Christmas Miracles Read online

  As far as my personal life was concerned, I was as loyal and family-oriented as any man could be. I loved my mom and treated her like a queen. I enjoyed cooking and didn’t mind doing dishes and laundry. I’d always loved kids—I certainly had plenty of experience with my nieces and nephews. I adored Carla’s teenage daughter Kaleigh and had tried my best to get to know her.

  When all was said and done, I had been more than ready to walk down the aisle and become a husband and stepdad. I’d thought Carla wanted that too. I believe she did want it.

  At least until she flew up to Canada to meet Robinson Crusoe.

  Chapter Four

  As soon as I got into the squad car shortly after midnight and started up the engine, my partner Scott set his coffee in the cup holder and cocked his head.

  “So what happened between you and Carla?” he asked. “Did she ever get back to you?”

  I shifted into reverse, backed up, and drove out of the station parking lot toward the turnpike.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “She came over this morning and finally said what needed to be said, so at least now I know.”

  “All, hell,” Scott said. “How are you holding up?”

  I tugged down on the brim of my hat. “Let’s just say I’ve had better days.”

  “What about the ring?” Scott asked. “Did you have a chance to give it to her, or at least tell her about it?”

  I scoffed. “Are you kidding? After she stood me up and spent the weekend with another guy, I didn’t think it was an opportune time.”

  Scott picked up his coffee and sipped it. “Sorry to hear that. You guys seemed good together. You sure as hell looked good, like some Hollywood power couple or something.” He paused and glanced out the window while the vehicle tires hissed through puddles on the wet pavement. “But listen—maybe if you tell her about the ring, it might change her mind and make her realize what she’s walking away from. You know how girls are about diamonds. The sparkles make them all weepy. My wife practically fainted in my arms when I proposed to her.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, shaking my head. “She seems pretty into the other guy—like she thinks they’re soul mates or something, which I really don’t get, and I just can’t forgive. We’ve been together for a year. How could she just flick a switch and do an about-face like that?” I waved a hand over the steering wheel. “I really need to let this go. I’m starting to sound like a broken record—a pathetic, heartbroken sap. Somebody, please, just shoot me now.”

  Scott chuckled. “Hey, I understand. She delivered a blow. Seemed like it came out of nowhere, too.” He patted my shoulder. “You’ll get through it, buddy. We just need to find you a new girl. A really hot girl.”

  I nodded because that was the “guy” thing to do, even though I had no interest in hot new girls. All I wanted was Carla.

  “Do you see that?” Scott asked, pointing at the silver minivan in front of us, weaving back and forth over the center line.

  Scott called in the license plate number to the dispatcher while I activated the siren and flashing blues.

  Chapter Five

  “I’ll get this,” Scott said, raising the hood of his slicker and opening the car door at the shoulder of the road. “But you could order the rain to stop, if you get a minute.”

  “Sure thing.” I leaned forward slightly to squint up at the dark, overcast sky while water sluiced down over the windshield.

  While I kept the wipers moving at full speed and let the car idle to prevent the windows from fogging up, Scott got out and approached the vehicle.

  Attentively, I watched him tap a knuckle on the window of the van and begin to converse with the driver. I noted another passenger in front—a woman leaning across the console to speak to Scott, though it was difficult to make her out through the blinking rear tail lights and heavy rain.

  Scott eventually moved a few feet back and gestured for the driver to step out of the vehicle.

  Must be a DUI, I thought. Not surprising, given how the van was weaving about.

  Just as I reached to unfasten my seatbelt, however, I heard a gunshot. I looked up to see Scott stumbling backwards onto the road.

  Shit!

  Within seconds, I had radioed for backup and was out of the squad car, going for my gun.

  “Freeze! Drop your weapon!” I shouted, darting a quick glance at Scott. He was conscious and clutching his shoulder.

  By now the perp had scrambled back into the minivan. The passenger door opened and the woman fell onto the road, screaming hysterically. “Help me!”

  “Stay down!” I shouted at her.

  Just as I reached the driver’s side door, the tires skidded over the wet pavement, spitting up loose gravel. The van fishtailed out of there.

  The next thing I knew, I was aiming my .38 and considering firing off a couple of rounds at the left rear tire, but I didn’t have to. The driver hit the brakes for some reason and the minivan did a 180 on the slick pavement. It skidded into the guard rail about a hundred yards away.

  “You okay?” I asked Scott, who was rising unsteadily to his feet. I reached out to give him a hand.

  “Yeah. The little bastard got me in the arm. I think it just grazed me.”

  “Get the woman,” I said, hearing the sound of the minivan engine sputter. The suspect was attempting to make another escape. “Backup is on the way.”

  Sirens wailed in the distance. The front door of the van swung open. The suspect hopped out and sprinted down the off-ramp.

  “I’m going after him,” I said to Scott, and broke into a run.

  Chapter Six

  I barely registered Scott’s voice calling after me, telling me to wait for backup. I probably should have listened to him, but I couldn’t let the suspect get away. Not after he’d shot my partner at close range.

  Running at a fast clip down the off ramp, I radioed in my location and followed the perp into an auto body repair shop parking lot.

  I was breathing heavily by then, aware of the sound of my rapid footfalls across the pavement, splashing through puddles.

  The suspect disappeared around the back of the building. I followed briskly, pausing at the corner to check my weapon and peer out to make sure he wasn’t positioned there, waiting for me.

  He had gained some distance and was scrambling up and over a chain-link fence. I immediately resumed my pursuit and climbed the fence to propel myself over.

  Inside the repair shop, a dog barked viciously. An outdoor light flicked on, illuminating the rear lot. I was almost over the fence when a door opened and a large German shepherd was released from within. He came bounding toward me, barking and growling.

  I dropped to the ground on the other side of the fence.

  “Police officer in pursuit of a suspect!” I shouted at the man who followed his dog across the lot.

  “He’s heading that way!” the man helpfully replied, pointing, but I didn’t stop to acknowledge his assistance because the suspect was escaping toward a residential area across the street.

  “Stop! Police!” I shouted.

  To my surprise, just as the shooter reached a low hedge in front of a small bungalow…instead of jumping over it, he halted on the spot and whirled around.

  I trained my gun on him. “Drop your weapon!”

  He raised both arms out to the side.

  “I said drop your weapon!”

  I blinked a few times to clear my vision in the blur of the rain. Then…

  Crack!

  A searing pain shot through my stomach, just below the bottom of my vest. Then another crack! I felt my thigh explode.

  Somehow I managed to fire off a few rounds before sinking to the ground. The suspect did the same.

  In that instant, two squad cars came skidding around the corner, sirens wailing and lights flashing.

  Slowly, wearily, finding it difficult to breathe, I lay down on my back in the middle of the street and removed my hat as I stared up at the gray night sky. A cold, hard rain
washed over my face. I began to shiver.

  Vaguely, I was aware of the other two units pulling to a halt nearby. I turned my head to watch two officers in raincoats approach the suspect, who was face down in the ditch in front of the hedge.

  Then rapid footsteps, growing closer…

  “Josh, are you okay?”

  I looked up at Gary, a rookie who had offered me a stick of gum in the break room before I’d headed out that night. I nodded my head, but felt woozy. “I think I’m hit.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, glancing uneasily at my abdomen. “Help’s on the way. Hang in there, buddy. You’re going to be fine.”

  Feeling chilled to the bone, I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  By now Gary was applying pressure to my stomach, which hurt like hell. He shouted over his shoulder, “Need some help over here!”

  I clenched my jaw against the burning agony in my guts and leg, and heard more sirens.

  “Will they be here soon?” I asked with a sickening mixture of panic and dread.

  “Yeah,” Gary replied. “Any second now. Just hang on.”

  “It’s cold,” I whispered. “I should have worn the raincoat.”

  More footsteps. I felt no pain, only relief but was drifting off. It was hard to focus.

  Another cop knelt down beside me.

  I labored to focus on his face.

  “MacIntosh,” I said. “Can you call Carla for me? Tell her I’m sorry about this morning. Tell her I love her. I didn’t mean what I said. I should have walked her to the door.”

  “You can tell her yourself,” MacIntosh replied.

  His patronizing response roused a wave of anger in me.

  “No.” I grabbed his wrist and spoke through clenched teeth. “I need you to promise me… Promise me you’ll tell her, or I swear I’ll knock your head off.”

  “All right, all right,” he replied. “I’ll tell her.”

  That was the last thing I remembered from that day.

  What happened next was strange and incredible. From that moment on, my life became divided into two halves—everything that happened before the shooting, and everything that happened after.

  Chapter Seven

  I must have passed out before the ambulance arrived, because I don’t remember any of that. I don’t recall being placed on a stretcher or speeding to the hospital or being wheeled into the ER—which was probably a good thing because with two bullets in me, I would have been in a lot of pain.

  When I finally woke up, there was a team of doctors and nurses crowded around me in an operating room and my stomach was sliced open.

  I’d never seen so much blood. They were suctioning it into a tube.

  At first, I didn’t understand that it was actually me on the table. I felt as if I were watching some random operation from over the shoulder of one of the surgeons.

  Though I felt sorry for the unfortunate individual on the table. He looked like he was in pretty rough shape.

  As the seconds passed, I slowly floated upward until I was hovering close to the ceiling. Only then did I realize that the body on the table was mine and I was not inside it.

  Strangely, this didn’t trouble me. I was glad not to be in that ravaged body on the table. The whole situation looked rather gruesome. Especially the sounds—the suction machine collecting a seemingly endless supply of blood, the smoky sizzle from the electro cautery, the repetitive clicks and snaps from instruments opening and closing.

  “Spleen is shattered,” one of the surgeons said. “Grab the artery here, put pressure on it until I can clamp it… Another Kelly, please and zero ties. Keep them coming. We’ve got lots more bleeders.”

  I didn’t know what any of this meant.

  Some kind of alarm went off on one of the beeping monitors and the anaesthetist said, “Doctor”?

  I continued to watch with an unemotional curiosity.

  “I know, I know,” he replied, digging deeper into my guts. He reached in and clamped down on the artery to my spleen. “Zero tie!” He tied furiously. “Mayos.” He took the scissors and made a few snips, then pulled out my spleen and dropped it into a steel bin. “This should do it, release the clamp…slowly…”

  They all watched in anticipation.

  Then blood started to stream again. “Shit.”

  Another alarm sounded. “We’re losing him!” The anaesthetist’s voice spoke with urgency as he quickly squeezed a bag of blood into my arm.

  I hoped, for their sake, they could work out the problem. As for my own, I didn’t really care.

  “Get me another six units of PRBCs and FFP.”

  A nurse ran out of the room. The heart monitor began to hum in a high-pitched, unbroken tone, and everyone moved about in a panic.

  “We need chest compressions now. Clamp what you can to stop the bleeding.”

  The charge nurse dropped the chart to the floor, pulled on a pair of gloves and rushed to help. She began pushing on my chest under the sterile drapes.

  The surgeon yelled, “More clamps…now!” as the suction machine rose to a crescendo.

  I watched the nurse pump on my chest and understood that I was dying. Oddly, I was indifferent to that. Then I felt a presence behind me. Slowly, I turned.

  There was a light in the back corner of the OR. I felt the physical sensation of being drawn toward it. None of this seemed out of the ordinary—not even to me, the most spiritually skeptical person in the universe.

  The next thing I remember, after moving through some sort of dark, wide tunnel, was being met by a number of people. Though “people” isn’t exactly the right word because they weren’t really human. They seemed to be made of light and shadow, so it was impossible to recognize them in a physical sense, though somehow I understood I was with my paternal grandmother.

  There were others as well. I might have known some of them… I suspected I did. They felt familiar and intimate, though I couldn’t seem to articulate in my mind who they were.

  Then the vast, open space all around me began to spin like a tornado. I found myself standing in the center of it, reliving every moment of my life from the time I was born, through childhood and adolescence. I felt everything as if it were happening in real time, except that I could reflect upon it and comprehend every ripple effect of every choice and action—with the wisdom and hindsight of a man who has lived his life a thousand times over.

  Or so I thought.

  Destiny

  Chapter Eight

  When I was a kid, I lived with my parents and siblings in a modest white bungalow in a small town on the outskirts of Boston. Back then, there were no cell phones or video game devices in the back pocket of every kid, so we spent a lot of time outdoors, playing street hockey and riding our bikes.

  My best friend was a boy named Riley James who lived at the bottom of the cul-de-sac in the biggest, most ostentatious house in the neighborhood: a two story brick colonial with intimidating lion statues flanking the gated driveway.

  Riley’s dad was a neurosurgeon, so he was hardly ever home, but his mom was really nice. She always invited us in for popsicles and hot dogs in the summer.

  Riley had a dog—curiously named Mr. Smith, which always seemed like some kind of alias to me—and a sister named Leah, who was a year and a half older than we were.

  We all thought Riley and Leah were insanely rich because they had three televisions, a pool in their backyard, and every February, their parents withdrew them from school to take them to Florida for a week. Riley and Leah came home with enviable golden sun tans and dinky souvenirs for all of us who lived on their street.

  For the most part, we were good kids, and our lives were uneventful until, at the age of ten, Riley suggested that he and I take our bikes out to the old Clipper Lake Hotel. It had been abandoned decades earlier and was the subject of much neighborhood gossip.

  * * *

  “What if your dad finds out where we went?” I carefully mentioned as we peddled fast down the dirt road on
our bikes.

  “No one will know,” he replied. “Mom’s sick in bed today, and I told her we were biking to Jack’s house, and he promised to cover for us. Leah won’t say anything.”

  “Geez, Riley. You told her?” I gritted my teeth with irritation.

  “I had to,” he shouted defensively. “She got mad when I took the whole box of soda crackers because she wanted them for Mom.”

  “You could have made something up.”

  “I know, but I can’t think fast on the spot, and besides, Leah always knows when I’m lying. She has some kind of sixth sense.”

  We rounded a bend and peddled over a wooden bridge. “Do you think she’ll rat on us?”

  “No way. I promised her a full report, so she’ll keep quiet. She’s kind of in on it when you think about it because she helped me figure out the map.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Your sister can be a hard-liner sometimes, just like your dad. I still remember the day she pushed me into the deep end of the pool at the Y. I didn’t want to jump and she used her whole body to shove me off the diving board.”

  Riley laughed. “But you learned how to dive, didn’t you?”

  We continued peddling along the dirt road, which was muddy in places because it had been a wet spring. The trees were only just beginning to sprout leaves.

  “It’s farther than I thought it would be,” I said. “I just hope we’ll make it home before dark or my mom will freak.”

  “Don’t worry,” he assured me. “We will.”

  Just then, we saw a large wooden billboard at the edge of the road, barely visible in the overgrown bush. The paint was peeling, but we were able to read the words:

  CLIPPER LAKE HOTEL

  STRAIGHT AHEAD .5 MILES

  A shiver of anticipation rippled up my spine, followed by a sudden compulsion to turn back, which I fought hard to ignore.