Sam Swarek couldn't find Andy McNally.
He had lost his partner and didn't know where in the hell she was. The last thing he remembered was an uncomfortable chair and a pain in his head, and then somehow, he had found himself...here.
'Here' was a seemingly endless space filled with the most beautiful golden light he had ever seen. It seemed to envelope him, seeping into his pores, into his very bones. The sensation was wonderful, warm and welcoming, like a mother's embrace. He took hesitant steps, unsure of where he was or where he was going. The feeling of something impossibly soft underneath his toes, a mixture of the softest silk and velvet, brought to his attention his lack of footwear.
His steps became more urgent as the sound of laughing reached his ears. The golden haze cleared and to his right was a table with four chairs. Three of them were occupied. There was Crazy Horse, sitting with his feet on the mahogany table, his long dark hair falling behind him, his head tilted back in a deep laugh. Abraham Lincoln was laughing also, his black velvet top hat resting on the table next to Crazy Horse's feet. And there was Amelia Earhart, her flight goggles pushed up on her head, her eyes sparkling with mirth as she told a story to the two men. Elvis suddenly appeared, a tray of green apple martinis balanced in his hands, Amelia breaking her story to toast the Father-of-Rock-n-Roll.
Where the hell was he?
He continued walking, the haze breaking in certain parts both on his left and on his right, the sights he saw amazing and astounding him past anything he had ever seen.
He saw George Washington involved in a rather intense card game with Benjamin Franklin and John Adams.
He saw Fred Noonan standing next to his plane, lifting a little girl with braided pigtails into the cockpit, letting her small fingers pretend to fly the plane.
He saw C.S. Lewis and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sitting in over stuffed armchairs discussing various literature, the smoke from their pipes swirling with the golden haze in a beautiful dance.
He saw Jackie Robinson and Wilt Chamberlain playing a game of pick-up basketball, the hoop suspended in the haze.
He saw his grandmother, sitting in her rocking chair, with his baby sister Lucy on her lap, their hands overlapping as they knitted a pair of wool stockings for Lucy's feet.
He stopped counting the number of people he saw at two hundred, some of them he knew, the majority of them he didn't.
He had never seen people this alive, this happy before. And in any other circumstance he would have joined them in their mirth and excitement, for it was impossible not to want to have what they had, an energy, a peace about them that was beautiful.
Well, it was almost impossible, for he didn't want to join in with them. All he wanted was to find his Andy.
So he continued walking, continued searching, passing more and more people, waiting for exhaustion to overtake him, for he must have walked hundreds of miles. But exhaustion never came, only a growing sense of urgency and need to find her.
And then, all of a sudden, out of the golden haze in front of him, she appeared. She walked towards him, a smile on her face that had him on his knees.
"You found me," she said, in that lovely voice of hers that he had heard so many times before, when it was just the two of them, alone.
"I looked everywhere," he replied, reaching out and taking her hands, drawing her into him. The feeling of her body against his made him want to weep. He held her close, inhaling her essence.
In time, he broke away from her, wanting to see her face. He cupped her cheeks like he had that day he had dragged her behind the communications van.
"It's beautiful here, isn't it?" she said, her eyes holding such warmth and love that he couldn't look away even if he wanted to.
"It is," he said, never taking his eyes off of her. She laughed, the sound washing over him like a balm.
"Sam, you haven't even looked around."
"I was kind of busy looking for you. I was afraid that you had relapsed into your usual way of stumbling into trouble."
"I can't get into trouble here. Although I did just recently beat the sharp shooting score at the range."
"There's a range here?"
"What, you thought all you do in heaven is sit around on clouds and strum harps?"
"We're in heaven?"
Andy laughed. "Just look around, Sam."
And he did. He looked and looked and looked until he thought he would burst from...happiness? Perfectness? He didn't know how to describe it, but it was something spectacularly wonderful.
He ended up sitting on the soft ground, his back against a tree that bore fruit he had never heard of before, but it was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. Andy sat between his legs, her own back against his chest, his arms wrapped around her waist.
He had never been happier. He had never been happier in his entire life. Every fiber of his body was singing in joy.
"I've missed you so much," he whispered in her ear.
"I know. I've missed you too," she whispered back.
Colors he had never even seen before suddenly burst in front of them, swirling around together in something akin to an otherworldly sunset.
Something was wrong, though. He felt a thin tendril of cold slowly start to work its way through his body, and try as he did to banish it, he couldn't.
"It's time for you to go, Sam," she said softly.
"No," he said, gripping her waist tighter. "I don't want to leave you."
"You have to. You don't belong here. Not yet."
"I want to stay. I don't want to go back."
"I know. But you have to." She turned in his lap so that she was facing him.
"I love you so, so much, Samuel Swarek," she said, kissing him softly on the lips.
"I love you too, Andrea McNally," he replied, wiping a tear that had fallen from her eyes off her cheek even as one of his own escaped.
"I'll see you soon."
And then he started to fall, down, down, down, her last words echoing in his ears. He was falling faster now, faster...
He woke with a start, jerking up in his chair. He felt something wet on his face, and upon further inspection with his left hand, he realized that they were tears.
He realized that he had been dreaming, and with that realization came more tears that he couldn't bring himself to stop. He looked down at the bed which he was seated next to. The woman in it was deathly still, her ashen skin framed by matted, dull hair. She looked nothing like the woman he had just seen, moments ago, awash in a heavenly glow, her lips parted in a smile.
His right hand still gripped hers, his head still pounding with a headache that had beseiged him before he had fallen asleep.
Two weeks. It had been two weeks since she had been shot, two weeks since she had slipped into the blackness of unconsciousness and never returned. The only sign that she was still among the living was the steady beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor.
He hadn't left her side since then, not once getting up from the chair. He had had his meals in that chair, slept in that chair, cried in that chair.
He ran his fingers over the diamond ring on her left hand, wishing desperately that the land in which he had just come from hadn't been a dream. Heaven was beautiful; heaven was beautifully perfect with Andy. Reality was just...death.
"I'll see you soon," she had said. And yes, it had just been a dream, but how he desperately, desperately wished that was true. He wished for the land of the dreaming, not for the land of reality, for the land of reality contained the doctors' prognosis that his fiancee would never wake up.
"It was a beautiful dream, Andy," he said softly, leaning forward to whisper in her ear. "It was a beautiful dream, but not yet. Don't go just yet."
And so he began telling her about what he had seen, who he had seen, the colors that didn't exist and the fruits he had never known.
Somewhere between his description of Wilt Chamberlain's amazing dunk over Jackie Robinson and the way the ground had felt on his bare feet, the limp fingers he had wrapped his hand around so tightly began to move.
His breathing stopped. The beep, beep, beep picked up pace, in beat with the fluttering of her eyelids.
And then, slowly, they opened.
They weren't the angelically bright chocolate orbs he had seen in his dream. They were more beautiful.
And then, her lips moved, a single word coming from her mouth.
It wasn't the soft lilt he had heard in his dream. It was more beautiful.
"Sam."