28 Something Happened On The Way To Heaven

We had a life, we had a love
But you don’t know what you’ve got ’til you lose it
Well that was then and this is now
And I want you back
How many times do I have to say I’m sorry, yes I’m sorry

How can something so good go so bad
How can something so right go so wrong
I don’t know, I don’t have all the answers
But I want you back
How many times can I say I’m sorry

You know, you can run, and you can hide
But I’m now leaving ‘less you come with me
We’ve had our problems but I’m on your side
You’re all I need, please believe in me, oh yeah

I only wanted someone to love
But something happened on the way to heaven
It got a hold of me and wouldn’t let go
And I want you back
How many times do I have to say I’m sorry, yes, I’m sorry

You know, you can run, and you can hide
But I’m not leaving less you come with me
We’ve had our problems but I’m on your side
You’re all I need, please believe me

You know, you can run, and you can hide
But I’m not leaving till it’s all over
We’ve had our problems but I’m on your side
You’re all I need, let me show you
They say you can’t take it with you when you go
And I believe it
But taking what I’ve got or being here with you
You know I, I’d rather leave it

We had a life, we had a love
But you don’t know what you’ve got ’til you lose it
Well that was then and this is now
And I want you back
How many times do I have to say I’m sorry, yes I’m sorry
You know you can run, and you can hide
But I’m not leaving less you come with me
We’ve had our problems but I’m on your side
You’re all I need, please believe in me

You can run, and you can hide
But I’m not leaving until it’s all over
We’ve had our problems but I’m on your side
You’re all I need, please believe in me

Phoenix Wright
Wright Anything Agency
 September 5, 2020, 11:00 AM

Phoenix was jolted awake from his mid-morning nap by an unexpected pounding in his heart and ringing in his ears.  After getting breakfast for Trucy and seeing her off to the school bus stop, he’d fallen back to sleep as he didn’t work again until later that evening, and it had been a rough night. He’d barely slept a wink, as he’d been inexplicably plagued by horrifying nightmares, all involving malevolent, vengeful people, some dead, some alive, some incarcerated.

Every night, on the eve of this date, he had nightmares.  And every September 5, all he could do was think. Sit, think, and remember.

The bittersweet day he’d mentally dubbed as Phoenix and Maya Day.

It was inescapable to forget the fact that on this date, exactly four years ago, the devil, in the form of the diabolical Redd White, had taken his beloved mentor Mia Fey away from him. And then, within that exact moment, on that same fateful day, he’d met Maya Fey. The woman who would later become the love of his life.

The very inauspicious woman who, because of their mind-boggling incompetence, the LAPD kept repeatedly trying to take away from him! The same day he’d met Maya, she’d then become his second-ever murder defendant. Little did either know it would not be for the first time in the years to come!

As much as the knowledge of this date was torture for him, he knew it was a hundred times worse for the girl, who’d not only been just a teenager at the time but had stood accused of the horrific crime of murdering the only remaining family she’d had – after having had the misfortune of being the first to discover the body!

More than anything in the world, the hobo wished he could be by his lover’s side right now, to hold and comfort her on this most dreadful anniversary, made all the more bittersweet as it also marked the day they had first met.

Normally he’d have sought out his lover’s company so he could see her, touch her, hear her, to make sure that she was indeed alive and well.  But of course, his Kristoph suspicions aside, now that he’d been made so excruciatingly aware just to what degree of contemptuous loathing the Elders of Kurain felt for him, giving that reassurance in person was impossible.

Maya was probably too busy, anyway. Most of the time when he did ring, she was off on some arduous training ordeal. The Kurain Master position must be incredibly difficult and time-consuming. He shouldn’t inconvenience her with his comparably trite quandaries.

The perimeters of this latest separation were inarguably and mostly his fault. Therefore he’d long since acquiesced that seeing his swain was out of the question. Phoenix had to concede that on top of his genuine concern about how negatively her Master position was impacted by his presence, his pride had also taken a severe beating nine months ago when he’d seen her last. Coupling that with his suspected stalker’s antics since his disbarment, there was only so much one man could endure!

Nonetheless, that didn’t mean he couldn’t call her, right? There would be nobody around to hear him. Maya had mentioned she had vigorous training to undergo during the daytime today when they’d last spoken, so even if he couldn’t reach her by phone, he could simply shoot her a quick email.

How to begin either one was the question. A simple “Hi babe, just wanted to ensure that you‘re still alive” didn’t sound quite right, especially coming from him of all people. The context would possibly come across as one that was more filled with unsolicited sarcasm rather than solicitude. The last thing he wanted to was for his partner to think he was being hypocritical about their lack of communication, considering Phoenix himself had vanished underground like a mole a year and a half ago, making Maya question both his whereabouts and continued existence for over a fortnight!

Moreover, his concern would seem completely over-the-top, not to mention insane, since he’d spoken to her only last night!

The ex-lawyer wasn’t sure if he was simply being paranoid because of the date it was, or if something genuinely was off course with his other half. Either way, he knew that he was struck with a resounding, inexplicable need to hear her dulcet voice. He needed to be reassured of her well-being if he was going to have his heartbeat and pulse return to a steady pace anytime soon! Both were inexplicably racing and not in a good way, like when Maya was in his arms and they were wrapped together in a heated lip lock.

And even during those more heated, stirring of the senses stolen moments, it still didn’t account for the current irksome ringing in his ears!

BRRRING! BRRRING!

That was when he realized that the shrill sound that he was hearing was not within his eardrums at all but coming from the telephone!

Who the heck would still ring my old office landline? Why wouldn’t they just call my cell?

As he reached for the receiver, he glanced down at this mobile screen and saw several missed calls! He cursed himself for his careless actions, realizing the familiar taiko drums of the Steel Samurai ringtone hadn’t awoken him because he’d accidentally put his phone into silent mode before passing out last night!

“Hello?”

“Hello, Mr. Nick.”

It was Pearl. He was surprised but pleased to hear from her; yet at the same time, he couldn’t help the incomprehensible feelings of trepidation as he answered.

“Hi, Pearls.” Phoenix spoke warmly to the little girl he’d always adored. “How are you?”

“I’m not doing so good, Mr. Nick,” was the sniffled response.

“What’s wrong, Pearls?” He anxiously cut in. “Are you sick? Did something bad happen?”

“It – it’s Mystic Maya, Mr. Nick!” The spirit medium wailed hysterically. “She’s in the hospital!”

“Hospital?!” The card shark’s pulsating heart lurched into his throat. “Is she all right?”

“I – I don’t know…” The child sounded as if she were near tears. “I’m so scared!”

“What in the world?” The poker champ had been standing up when he’d taken the call but promptly fell back onto the bed in shock upon hearing the news. “W –What happened?”

“She was doing that Extra Special Course at Hazakura Temple and she…collapsed. Sister Bikini had to do CPR on her until the ambulance came.” Pearl’s voice broke as she began to cry. “They – they don’t know if she’ll be OK or not! Mr. Nick, she’s the only family I have left now…”

The world screeched to a sudden halt for Phoenix at that moment. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe. His head pounded. His vision began to waver.

“W – Where is she? I’m coming right now!” Shakily he scrawled down the address of the hospital and rushed out the door.

Phoenix Wright
Hickfield Clinic
 September 5, 2020, 11:35 AM

Palms drenched in a cold sweat, Phoenix spotted the spirit medium at their meeting place at the hospital entrance. Pearl wrapped her arms around him in a huge hug, her little face drenched in tears. After a few moments of him attempting to soothe the distraught child, she handed him the number of Maya’s room in the ICU.

“She can only have one visitor at a time, so I’ll be in the lounge down the hall for you.” She slumped down against the wall, a tiny, doleful figure. He gave her one more hug before she slowly shuffled towards the waiting area, her head down. He watched her despondently for another moment before heading toward Maya’s room.

“M…Maya?” He called hesitantly as he neared the doorway. “It’s me, Nick…”

A burly nurse with rolling pin arms and a too-tight perm sprang out to obstruct his view.

“I’m sorry, sir, the patient is in a critical condition and only immediate family members are allowed visitation.”

“But I am a relative to the patient! I’m Miss Fey’s … uh… cousin!” The Baron of Bluffing improvised hastily. “Her first cousin, actually!” 

Suffering Saint Sebastian on the sousaphone in a short screenplay by Susan Sarandon! I just can’t seem to get a break from bluffing, even when I’m off the damn clock!

The nurse scrutinized his panicked, desperate expression with knowing sympathy. She knew he was lying. She saw it all the time. But there was something about this particular individual, something she saw in his eyes, which made her balk at refusing him admission. It was the look of genuine, nervous terror reflected in the dark blue depths. A despaired, pleading look a man could only have when then the woman he loved was in terrible danger. Ultimately, she just couldn’t make herself refute it at that moment.

With a sigh of acquiescence, the nurse nodded, feigning acceptance of his explanation, and stepped aside.

Phoenix rushed into the room but then froze in his tracks as his alarmed gaze took in the harrowing scene before him.

An imposing array of unidentifiable, scary-looking machines surrounded the psychic, creating a cacophony of varying beeps and sounds along with flashing numbers he had no comprehensible way of understanding.  Various tubes were attached to the Master’s body, and the sole machine he recognized was the IV tube running into her slim, pale arm, which he knew was giving her life-sustaining nutrients. The patient herself was as limp and white as the sheets on her bed, looking more Lilliputian and fragile than he could have envisioned his normally bubbly, vibrant life partner ever to be.

Gingerly, he took her icy hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“Maya?”

“I don’t think she can hear you,” the nurse called from the doorway. “She’s been unconscious ever since she came here.”

No! I’ve heard that people in a coma can still hear you sometimes, and hearing is often the last thing to go! There is no way I’m taking the chance of not letting her know I’m here by her side, which I never should have left in the first place!

The poker champ pointedly ignored the nurse, his attentions solely fixed on the woman lying before him.

“I’m so sorry, my love,” he whispered, uncaring if the medic overheard and busted him for the earlier lie about being a kissing cousin.  “Forgive me for not letting you come down to see me a long time ago.”

He softly pressed a kiss to her forehead, which sported a small, bruised bump.

“But I’m here now and I’m not leaving your side again until you come back to me, do you hear me?”

After several minutes of the hobo clinging to the diviner’s unresponsive hand, murmuring loving adages, and gazing hopelessly at her, the nurse interjected.

“I’m sorry but the doctor’s coming soon. You’ll have to leave, for now, sir.”

“No!” The pianist cried elegiacally. “I can’t leave yet! I just got here – she can’t be left alone right now! M – Maya needs me…”

He was teetering on the brink of hysteria.

“OK, fine then.” The nurse gave a reluctant sigh. “I’ll let you stay until the doctor gets here.”

The ex-lawyer pounced on the doctor like a ravenous lion the minute he set eyes on him. He ran right up to the physician, his eyes wild and frantic.

“Doctor, please tell me if my Maya will be all right! What happened to her? Is she going to get better? When will she wake up?”

The MD calmly extracted his white lab coat sleeves from the pianist’s frantic, vice-like grip before he calmly replied to the barrage of questions.

“Miss Fey has come down with a minor case of hypothermia, which was easy enough to take care of. However, she’s also contracted pneumonia and appears to be extremely malnourished, the former which we’re treating first and foremost.”

His paramour, the gluttonous Burger Queen … malnourished? Inconceivable! He shook his head vehemently, still unable to process such Twilight Zone information.

“And her survival odds overall?”

“It’s hard to say,” the doctor told him. “She’s young and strong, and does appear to be stabilizing, so prospects for survival are good.”

The pianist felt a small glimmer of hope flicker within him at these encouraging words.

“However, I can’t predict if or when she will fully recover.”

The hope withered and died, replaced by a wave of nearly overwhelming nausea washing over him. He couldn’t muster a response.

“She’s is lucky to be alive against all these odds,” marveled the doctor. “It’s unfathomable how she managed to survive under such extreme circumstances. The nun who found her was truly Miss Fey’s guardian angel for having administered CPR so quickly. She may not still be with us otherwise.”

Sister Bikini. Phoenix solemnly vowed to go volunteer his assisted services at the temple at some near point in the future to express his gratitude for the shrine maiden who had saved Maya’s life.

“I must ask you to wait outside now, sir,” the doctor continued, his voice polite but firm. “I need to tend to our patient now. You’re welcome to return when the nurses change rotation after lunch, in about an hour.”

Before he could open his mouth to protest again, the nurse came in and dragged the morose hobo out of the room. Shaky and stunned, he traipsed back to the waiting Pearl, heavy of both mind and heart.

Phoenix Wright and Pearl Fey
Hickfield Clinic, Visitors Lounge
 September 5, 2020, 11:50 AM

It was a small lounge where the child sat, void of any other visitors, with only three chairs on each side of the room, along with a coffee dispenser and snack food vending machine. The pretzel-haired girl sat in her chair, knees tucked to the chin, looking almost frailer and more helpless than her kinswoman had. As impossible as it seemed, his heart ached even more at the sight of her dejected form. His girlfriend was more of a sister than a mere cousin and since Pearl’s mother had been incarcerated, she also was the acolyte’s legal guardian. Each was the only family the other had. The child was the only person in the world who loved and needed Maya as much as Phoenix did, if not more so.

She lifted her head when he entered the room, her doe eyes red-rimmed and teary.

“Did she wake up yet, Mr. Nick?”

He shook his head and sank into the chair next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

“The doctor said her chances of survival are good, Pearls. He just doesn’t know when she’ll wake up.”

Her lower lip trembled, and Phoenix was worried about what he’d do if she started crying again – he was barely keeping it together himself! He decided to try to divert her anguish, however momentarily, with some conversation.

“Talk to me, Pearls,” he urged gently. “I need to know what happened. You said your cousin was training at Hazakura Temple? I recall how she and I did that Ultra course together with Sister Bikini shortly after the whole Dahlia incident. At the time, I was barely over the cold I’d caught falling into that raging river but I still managed to survive sitting under that freezing waterfall with her – whereas Maya was completely unfazed by it all! What was it this time around that affected her so badly? Surely she’s done some sort of similar training like this since?”

“Yes, she has,” Pearl sniffled. “But the Special Course is 100, 000 incantations under that waterfall versus 30,000 of the Ultra … and there’s much stricter preparation involved. I think Mystic Maya has been doing too much training. She’s done nothing else since that last time you came up to the village. I’ve tried to talk to her about how she’s been pushing herself too hard and making herself sick. But she wouldn’t listen! So, when she left for Hazakura Temple this morning, I was so worried about her that I went and borrowed some of the books she was reading. I believe she has been doing these training exercises.”

Completing the Ultra Course had been one giant, eye-opening boot to the head for the anterior attorney, bequeathing him with blatant new cognizance and respect of the massive amount of inner strength Maya must possess in that petite frame of hers. He would have run screaming from the cavern after five minutes if the spirit medium hadn’t been supportively holding his hand. It’d been almost emasculating for him how easy in comparison it’d been for his then-assistant.

Then again, his strong, brave girlfriend had endured a lifetime of these tortures and God only knew what else. Whatever had eventually lambasted her must have been more than just a mere training regimen.

They poured over the thick book Pearl had brought. The archaic Japanese was impossible for him to decipher and difficult for the child but the recent incident had been more than enough motivation to compel the acolyte to work on her reading skills. With a concerned frown, she summarized aloud a recent trial Maya had performed, entailing four-day starvation, then being crushed under a spiritual boulder atop a freezing mountaintop, in tandem with some power-honing exercise that belied any sense to Phoenix.

“But why?” He demanded, burying his head in his hands. “Why would she do this to herself, Pearls? Is it really such a prerequisite?” The pint-sized spirit medium regarded him quizzically and he hastily simplified the last word. “Necessary?”

“I think she’s been feeling the need to prove herself to the Elders. They’ve been so mean to her!”

Pearl went on to give him a brief synopsis of the verbal taunts, lashings, and emotional abuse they’d succumbed Maya to since she’d assumed the Master role.

Phoenix just listened in agonized silence, his head still buried in his hands, heartsick at how much torment the woman he loved had endured in his absence. His composure was beginning to unravel. He could feel it. He was about to lose his shit right there in the hospital waiting room right before an equally devastated 10-year-old child who desperately needed his strength and support, rather than his tears, more than anything in the world right then.

And he wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to hold out.

In a vast effort to keep a reign on his tumultuous emotions, he bit his lower lip, so hard that he thought he tasted blood, and nodded his head as Pearl went on, silently prodding her to continue.

“That mean old witch Mystic Mildred has been the worst!” Pearl concluded, her gray eyes flashing with anger. “She’s the main reason all the elders never listen to Mystic Maya and always say bad things about Aunt Misty.”

She bit her thumb and looked down as she continued.

“I believe that’s the main reason Mystic Maya feels she is expected to heighten her powers,” the moppet recalled, thinking back to her cousin’s blabbering during one of her recent dreams. “I think she does not wish to fail her mother.”

“Oh, dear God!” Phoenix yearned to collapse to the ground, so deep was his sorrowful penitence. “My poor Maya!”

Deep down, he’d always deduced that his lover wasn’t truly dealing with the whole issue of her mother’s death as well as she outwardly claimed to be. As her best friend, as her damn boyfriend, he should have found a way to better assist and support her, despite her claims that she was fine. But he’d always been afraid to press the issue, of what may have become unleashed if opted to not let that sleeping dog lie.

Sometimes it takes you losing something you rely on to learn the good of what you had.

Then, after he was disbarred, he’d been too self-absorbed by his battered ego and his issues thence hadn’t paid enough mind to Maya’s plight whatsoever. Had never paid heed to that beatific smile that masked so much pain.

I truly am the most selfish sonofabitch on earth, Phoenix berated himself bitterly. All Maya’s ever done is stand by me and hide her own problems and focus all her attention on mine and all she ever asked for in return was just to see me. Just a visit. But noooo, I was too wrapped up in my stupid, possibly needless, paranoia to even give her that! And now it may be too late! Christ, what if I lose her? I couldn’t live without her! She’s my pillar of strength. She’s my hero. How will I ever continue to go on if Maya dies? 

He felt Pearl’s eyes on his hunched frame and lifted his head from his hands, noting her doll-like visage was no longer etched in sorrow but concern. She placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Mr. Nick, are you going to be all right?”

Lord help me, I’m the most pitiful, pathetic excuse of a man that ever existed. Another daughter of mine, trying to console my sorry, self-pitying ass in a time of desolateness, when it should damn well be the other way around!

This was the second time now that a young child burdened with strife even worse than his own had needed to be the adult and attempted to comfort him! It was a travesty beyond measure; they were the ones who needed it most. It was that incident in the kitchen last year with Trucy all over again, even down to the same silky brown hair.

Except, he thought, as he looked up, at last, the sympathetic, caring orbs presently beholding him weren’t his daughter’s crystal blue ones. They were a clear, amethyst gray and reflected a look of wisdom that belied the years of their young owner.

Wait … no they weren’t!

The gentle eyes he was now peering into were just as kind, just as loving … but were now a beautiful amber brown!

“You’re going to be alright, Phoenix.”

The disbarred lawyer blinked a few times as the startled cry escaped his lips.

“You!” He gasped.

Phil Collins – Something Happened On The Way To Heaven