Tuesday Morning Heaven

He went to Heaven on a Tuesday morning. The walls were white and lined with paintings of cottages in the misty morning down by a creek deep in the woods. Everything was so white and sterile. Wait, no, his mistake, those were hospital walls he was walking along with people who wore kitty cat scrubs and white shoes that matched the tile floor. He felt light, so free as if he was floating, though he walked. He heard people making dinner reservations and some spoke about their patients and plans for the weekend. He stood beside a woman who spoke of chest pains and how long she had been waiting and how unacceptable that was. He tried to tell of his chest pains too, but no one pays him any attention like he isn’t even in the room. He’s there though; he can hear and smell her strong perfume floating around the room, tickling his nose. Someone says his name, but wait, no it isn’t his name; it’s someone else with the same name. He begins to walk again; it was like floating, feeling so light like when air touches your skin that’s how he feels.

Diana! What was she doing there, her head hung low as someone spoke to her? She was his wife, his beautiful wife of twelve years, and she was crying tears from those beautiful brown eyes of hers. He calls her name then calls her sweetie, his special salutation for her, and he went to touch her, but she seemed so distant, no one said anything to him. Diana stopped crying for a second, looking past him, but he was there, damn it! She was deep in thought. The woman beside her was older, a plump middle aged woman of probably forty who wore blue scrubs. She had a mask hanging around her neck, and she had something in her hands, a clipboard with papers and she held a pen out to his wife, and she took it, looking at the papers then writing.

“Why are you here?” he asked, but she walked away from him. “What are you doing?”

Answer Diana, please answer me, he chants out loud, but no one seems to care. In all the years of their relationship, she never walked away without indulging his thirst for answers. That’s what he had always loved about her, the sense of duty to always be honest. They had had an awkward meeting, he was almost certain that they couldn’t possibly have fallen in love. She was exactly three years younger than him, almost to the exact minute, and he had found this out on their first meeting.

He had been heading back from the grocery store, planning to fix dinner for a girl that he had been dating for nearly a month. He was going to be graduating college with a degree in advertising, loving the funny commercial with talking dogs and funny babies since he was a boy, watching television with his two other brothers. He wasn’t an artist, but he was witty and often wrote his own little jingles while attempting to sleep. Diana was young, in her freshman year of college, but she looked older, was wearing high heels and a knee length black skirt that hugged her curvy hips as she walked over to him. It was about four that afternoon when she had hit his black, fairly old, though his only car, a Grand Am. The hit had happened on the driver’s side, knocking into his tire. He had to crawl over the passenger seat to get out. She was immensely apologetic, crying as she came over to him, but she tried to hold herself together, biting her check every so often. He was so annoyed, his groceries were all over his car not to mention it would cost him to get everything fixed, and on top of that, he had a date in less than two hours, man was he pissed. However, he stayed calm, asking if she was doing alright and if there was anything that he could get her.

“I hit your car, remember,” she had said.

He called the police from his car phone, sitting in the passenger seat, watching her. She was beautiful and couldn’t be angry anymore, and though she had hit him, it was impossible to be anything but nice to her especially as she shook when handing him her driver’s license.

“August twentieth huh,” he said just before writing down the rest of her information. “Mine too, though three years before yours.”

She had smiled at this news. “Oh,” she replied, looking over to his license, which he had held out for her to see. “Cameron Michael Wyatt,” she read and upon hearing his name come from her lips, he knew that there was something about her that he would never be able to get over.

It took half a year to start dating and another year and half to finally be engaged. Diana was so smart, witty and truthful and by God, did he love her. She would nearly always admit fault if she had been wrong and she could speak so beautifully, articulating perfectly while using words that he had learned only because of her. They had large wedding with both their families present. Two years later, after she had finished her master in literature, they had their first child or rather children, twins, a boy named Alex and a girl named Lorelei. They hadn’t had anymore children since, being too busy with life as it was. He loved his life.

Diana was gone, away somewhere with that nurse, going somewhere that he couldn’t go. He felt sad, so alone, feeling like he wanted cry, but he couldn’t physically produce the tears just the pounding in his chest. Why couldn’t he go? He sat down.

“What are you here for?” a man asked.

He hadn’t notice anyone sitting beside him, especially not the old man sitting next to him, smelling of Vic Vapor Rub with a knitted scarf decorated with red and white stripes. There was a time, as a boy, that he had had a scarf like that. He had to be about seventy, sounded fifty and smart, so was he really wearing a Hawaiian shirt with hula girls on it? His hands were clasped together in his lap. He reminded him of someone, a man with dark skin, a deep voice, so tender. Ha, like Morgan Freeman.

“I don’t know-”

“Don’t know or don’t remember?”

“There both the same.”

“No they’re not,” he countered as he leaned over. “One you know and just don’t recall and the other means that you plumb don’t know whatcha did.”

“Did?”

“Yeah, what are you doing here?”

“I don’t remember I guess…do you know?”

“I haven’t a clue, can’t read your mind you know. I just came cause I got a call, so here I am, speaking to you.”

“A call, you’re here to visit someone?”

“Yeah, you.”

“You got a phone call about me?”

His hands came up, moving as he spoke. “I didn’t say a phone call Cameron. I said a call…plain and simple.”

He eyed the man. “How’d you know my name?”

“Dose it matter, really?”

“Well…yeah.”

“Does it matter more how you got here or how I got here?” he asked, tilting his head. “Isn’t it more important to know where you’re going?”

“Going?”

He pointed to the left. “Going Cameron like this way,” he said then pointed to the right. “Or that way.”

“Left or right huh, so those are my options?”

He released a heavy sigh like this man beside him was just not getting the point, so he stood and there was something familiar about him like he had known this man. The way he walked or talked, and the way he spoke about being at the hospital for a reason. There he was, following a stranger, a man who walked down the halls of the hospital like he had been living there for years, walking in zigzags around people who really didn’t seem to notice them at all. They kept walking and walking and he looked back.

“Don’t look back, the past is not where we’re going,” the man said.

“Right,” he answered, following down the hall. “No looking into the past…then how am I to know what I did or didn’t do?”

“Not no looking into the past because Cameron, we learn from the past, but we cannot dwell on the past you know? You should learn and then move on.” He stopped and looked into the room of a couple, looking over the bed of their daughter. The little girl was sleeping, and the parents were sitting on each side of her bed, watching over her. “You’d never know it, but the parents are divorced.”

“So?”

“So they’ve come together for their daughter who’s dying of cancer.”

“Will you come and get her too?”

“No, I am here just for you. By the way Cameron, where do you think I’m taking you?”

“Would it be presumptuous of me to assume that you’re taking me to Heaven?”

“It would be.” the man said as he stopped in the middle of the hallway. “What makes you think you deserve to go?”

“You say that I don’t deserve to go?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I asked what makes you think that you deserve to go. I don’t make the rules.”

“Good, because I would have to tell you that I’ve been a good father and a good husband. I’ve loved each of them without one second thought. I would give my life for either of them you know, but of course you must know that-”

“Why must I know that?”

“Because you’re part of Heaven, right? I mean friends with God and all?”

“Hmm.”

“Why are you saying that…like hmm,” he repeated like the man. “It’s like you doubt me…”

There was no answer just continuous walking. They walked forever, feeling like days and days before the man turned to him, looking at him for just seconds surely, but they felt like hours. The man, he had brown eyes, the same spiral lines around the pupils. He had spiral lines around his pupils.

“What’d you say Cameron, to her, before you left, what did you say?”

“Pardon?” he asked.

“To her…Cameron, what’d you say?”

He remembered his wife’s voice, sounding so erratic, so much like something he had never really heard before. It was a way she didn’t usually speak like she was desperate for understanding him like she didn’t already know him. Diana was the only person who knew him the most, the simple man that he was and she knew him more than anyone ever would. He loved her for that very fact. Why was she questioning him like she had never known him? He looked around, hearing her voice over and over again asking for some answer that he wasn’t sure he could give. It was his wife’s voice, floating around him, asking so many questions.

“Cameron,” the man said, not Diana, but a man.

“Huh?”

“What’d you say?”

“This isn’t Heaven…is it?”

The man released a heavy breath. “One doesn’t remember or plumb doesn’t know what one has done?”

“Do,” he repeated. “…done…I haven’t done anything?”

“How’d you get here Cameron?”

He wasn’t sure how he had got into the hospital. Really, he couldn’t remember. All he could remember was sitting with Diana, arguing over something that he had said to their daughter. It was about an outfit she wanted to wear, something he thought was inappropriate for a ten year old girl. Diana came into his office, asking what he had said to her, but he couldn’t remember. He couldn’t fathom might send Diana to him in such a frenzy, eyes all aglow with anger. Was it what he had said to their daughter or was there something else?

“I got up and left the house, grabbing my keys from the kitchen counter as I headed to the garage. She told me not to leave, begging me now that I think about it. Yet, I left because I felt like I was being attacked, and I didn’t understand why.” He turned, seeing the man looking at him, waiting for more…more story. “I started the car, debating on whether I was going to go or not. I saw that the tank was near empty, so I thought that I would go and fill up the car then come back. I would come home, yes, I would be gone for a short while and she would calm down and then I would go home to her, and ask her what was wrong. We would work things out.”

“Where’d you go instead?”

“No, I went to the gas station, I filled up the tank…wait, no, I didn’t…I had forgotten my wallet at the house, sitting in the bedroom where I had taken it out of my pocket. I couldn’t get gas…there was enough left to make it home. I had planned on filling it up after talking with Diana…”

“But?”

“I saw her; she was looking at me with a smile, the daughter of one of the men that I had worked with, a campaign that I had successfully pitched. She was younger than me by eight or so years, really pretty. Odd, I don’t even remember her in details. I had no attraction to her though, not in comparison to Diana, but she was smiling at me from over by her car, and she had recognized me. I thought that I would get out of the car and ask about her father, but somewhere, somehow something went wrong. It was like suddenly I was with her then, looking at her naked as I sat down on her bed, and I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t think much though, I had put everything I could from my mind, thinking that for one moment that I would forget about everything that I had waiting for me at home, the woman who was upset with me, had seemed upset quite often with me, but I put that from my mind…”

“What’d you say to her Cameron?”

“Nothing, I didn’t say anything just looked at her as she came towards me, naked coming towards me, and that’s when it hit me. I saw how different, how young her body looked, the size and shape of her breast. Yes, that’s what hit me the hardest. Diana’s look different now, different then they did before she had the twins, but I love them. I love every damn thing about her body even though she doesn’t, the lines, the color of her skin in the light, how it looks olive sometimes, and how when she leans over, I can tell that she’s a mother. Yes, I love her, and this woman, who was before me, was not her, though I touched her, feeling felt sick. Yes, I felt like vomiting, and I stood up so fast that my head spun around in circles, moving faster and faster and I felt nauseas, but I felt my feet moving underneath me like I couldn’t move fast enough to get to my car.

It wasn’t raining or fogging or even cloudy for that matter, but to me, it seemed that way, driving like some divine part of nature was all around me.”

“That’s it!”

“Yes, that’s when it happened. The car caught on fire when I hit the tree, not right away mind you, but it took a while as they pulled me out.”

“And now, you are here.”

“Yes.”

“And now, you remember what you did-“

He nodded.

“So now, when you wake up-”

He looked at the old man, the gray hairs around his ears sticking out.

“Yes…Cameron…you are going home.”

“I have to tell her?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“Because, you’re His friend…you’re telling me that I have to tell her or I won’t get into Heaven…”

“No, I’m not telling you anything…”

He began walking again. “Good, because I don’t know if it’s right-”

“Telling her?”

“Yes, because then she’ll be hurt over nothing…because that’s what I did…nothing happened, so telling her would just cause this whole whirlwind of events that she doesn’t deserve to go though…”

“Ah I see, so is this really for her or you…you don’t want to loose her then?”

He stopped, turned, staring into nothing. The hospital was buzzing with people, nurses who scurried to and fro on their rounds and doctors who grabbed charts of this patient then charts of that patient, and he was alone. He’s standing beside Diana. He looks down, he is in a hospital bed and she is resting her head on his hand; her hair back in a ponytail.

How long was he gone? It is too long, yes, too long while she waits for him. He hates to make her wait, and prays that this has not upset her.

“Cameron,” she says as she moves to look at him, lifting her head. “Cameron,” she says again sweeter than the first.

He smiles, though he’s barely able to.

“Don’t talk,” she says as she sits up, straitening her slender body, showing him that her eyes are all red, though still beautiful. “I love you,” she says with a return smile.

He knows that it will hurt to talk, but he can’t keep silent. “Diana,” he says in a whisper.

She comes closer to him, brushing a few loose hairs behind her ear. “Yes sweetie?”

“Do you…want to know…where I’ve been?”

She smiles. “Oh sweetie…yes, yes I do, but not right now okay...right now I’m going to get the doctor.”

He nods, and then, she’s gone.