Chapter Thirty-Three
David heard the unmistakable sound of wings flapping from inside the chicken coop. Turning his flashlight toward the commotion, he was more than a little surprised to find Evelyn, squatting down on the ground, cradling Delilah, his rescue chicken, between her arms.
“Evelyn,” David asked. “What are you doing?”
Evelyn didn’t respond. Instead, she kept embracing the old bird, cooing sweet-sounding but otherwise totally indecipherable words into her ears.
She seemed to be in some form of a trance.
A dissociative state. His shock at finding her cuddling a rescue chicken grew into concern.
He entered the coop himself, snapping his fingers in front of her face in an attempt to wake her.
When that didn’t work, he bent down on one knee, gently shaking her.
“Hey,” he said. “Can you hear me?”
Startled, she jumped. Blinking her eyes open, she returned to reality. Moments later, the realization that she was sitting in the chicken coop—and covered in their excrement—hit her full force. She bellowed and tossed Delilah away from her, before immediately freaking out.
“What the—” she stammered. “What am I doing here?”
“I was actually going to ask you the same thing.”
“I’m covered in chicken poop.”
“Yeah,” David said, sympathetically. “That tends to happen when you spend time on a farm.”
Her eyes went wide. A look of terror spread across her face. She rose from her spot, pushing David out of the way, stepping over fowl none too happy with the disturbance in their pen that evening, before taking off again. David wasted no time chasing after her.
“Evelyn!” he shouted. “Hold up!”
“This isn’t happening . . .” she said.
“Please! Just tell me what is going on with you.”
They were both halfway to the barn that held the farm equipment, the light from the overhead lamp allowing him to turn off his flashlight, when she spun around to face him. David was surprised to see tears filling her eyes. “I saw her,” she said.
“Who?” He squinted.
“April,” she said, speeding through an explanation.
He caught on her words. “You saw . . . April?”
“And you,” she continued. “And Delilah, the talking chicken, was there, too.”
He frowned, concerned. “Delilah can’t talk, Evelyn. She’s a chicken.”
“I know that,” she snapped back. “But we were all at the hospital together. We were back there. That night. And it was so horrible. But also, she was so beautiful, David. She was so beautiful, and perfect, and precious . . .”
He wanted to be helpful, but he was confused. He had no idea what she was talking about. She never saw April. But seeing her agitation growing, knowing that she had spent the last week experiencing migraines and dizzy spells . . . the medical training kicked in. He attempted to gain clarification.
“You had a dream about April?”
“It wasn’t a dream,” she said, before backtracking. “It was the heartbreaks of Hanukkah.”
He recalled her mentioning them before, on the night they had kissed.
“Evelyn,” he said, growing concerned. “You do realize . . . there is no such thing as the heartbreaks of Hanukkah?”
She blinked, her voice softening. “But I saw April.”
His heart broke for her. For both of them. For the pain that neither of them had the tools to confront. For the trauma they underwent that they couldn’t come back from. The scars of which still sat on their broken hearts.
“April is gone.”
“I know that,” she said, softly. “Just like I know that whatever is happening inside me can’t be real.
But it feels real, David. I get a headache, and suddenly, I’m back in the past. And it’s you and me, my parents, the old house, our friends and relatives at the wedding.
And I can smell the musky carpet in our old house.
I can feel the mist on my skin from the wetness in the air on the day of our wedding.
And I know that what I’m experiencing has to be a migraine.
Or a delusion. Or maybe you were right. Maybe I did hit my head too hard on that piano, and now I’m dealing with some massive brain bleed .
. . But I saw April. I saw her. And she was beautiful. ”
He laid one hand on her arm and met her eyes directly. “You need to go to the hospital.”
She swallowed. “I know that, too.”
David nodded, and then, wrapping one arm around his ex-wife, helped her back to the main house. It was the seventh night of Hanukkah, and lo and behold, God had performed a miracle. Evelyn had finally yielded to his medical advice.