Alli's Life Songs

By Emma Johnson

Allison Swanson felt her life was arranged the way it was supposed to be. She was a professional woman in her early fifties who accepted the daily routine of life: working and coming home to her two beloved cats. After one failed marriage and a bittersweet romance, she felt "safe" with her existence. That all changed when she met Daniel Kelley, a hero, an irritant, and, eventually, her love. Daniel brought with him a ready-made family, which included his six-year-old grandson, Elliott. Allison began a personal evolution that changed her perception about everything. Alli's life songs paint the portrait of this evolution. Life circumstances would bring Allison immense joy and heartbreaking tragedy. Along the way, she discovered the heroes in her life. Her faith-sometimes fragile, sometimes imperceptible, but always present-would carry her through.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: May 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646705535

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Alli’s

Life Songs

Emma Johnson

ISBN 978-1-64670-552-8 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64670-553-5 (Digital)

Copyright © 2020 Emma Johnson

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books, Inc.

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Table of Contents

Prologue

Frail—Jars of Clay

Wandering Shepherd—Dan Fogelberg

Thankful—Josh Groban

Through All of It—Colton Dixon

Move—TobyMac

Epilogue

About the Author

Dedication

The genesis of this book came at an interesting time. The book began ten years ago, on a day when I was bored. From 2009-2019, I had written a mere 25 pages. In 2019, I had decided to resign my position as a therapist. I wasn’t sure I was even going to go back to work. But after two months of traveling, reading, and cleaning everything in sight, I knew I wanted to be a therapist again. The problem was job offers didn’t come easily. I was bored and restless and felt unfilled. One day, there was a clear message. Finish the book. It was a strange idea, and I resisted. I didn’t know what to say. It was too much mental work. Nobody would ever read it anyway. But the message kept coming, and after two days, I sat at the computer. The book was completed in about a two-week period. I have no doubt who was sending the message. Thank you, God, for listening to prayers and offering choices.

I also want to thank the Sirius XM radio station The Message. You provide life songs. Along with amazing artists mentioned in this book there are others: Stephen Curtis Chapman, David Crowder, Lauren Daigle, Francesca Battistelli, Chris Rice, Mercy Me, Sanctus Real, Jeremy Camp, Chris Tomlin, Michael W. Smith, for King and Country and many, many others. You are blessed with a talent that reaches many. Thank you.

Prologue

Little boys. They are expected to be tough and aggressive. And so, they are. Until they are too aggressive and make the wrong move. They skin their knees or challenge the wrong other little boy. Then, they stop being little boys and just become frightened little children.

They dream like all children do. Maybe they dream of being the best football player or the bravest fireman.

It’s all right to do well in school, but not too well, because being the smartest kid in class can set you up for being a target. Little boys can enjoy playing outside, but they don’t spend too much time outside. The scourge of video games requires them to beat the machine faster than the rest of their friends.

There are little boys who imagine that someday they will grow up to be heroes. Sometimes little boys are heroes when they are still little boys.

Part 1

Frail—Jars of Clay

Allison always knew he was a mistake. She felt it the moment he looked at her and gave her that smile. She had glanced behind her to see who the recipient of that whitewashed grin was. The only thing she saw was a poor replica of a Van Gogh. She wanted to walk over and straighten the painting. That would have been the most productive outcome of an excruciatingly boring banquet.

Allison was attending a celebration for the husband of one her coworkers. Doctor of the Year at Jefferson Memorial Hospital. Really? Dr. Robert Jennings. Husband of Rita Bryant-Jennings. Why did women ever do that? Hyphenate their name. As if it were some kind of hieroglyphic liberation. All it did was screw up the orderly process of documenting employment applications and driver’s licenses. Hey, I’m married, but I didn’t start out that way, and I don’t have to be, but I found someone anyway. Staying single, and happy—now; that is a more ingenious accomplishment.

Allison didn’t even like Rita. But she was the public relations officer at JMH, and Allison was the executive assistant to Braxton Cunningham, the chief executive officer. Brax made sure that Rita was given any assistance she needed to promote Jefferson as the premier in modern health care. Did anyone, beside Allison, grasp the concept that the public relations officer at the hospital might not be able to objectively campaign for her beloved soul mate so he could be given the highest honor at Jefferson? That is what she had said at the ceremony. I am so honored you are my soul mate. And, the one who secured my position at the hospital, and my Mercedes Benz, and my diamond earrings, and my three-million-dollar home. But I have remained totally objective.

Allison Swanson Reynolds Swanson had been at Jefferson for twenty-four years. She had worked her way up to the CEO’s office honestly by demonstrating loyalty, efficiency, and creativity. Her positions included billing clerk, then a scheduler for physicians, followed by a transcriptionist for the cardiac surgeons at Jefferson, and then as a personal secretary for Dr. Rachel Mageson. Rachel was killed in an automobile accident during Allison’s eighteenth year at the hospital. Allison was devastated. It was not possible to continue with another surgeon. Braxton needed an assistant, and Allison made sure he was convinced he couldn’t survive without her.

On this night, she was fifty-three years old. Her height of five feet seven inches helped her remain slender, although the red evening dress she was wearing was a bit snugger than it had been in the past. While she prepared to go out for the evening, she carefully applied her makeup and pulled back her dyed brown hair. Gray had never been Allison’s favorite color. She surveyed herself in the mirror. Allison had always liked her bright green eyes, which required little makeup. But she felt her face was too round and her lips were too thin. Her conclusion? She looked like she was fifty-three years old.

*     *     *     *     *

Work was Allison’s life. And she was good with that. She was born in a small town in Colorado. She attended the Colorado State University after graduating from high school with a 2.4 grade point average. She was never sure why she was accepted at CSU, but she didn’t have any great plans for life, so why not? She majored in business and attended for two years. She met her first husband during her sophomore year. David Reynolds. A senior. He was a very successful running back for the football team. Not intelligent, but funny, charming, and, at first, very loving. There were good times. When he graduated from CSU with a degree in physical education, he proposed to Allison. She, of course, accepted, because she really didn’t have any plans for life. Her parents and her older brother were less than enthusiastic about the marriage, which only convinced Allison that this was the way it was supposed to be.

The only problem was that the marriage was a disaster. David took a job as a junior high PE teacher in a small town in western Colorado. He would have been much more successful if he had actually liked children. What David did like was drinking. He was just as successful with his alcoholic binges as he had been on the football field. Unfortunately, hiding a drinking problem from parents and the local school board in a rural community was a bit of a problem. David was eventually fired after his third DUI. He decided to move to Denver to start over. Allison followed him because she still didn’t have great plans for her life. But, starting over for David was getting a job as a bouncer at a bar and grill four blocks from Mile High Stadium. While Allison was in the emergency room with David for the sixth time after a bar fight, she noticed a job announcement for a billing clerk at the hospital. She applied the next day, saved money for six months, and left David while he was in a stupor.

Allison had never been on her own, ever. Her parents begged her to return home and help them run the drugstore they had owned for thirty-five years. All her friends from high school were still living in this dusty, depressing, backward town of 3,256 stagnant human beings. That didn’t sound like a plan. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Living in Denver with the risk of being run over, sexually assaulted, mugged, or poor was much more attractive. She made some mistakes. The first apartment she rented was plagued with occasional heat and deafening noise. She rented a room in a large house from an Asian woman who earned her money as a psychic and an entrepreneur of relics and psychedelic substances. She was eventually able to settle into a gated apartment complex, and then saved enough money to buy a small townhouse in a stable residential neighborhood.

Allison’s parents had died within six months of each other, when Allison was forty-five. Her mother died from pneumonia and her father from prostate cancer. When her father was diagnosed with cancer, he refused to undergo chemotherapy or any sort of treatment at all. He succumbed to the cancer quickly, and Allison believed this was his wish.

Allison had not talked to her brother, Bradley, since her parents’ funerals. Bradley was a classic narcissist who focused on two things: money and himself. He visited their parents rarely, and when he did, he inquired about their financial circumstances. He had relocated years ago to Chicago and questioned why anyone would live anywhere else. He married three times, and no one in the family was invited to any of the ceremonies. Allison and Bradley had a tremendous argument about the disposition of their father’s assets a few days after the funeral. Bradley threatened to bring legal action if his arrangements weren’t accepted. Allison told Bradley he had nothing she needed and left the next day. She gained nothing from her father and knew nothing about what became of his wealth. She was content with this.

Allison dated occasionally. Frankly, the only reason she agreed to infrequent dates was to satisfy her friends. It didn’t seem the designed plan was to find a happy partnership. Allison liked her life without anyone else in it. She even went to a therapist because there had to be some sort of mental illness. She wanted to know if she was socially impotent, gay, antisocial, or an alien. Her therapist told her if she was happy, be happy. Not many people are. Smart therapist.

There was, in fact, almost one more marriage. Michael Christopher Sullivan. He was the most honorable man Allison had ever known. He was kind, and intelligent, and intuitive. He had this dry sense of humor that Allison always appreciated. Michael could make Allison laugh like no one else. She always felt peaceful around him. There was no need to be anyone else except herself when she was with Michael. They had met at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. Allison was in fact a lukewarm Episcopalian. She liked the assertion that Episcopalians love everyone. There were some contentions about their theological beliefs. Which was the thing that caused her and Michael to go their separate ways. Why?

Because Michael was also the rector at St. Andrew’s. He was a priest. When Michael asked Allison to dinner one Sunday after a Eucharist service, it was just two friends getting together. That get-together turned into a three-year relationship. There was serious talk between them, and every parishioner at St. Andrew’s, about a wedding. But Allison couldn’t do it. She couldn’t be a priest’s wife. She didn’t want the expectations, the obligations, and the assumptions that go with this role. So, they parted as friends who loved each other…always.

And friends they were. Close friends. Which has always been an issue for Michael’s wife, Kristy. Michael met her while on vacation in Hawaii. She moved from Hawaii to Colorado, which for Allison raised some questions about Kristy’s decision-making abilities. I mean, Colorado is nice, but give up Hawaii? Michael is good, but really, that good? Kristy had continually been suspicious when Allison and Michael conversed, or when they would phone each other for advice or support. Neither of them would ever cross a boundary that would bring their values into question. But Allison did secretly enjoy giving Kristy a chance to speculate. It was cheap entertainment.

*     *     *     *     *

And now she was stuck in a room at the Marriott with 112 other people, including employees of Jefferson, dignitaries from the local and state governmental offices, and medical personnel from competing hospitals to honor Dr. Robert Jennings. Allison wondered if the night would be darkened by the fact that Brax was recently contacted by three attorneys representing a woman whose husband succumbed to organ failure after being treated by the incomparable Dr. Jennings. Ben was supposed to be here with Allison tonight. Allison was going to hurt Ben for not being here.

Ben Jenkins was Allison’s assistant. He was a twenty-eight-year-old handsome and smart man whom Allison trusted with every part of her being. He was quick-witted and cynical. He was even more organized and obsessive than Allison was, something that four years ago Allison didn’t think was possible. He was the son that Allison never wanted. He was going to be Allison’s comic relief through this farce. And, tonight, he had let her down.

And now, Allison was being singled out by some suited man from across the room. She might create a distraction by talking with someone else in the room, if she could find someone whom she could pretend interested her. Allison didn’t cavort with many people at Jefferson. Her irritation with Ben became even greater when Mr. Smiling Face began moving in her direction.

Hello, he said cheerfully. I believe we know each other.

Really? I apologize, but I don’t recall. I meet a lot of people in my position, so that may or may not be the case.

Oh, I am sure you run through a lot of people, being the assistant to Braxton.

Allison looked at him curiously.

Well, you know what I do in life, but I can’t image why.

I’m sorry, I am Daniel Kelley. We met a few weeks ago when I was doing an audit at the hospital, he said cautiously.

Oh, Lord. Allison had a thunderbolt of recollection. She had hoped her revulsion was in her mind and not on her face.

They had met exactly thirty-two days ago. Daniel was a medical records officer for the Colorado State Board of Accreditation of Hospitals. He had invaded her office to conduct a three-year evaluation of the hospital. Allison despised this process. This man had been the bane of her existence for a week and a half. He had taken occupancy in a conference room across the hall from her office, along with two other rigidly dressed, adolescent colleagues. His microscopic review of hospital records, surgical procedures, billing practices, and policies and procedures had caused her nine days of migraines. Because Allison was not adept at hiding her impudence when irritated, and didn’t during this demand performance, she was surprised this man would venture to approach her.

Oh, yes, Mr. Kelley, how are you? Allison said tightly.

Daniel, please. I am well. It was a nice banquet, don’t you think? Jefferson must be very proud of Dr. Jennings.

Dr. Jennings is a very interesting member of the staff, Allison replied cryptically.

Just then, Braxton Cunningham joined the conversation. "Daniel, good to see you. I’m so glad you came. And, you have caught up with Allison, I see. Discussing the excellent reports