From the Ashes

Preface

From the Ashes did not start out to be a novel; it began in 2007 as a blog entry – a story inspired by an amazing synchronicity I experienced on an airplane, which I used as inspiration for an essay about a fictional character named Rissa. So many readers responded with interest that I was compelled to write another chapter, and then another. Only a few pages were shared publicly, but I continued writing Rissa's story, completing it in 2009.

Before starting this novel, I had been professionally writing and editing nonfiction for years but doubted that I could write fiction. To my surprise, after I created the initial chapter, scenes and dialog would craft themselves in my mind, and I would to rush to my computer to record and expand on them.

Rissa (pronounced in a way that rhymes with Melissa) was not a name I chose, it simply popped into my head, as if I had discovered rather than invented her.

Acknowledgments

I am blessed with so many dear friends that have offered encouragement for my writing that I could not list them all here, but will mention those that played a role in the creation and publication of this book. Eric Seifert, you are one of the world's unsung heroes, and I greatly appreciate your support. For reviewing the manuscript and providing encouragement and valuable suggestions, I thank the following people (in alphabetical order): Anita Maxson, Crystal Newton, Dan Guenther, Dan Spicer, Dawn Brown, Diz Bellizzi, Ed Moda, Jack Wilson, Katie Schulte, Laurie Martin, Lloyd McElheny, Mary Sue Dickerson, Paul Tews, Robbie Muskin, Sally Beckett-McCollum, Stephen Jimenez, Todd James, and Togi Simatupang.

Chapter 1: June 26–27

The jarring ring of Rissa's cell phone roused her from near-unconsciousness. As she returned to awareness, the intense cramping in her abdomen made her close her eyes more tightly rather than open them. An overpowering wave of nausea compelled her to crawl out of the hotel bed and stumble to the bathroom, where she vomited in the sink. She let the phone call go to voicemail.

Rissa had checked into the hotel room to die. She wanted to stop the pain – to stop feeling – and the only way she knew to stop feeling was to end her life. Now she was in even more pain than she had been before, but this time the agony was physical.

Ultimately, what saved Rissa's life was her low tolerance for alcohol. The cheap vodka she had swigged (the first gulp straight from the bottle) to dull the pain of the knife blade had knocked her out before she could cut the veins in her arms deeply enough to lose much blood. She had passed out on the bathroom floor almost instantly.

It was the aspirin that nearly did her in. Rissa had been taking aspirin all day (six at a time, every hour) to thin her blood so it would flow faster. The effects of the alcohol dissipated in a few hours, but the aspirin had reduced the pH of her blood to a dangerously low level.

What (or more accurately, who) saved her from aspirin poisoning was her housemate, Daniel, who was not exactly a shining example of health himself. Two weeks earlier, he had been diagnosed with a widow maker, a combination of factors that make a person (typically a male) likely to drop dead from a heart attack or stroke, especially if he is subjected to extreme stress. So as not to worry Daniel, Rissa had checked herself into a hotel. She did not want him to be the one who discovered her lifeless body.

When Rissa staggered back to bed (with no memory of how she had gotten there in the first place), she picked up her phone and checked for messages, finding three from Daniel. Apparently, she had not heard her phone ring the first two times. Her housemate was concerned because it was late and she was not home. She called to let him know she was okay, and he coaxed her into revealing her whereabouts. Sensing an emergency from the tone of her voice and her evasive answers to his questions, Daniel immediately drove to the hotel.

Writhing in agony and vomiting bile, Rissa was almost too weak to answer when Daniel knocked on the door. When she told him how many aspirin she had taken, he insisted on driving her to the emergency room. Severely dehydrated and delirious with nausea, Rissa held the empty ice bucket to use as a sickness container as they rode the elevator to the lobby. A primal instinct for self-preservation kept her moving, following Daniel's instructions that would save her life. A few hours earlier, her mind had wanted nothing more than to leave Earth permanently, but now her body seemed to have other ideas. She felt compelled to take any actions that would keep her alive, and was willing to do whatever it took to stop the unbearable nausea.

Rissa was dimly relieved to see that the emergency room was not busy. Almost immediately, she was placed in a bed. A weary-eyed nurse in rumpled green scrubs inserted a hypodermic needle into her arm and connected plastic tubing to the first of the three liters of intravenous fluid she would receive in the next few hours. As Rissa lay on the sterile hospital bed with life-sustaining fluid flowing into her veins, the nurse looked at her appraisingly. So you took all those aspirin to get rid of a headache you got from drinking alcohol? she asked, with a strong note of skepticism. Daniel, sitting on a chair by the bed, looked at the wall and pretended not to have heard the question.

Well, not exactly, Rissa answered weakly. I had been taking aspirin for a couple of days, trying to get rid of a migraine. That didn't work, so I drank some vodka because I thought it would help me sleep. After that, I guess I must have taken a lot of aspirin that I don't remember.

Rissa could see the nurse's hard gaze softened by pity. She knew the woman did not believe her story but was choosing not to question it too carefully so that Rissa's emergency room visit would not be labeled a suicide attempt. The nurse handed Rissa a plastic cup full of noxious-looking black liquid. Drink this, she commanded. The charcoal will help absorb and neutralize the acid from the aspirin.

Charcoal… looks like ashes, Rissa thought as she choked down the thick, nauseatingly sweet black liquid. How appropriate that they gave me this! My life has been incinerated; all that is left is the ashes.

Had I known I could kill myself with aspirin, Rissa told Daniel when the nurse was out of the room, I would have taken the whole damn bottle.

Do not even go there, or I'll have to slap you around when you get out of this place, joked Daniel, who did not at all appear to be in a joking mood. Rissa sighed and wished, once again, that she were dead. I just want the pain to stop….

~~~

Chapter 2: March 16 (Three Months Earlier)

At an impromptu gathering the evening before a metaphysical-themed conference, Rissa was sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck, chatting with her friend Sandy. About a dozen people were milling around, talking and laughing. The mood was jovial, with energy of anticipation building for the following day's event.

Sandy mentioned someone named Carl who had come to Burbank for the conference, asking Rissa if she knew him. No, I don't believe I've heard of him, Rissa answered. Moments later, she looked up and saw a man she intuitively knew was Carl. He sat on the tailgate and struck up a conversation with Sandy, but Rissa could feel his attention on her. His eyes are not looking at me, but his energy certainly is! Rissa noted. This feels weird.

Although she did not think of herself as pretty, Rissa often received attention from males. She had pale skin, broad cheekbones, and dark green, almond-shaped eyes that gave her an exotic look. Her wavy, almost-black hair (streaked with unruly strands of silver she refused to camouflage with hair color) fell halfway down her back.

Feeling the energy from Carl, Rissa was amused. I must really have flipped his switch, she laughed to herself. When first they spoke, it was about something mundane.

Turning toward Rissa, Carl cast his blue-green eyes on her face and asked nonchalantly, Where did you get that bottle of water?

My friend Jack has a dozen of these in the trunk of his car, and there are a few in my room. Want one?

Sure.

Rissa led Carl to her room, just across the courtyard. It was getting cool on that March evening in southern California, and she wondered if she should take the opportunity to put on the jacket she had packed. She reached into her pocket for the room key and realized she had forgotten it. Locked myself out, she admitted, embarrassed. Great! she thought. I've just met this person and already I'm demonstrating what a space cadet I am.

They walked a few yards to the rental office. The clerk accompanied them to the room and opened the door. Carl stood just inside the door while Rissa retrieved a water bottle from the small refrigerator. The two strolled back across the courtyard and rejoined the crowd, gravitating to different groups.

Half an hour later Rissa wandered over to Carl's group, intending to join the conversation. Carl stopped in mid-sentence, looked at her intently, and said with compassion, You recently ended a long-term relationship. It was very difficult and painful for you. I'm sorry.

Given the type of gathering this was – a group of people deeply involved in studying and applying metaphysical concepts – Carl's intuitive insight was not as surprising as it would have been otherwise, but it still gave Rissa a jolt. What he had said was dead-on accurate. Exactly a month before, she had made the final break with her long-term partner, Steve. They had been living together for five years, and ending the relationship had been like slowly pulling an adhesive bandage off her forearm. Emotionally it was the hardest thing she had ever done, although she had known the relationship was not right for her. Rissa did not regret her decision, but still felt a little raw.

The conversation soon moved to other topics. Carl mentioned having a wife, and Rissa felt something inside her plummet. I'm not looking for another boyfriend, so why do I care if this guy is married? she asked herself. Rissa found him cute, but by conventional standards he was average looking, not strikingly handsome like her ex-boyfriend. Carl was average height with a medium build. His blond hair was thinning on top, but people's attention typically was drawn to his ocean-colored eyes and engaging smile.

Rissa moved on to talk with other people, while Carl stepped inside one of the motel rooms that faced the courtyard. The room, which belonged to two other conference attendees, had its door propped open and seemed to be the center of activity. Rissa stayed outside, preferring the fresh air of the spring evening. She chatted with Sandy, various other friends, and several new acquaintances, but found it difficult to keep her attention fully on their conversations because her mind was on Carl. To her dismay, she noticed that whenever he was out of her sight, she missed him.

Reflecting on this night later, Rissa thought, it is disconcerting to meet a person for the first time and realize you already are in love with him.

~~~

Chapter 3: June 28 (Morning)

Thursday did not begin as the best of days for Rissa. Released from the hospital the evening before, she barely had the strength to pack a bag and drive to the airport. Common sense told her to cancel her flight to Oregon, but she decided to go ahead with the trip. If I stay home this weekend, I'll go crazy, she admitted to herself.

At the airport, nothing went smoothly. She had to wait in line at the ticket counter for a seat assignment, which turned out to be in an exit row. Going through the security checkpoint was even worse than usual because she was almost too weak to lift her suitcase. Security personnel, she discovered, are not kind to passengers that move slowly and act dazed.

The world seemed a cruel place that morning, and Rissa had never felt more disconnected from life and her soul essence. I don't want to be here anymore! she thought. If I'm still supposed to be here, in a physical body on Earth, just give me one sign – a person or event – that shows me that life makes some sense. At age 36, Rissa had lived enough to know that pain lessens over time, but now she was finding it hard to see her way out of the dark pit she had fallen into.

When she boarded the plane, she removed the seat-pocket card to read the instructions for exit-row passengers. If the flight attendants knew the sad shape I'm in, they never would trust me to sit here! Rissa smiled to herself. There were only two seats in her row, and she could see why her seatmate had chosen the aisle. He was a big man, well over six feet tall and with a large frame. He is lucky he ended up sitting next to someone as scrawny as I am, Rissa thought. She was average height with a birdlike bone structure, and recent events had led to her dropping a few pounds she had not needed to lose.

Rissa had two goals for the flight: (1) not to start thinking about recent events, burst into tears, and embarrass herself; and (2) not to annoy her seatmate. Exhausted from the stress of the past few days, she kept dozing off and falling onto the man's right arm. He seemed amused rather than annoyed, but she did not want to push it.

When she was awake, Rissa pondered what to do when she arrived in Portland. Her plans to spend the weekend with Carl had evaporated overnight, and she had no hotel or car reservations. Her friend Jack, who lived near Seattle, had offered her the use of his spare bedroom and said he would be glad to have the company. The way she saw it, she had two options after renting a car: to drive north for three hours to Jack's place, or to drive west and take a swim in the Pacific Ocean – knowing she could not swim well enough to wade safely into more than five feet of water. As the flight progressed, the latter option seemed increasingly appealing. Rissa figured she would make the decision by flipping a coin when she got off the plane. Heads she would drive north; tails she would go west.

Her seatmate was reading an aviation magazine, which aroused Rissa's curiosity because she worked for an aviation company, a startup venture with 80 employees. She kept feeling an impulse to ask if he had heard of the plane her company was designing, but stopped herself because she didn't want to bother him. He was wearing noise-canceling headphones and did not seem open to conversation.

Finally, more than halfway through the flight, Rissa overcame her reticence and asked the man if he had heard of her company's jet. Yes, he answered, turning to look her full in the face. I'm very familiar with it.

I work for CBJ, she told him.

What a coincidence! he exclaimed. I just spent the past two days at your company, developing a design for your new building.

It turned out that Mike was a member of a group of investors that had been working with CBJ for several months. Had she not been out sick the previous two days, Rissa might have run into him at her office. The investors were based in the Denver area, as was her company. Mike was flying to Portland not on business, but to connect with several friends that were going to Alaska for a weeklong fishing trip.

They haven't even told us we're getting a new building, Rissa laughed. It's typical for employees to be the last to know anything important. What does it look like?

After I finish my coffee, I'll get out my laptop and show you the design, Mike offered. It was an impressive building, with much more room than CBJ employees currently had. After looking at the building plans, they traded anecdotes about various CBJ executives, most of whom she knew well. Mike asked what her job was, and Rissa told him she was a technical writer. Did you by chance have anything to do with this? he asked, pulling out the latest edition of the CBJ newsletter.

Rissa always edited the newsletters extensively, but had never had an article