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“It’s not a hang-up. After reading about other people’s experiences, I’m more convinced than ever that it’s real. So don’t tell me I’m talking rubbish,” Geena shot back.
“I wouldn’t dare, but there are facts you should be aware of…. Apparently when the brain is starved for oxygen the neurons that deal with vision fire at random, creating the sensation of bright light. Because more neurons are at the center of our visual field and fewer at the edges, you get a tunneling effect.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”
“I’m trying to help you understand. All these so-called paranormal incidents can be explained scientifically.”
She slung her bag over her shoulder. “Science doesn’t have all the answers, Dr. Ben Matthews. Open your mind. You might be surprised at what flows in.”
And then she was gone, hurrying around the corner. Ben gazed after her, shaking his head. Just when he thought he was beginning to know her, just when they were beginning to connect, some damn thing would blow up in their faces. If it wasn’t her modeling, it was her near-death experience. Baby-sitting for a relative stranger, believing in the paranormal…studying algebra?
Who the hell was Geena Hanson, anyway?
Dear Reader,
Tales of near-death experiences have long fascinated me. Whether you believe they are a spiritual journey or merely the result of a lack of oxygen to the brain, there is no doubt that for many who undergo this profound experience, it is life altering. Among other things, love, in all its forms, becomes a reason for existence. As a romance writer, this seems to me only natural.
When supermodel Geena Hanson experiences near death after collapsing on a runway during a fashion show, she’s no longer content with her materialistic lifestyle. Change is difficult and scary, but her newfound reverence for life helps her grow. When she falls in love with Dr. Ben Matthews, their opposing beliefs cause them to challenge each other on every level. Their conflict comes to a head over a young boy with cancer, whom they’ve both grown to love.
Child of Her Dreams is the second of three linked books about the Hanson sisters of Hainesville, Washington. Previously readers met Geena’s eldest sister, Erin, in Child of His Heart.
I love to hear from readers. Please write me at P.O. Box 234, Point Roberts, Washington 98281-0234, or send me an e-mail at www.superauthors.com.
Joan Kilby
Child of Her Dreams
Joan Kilby
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
While researching Child of Her Dreams I read, watched and listened to everything I could find on near-death experiences. Two items were particularly helpful: the book Transformed by the Light: Life after Near-Death Experiences by Cherie Sutherland, and the BBC series The Human Body, done by Robert Winston.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
“BREATHE IN, signorina.”
Geena sucked in her stomach, and the Italian seamstress wielded needle and thread to take a tuck at the waist of her ivory silk creation. Holding her breath made Geena feel even fainter; she hadn’t eaten for two days in preparation for the launch of a new collection of Milan’s hottest designer.
Throbbing techno music swirled through the dressing room as models returned from the catwalk, hurriedly stripping off one set of clothes in exchange for another. Geena’s tightly strung nerves jittered with the warring effects of too many pills and too little food and sleep. She reached for another cigarette.
Lydia, her agent, glided over and ran a hand down Geena’s back, pinching as though testing for flab. Penciled eyebrows lowered under a fringe of jet-black hair. “You look…fabulous, darling.”
Geena tweaked the strands of her waifish coif and shook her head in self-disgust. “I need to lose five pounds before the Paris show.”
“You seem on edge, Geena.” Lydia eased the cigarette from between Geena’s fingers and took a drag. “I’ve got plenty of girls for Paris if you want some time off at a Swiss spa.”
Geena’s heart raced at the thinly veiled suggestion that she wasn’t needed. “I’m fine. Honestly.”
“Think about it,” Lydia said, blowing smoke over her shoulder as she drifted off to another client.
Geena’s worried gaze followed her agent in the mirror. If Lydia wasn’t insisting on her coming to Paris, if Lydia wanted her to take time out to go to a spa, Geena must be overweight. Maybe even on her way out.
Glancing at her image, she saw haunted blue eyes shrouded in gray and purple eyeshadow. Maybe Lydia wanted to replace her with some dewy-skinned teenager. At twenty-eight Geena was getting old to be a supermodel.
She was aware suddenly that her breathing was shallow and her rapidly beating heart had taken on an irregular rhythm. Please, no, not palpitations now; she was due on the runway in seconds.
She gulped air, trying to fill her lungs, scrabbled in her tote bag for a vial of pills and swallowed two with a gulp of mineral water. This was crazy. Forget Paris; after Milan she needed a break. After pushing her feet into a pair of four-inch heels, she made her way to the stage entrance.
The master of ceremonies detained her with a hand on her arm. “You okay, signorina? Your face, she is blanca—white.”
Geena ignored the spinning in her head and gave him a brilliant false smile. “I’m fine.”
She willed herself forward with an exaggerated sway of her hips and emerged into a blaze of klieg lights and popping camera flashes. Beneath the music and blinding lights she was uneasily aware of her erratic heart. For whole seconds she couldn’t feel a beat. Then, just when she was sure she was about to die, blood thundered through the chambers as her heart raced to make up time.
She wanted to turn around right then, but the designer had paid big money for her to make an appearance. Smile, Gee. You can do it.
Midway down the catwalk, she faltered as pain traveled along both arms and a massive hand seemed to reach into her chest to squeeze her heart. She stopped dead and half turned, as if to go back to the dressing room. The next instant, everything went black.
Geena drifted upward, confusedly wondering where she was, what was happening. Below, a model lay facedown on the catwalk, long limbs sprawled awkwardly. A crowd had gathered around her, and people were shouting, gesticulating. Someone rolled the model over. With a jolt, Geena saw her own face staring unseeingly at her.
She was high above the room, floating among the klieg lights. Odd, she couldn’t feel their heat. With detached interest she contemplated the hysterical urgency of the people trying to revive her. Some of the other models were crying. Excited shouts for a doctor yielded a small man in a black suit pushing his way through the crowd. Help was on its way, but it was too late.
She was dead.
The babble of voices formed a wall of sound that she turned away from, wanting peace. A tunnel appeared before her, and she went into the cavernous darkness, marveling at the soft, warm atmosphere. Then she was moving, traveling faster and faster through the darkness amid strange whooshing noises that came from nowhere. A pinprick of brilliant white light came into view. As she came closer the light grew larger and brighter, like the light of a trillion suns.
The light was good; she yearned toward it and eagerly allowed herself to be drawn in, for the light was love. Love and joy transcendent, bliss greater than anything she’d ever known. She felt incandescent, glowing with love and peace like the filament of a million-watt lightbulb. Was this a dream? Had doctors pumped some reviving drug into her veins? Perhaps any second she would wake up.
The light vanished.
She was in a small room with pale-green walls. Brown vinyl settees stood catercorner to an end table strewn with magazines and comic books. On one wall was a poster of a giant tooth being scrubbed by a cartoon dolphin, and in another corner stood an empty coatrack.
Geena looked again, and on one settee sat a woman reading a tattered copy of Good Housekeeping. She had long straight honey-blond hair parted in the middle, and her slim figure was clad in a seventies-style lime-green pantsuit.
The woman shut the magazine. Eyes glistening, she rose and reached out. “Geena. My baby.”
“Mom?” Tears came to Geena as she was folded in loving arms. She was only three years old when Sonja Hanson had died, but deep in Geena’s heart and mind was the indelible memory of her mother’s scent, the loving timbre of her voice, the safety of her embrace. “Mom, is it really you?”
“It’s really me.” Sonja wiped away the moisture below each shadowed eye with a gentle swipe of her thumb. “Look at you, all grown up. You’re so beautiful.”
“Oh, Mom, we missed you so much—” Her voice broke. “All those years…”
Tears bled from her mother’s eyes. “I missed you, too. You and your sisters. Don’t cry, darling. Your father and I went to a better place. Truly.”
Drawing back a little, Geena glanced dubiously around the little room. “Is this Heaven? It looks like a dentist’s waiting room.”
Sonja laughed softly. “No, it isn’t Heaven.”
“Then…oh, no, I’ve gone to the other place! Was it the pills? I swear I was going to get off them right after the Paris season.”
Her mother shook her head, smiling sadly. “The pills helped send you to me, but we’re not in the other place, as you put it. It doesn’t exist.”
“Limbo, then?”
Sonja smiled and took her by the hand. “Come, sit down and we’ll talk.”
Geena realized then that although they were communicating, no words had been uttered. She sat with her mother on the settee, hands linked with Sonja’s, and let her thoughts flow outward. “Where’s Dad? When can I see him?”
“I’m sorry, darling, that won’t be possible. It’s not your time.”
“What do you mean? Aren’t I staying here with you?” Now that she’d found her mother after being without her for so many years, losing her again seemed unbearable.
“I’m sorry,” Sonja repeated. “You have important work left to do in life.”
“Modeling?” Geena said bitterly. “It killed me.”
Sonja brushed her fingers through Geena’s wispy auburn bangs, as if she couldn’t help touching her child. “A little glamour can lift people’s spirits if not taken to extremes, but I didn’t mean modeling.”
Before her mother could say what she did mean, Geena had to ask the question that had preyed on her mind her whole life, even though she flinched from the painful memories of her parents’ deaths and the aftermath of that dreadful night. “Mom, there’s something I’ve always wondered about. Was Dad…drunk the night of the crash?”
“No,” Sonja said firmly. “A dog leaped in front of the car. Your father swerved to avoid it and hit a patch of black ice. We skidded and crashed into a tree.”
“I knew it. I mean, not about the dog, but we— Kelly, Erin, Gran and I—knew she couldn’t be telling the truth.” Sonja lifted her eyebrows, and Geena explained. “Greta Vogler planted the idea in everyone’s mind that Dad went off the road because he was drunk.”
Sonja let out a deep sigh and squeezed Geena’s hands. “Try not to let Greta bother you. Forgive her if you can.”
“But how, when she—”
“Trust me, Geena, darling.”
Geena couldn’t understand her mother’s forbearance, but neither did she want to waste precious time talking about Greta Vogler. Heaven was simply being reunited with her mother. Geena could still hardly believe she was here, talking together as if they were sisters.
“I’m afraid it’s time for you to leave,” Sonja told her, as if aware of Geena’s thoughts. “You should go back to Hainesville.”
“Hainesville? What on earth would I do there?” Yet even as she scoffed, the thought of returning to her childhood home filled her soul with a promise of peace. “Maybe a visit would do me good.”
“Live there. People need you.”
Geena laughed. “Me?”
“You have a talent for helping others. When you were little, you took in every stray that came your way.”
“Mom, that was long ago. Besides, I’m dead. How can I help anyone? I want to stay here with you. I really want to see Dad. And Gramps.”
“It’s not your time, Geena.” Her mother hugged her again, then rose. “You must go back.”
“No!” Geena panicked as she realized her mother really meant it. “Mom! Where are you going?”
Sonja opened a door on the far side of the room. Through the crack Geena glimpsed a rambling flower garden crisscrossed with swaths of lush green grass. In the fragrant center, a fountain burbled.
“Mom, take me with you. Don’t leave me!” Geena sobbed, as desperate as a three-year-old watching a coffin being lowered into the ground. “Mommy!”
Her mother returned to wrap her once more in her warm embrace. The light surrounded them both. Love, ineffable and infinite, poured through Geena as she clung to her mother.
“Geena, sweetheart, be brave. We will be together again someday, but for now you must go back.” Sonja’s voice was gentle, but again firm. “A child needs you. You’re going to be a mother.”
For the first time since Geena had arrived in this place, she felt utter disbelief. “I can’t have a baby. I haven’t had a period in over a year.”
“Goodbye, darling,” Sonja said, slowly backing away. “Tell Gran that Gramps misses her. But he doesn’t mind the wait. He has all the time in the universe.” With that, she went through the door and disappeared around a cluster of flowering shrubs.
Geena found herself moving through the tunnel at dizzying speed, away from the light. The light faded to a pinprick. Once again, everything went black.
CHAPTER ONE
IN A SMALL VILLAGE in the western highlands of Guatemala, Dr. Ben Matthews listened to the agitated outpouring of a Mayan Indian woman who clutched her ailing baby boy to her breast. Ben understood only a few words of her native language, but the source of her worry was unmistakable. “I’ll have a look at him.”
He rolled up the sleeves of his white cotton shirt, gently took the child from the mother’s arms and laid him on the examining table. The baby’s hot, dry skin, sunken eyes and dry mouth all pointed to severe dehydration. Using a combination of sign language, formal Spanish and a smattering of the local dialect, Ben questioned the mother. She confirmed his suspicions; the child had vomiting and diarrhea.
“Dysentery,” Ben explained. “He needs fluids.”
The mother nodded mutely, then watched anxiously as Ben prepared an electrolytic solution and hooked up an IV to let it drip into the baby. The poor tyke was too sick to cry at the needle or to laugh when Ben tickled him under the chin. Ben’s heart clenched. Two years of treating people ravaged by disease, malnutrition and poverty had not inured him to the heartbreak of a high infant mortality rate. This little boy had a chance, at least.
Ben gave the mother several packets of electrolytic solution. “Mix with boiled water,” he said, miming what she was meant to do with them. “Baby drink.”
She nodded again, then wrapped her baby and placed him in a colorful woven sling across her back. With a grateful smile that needed no words to be understood, she took her leave. From the doorway Ben watched her bare feet squelch through mud till she got to the hard-packed dirt road on a journey of perhaps many miles to her village.
Turning, he glanced at his watch, and his spirits lifted when he saw that the bus from Guatemala City would arrive soon. Eddie, his younger brother, had just finished his internship and at Ben’s urging was going to replace him here at the clinic funded by International Médicos.
Ben strolled through the narrow streets lined with two-story adobe houses to meet the bus, greeting villagers with a smile and a wave, sometimes pausing to ask after a sick relative. Underlying his eagerness to return to the United States was a sense of loss at the prospect of leaving the town and its people behind.
The gray clouds building overhead distracted him from the excitement of seeing Eddie. July was smack in the middle of the rainy season, and this year had been unusually wet. Ben’s main concern was the mosquitoes the river bred and the diseases they carried—malaria and dengue fever. But there were other dangers. The river was already high and threatening to flood its banks.
The bus arrived in a festive blare of marimba music spilling through open windows and lurched to a halt outside the cantina. Passengers spilled out. Ben searched the assemblage—Mayan Indians, Ladinos, backpacking travelers—and the odd goat—for his brother.
Eddie stepped off at last, dazed, his arms wrapped around a duffel bag and a backpack slung over his shoulders. His blond hair was mussed and his clothes wrinkled, as though he’d slept in them, which Ben knew he probably had.
“Eddie, over here,” Ben called, striding toward him.
Eddie saw him and dropped his duffel bag in the dirt so that Ben could embrace him in a fierce hug.
“Great to see you, buddy,” Ben said, leaving one arm draped over his brother’s shoulder. “How was the trip?”
“Interesting.” Eddie pulled a downy chicken feather from his hair. He looked at it, then at Ben, and grinned. “I can’t believe I’m here.”
“Believe it, bro.” He ruffled his brother’s hair. “Better cut that mop or you’ll find worse than chicken feathers in there.”
“Oh, yeah?” Eddie punched him in the ribs. “What’s with the face rug? Wait’ll Mom sees that.”
Ben stroked his carefully clipped mustache-and-goatee combo, smiling through his fingers. “I kind of like it. Gives me a certain polish, don’t you think?”
He picked up the duffel bag and started walking to the clinic, weaving through rusted-out cars, bicycles, mule-drawn carts and pedestrians. “How are Mom and Dad? Did you get to Austin to see them before you left?”
“Yep. They send their love. They’re looking forward to having you Stateside again, but aren’t too happy with you for dragging me down to this mountain wilderness.”
Ben gazed around him, at the Spanish colonial architecture, the Mayans in their colorful native dress, the pine-covered Sierra Madre. “I’ll never forget my stint here. It’s been a fantastic experience that I wanted to share with you.”
“I’m not complaining,” Eddie said. “This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Dr. Ben! Dr. Ben!” A ragged group of five or six children ran alongside the two men as they moved through the crowd.
“Hey, kids.” Ben broke his stride and gestured to his brother. “Dr. Eddie,” he said, then added a few words in the local dialect.
“Dr. Eddie!” The children crowded around him, touching his hand or his sleeve. Then they laughed wildly and ran away down the street, scrawny dogs chasing at their heels.
“What did you tell them?” Eddie asked with a wary grin.
“That you were my brother.”
“That’s obviously a recommendation. I hope I can live up to your reputation.”
Ben eyed him with affection. He almost wished he hadn’t urged Eddie to come here; he’d missed him, and now their separation would be prolonged further. “I’ve gotten attached to these people, especially the kids, but I feel better knowing they’ll be in good hands.”
“Thanks.” Eddie looked beyond the rooftops into the distance, at the cone-shaped mountain rising above the plain. “That a volcano?”
Ben nodded. “Volcán Santa Maria. It’s considered active. The region is also prone to earthquakes. We’ve had a couple of mild quakes during my time here but nothing to write home about.”
Ben stopped in front of the clinic, a low whitewashed adobe building with chickens pecking in the yard. A sign beside the door displayed a large red cross and the words International Médicos.
“Here we are.” Ben pushed open the door. “Clinic out front, residence in back. It’s simple, but it’s home.”
Eddie wandered through the clinic, surveying the meager shelves of medical supplies, the primitive equipment. “It’s a change from a big-city hospital,” he admitted in massive understatement. “What are some of the health issues you deal with?”
Ben perched on the edge of the small desk in the corner. “Oh, God, where to start. There’s dysentery, insect-borne diseases, outbreaks of cholera and hepatitis. Malnutrition is a big problem, especially among the children. I spend most of my stipend providing food for hungry kids.” He shook his head. “Infant mortality is high. No matter how hard you try there’s so much to battle—disease, poverty, ignorance.” As he thought of some of the little ones he’d lost, his voice became unsteady. “I hate it when the children die.”
He pushed off the desk and moved across the room. “There are bright spots, reasons for optimism. I’ve set up a vaccination program, one for oral hygiene, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I travel to the more remote villages and treat those who can’t come to me.
“Come and see where you’ll be living.” Ben pushed aside a curtain of woven fabric in deep blues and reds and led the way into his private quarters. One end of the room was fitted with a hot plate, fridge and sink, while the other end held a single bed that doubled as a couch, a bookshelf crammed with paperbacks and, Ben’s pride and joy, a turntable and speakers he’d picked up in Guatemala City to play his record collection. He put on Harry Connick, Jr.
“Man, our musical tastes never did coincide,” Eddie complained. “Don’t you have any Shaggy or New Radicals?”
Ben wrapped him in a headlock. “No, but I’ve got a cold beer. Want it? Say uncle.”
“Piss off.” Eddie hooked a foot behind Ben’s ankle in an attempt to bring him down, but he was laughing too hard.
Ben released him and went to the fridge, a relic of the fifties, and reached past shelves of medicines for a couple of long-necked brown bottles of Guatemalan beer. He flipped the caps off and handed one to Eddie. “Luckily for us, doctors have to store medicine. Refrigeration is a perk of the job.”
“Is that a fridge benefit?” Eddie asked, raising an eyebrow wryly. He unstrapped his backpack and pulled out a bottle of duty-free Jack Daniels and a newspaper. “Care for a taste of home?”
Avid for news, Ben bypassed the bourbon to pick up the recent copy of USA Today. The headline story blared in inch-high black print: Supermodel Collapses on Milan Runway—Miraculous Return From the Dead.
A photo, obviously taken before the model’s collapse, showed her draped in designer clothing and glittering with diamonds against a backdrop of an Italian palazzo.
“Will you look at that?” Ben said, shaking his head in disgust. Evidence of excess always raised his ire on behalf of his poverty-stricken patients. “That dress alone would likely supply vaccine for the whole western highland. Look how thin she is. No wonder she collapsed. I’ll bet she pops diet pills as if they were candy, then lets men take her to expensive restaurants and doesn’t eat. Meanwhile, kids here are literally starving.”
Eddie glanced over his shoulder at the newspaper. “She doesn’t look too good now.”
It was true. Below the first photo was an after shot of the woman in a hospital gown whose voluminous folds accentuated her prominent bones and gaunt features.