The Other Side of Heaven Read online

  The Other Side of Heaven

  By

  Jacqueline Druga

  The Other Side of Heaven

  By Jacqueline Druga

  Copyright 2016 by Jacqueline Druga

  Parts of this book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Parts of this book are based upon actual occurrences which are used with permission of those portrayed.

  Thank you so very much to Paula G. for all your help with this book.

  Dedication …

  To all those who helped me … I dedicate this book to you.

  BOOK ONE - The Search

  1. THE CALLED – DEATH

  Of all the things I imagined I would accomplish in my life, surviving a freak accident was not one of them. Actually, I died first. The other thing I never foresaw was being chosen.

  Before all that, I died.

  It wasn’t a near death experience, it wasn’t an almost crossed over. For all intents and purposes, I died. It was documented, I was a medical wonder and miracle.

  All ground work for the big responsibility I didn’t ask for nor did I want … at first.

  So how did I die?

  It was a normal day, a normal routine, coming home from work. I was six minutes behind my normal schedule. Six minutes may not seem like a lot, but it made a world of difference on that day. I wasn’t rushing. There was no reason to.

  I wasn’t speeding, I never did. Driving the speed limit, I painfully noticed the rush hour drivers who rode my bumper trying to intimidate me into moving faster. To me, nothing was that important that I couldn’t arrive safely.

  Hands on the wheel, ten and two, no radio, no phone, no distractions. I followed the rules.

  Hell, I even dropped from thirty-five to twenty-five as I approached the railroad crossing. It was habit. I didn’t look to see if there was a transit train coming, why would I? The lights weren’t flashing. Maybe if I didn’t slow down, maybe if I would have looked, maybe... just maybe. But I didn’t.

  The lights failed. They weren’t working. The signal was down.

  Just as my car crossed over the tracks, I caught the train in my peripheral vision. It was coming from the passenger side. It was over, I knew it and clutched that wheel and slammed the gas. I wasn’t fast enough.

  Oddly, I remember the impact, the fierce feeling of being out of control, my car sailing sideways then rolling side over side. I heard the brakes of the train and a crash sound that rang in my ears. There was no pain, everything moved in slow motion, every turn, every bump, I remembered it all. My car smashed into something, I don’t recall what. After that, it was completely black. That final crash threw me into complete nothingness.

  I was swimming in an empty vat.

  This is it? Is this it I wondered? Is this death? Was I dead? I tried to move my hands, but even though I felt as if I moved them, I couldn’t see them. It was as if I didn’t have a body. I floated, I remembered that.

  How horrible. Our bodies end, but our conscious doesn’t? How long would that last? I thought of all that and then suddenly flashes of bright lights appeared before my eyes.

  Now that was more like it.

  I would see a tunnel, follow a bright light, yeah, I was certain.

  There was a tunnel of light, but I didn’t go to it, it pulled me. Surprising me was the state of my conscious. I knew what was happening, I started to worry. What about the payroll entries I didn’t finish, those poor guys wouldn’t get a paycheck. My Crockpot was on, would anyone think to turn it off, my cat, who would feed my cat?

  More than that was when I arrived into the bright light. It was enveloping, everywhere, but only for a moment. From the light, I stepped into a huge, narrow room filled with people. More like translucent beings, images of who they were. All of them, calling my name, vying for my attention. Rushing to get to me, to talk to me. I was the finish line and all the people were racing.

  ‘Natalie, look, I know you only have a minute ... her name is Gale.’

  ‘If you just hear me out, you’ll see why he has to be picked.’

  ‘Natalie, my name is Garrett, remember that. So much has to be said.’

  Voices meshed together, everyone was saying something to me.

  What was going on? I wondered. Where was my mother? My Aunt? Grandmother. The throes of loved ones waiting to greet me? Instead I was bombarded with strangers treating me like some sort of celebrity in the afterlife.

  “Please.” Then he broke through. Almost as if he wasn’t a part of the rest. He stood in front of them. I locked eyes with him. A young man about thirty. Tall and handsome with dark features and dark short hair cut close to his head. “Please.” He grabbed my wrist. Flesh. Was he real? He felt real. There was something about him that didn’t seem like a spirit. He quickly rattled off his plea. “Of anyone, find her. My mother. She was there. She held my hand. I knew it, but I don’t think she knew I was aware. Find her. Sing her this song.…”

  He began to sing. Then …

  Gone.

  As fast as I appeared in the room filled with people, I was yanked out.

  The young man’s singing echoed and faded until I couldn’t hear it anymore, his was the only voice I remembered.

  I was yanked into a small, empty space.

  “Sorry about that,” another male voice said.

  I slowly turned around to the voice behind me.

  He shrugged, hands in the pockets of a pair of jeans. He wasn’t tall, and his brown hair danced across his eyes. “I didn’t expect that to happen.”

  “Neither did I. Am I dead?” I asked.

  “Yeah, you’re dead,” he replied. “For the moment.”

  “The moment?”

  “You’ve been chosen, Natalie.” He walked toward me.

  “Who are you?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m your connection to this side. You’ll see me quite a bit. But you were chosen.”

  “Chosen for what?”

  “All those souls you just met. They all want the same thing. Word got out that you were arriving and they wanted to plead their case.”

  “They’re all dead?”

  “Yep. Passed on. They want to speak to their loved ones.”

  “Ah,” I nodded. “So I am gonna find these people and give them a message.”

  “No,” he chuckled. “That would be silly. People would think you were trying to gain something. You know how the human race is. No, it’s more than that.”

  “I’m not really dead, am I?”

  “No, you’re dead.”

  “No, this is like one of those coma dreams. I’ll wake up, say I died, was in …” I looked around. “Well, heaven, if that’s what this is, and no one will believe me, because I was never dead.”

  “Oh, no, we’ve covered that. You’re dead. There will be no doubt. Therefore there will be reason not to believe you when you make your decision and approach the chosen.”

  “Forgive me. But who am I choosing?”

  “The ones who need it most. The ones who can in fact, take the gift and enlighten the world with their experience.” He placed his hand on my arm. “The world needs a wakeup call. You can believe, but it’s empty belief. People have blind faith, lost faith. We’re gonna try to give it back.”

  “How?”

  “By opening up the other side of Heaven.”

  “I’m sorry, wouldn’t the other side of Heaven be hell.”

  He laughed. “No. I’ll explain more. But right now, time is of the essence and you have to go back.”

  “Yo
u didn’t give me much information.”

  “I will. I’ll be in touch,” he said.

  At that second I was convinced it was a dream, a very vivid and lucid dream. The way the conversation went, my confusion, and the fogginess.

  “Go back and live. You’ll see me often.”

  “No one is going to believe me. I can’t just say I died.”

  “They won’t have a choice.”

  “Huh?”

  Then he touched the center of my chest. A tremendous pain shot into my sternum, one like I never experienced. I was certain it was the pain from the crash. I felt my being pulled backwards.

  It hurt so badly, I screamed, and after that long scream I opened my eyes.

  Lights. Bright lights.

  Fluorescent lights.

  My mouth was open and then the man standing above me shrieked almost as loud as me. He dropped the instrument in his hand and ran.

  “Someone!” he shouted. “She’s alive!”

  What? Of course I’m alive, I thought then as I lifted my head, I realized what scared him and made him scream, running from the room as if he saw a ghost. I was a ghost. I didn’t just wake up from a horrible accident; I woke up in the middle of my autopsy.

  2. THE CALLED – Welcome Back

  It wasn’t a joke. I had died. The problem was I couldn’t pinpoint anyone on how long I was dead. Long enough for them to send me to the county morgue for an autopsy. Unless they fast tracked bodies to the table, I had been dead at least an hour. At least.

  No sooner had I awoken before a medical team came in, tended to my bleeding chest, and whisked me away in an ambulance.

  “Are you feeling anything?” an EMT asked, “Pain, difficulty breathing?”

  “No. How long was I dead?”

  He didn’t answer.

  There was chatter in the ambulance, I was hooked up to an Intravenous infusion, but they kept saying it was difficult. My veins were hard to access

  “Am I alive now?” I asked.

  “Very much so,” he replied then pointed to a monitor. “That beeping is your heart.”

  “So why are my veins hard to access?”

  He swallowed with a pouted mouth and shrugged. “We’re flushing them now.”

  “Flushing them.”

  “Please try not to talk.”

  I would abide.

  The ambulance journey was short and once we arrived at the hospital, I was not only whisked inside, but to the operating room. Within minutes they were putting me under.

  I had just opened my eyes and they were sedating me?

  Apparently, the saw to my chest did some damage. Not a lot, they explained, but I needed surgery to repair that amongst other things. I didn’t really hear what the other things were before the anesthesia kicked in.

  I had to wonder if I had some sort of highly contagious disease or if people were generally frightened of me. The recovery room nurse spoke three words to me. ‘Natalie, get up.’

  That was it. After that she was silent. From recovery I was moved to a room, with a guard by my door. The nurses and even the doctors wouldn’t respond to me when I spoke, they merely made eye contact, acknowledged that they heard me, and walked out. I was poked, prodded, and examined.

  “I do speak English if that’s why you won’t talk to me,” I said to one of the doctors.

  He smiled.

  That was it.

  The thought did cross my mind that perhaps by dying maybe my words were jumbled and I just thought I was making sense. Then I recalled the ambulance ride and dismissed that.

  I wasn’t allowed visitors either. Not that anyone would visit me. I didn’t know my father, my mother had passed, and I really didn’t have any friends who would barrel down the door of the hospital.

  I was literally in the dark. No phone, no television, no conversation. I was an anomaly to everyone, even myself.

  The next morning when I woke up, it felt like it was going to be a different type of day. Although I didn’t even know what day it was. The guard was still at my door, and other than being slightly sore and having a bit of a headache, I felt fine. In fact the only thing that really physically bothered me was my chest wound.

  The breakfast tray had arrived and I hoped it wasn’t a liquid diet. I was starving and I groaned some from stiff joints as I sat up.

  Of course, I would be sore, I was in a major accident. Thankfully, I didn’t see any casts so no bones were broken.

  The tray of food was still warm, so it hadn’t been that long since the dietitian brought it in. I finished a good bit of my breakfast and it was after that my mood changed. The CAN came in to get the tray and ran out as if I were a monster.

  Suddenly I went from being amused and slightly annoyed over the situation, to being scared. Why was everyone afraid of me?

  A nurses’ aid came in, took my vitals, and said nothing. In fact she didn’t even look at me.

  “Are you scared of me?” I asked her.

  I didn’t need a reply, her reaction spoke multitudes. She made brief eye contact, her mouth quivered some and after experiencing an instant total body shaking fit, she hurried from the room.

  “She’s scared of me,” I said out loud.

  “People are afraid of what they don’t understand,” his voice said, I recognized his voice.

  I didn’t hear any one enter the room, and I looked to my right, he was standing at the window peering out. He was the same man I spoke to when I died. The one that gave me the brief ‘you’ve been chosen’ speech then sent me painfully back with a touch of his finger.

  “It’s a zoo out there.” He pointed. “Don’t get up.”

  “I’m not.”

  He walked to my bed and sat in the chair next to me.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “That’s not important.”

  “If I remember correctly, you said I’d see you often. So, yeah, who you are is important.”

  “Call me Bill.”

  I blinked. “Bill?”

  “Yes, I always liked that name.”

  “Are you dead?” I asked.

  “Not really. I can’t be described as dead.”

  “Are you my guardian angel?”

  “No, why is this important?”

  “Because I’m scared. I’m really scared. I have been in an accident, yet the only person that asked me how I, seemed to be the EMT. I don’t know if I’m hurt…”

  “You’re fine. Absolutely fine. Well, except for the new incision in your chest. Otherwise miraculously fine.”

  I sighed out. “Then why won’t anyone look at me, or talk to me?”

  “They will. Later today. They just don’t know what to say to you. How to handle this. It scares them. You scared them. In a little bit curiosity will take over. But right now, they are still trying to figure things out.” He lifted the remote control and pointed it at the television.

  “That doesn’t work.”

  He smiled arrogantly. “Please.” He shook his head and turned on the TV.

  Immediately it was on a new station. A panel discussion.

  ‘Eighteen hours. How did the doctors miss that?” one person asked.

  ‘They didn’t. She was dead.”

  Click. Next station.

  ‘No one knows how or why, but it appears the woman woke up in the morgue, eighteen hours after being pronounced dead.’

  Click.

  “It has to be an error. A mistake. Authorities are being mum on this. A news conference is scheduled for this afternoon …”

  Click.

  ‘Doesn’t matter what happened. Bottom line, this woman is healthy and will never have to work another day in her life. Can you say lawsuit?’

  Click.

  ‘She is being hailed as the miracle of the century, but in this reporter’s opinion, I haven’t heard of such a resurrection since Jesus.’

  Bill muted the television. “Ow, that’s uh, a little blasphemous. Don’t you think?”

  “Are they t
alking about me?”

  “Yes.”

  Before I could ask another question, a nurse came in the room. Immediately she stopped cold and looked at the muted, but playing television. I, the patient couldn’t get a medical professional to speak, yet the presence of a working television set loosened the vocal chords.

  “How … how are you having reception? You’re not supposed to have a TV,” she said.

  I opened my mouth to answer.

  “Wait.” Bill said. “Don’t tell her it was me. She can’t see me.”

  I shifted my eyes to him, then to the nurse. “It just worked. Do you see him?”

  “See who?”

  “Told you,” Bill said.

  “Shh.”

  “Excuse me?” asked the nurse.

  “Not you.”

  Her eyes widened and she raced from the room.

  “Well,” Bill exhaled. “Any chance of verbal communication you had just ran out that door. No worries, someone will be in here soon.”

  “What is going on?”

  “It’s all part of the process.” Bill stood and leaned toward my bed, hands on the railing. “Pretty soon you will be bombarded. People you don’t remember, people from your past will flock to you. Reporters, news casters, TV hosts. Friends you haven’t seen in years.”

  “I don’t have friends.”

  “Yes, I know. But they will think you are their friend. All of them will want to talk to you. You were dead, Natalie. Eighteen hours, stone cold, rigor mortis dead and you came back. There is no denying that. Some people die and say they crossed over, they have, but medical records show them not dead or having died only a few seconds. Not you. All of this had to be done, so there is very little doubt when you speak.”

  “About?”

  “When they ask you what you saw.”

  “People will think I’m nuts.”

  “Probably. But they’ll listen.”

  “What do I say?” I asked.

  “The truth. That you did cross over. Tell them whatever you want. Tell them you saw people, or don’t, it is up to you. How you handle this all is up to you. You use whatever resource you want or need to complete your mission. You have been chosen, Natalie.”