Miami Attraction

It was almost three months before she became conscious of anything around her. Not awake exactly, it was more like a waking dream.

She heard the nurses discussing her situation right over her bed as if she were not there. They spoke of how she’d been downgraded from hospital to hospice because it was believed she had a short while to live.

The nurse spoke of a dog that had started hanging around outside the small hospice, much to the staff’s concern because she had blood caked in her fur. At first, Mikayla could not believe it was the same dog, but when she heard her familiar whimpering outside her first-floor window she knew it was.

Then something changed. She wasn’t sure if it were her concern for the dog that awakened her or the natural healing process. She only knew she was frightened of what would become of her protector.

She tried to tell the nurses how the dog had rescued her, but they showed little sympathy and attempted to have the dog picked up by animal control more than once. But the animal was smarter than they gave her credit for, disappearing before the truck arrived and returning when the coast was clear.

Meanwhile, Mikayla found out while she’d been hospitalized for three months, she’d lost her apartment and all her belongings and her Lexus had been repossessed.

Mikayla felt hopeless and helpless to do anything about the situation. Sensing her anxiety a volunteer had suggested she start a journal. Within a few days she’d filled several journal notebooks, spilling out all her thoughts and feelings and finding the process to be cathartic.

By the time she’d finished her journals she was looking at the eviction as a chance to start over. After all, the apartment and everything in it had belonged to Tangie, and Tangie no longer existed.

Mikayla began feeling better by the day. Her only sadness being she had no way to protect the animal that had fought so hard to protect her. The dog would disappear, sometimes for days at a time, but she always returned, and Mikayla was certain the animal control people would catch her and possibly euthanize her if they felt she was dangerous.

After rereading her journals several times, Mikayla got an idea. When she was healthy enough to walk, she began using the hospice library computer to organize her journals into a book. It took her almost a month, but finally it was ready to send off.

She found a literary agency in Florida and used the only return address she had, the hospice. Even as she asked a nurse to postmark it for her, Mikayla had decided the outcome didn’t matter. Regardless of whether it was published or not, just the sense of accomplishment was enough.

She was startled when an agent from the firm, Kandi Martin, showed up at the hospice unannounced. The woman had been intrigued by not only the book itself, but the return address of the writer. She’d come expecting to find someone on their deathbed, and instead found a woman on the road to recovery.

Mikayla had labeled the story fiction, but Kandi had known the moment she read it that it was based on real experiences and no matter how she tried to talk Mikayla into changing the category, she refused.

But she did open up to Kandi and explain the circumstances that had brought her to this place in her life, including the dog that rescued her. The two women came to a sort of strange agreement, one that included Kandi taking custody of the dog until Mikayla could get up on her feet.

Six months from the day of her attack, Mikayla purchased a new car. A small Chevy sedan and a far cry from her Lexus. And a week later, she had packed what few possessions she owned, her scruffy companion she’d christened “Angel,” and headed for Miami where Kandi lived, never looking back.

Over the past five years, she’d built a good life for herself, but had found there were side effects of the attack. She became more and more of a recluse until she’d cut off all contact with the outside world, except for Kandi.

That was when Kandi suggested the seminars. Reluctantly, Mikayla agreed to do one, and stumbled into her calling when she looked out over the faces of that first group of women, knowing each of those lives contained stories of pain and broken hearts. Somehow her book had brought them together, and now they were looking to her for words of healing. In that moment, she understood why everything had happened. It was so that the arrogant, selfish young woman she’d started out as could become the woman she was today.

As she pulled up in front of the conference center in Fort Lauderdale forty minutes later, Mikayla felt emotionally drained. She tried not to think back to that time in her life often, because even now the pain was too sharp. But she understood that sometimes looking back was necessary to see how far you’d come. And she had come so far.

Mikayla was very proud of the way she’d recovered from her attack, and turned her life around. The exotic dancer known as Tangie was dead. Mikayla had killed her the same night Vega had tried to take her life. That night, she’d been reborn into Mikayla Shroeder, Christian inspirational author and motivational speaker.

So much had changed in her life since that fateful night. The girl she once was would not even recognize the woman she’d become. That girl was careless, arrogant and selfish and it had cost her more than she ever dreamed possible.

But over the years, she’d become stronger, tougher than she ever imagined she could be. She grabbed her attaché and hopped out of the car. Seeing Dusty’s face before her once more, she shook away the image. It had been a long time since she’d been vulnerable to anyone, and she wasn’t about to start now.