A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE
DB86 Xmas special
Edited by Pat
A miracle changed their lives for the better.
***
CHAPTER 1
"It looks like the same vehicle that caused the accident on the Interstate." Bert advised me, while he called in the license plate number of the SUV to the dispatcher. "Could be a DUI, but they also could be running away from something else. Maybe we should wait for backup, kid."
"For the umpteenth time, I'm not a kid, Bert. I got this."
We had chased and stopped a SUV that was weaving back and forth over the center line. The driver had been supposedly involved in a three-car crash on northbound Interstate 5 in Portland, leaving one person dead.
I got out and approached the vehicle. I tapped a knuckle on the window of the van and begin to converse with the driver. I noted another passenger in front, a frightened woman. She was making strange movements with her eyes. Something was wrong.
I moved a few feet back and gestured for the driver to step out of the vehicle.
The guy reached to unfasten his seatbelt, but he got a gun instead and shot straight at me. I stumbled backwards onto the road.
Shit!
The vest saved me from a serious injury, but even so it hurt like hell.
"Freeze! Drop your weapon!" I heard Bert shouting.
The passenger door opened and the woman fell onto the road, screaming hysterically. "Help me! He kidnapped me."
"Stay down, madam!" Bert shouted at her.
Just as I tried to stand, the tires skidded over the pavement, spitting up loose gravel, and the SUV fishtailed out of there.
I aimed my .38 and fired off a couple of rounds at the left rear tire. The car did a 180 on the pavement and skidded into the guard rail about a hundred yards away.
"You okay, kid?" Bert asked me, while I was rising unsteadily to my feet. He reached out to give me a hand.
"Yeah, the bastard got me in the vest."
"I'll get the woman," Bert said.
I heard the sound of the minivan engine sputter. The suspect was attempting to make another escape.
The front door of the van swung open. The suspect hopped out and sprinted down the road.
"Don't even think about it, kid. Don't try to be a hero. Backup is on the way."
Sirens wailed in the distance.
"I'm going after him," I said to Bert, and broke into a run.
I barely registered Bert's voice calling after me. I probably should have listened to him, but I couldn't let the suspect get away.
This was my first taste of real action in years. My veins were probably full of adrenaline at that moment. I radioed in my location and followed the kidnapper into a scrap yard.
The suspect disappeared around a stack of cars. 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. My chest hurt like hell.
I dropped to the ground on the other side of the fence.
"Stop! Police!" I shouted.
To my surprise, the suspect halted on the spot and whirled around.
I aimed my gun at him. "Drop your weapon!"
He fired at me three times. A searing pain shot through my stomach, just below the bottom of my vest. Another bullet hit me in the leg.
Somehow I managed to fire off a few rounds before sinking to the ground. The suspect fell.
In that instant, two squad cars came 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. I began to shiver.
I turned my head to watch two officers approach the suspect, who was face down in the ditch in front of the hedge.
Then, I heard rapid footsteps, growing closer.
"Nick, are you okay?"
I looked up at Bert. "I think I'm hit."
"Yeah," he replied, glancing uneasily at my abdomen. "Help's on the way. Hang in there, Nick. You're going to be fine."
Feeling chilled to the bone, I shook my head. "I don't think so. You called me, Nick."
By now Bert was applying pressure to my stomach, which hurt like hell. He shouted over his shoulder, "Officer down! Need some help over here!"
I clenched my jaw against the burning agony in my guts, and heard more sirens.
"Will they be here soon?" I asked with a sickening mixture of panic and dread.
"Yeah," Bert replied. "Any second now. Just hang on."
"It's cold," I whispered.
More footsteps. I felt no pain, only relief but was drifting off. It was hard to focus.
"Don't die on me, Nick," I heard Bert plead.
That was the last thing I remembered from that day.
CHAPTER 2
When I woke up, I could see a team of doctors and nurses crowded around a body in an operating room and his stomach was sliced open. I'd never seen so much blood in my life. They were suctioning it into a tube.
I felt sorry for the unfortunate guy on the table. He looked like he was in pretty rough shape.
Then I realized it was actually me
on the table.
I was out of my body, right above them, looking down.
Strangely, this didn't trouble me. I was glad not to be in that ravaged body. The whole situation looked rather gruesome.
"Spleen is shattered," one of the surgeons said. "Grab the artery here, put pressure on it until I can clamp it... Another one, Susan. Keep them coming. We've got lots more bleeders."
Some kind of alarm went off on one of the beeping monitors, and the anesthetist said, "We're losing him, we're losing him."
I continued to watch the scene with an unemotional curiosity. I felt nothing. I was surrounded by a warm peacefulness.
"I know, I know," the surgeon replied, digging deeper into my guts.
He reached in and clamped down on the artery to my spleen.
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.
The blood started to stream again. "Shit."
Another alarm sounded. 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."
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."
A 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 understood that I was dying. Oddly, I was indifferent to that. Then I felt a loving presence behind me. Slowly, I turned.
There was a bright light in the back corner of the operation room. 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. Well, 'people' wasn't exactly the right word because they weren't really human. They seemed to be made of light, so it was impossible to recognize them in a physical sense. However, they felt familiar. Somehow I knew one of them was my grandma.
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, adolescence and young adult. 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.
One particular moment of my life, got stuck in my mind.
CHAPTER 3
I was a very active kid, always getting in trouble. My parents' divorce did not help matters. Dad went to live to Portland, while Mom stayed in Middletown and I split time with each of them.
When I was in Middletown I used to spend a lot of time outdoors, riding my bike with my friends there. However, my best childhood friend lived in Portland. A boy named Jonathan James Reynolds or J.J. for short. He had two sisters. Wendy, who was two years older than we were, and Lizzie, who was three years younger.
Wendy was really cool, and she used to hang with us too. Lizizie, on the other hand, was a very shy girl, and preferred to stay indoors reading books.
Mr. Reynolds was a surgeon, so he was hardly ever home. Mrs. Reynolds was really nice. She always invited us in to swim in the pool they had in the back yard. I always thought they were insanely rich because of that.
J.J. and I were very active kids and we got into our share of trouble. Nothing serious, of course, we used to ride our bikes, explore abandoned houses, and throw rocks at the windows.
One day, one of the neighbors called the police, we were around ten years old. Both our parents were called. Dr. Reynolds accused me of being 'a bad influence' and forbid his son to hang out with me.
That was the beginning of the end of our friendship.
"It's not fair," I said to Dad. "J.J. is my best friend. We didn't do anything really serious."
Dad tried calling Dr. Reynolds, but he hung up the phone. We tried to talk with Mrs. Reynolds but she refused to hear us. Even a kid like me could see that the poor woman lived in terror of contradicting her husband's orders.
Dr. Reynolds was a very strict person who ruled his family like an old Roman Caesar. His way or not way at all. His word was law. He had an obsessive need to control not only his family, but everyone around him.
Every morning before his kids left for school, their beds had to be made with hospital corners and without creases.
If they were ever caught leaving a dirty dish anywhere in the house, or not hanging up their jackets when they came in the door, they had to do extra chores for a week. There were more rules about grades and J.J. had a hard time with that because he wasn't as book smart as Wendy or Lizzie.
Of course, J.J. defied his father orders every time he could, which not only got him into trouble, but me too. Every time he could, he escaped from his house to hang with me.
One day, Dr. Reynolds had enough, and sent J.J. to a military school while the rest of the Reynolds family moved away to Arizona.
"Was it because of me?" I asked my father. "Is this my fault? Am I the reason they moved?"
