Fly Away by Kristin Hannah Page A

smelled of disinfectant. He was sitting on a hard plastic chair in
     the hospital waiting area.
    A man stood in front of him, wearing blue scrubs and a surgical cap. “I’m Dr. Reggie
     Bevan. Neurosurgeon. You’re Tallulah Hart’s family?”
    “Yes,” he said, after a pause. “How is she?”
    “She’s in critical condition. We’ve stabilized her enough for surgery, but—”
    Code Blue, Trauma Nine blared through the hallway.
    Johnny got to his feet. “Is that about her?”
    “Yes,” the doctor said. “Stay here. I’ll be back.” Without waiting for a reply, Dr.
     Bevan turned and ran toward the elevators.

 
    Five
    Where am I?
    Darkness .
    I can’t open my eyes, or maybe I can open them and there’s nothing to see. Or maybe
     my eyes are ruined. Maybe I’m blind.
    CLEAR.
    Something hits me in the chest so hard I lose control of my body. I feel myself arch
     up and flop back down.
    NOTHINGDRBEVAN.
    There is a crush of pain, the kind I never even imagined, the kind that makes you
     want to give up, and then … nothing.
    I am as still as a held breath; the darkness that cradles me is thick and quiet.
    It takes no effort to open my eyes now. I am still in the dark, but it’s different.
     Liquid, and as black as water on the seafloor. When I try to move, it resists. I push
     and push until I am sitting up.
    The dark lessens in stages, turns gray and gloomy, and a light appears, diffuse, almost
     like a distant sunrise. And then suddenly it is bright.
    I am in a room of some kind. I’m up high, looking down.
    Below me, I see a crowd of people moving feverishly, calling out words I can’t understand.
     There are machines in the room, and something red is spilling across the pale floor.
     The image is familiar; something I’ve seen before.
    They are doctors and nurses. I am in a hospital room. They are trying to save someone’s
     life. They are clustered around a body on a gurney. A woman’s body. No. Wait.
    My body.
    I am the broken, bleeding, naked body on the gurney. It is my blood dripping onto
     the floor. I can see my bruised, bleeding, cut-up face …
    The weird thing is that I feel nothing. It is me, Tully Hart. I am the body bleeding out in this room, but this is me, too; I’m floating
     in the corner, above it all.
    White coats crowd in around my body. They are yelling to each other—I can see how
     worried they are by how widely they open their mouths and how red their cheeks become
     and how deeply they frown. They drag other machines into the room, wheels whining
     on the bloody floor, leaving white tracks in the red.
    Their voices make sounds that mean nothing to me, like the adults in a Charlie Brown
     TV special. Wa-WA-wa .
    SHESCODING.
    I should care, but I don’t. The drama down there is like a soap opera I’ve already
     seen. I turn suddenly and the walls are gone. In the distance, I see an effervescent,
     luminous light, and it beckons to me, warms me.
    I think, Go, and as I think it, I am moving. I float into a world that is so sharp and clear it
     stings my eyes. Blue, blue sky, green, green grass, a snow-white flower falling from
     the cottony clouds. And light. Beautiful, incandescent light that is like nothing
     I’ve ever seen. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I feel at peace.
     As I move through the grass, a tree appears in front of me, a sapling at first, bending
     and knobby; it grows as I stand there, punching outward, widening until it takes up
     my entire field of vision. I wonder if I should go back, if this tree will grow over
     me, swallow me in its tangle of roots. As it grows, night falls around me.
    When I look up, I see an array of stars. The Big Dipper. Orion’s Belt. The same constellations
     I once studied from my yard as a girl, back when the world didn’t seem big enough
     to hold all my dreams.
    From somewhere far away, I hear the first tentative strains of music. Billy, don’t be a hero …
    The song opens me up in a way that makes it