One Tuesday Morning (44 page)

He'd been praying. Asking God to let him have one more chance about something. He rolled over in bed, and in an instant another image flashed in his mind. A blonde woman and a little boy, maybe seven or eight years old. He was still tearing down the steps, one flight at a time, and now he knew why he wanted one more chance. It was something about the blonde woman and the little boy.

Then a horrible sound rang out all around him, and he screamed out loud. Not the kind of shout he'd let out after his first flashback. But a bone-chilling scream that had Jamie at his door in six seconds flat.

Again her face was pale. “Jake … what is it?” She tore into the room and stood next to the bed, staring at him. “Is it a flashback?”

Jake opened his eyes and felt them grow wide. “Yes …” His voice was breathy and filled with fear.

Jamie sat on the edge of his bed with several feet between them. “What did you remember?”

Jake's heart raced, and he felt as if he were falling off a cliff. Falling, falling as fast and far as he could to a place where certain death awaited him only moments away. Why weren't his memories headed in the direction he'd expected them to go? He'd studied everything in his journal, every notation in his Bible. All of it told him that when his past returned, it'd be of a terrifying moment trying to rescue someone from the south tower, and other than that they'd be of Jamie and Sierra, of fighting fires and hanging out with Larry. But the flashbacks he was having now contained none of that.

Who was the blonde woman and the little boy? Why had he been thinking about them as he tore down the stairs of the World Trade Center? Had he been unfaithful to Jamie? Or …

He blinked and searched Jamie's face. She was still waiting, still staring at him, practically willing him to say that he remembered her, that everything about his past as Jake Bryan, firefighter and devoted father, was coming back to him.

But it wasn't. And because of that, he needed to tell Jamie the truth about his flashbacks. She'd know what to do, how to help him relax and make sense of the things he was remembering. Maybe he had a sister with blonde hair or a mother. Who could tell what his brain might do as it struggled to clear the fog from his memory?

They had both caught their breath now, and Jamie crossed her arms, her hands clenched. “Tell me what you remembered, Jake.”

And then, without waiting another moment, Jake did just that. He started with the memory of himself talking with a white-haired man on one of the upper floors of the World Trade Center. “We rushed together through a series of offices to a bank of windows.” He paused, his throat dry with fear. “That's when we saw the fire. It was huge—worse than anything I've seen on television about the attacks, Jamie.” He placed his hand inches from his face. “It was right here. I could practically feel the heat.”

“Is that what you remembered just now? When you screamed?”

He shook his head, and this time his mouth was dry. “It was something else.” How could he tell her about the other flashback without terrifying her, without shaking her certainty that they'd ever find their way back to what they'd shared before? Or worse, without making her doubt that he really was the man he'd thought himself to be these past two months?

“What, Jake? Tell me.” Her voice was a strained whisper, her face ashen. “I have to know.”

“You're right.” He reached for her hands and told her about the memory, how he had been running down the stairs as fast as he could go, taking one flight at a time and desperate to get out of the building. “That's when I begged God for one more chance with my family … one more chance to make things right again.”

“Right again?” Jamie shook her head and dug her fingernails into the palms of his hand. “You were always right, Jake. Everything about you.”

He stared at her, his mouth open, heart frozen.

Jamie exhaled through pursed lips and hung her head between her knees for a moment. When she looked up she had just one question for him. “Did … did you picture us? Me and Sierra? The people you wanted another chance with?”

He turned his head but kept his eyes on her. “I pictured two people … but …” Jake would've given anything to not finish the sentence. But it was too late now. The only way he could make sense of the strange memory was to share it with Jamie. No matter where that took them afterwards. “The people weren't you and Sierra.”

Jamie let her head drop as she slid her hands over her ears and then down the tops of her thighs. She looked as though she might spring up at any moment and run from the room, but instead she found his eyes once more. “I … I don't understand. Who were they?”

“I don't know.” As frightened as the memories had made him feel, he was more concerned with Jamie's reaction. He put his hand on her shoulder and bit the inside of his lip. “The woman was taller than you … with straight blonde hair. And the child … was a boy. Maybe seven years old.”

“Who … who are they?” Jamie sucked in a sharp breath through her nose and shook her head several times.

“I thought you might know.” He shrugged. “Like maybe she was a sister or a friend, someone married to one of the guys at the station.” He hesitated, his eyes pleading with her. “Tell me you know who she is, please.”

Jamie stood up then and backed away from him. Without saying another word, she turned and ran from the room. He could hear her bare feet patter across the entryway and tear out the front door into the yard. She sprinted away from the house as fast as she could and after a few seconds the sound faded to silence. Jake thought about going after her, but whatever process she was working through, she needed to do so without his help.

He sat stone still, waiting to hear her footsteps again. When she didn't come back after a few minutes, he climbed out of bed and paced the room. His boot cast had been removed two days earlier, and his ankle was still tender. But in that moment, he didn't care about the pain. He walked over to the dresser and scanned the photographs.

All he wanted were answers.

Somewhere there had to be a blonde woman. Why else would he have remembered her? And what about the little boy? One of the pictures must've contained the image of him—maybe sitting on the lap of a favorite uncle or long-lost friend.

Without thinking Jake pulled open the top drawer.

What he saw there surprised him. All this time living in the guest room and he'd never looked in any of the dresser drawers. This one was filled almost to the brim with dusty old, framed photographs. Jake was ready to race through the lot of them, when his eyes fell on a simple five-by-seven near the top of the stack. It was a picture of a man in a firefighter's uniform. But that wasn't what caught Jake's eyes.

It was the man's helmet.

With almost trancelike precision, Jake lifted the photo from the drawer and stared at the firefighter. Clearly the man was supposed to be him, but something about the helmet set off a flashback that until that moment had been incomplete. Once more he could see himself falling in the stairwell, feel himself being helped to his feet by a man who turned out to be a firefighter. Again, the uniformed man looked identical to himself, but this time the firefighter's helmet fell off, and Jake picked it up. The scene was so real in his mind, it made his head hurt. As he handed the helmet back to the firefighter, Jake saw Sierra's photo taped to the inside. Beneath the picture was her name, scribbled in big block letters.

Jake could see the little girl's image as clearly as he must've seen it that awful Tuesday morning. The flashback continued, and he remembered looking up, catching the firefighter's eyes, and thinking something very strange, something that hadn't been a part of the flashback until just that instant.

The thought was this: Never in his life had he seen someone who looked so much like himself.

Footsteps sounded near the door, and Jake looked up. It was Jamie. Her eyes were red and swollen, but she was more in control than she'd been fifteen minutes ago. She walked toward him, never taking her gaze from his face. When she was just a few feet away, she narrowed her eyes and whispered the same question that was suddenly shouting at him.

“Who … who are you?”

His heart pounded in his chest, but he could do nothing to save her, nothing to erase the doubts for either of them. Instead, he merely set the photograph down and gave a slow shake of his head. “I don't know, Jamie. I really don't know.”

****

The answer was simple.

The next morning Jamie called Dr. Cleary, and in sentences broken with tears, she explained about Jake's flashbacks. “What if it's not him? How could we find out?”

The doctor had answered with the obvious. “Didn't you say he had a rare blood type?”

“Yes.” Jamie massaged her temples and tried to ease her aching head. “AB-positive.”

Dr. Cleary sighed. “I really don't think you have anything to worry about. But since you're both having doubts, go down to University Hospital and have his blood drawn. I'll call in the order, and they should have the results in about thirty minutes.”

“Right now?” Jamie closed her eyes and steadied herself against the kitchen counter.

“Right now.”

When she hung up the phone, she took Sierra across the street to the neighbor's. “Jake has to do some testing at the hospital.”

Her neighbor was more than agreeable. “Take your time. I'm home the rest of the day.”

Five minutes later she and Jake were on their way. Jamie drove and kept her thoughts to herself. The idea that the family in his mind was a blonde woman and a young boy was terrifying. It made her want to turn around and drive the other direction, as fast and far away from the hospital and the blood test as possible. To a place where the man beside her would be Jake Bryan, no questions asked ever again. But running wouldn't make the problem go away.

Jake slipped his hand in hers and squeezed once. “You okay?”

She nodded and blinked. Her throat was too thick to speak, and Jake seemed to understand. She could barely breathe for the tears fighting their way from her eyes. But she wouldn't cry; not now. Maybe this was just a crazy thing they were doing. Maybe the flashbacks would make sense in time. She ran her thumb along the side of Jake's hand.

But if not …

The hospital was just around the corner, and still neither she nor Jake had said a word to each other. They pulled into the hospital's front lot and found a place to park. Only then did Jake turn toward her and touch her cheek. “Jamie …”

She found his damp eyes and allowed herself to get lost in them. His gaze went to the deepest place of her heart.

“Whatever happens in there, I'm here for you. You have to believe that.”

Jamie studied him and willed away the tears that blurred her own eyes. He had to be Jake, didn't he? Those were Jake's words, Jake's tenderness. His way of caring for her above himself, especially when she was afraid. She leaned closer, and they came together in an embrace that seemed to last an hour and an instant all at once. As though neither of them wanted to climb out of the car and take the chance that somehow—in the span of half an hour—everything they had believed about their future together would suddenly and swiftly vanish.

She was the one who pulled back first. “Let's go.” Her eyes met his, soaking in the face she still believed was her husband's. “We have to find out.”

The test took only twenty minutes. Jamie and Jake were holding hands in the lobby when a nurse approached them. She had a white piece of paper in her hands. “Mr. Bryan?”

Jake stood up and Jamie joined him, leaning against him for support. The nurse's face was calm and pleasant looking.
She has no idea
, Jamie thought.
One way or another, the information she's about to give us will change our lives forever
.

The woman handed the piece of paper to Jake, and Jamie craned her neck to read the details.
Come on, where is it?
Her eyes darted across the page.
His name … his birth date … his age …
lines and lines of information, but not the part they needed. Jamie wanted to scream.

Where was the blood type?

After only a few seconds, Jake looked at the nurse and shook his head. “I can't read it.” His voice was urgent, almost impatient. “We're trying to find out my blood type.”

Jamie closed her eyes.
AB-positive … his blood type is AB-positive, God … let her tell us that, please
.

“Let's see …” The nurse took the paper back again and glanced at it for just a moment. “Well, you're one of the lucky ones.” She handed the paper to Jake once more and smiled. “You're O-negative. The most common blood type of all.”

T
HIRTY
-O
NE

N
OVEMBER
12, 2001

They collapsed together on a bench outside the hospital.

Jamie had no memory of how they'd gotten there, just that they were. The realization of the blood results hit her in waves.
The first nearly knocked her to her knees. The man she'd been living with since the end of September was not Jake Bryan, but someone else, someone who merely looked like him.

The second realization took a minute to sink in, but by the time they reached the bench and sat down, it hit her full force.

If that man beside her wasn't her husband, then …

She buried her face in her hands, her body shaking so badly she could barely stay seated. “No, Jake … No! God, please … not Jake.” Her words were drenched in grief and the quiet, desperate sound of a person in shock. But this time the person wasn't someone on television or someone pasting flyers on a wall in New York City. It wasn't one of the other firefighter wives—it was her.

Jamie Bryan.

The thing she had feared all of her life had actually happened, and she hadn't known it until now. Next to her, the man who looked so much like her husband placed his hand on her back and brought his head close to hers. “I'm sorry, Jamie …
I'm so sorry.”

Part of her wanted to fall into his arms, take the slip of white paper he still held in his other hand, rip it into a hundred pieces, and dump it in the nearest trash can—where it belonged. But somewhere in the soil of her conscious, the truth had taken root and there was nothing she could do but watch it grow.