Heavenly Husband

“Let me see,” came the voice of the man who’d ordered her out.

A moment later, the blipping of the monitor became more rhythmic.

A woman’s voice spoke in quiet awe. “It’s a miracle.”

Jared became aware of the sounds around him first. The noise was loud and cacophonous, unlike the soft, melodious sounds he’d become used to “on high.” First he heard a deep male voice asking if he had a problem with hemorrhoids. Then a click and a woman complaining about tough, grimy stains. Another click and the sound of something hitting against a hard object, followed by uproarious laughter.

With effort, Jared opened his eyes, squinting against the harsh light that came from two long cylindrical strips in the ceiling. Laughter rang out again, and he turned his head to the source, a large box projecting from the wall, with images of miniature humans showing inside it. He’d heard that the Chairman of the Board had such a box, to watch the activities of those below, but something told him this wasn’t the Big Guy’s office. Something rustled beside him, and he turned toward it.

A lovely creature sat in a chair near him and pressed a button on a small black box every so often. Each time she did so, the noise and pictures emanating from the box on the wall abruptly changed.

A vision of femininity, she was so beautiful he didn’t think she could possibly be human. But she wore no wings, and instead of the traditional white robe, she was garbed in two layers of loose-fitting upper clothing, neither of which had sleeves. Her lower limbs sported two dark blue casings that appeared to be held on the wearer by a series of buttons below her waist. And her feet were encased in a soft-looking white material. Like the sandals he was accustomed to, these were also tied, but instead of leather thongs, they were held together by white strips of fabric with clear, hard tips on the ends. Printed on the flap that protruded from the top of the foot covering was the word “Adidas.”

His gaze was drawn upward to her face. The eyes, cinnamon brown framed by lashes of black, were trained upon the box on the wall. Her features were of a pleasing proportion, and the dark brows and sun-darkened complexion complemented the burnished brown locks that surrounded her face.

Jared felt a strange sensation in the pit of his being. She was more beautiful than any angel he’d ever seen.

His thoughts returned to the name printed on her foot covering. Adidas. He was familiar with Adonis, the Greek god, and had even beaten him at a hand of fenuki. Could this, perhaps, be a beautiful goddess, maybe even a heretofore unknown relation of her handsome male counterpart?

She turned in her chair and became aware of his steady perusal. “Oh, you’re awake.” Her eyes were filled with compassion and pity. But something else lurked there, as well. A wariness emanated from her, making her appear torn inside. “Maybe I should call the nurse.”

“What are you doing here?”

She leaned forward and touched his arm, which was covered by a clean white blanket. “We almost lost you. No matter what our differences, I couldn’t leave you here alone, Gerald.”

“My name is Jared,” he corrected her.

She tilted her head slightly and gave him a small frown. “Do you know my name?”

How could he not know it when it was emblazoned on her garments? “Of course.”

The goddess appeared relieved for a spare moment, then leaned closer. “Tell me who I am.”

Jared didn’t know what sport she found in this game, but he decided to humor her. “You’re Adidas.”

His response appeared not to satisfy her. If she’d tell him the rules of the game, perhaps he’d be a more worthy opponent. Nothing seemed to make sense to him right now.

With a clatter to announce her entrance, a young woman entered the room pushing a cart laden with trays. “So, Sleeping Beauty finally decided to wake up, eh?” She positioned a narrow, wheeled table so that it reached across the bed where he lay, then placed one of the trays on top of it.

Jared didn’t know what he’d done to earn such treatment. Here he was, lying upon a chaise of white, with a nubile young goddess beside him and a servant woman to feed him. But he didn’t understand why there were no palm fronds to shade him from the harsh light and no clusters of grapes to be fed to him one by one. He would have to speak to Nahum and find out what was going on.

“Here’s your lunch, honey.” Turning to Adidas, she added, “I’ll tell the nurse that he’s come around.”

Adidas thanked the servant woman and moved her chair closer to Jared’s chaise. “Are you hungry?”

Was he hungry? He’d never experienced such a need in all his existence. Only humans wanted for physical sustenance.

Then realization dawned. He was now a human serving his earthly apprenticeship. He looked around him at his stark surroundings, taking in the painting that tried desperately to cheer up a wall filled with hoses and silver-colored fixtures. Taking in the clear, fluid-filled bag that hung over his bed—not his chaise—and that dripped liquid into a tube that disappeared under the blanket near his arm. Finally, his gaze fell on the goddess beside him. Could she be a mere human? If so, he wondered why he’d been so reluctant to complete this portion of his training.

She watched him expectantly, and he remembered she was waiting for his response.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

She picked up a cream-colored box beside his pillow and pressed a button. The bed vibrated and moved upward until he was in a near sitting position. Then she took the cover off his tray of food. “Mmm, vegetable soup. Why don’t you try to eat a little, even if you’re not hungry? It’ll help you get your strength back.”

Jared tried to lift his arm to pick up the spoon, but the appendage was much heavier than he’d anticipated. And when he put more energy into his effort, his arm jerked upward and flopped heavily against the tray, spattering orange soup on the white blanket.

“It’s okay,” said Adidas. “I’ll feed you.” She turned her chair until she faced him and dipped the spoon into the soup. Scraping the bottom of the spoon against the bowl, she lifted it to his mouth.

Jared wasn’t sure how to do this. He watched her as she opened her mouth slightly when the spoon approached his face. Copying her action, he parted his lips. Warm liquid and lumps of vegetables touched his tongue, and he found the sensation quite pleasing. Adidas withdrew the spoon, and the liquid dribbled out of his mouth and down his chin.

He sat open-mouthed as most of the soup made a drool path down to his neck.

“It’s okay. I’ll get it.” The auburn-haired woman dabbed at his chin and neck until it was once again dry. “Maybe this time we should use a bib.”

As she tucked a paper napkin under his chin, a terrifying thought occurred to Jared. It appeared Nahum had changed his mind and decided to make him serve his full apprenticeship, starting as a baby.

Judging from the equipment in the room and the sterile smell of it, he decided he must be in a hospital. Could it be that he was a newborn and this gorgeous woman was his mother? Mothers feed their babies, and she was certainly doing that. He couldn’t remember the birthing experience, but then he’d heard that all humans forgot the events accompanying their emergence into the world.

The worst part would be going through life desiring his own mother. There was no way he could stop the strange urge that compelled him to stare at the beauty of her face, listen to the soft melody of her voice, or notice the gentle curves of her earthly form. How could Nahum do this to him!

But wait. Didn’t babies drink from bottles? Or elsewhere? Jared tried to rein in his errant thoughts as he pictured himself suckling from Adidas’s ample breast. No, if he were a baby, he wouldn’t be having such thoughts.

In fact, if he were a baby, he wouldn’t have been able to converse with her.

She pushed another spoonful of soup into his mouth, and this time he closed his lips around it, keeping the savory nourishment inside as she withdrew the spoon. It sat on his tongue as he wondered what to do with it.

This was quite different from on high. Up there, when they’d sipped wine or sampled grapes, it had been a symbolic procedure. The wine and grapes, having no dimension, had presented no problem, but this soup...

Reflex took over, and he swallowed. The chunks of vegetables lodged in his throat, bringing on a fit of coughing.

Adidas leaned forward and patted him on the back. Through a tear-filled haze, Jared was rewarded with a glimpse of the soft white flesh that filled out the front of her upper garments. Thoroughly distracted now, he ceased coughing. Strange, but this unexpected sight created even more pleasure than his first taste of vegetable soup.

“For goodness’ sake, Gerald, you’ve got to chew your food before you swallow it.”

“Chew?”

“Yes. You know, mash it between your teeth.” She stared at him with a mixture of curiosity and exasperation.

For some unexplained reason, Jared didn’t want her to be displeased with him. He wanted to see her smile, wanted her to lean close again so he could smell her sweet floral scent. And he wanted something else. It was a need that was so deep-rooted he couldn’t put a finger on what it was. What he did know was that this need somehow involved Adidas.

“Who is Gerald?” he asked.

She frowned at him a long moment before answering. “You were involved in a car accident...at the Pike Creek Overpass.” She waited a second as if she expected him to be familiar with this information. When he didn’t reply, she continued, her tone slow and careful, as if she was afraid of upsetting him. “You came very close to leaving us.” Her gaze dropped to her lap, and when she looked up again, her eyes glistened with moisture. “Your name is Gerald Kirkland. The doctors said you might suffer a temporary memory loss. But don’t worry, it’ll come back soon, I’m sure.”

Then Jared recalled Nahum’s words. There is a soul whose hourglass is almost empty. You will inhabit his vessel when he leaves it. So he had been placed in Gerald Kirkland’s body. At first he felt a twinge of guilt for invading the man’s physical casing. Then he remembered that the body would have died if he had not come into it.

He wondered if Adidas was the woman he was supposed to protect. And if so, how was he supposed to look out for her while confined to a hospital bed?

Jared lifted his right hand and was surprised to note how large it was. Dark hair covered the thick forearm. He reached for her, and she held his hand in her lap. Her skin was soft, even softer than a fenuki feather, and he relished the sensation of her fingers touching his.

“Tell me about your relationship with—” although he was inhabiting the man’s body, he couldn’t claim to be the former occupant “—Gerald.”

If she thought his question was odd, she didn’t show it. Instead, she seemed to be focusing on how best to word her reply. “We were...”

Hesitation. Wariness. There was something she obviously didn’t want to tell him. And she didn’t.

“We are friends. Just friends.”

“That’s it?”

“Your memory will come back gradually. Don’t push it too fast, Gerald.”

Jared squeezed her fingers. “Call me Jerry.”

She sat up straight in her chair and seemed to be trying to ignore the pressure of his fingers against hers. “You hate it when people call you that.”

“Not anymore.” With conviction, he added, “I’m not the man you used to know.”

CHAPTER TWO

KIM didn’t know what to do. Jerry—as he now insisted on being called—was driving her nuts. He was turning her home from a sanctuary into a zoo.

She realized she should try to have more patience with him. But it had taken repeated corrections and finally a look at her driver’s license to convince him her name was Kim, and not Adidas. He had seemed surprised to learn that she was only twenty-eight...in human years, as he’d put it. And patience ran thin after dealing with his endless questions about the mundane events and artifacts of everyday life. It was as if he were an alien from outer space and this was his first close-up look at life on Earth.

Kim stirred sliced bananas into the pancake batter, then poured out four round globs onto the hot griddle. And look at her now. Here she was, second vice president of Barnett’s Bakery—a woman accustomed to delegating work and giving instructions to high-level employees—taking breakfast orders from her temporary tenant.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that she was taking a couple weeks off from work to care for him when she most needed to be at the office, Jerry seemed to take delight in finding new ways to make her crazy.

First he’d gotten hooked on television. Daytime soaps, talk shows, cartoons, game shows and educational TV— he loved it all. Especially commercials. And he wanted her to buy him everything from the sugary cereal with a prize in the box to almost every sports car he saw advertised.

Then there was the telephone. He’d started out by listening to the dial tone until the electronic voice advised him to hang up and try again. After he got the hang of dialing numbers, he placed a flurry of calls to various 900 numbers. If he’d been confused by the horoscope predictions, he was absolutely bewildered by the sex-talk line.

“Why would a woman I’ve never met want to tell me what she’s wearing under her dress?” he’d asked.

Turning off the stove, Kim stacked the pancakes on plates, then poured two cups of coffee...black for him and cream and sugar for herself. A large tray accommodated the load, and she carried it to the den where she’d last seen Jerry sitting with his leg in that gaudy orange cast propped on the sofa.

He was nowhere to be found.

Kim set the tray on the coffee table and went to look for him. As she headed down the short hallway, she saw that the bathroom was empty, and the library, where she often caught him looking things up in the encyclopedia or dictionary, stood vacant.

Then she heard his deep voice coming from the guest bedroom. “Sure, I’d be glad to, but would you mind telling me what I should hold on to?”

She peeked in the open doorway and found him sitting on the bed with the phone to his ear.

Jerry looked up and smiled, the expression open and warm. It was an endearing gesture, and Kim tried not to be affected by it.

He placed his hand over the mouthpiece. “This guy told me to hold on, and then he started playing music for me. It’s really thoughtful of him, but I wish he’d stop for a moment and talk to me.”

Kim crossed into the room and sat on the bed beside him. “Who’s on the phone?”

“Besides me?”

Patience, the doctor had told her. Have patience. “Yes, besides you.”

“The guy on television who wanted to give me more information about life insurance.”

“But you have plenty of insurance as an employee benefit with my father’s company.”

“Oh, no, this is for you.”

She stared at the man who suddenly seemed so concerned about her, but his attention was diverted by the salesperson who had come back on the line.

“Yeah, it’s for my friend,” Jerry said. “How much will it cost to ensure that she lives at least another fifty or sixty years?”

Kim continued staring as his face took on an expression of disbelief. He slowly hung up the phone, apparently stunned by what he’d heard.

“What did he say?” she asked.

“I don’t know why anyone would want to,” Jerry said, “but he told me to put the phone somewhere that I don’t think it will fit.”

“He must have thought you were joking,” she offered in an effort to undo the effect of the salesman’s harsh words. Unlike the pre-accident Gerald, Jerry was at a loss for dealing with various types of stress. If she’d been that salesman, she, too, would have thought Jerry was making a prank call.

When the doctor had told her he would suffer memory loss, she hadn’t thought it would extend to such basic life knowledge. Jerry was certainly keeping her busy as she tried to teach him all the things he’d formerly known.

“Buying life insurance doesn’t ensure that you’ll continue to live,” she explained. “It just means that when you die, the insurance company will give a predetermined amount of money to your survivors so they can pay your burial expenses.”

He seemed genuinely surprised. “Then why don’t they call it death insurance?”

Kim shrugged, then put the phone back on the night-stand. “Come on, breakfast is waiting for you in the den. I made banana pancakes just like you asked.”

She stood and offered an arm to help him up, but he insisted on getting to his feet under his own steam. When he was balanced against his crutches, she led the way into the hall toward the adjoining room.

It wasn’t until she heard the thud and crash that she realized he hadn’t followed her out of the room. Dashing back to the bedroom, she found him lying in a heap on the floor, one crutch thrown to the side and the other balanced on his chest.

“Jerry, are you all right?” She ran and knelt beside him as he tried to struggle to a sitting position. “Don’t move until we’re sure you haven’t broken anything else.”

With a light touch, afraid that even a slight pressure could cause further damage, she ran her hands gently over his arms, body and legs to check for possible broken bones.

“Does that hurt?” she asked.

He closed his eyes. “No, it feels great.”

She jerked her hands away as if she’d been burned. It was enough that she was taking care of him these next couple of weeks. She certainly didn’t want him to get the impression he could expect anything more than room and board.

Kim helped him to his feet. “What happened?”

He lowered his head and gave her a sheepish grin. “I tried to take a shortcut through the wall.”

She felt her eyebrows draw together. “You can’t go through walls.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “Not anymore, I can’t.”

“Huh?”

Jerry rubbed his head. “Human bodies can’t transmogrify.”

Again, Kim led the way to the hall, but this time she watched her charge to make sure he followed her. “I think you’d better lay off the cartoons for a while,” she advised as he made his way to the den and lowered himself onto the sofa.

With his hands, Jerry moved his leg up onto the cushions and sniffed the air appreciatively. “Smells great,” he said of the food on the coffee table.

“Thanks. I hope you like it.” And she did. Despite the angry way in which they’d parted and the constant annoyances he caused her since he was released from the hospital, it was fun watching him get so excited over small things. Before the accident, it would have taken a drastic improvement in the stock market or the opportunity to travel abroad and do some skiing to elicit anything more than a benign, controlled smile from him.

Jerry dug into the breakfast she’d prepared for him, and Kim watched with delight as his expression changed from hopeful anticipation to pure ecstasy. It had taken some practice, and she was glad to see he’d finally mastered the use of a fork. His attitude changed after he sampled the coffee.

“No offense,” he said, “but this is disgusting.”

Kim put down her fork. “You always loved black coffee—said you couldn’t make it through the day without at least three cups.”

Jerry grew quiet. “I told you before...I’m a different man now.” He looked at her with such silent intensity it seemed as though he was trying to convey some truth, some deep meaning along with the words.

The silence stretched out. Was he trying to win her back? Did he remember what he’d done to cause their breakup? For that matter, did he even remember their breakup? Was he telling her that the accident had made him a changed man and that he wouldn’t cheat on her again?

No, she was convinced he remembered nothing from before the car crash. It was as if Gerald had received a personality transplant. Dr. Richmond had told her he may have suffered some brain injury, which would account for some unlikely behavior, but she’d never expected he’d be like a totally different person. Why, he even insisted on a different name for the new personality he’d become.

She could drive herself crazy if she tried to understand it. Perhaps it would be best to gradually reintroduce him to familiar things that might help him recall his past. In the meantime, she’d let him stay here until his body and mind healed enough for him to move back to his condominium without further injuring himself or burning the place down. And if she enjoyed the company of the sweet, thoughtful man who complimented her and made her laugh, what would be the harm in that? Before long, he would regain his memory and resume his relationship with that woman he’d taken to the motel.

Her teeth clenched at the memory, but she pushed aside the hurt feelings that arose whenever she thought of that fateful day. “Here,” she said, handing him her coffee mug. “Try mine. Maybe you’ll like it better.”

He sipped it, and she watched as he touched his lips to the rim of the mug and drank the sweetened beverage. After he sampled it, his handsome mouth turned downward at both corners. He handed it back to her. “No thanks.”

She got up and went to the kitchen for a glass of orange juice. When she came back, he was staring at her once again in that odd, penetrating way of his.

She set the juice down in front of him, but he ignored it. “I’m sorry you’re having to miss work on account of me.”

At first she thought he was joking. The old Gerald would have expected as much as his due for merely existing. But when she saw how sincere he was, she gave a little shrug. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.” .

“Did Gerald...do I have any relatives? Maybe someone else I could stay with?”

She’d answered so many questions about mundane, everyday things that she was surprised it had taken so long for him to get around to asking about his past. Perhaps what she told him would help jar his memory. And although anything she said to him at this point would be new information, she didn’t want to shock or hurt him.

“Your parents are gone.” At his questioning glance, she added, “Your father left when you were a baby, and your mother passed away when you were a teenager. Your only relative is your Aunt Rowena who lives in a nursing home.” She didn’t bother to mention that he would have had a wife if only he hadn’t been such a jerk.

He twisted on the sofa, moving his leg to the cleared portion of the coffee table so he could face her. “What about you?”

“What about me?” Forgetting about the wobbly chair leg, she scooted back into the cushions, causing the furniture to resettle with a thunk.

Jerry moved forward as if to catch her in case she fell.

“I’m okay,” she told him. “It’s done this before.”

“Why don’t you sit over here?” Jerry said, patting the sofa cushion beside him. “I’d feel terrible if you got hurt.”

Kim had to do a double take. It was hard to believe this was the same man who’d made a grid of dates and took bets from their co-workers on when the chair would finally collapse under her. When she saw that he wasn’t joking, she took him up on his offer.

“This place could use a little work,” he said once she’d settled beside him. “I noticed a loose step on the front porch, and last night when you went upstairs to your room, the banister swayed under your hand. If you’ll show me where your tools are, I’ll try to fix some of the stuff around here.”

He was right. There were quite a few things that needed fixing in this old farmhouse. But Gerald had never before offered to do any of the handiwork, partly because he considered it beneath him to do “common labor” and partly because he hated the big white farmhouse she’d bought outside the city. He kept insisting that they would buy a newer, bigger condominium to settle into once they were married. Gerald had considered it wasted effort to fix up a house he wouldn’t ultimately live in. Although she’d agreed to their engagement, they’d never finished working out where they would live.