Life's Golden Ticket

Dedicated to my parents,

Mel and Christiane Burchard,

and my brothers and sister,

David, Bryan, and Helen,

for surrounding me with the

beauty of faith, love, and friendship.

I am forever grateful. I love you all.

And to Denise.

Thank you, Sunshine,

for your support, patience, and belief in me.

I love you.

Death twitches my ear.

“Live,” he says, “I'm coming.”

I
was standing in the bathroom shaving when I heard the voice from the television: “We interrupt this program to report breaking news on the Mary Higgins disappearance.”

I dropped the razor in the sink, threw a towel around my waist, and bolted for the living room. Mary's picture filled the left half of the screen. The stoic local evening news anchor said, “Miss Higgins, who mysteriously disappeared forty days ago, has reportedly been found. . . .”

Oh my God.
I waited for the worst.

“. . . A spokesperson for the Highway Patrol said Higgins was taken . . .”

The telephone rang, and I scrambled for it, still keeping an eye on the TV.

“. . . hospital just fifteen minutes ago, where she is reportedly . . .”

I snatched the phone in mid-ring. It was Mary's mother, Linda, talking so quickly I could catch only half of what she said.

“Linda, slow down,” I said. “What's going on?”

“. . . We're here with her . . . you've got to get down here . . . they found her. . . . They
found Mary!
”

I glanced at the picture of Mary on the screen. “Jesus, Linda,” I breathed. “It's on the news. Is she okay?”

“We're at the hospital. You've got to get down here . . . now!” she said.

“Linda,
is Mary okay?
”

“Just come over as fast as you can. Room four-ten. I gotta go.
Hurry.
”

The line went dead.

I
burst into the hospital lobby and was blinded by camera flashes. A wall of reporters surrounded me, shoving their cameras and microphones in my face, barking questions.

“What is Mary's condition?” . . . “Do you know what happened?” . . . “Have you spoken with her parents?”

I'd never been so glad to see a nurse in my life. A sturdy woman in white pushed through the reporters and grabbed my forearm. “Give the man some privacy!” she commanded. “You—out of the way.” She pulled me forward, parting the reporters with a running back's stiff-arm. Guiding me to the elevators, she shoved me in one and turned, blocking off the reporters behind her. “Fourth floor,” she mouthed.

I pushed the button and felt a chill of dread at seeing the words next to it:
INTENSIVE CARE
.

The doors closed, muffling the reporters' shouted questions. I breathed in the sterile bleach-and-ether hospital smell, thinking how much I hated these places. Images of my grandfather, then my mother, flashed in my mind.
Please don't let it be like that,
I thought.

The doors opened. A nurse was at the desk.

“Ma'am, I'm looking for room four-ten. I'm—”

“I know,” she said. “Go down the hall and take your first right. Fifth door on your left.”

By the time she had said it I was halfway down the hall.

Rounding the corner, I saw Mary's mother, Linda, crying in her husband Jim's arms. A doctor was speaking to them quietly. A re
spectful distance away, Detective Kershaw, the officer in charge of the missing persons unit, stood staring at his feet.

I took a deep breath and tried to slow my heart. As I walked toward them I told myself to be strong.

Jim saw me first and whispered in Linda's ear. She wiped her tears, pulled away, and looked at me with sorrow-filled eyes.

Oh, no,
I thought.
Please don't . . .

My face felt numb as I reached them.

“Linda, is she alive?”

K
ershaw sat across from me, fidgeting with his notepad and glancing up every so often at one of those awful seaside paintings that seem to be the required decor on waiting room walls. He probably knew that if he looked me in the eye I'd take a swing at him. In a contrite voice, he said, “Look, I got you all wrong—I admit that. Finding Mary the way we did, it proves you had nothing to do with her disappearance.”

“It's about time you figured that out, you—”

“Whoa, now,” Kershaw said, leaning back and putting his hands in the air, palms out. “I know you're upset. But like I said, I was just doing my job. You can't blame me for thinking you had something to do with it. . . .”

Still seething, I said nothing.

“Okay,” he said. “Look—I don't blame you. Let's just start over. Let's talk like two people who want to figure out how Mary ended up on that highway. I know we've been through this a thousand times, but can you tell me once more about the last time you saw her? Can you tell me exactly what she said again? Now that we know where she ended up, maybe there's a clue in your last conversation.”

Our last “conversation,” I'm sad to say, was a shouting match. Shame and regret flooded my heart when I thought about it.

We were screaming at each other in the kitchen. Mary was on another of her we've-got-to-change-our-lives rants. The same old fight—every night, it seemed, right after dinner, for the past six months. She was tired of me sitting in front of the TV after work,
tired of my being “distant,” tired of my cynicism, tired of feeling weak, tired of living a life that she considered below us. Tired, she said, of being tired.

“We're drowning here,” she said. “Drowning in despair, in our own pools of pessimism.” That was her favorite phrase in combat: “pools of pessimism.”

“You don't know how lucky we have it,” I shot back. “My folks would have
killed
for a pool.”

A line like that usually broke her stride and cooled her down—I was always good at making her laugh and changing the subject. But not this time. Her face sagged, and she started to cry. After a few moments of sobbing, she looked up and said, “I think I need to go away for the weekend. . . . I was going to ask you to come with me, but I don't think you're ready.”

She'd never said anything in a voice that serious before.

“Where are you going?” I asked. “I'm not ready for
what?
”

She paused. “Change—you're not ready for change.”

Here we go again,
I thought. I braced for the laundry list she'd been working the past two months: Get off the couch. Put the beer down. Quit moping. Open up. Tell me what's going on. That was Mary, always trying to control me, make me follow her rules for how to live, make me someone I was not—a bright, shiny, sensitive sap.

“Will you stop trying to
control
me all the time? I don't need another mother, and I don't need you to tell me how much I need to change. Just let me live my life.”

“But you're
not
living your life,” she cried. “You're hiding from it. You sit in front of that television every night, trying to forget the fact that your life is miserable.”

There—she'd said it. I looked at her, shocked.

She looked down, her long eyelashes almost resting on her cheeks, and let out a sigh of exhaustion. “Like I said, you're not ready to change. But I am. And I'm going. A friend invited me to a place that can supposedly change my life. He said the experience will challenge and inspire me, a place where I can learn about myself and make my dreams come true.”

“Wow, honey, cool, you're going to Disneyland?”

“I'm serious. I'm going.”

I laughed at her, not believing she would leave. “Say hi to Mickey for me,” I said.

Her eyes widened, and she threw her coffee cup into the sink, where it shattered. She swiped her keys off the counter and headed for the door, saying, “I've heard this place can work miracles. For our relationship's sake, you'd better hope so.”

She slammed the door behind her. I almost said, “Don't let the door hit you on the way out.” But I hadn't, thank God.

That was forty days ago.

I never told Kershaw all the details of the fight—he didn't need to know. Besides, I trusted authority about as much as I trusted used-car salesmen. I knew he'd crucify me if he found out we were fighting when she left.

“You're right,” I said to Kershaw as I stood up. “We
have
been through this a thousand times, and I've got nothing more to say to you.” I turned to walk over to Mary's father, Jim, who was down the hall at the coffee machine.

“Okay,” Kershaw said. “I'm sure we'll find out what happened to Mary when she . . . if she wakes up.”

J
im had a cup of machine instant coffee ready for me.

“Here ya go,” he said softly. He wasn't the kind of guy to cry, but his eyes looked red.

I looked at him, knowing I was to blame for this—all of it.

“Jim . . . I'm so sorry. . . .”

He raised his hand, cutting me off.

“Don't,” he said gently. “It's not your fault. Forget Kershaw and all this mess in the media the last few weeks. There's nothing you could have done. You've got to tell yourself that. Linda and I believe that. We do. No matter what happened between you and Mary, we know it's not your fault she disappeared. And it's not your fault she's in here.”

His voice cracked, and he looked toward Mary's room.

“I just find myself praying and wishing our little Mary could open her eyes and tell us what's been going on these past forty days. I just wish she could . . . tell us she's okay.”

Tears streamed down his broad, strong face.

I
felt my shoulder being nudged, and opened my eyes. Mary's doctor knelt in front of me.

“I must've fallen asleep,” I said groggily.

“It's okay,” he said. “But Mary is conscious, and I don't know how long she'll be that way. She's very fragile, and we don't know if she'll . . .” He shook his head. “She's asked for you.”

I tried to jump to my feet, forgetting that I was lying across four waiting room chairs. I crashed to the floor, bruising my tailbone.

The doctor helped me to my feet and said, “Take it easy now. We'd rather have you as a visitor than a patient.”

I shook the sleep from my head and sprinted down the hall to 410.

Linda was coming out. She gently closed the door behind her.