequoia National Forrest. It was a mountain town and my mother had loved the view every time she had visited my grandmother.

My grandmother had died the year before I left for college, my aunt Nova had taken this the hardest. My mother had had 38 years with my mother, Nova had only had 22.  Her father had never been in her life. He was a Native American man travelling in the forest and he fell in love with Helena, my grandmother. About two months into their relationship, Helena realized she was pregnant. She never had a chance to tell him because he disappeared in the forest that very same day. She had never mentioned his name after that day. She never knew what had happened to him or why he had left.

My mother had grown up there but when she was 18, she had moved to Sacramento to go to college. She had been there for 3 years before travelling to New York or Boston, she was never clear on that. When she came home a year later, she moved in with Grandmother Helena for a short while and then moved out 3 months later. About five months after, I came along. My mother was twenty two. She had moved to a suburb of Los Angeles, where she had been offered a job right out of college. When I was 5, she had bought a house in the more expensive end of the Sacramento suburbs. I never asked her how she had gotten the money. I always figured it was a part of her father’s pension that had been set in to a trust fund by her mother.