#20–Dawn Finds Me
I had extinguished only a fraction of the campfires on the battlefield when I noticed an unearthly yellow tint giving shape to the ground. The weather of the illusionary physical world had cleared; sunlight washed over me. I had walked all night, coming out on the other side of tired and would need to rest before reaching exhaustion. With corpse-cold fingers, I fumbled out my phone.
It worked. I dialed my brother’s number and listened to the ringing until it switched to voicemail.
“Tom, I can’t stay at the bed and breakfast any longer. Something terrible has happened…” I hesitated. Where was I going to start in telling that story? I disconnected.
As I came out of the field, I found a two-lane, paved road in front of me. Instantly, I remembered the men in the taxi. Were they still hunting for me? I tried calling 911 again. When I finally got through, I tried to explain but the weary operator cut me off.
“If this was a crime you saw happening last night, you need to report it to the police. Emergency services are overwhelmed right now dealing with real emergencies.”
Now what? Suli needed help, but I shrank from the idea of going to the authorities. How was I going to explain reporting a murder to the New York police before the men showed up with the body? My compulsion to cram my computer and other valuables into an old liquor cabinet? A good investigator might regard it as evidence that I was part of a murder conspiracy. At best I would spend hours in a dingy police station being grilled by skeptical policemen. The mere thought was enough to trigger a rape flashback.
To avoid collapsing in a twitching puddle of tears, I thought of the roses and wondered what they looked like. I was trying to work up indignation against my brother but instead I found myself thinking of Darryl. To my astonishment, the thought of Darryl drove back demons. I saw him pushing his glasses back up his nose, and saying something funny. I smiled.
I looked up the road and saw the sunlight glittering off the big glass windows of a shop. It was a Starbucks. Even this early, three pickup trucks were parked in front of it. A few minutes later, I was parked at a corner table by the window, with a hot coffee and a bagel. My disheveled and mud-stained state and the fact I’d arrived on foot made me the focus of unwelcome attention. I didn’t care. It was gloriously warm, the coffee hot, and the bagel chewy.
As I thawed out, I looked at my cell phone, wishing I had a number for Darryl.
But what I really needed was someone with a car and knowledge of the lay of the land, someone who could cut through their skepticism long enough to find and get help to Suli.
Stuffing my wallet back in my pocket, my fingers encountered a rectangle of stiff paper, now stained and battered from all the events my coat had gone through. I looked at it and tried my brother’s number again. Still no answer. Shaking, I took a moment to breathe and rally my fading resources. Leaning the business card against the coffee cup, I dialed the cell phone number on it.
“Heinreich,” said Woman-in-Charge. She didn’t sound sleepy and I wondered if I’d interrupted another early morning soliloquy.
“This is Tiffany Deweese. I’m sorry to call you so early but I need your help.” Trying to keep things on a mundane level, I told her where I’d been staying and about seeing Natalie’s body. I could feel her interest like a razor-sharp knife at my throat.
“It’s a long story and I can’t tell it here. People are looking at me. I tried to call 911 last night but my phone had connection problems. I managed to escape in the storm, but I’ve been walking all night.” I told her the route number of the road outside then made my plea for Suli.
“Okay, I’ll have the locals send a police car to” –there was the sound of clicking—“Mourning Dove Trust Foundation is what it says on the map.”
“Check the hospitals,” I begged, “Her brother gave her a dose of his medication, some kind of sedative. If they cared about her, they might seek help from an emergency room.”
“Why did he do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe so she wouldn’t see her sister’s body? But maybe so she couldn’t resist whatever they were p-planning to do to her.” At the thought of all the things that could happen to a sixteen-year old girl, I broke down crying.
“Pull yourself together,” snapped Woman-in-Charge, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
I did my best to reassemble the broken pieces, visiting the ladies room and washing hands and face. I combed my wild hair with my fingers, making it worse, and tried to brush some of the mud off my coat with a paper towel from the dispenser. I still looked like a crazy bag lady after the process, but I had tried. When I emerged, someone else had taken my corner table in the sun. I bought another cappuccino and a pastry and made do at a table crammed next to a display rack. But the teenage girl behind the counter kept staring at me and I bolted the pastry and went outside.
Tried calling Tom. No answer. What was going on with my brother? I needed him. He’d believe me.
Buddhism sees reality in layers: impartial fact, human emotion, the realm of the spirit. I see both the physical world and sometimes, the spirit that bubbles up beneath it. To people who reject what I am, I’m somebody who sees things that aren’t there.
I wondered what Woman-in-Charge was going to make of my actions last night. Could I pretend I had packed in order to be ready to check out? No, that didn’t explain stuffing everything into a blinking historical artifact. It wasn’t even in my room. Maybe I should just say I’d had a premonition. She might accept that.
Except I’d rather eat road kill. As a rational person, I hated anything ‘psychic’.
A somber-colored car roared up the empty road and swung into the parking lot. The tinted window rolled down.
“Get in!” said Woman-in-Charge.
I looked at the door handle. I was holding my second cappuccino in my good hand. I kept the other tucked into my coat front, like Napoleon. My shoulder hurt like the devil. I put the disposable cup in its cardboard sleeve on the roof of the car, opened the door, picked up the coffee and maneuvered like a fragile old lady into the passenger’s seat. There, the puzzle of fastening the seat belt became too much for me.
“Are you okay?” asked Woman-in-Charge. She took my coffee and popped a cup holder out of the dashboard to hold it.
“Define okay.” Gingerly, I passed the seat belt buckle to her and let her lock me in.
“You need a doctor.”
“Suli wants to be a doctor when she grows up. Find Suli.”
“Perhaps I have.” Woman-in-Charge put the car in gear. “I looked at the map and called the hospital closest to a likely interstate exit. They have an unidentified young woman who was dropped off in the emergency room sometime late last night. Victim of a drug overdose. Thought we’d go there and see, but I warn you the hospital says she’s in bad shape.”
Woman-in-Charge flashed her credentials at the information desk and got directions to the ICU. In the elevator, I got a bit wobbly and had to grip the handrail.
“This Jane Doe might not be your friend,” she said, as if that would console me.
The elevator door opened. I saw Suli’s spirit hovering by the nurse’s station.
“It’s her.” I stopped.
Suli burned with a radiance that made the florescent lights dim by comparison. So spirit rises into matter and breaks off to join the human realm for a moment of glory. Seeing her naked soul, I realized just how much Suli had to offer the world, but I was helpless. Not by my choice, the gate was flooding the physical world with invisible radiance. Like a compass needle to a magnet, Suli’s spirit was turning to face it.
“Come on, I haven’t got all day!” snapped Woman-in-Charge.
I held up my index finger. Wait. For a moment, it held them arrested in a narrow slice of now. Wait, I pleaded. Not yet, not just yet, you can come again to this point, child, after seventy years, and then you will see that it has only been a moment after all.
