“Big Ed?” I ask. “I… Wh… What is going on?” I’m confused. Big Ed Lopez, the detective I met at the graveyard, the one who is dealing with his Aunt Tilly’s estate, is talking to Lionel Malak. How can that be? Can he see ghosts too?
“Hold on, Aaron,” Lionel says. “We’re going to try to help.” As he speaks, his voice gets distant and I know he’s gone.
I lie back down and soon my mother is there, the permanent look of worry on her face.
I’m in the ER most of that first day. Things move slow there, one emergency getting displaced by another. My mother is there and then my father. Nurse Iona is there a lot checking my vitals, scribbling on my chart, smiling and being so very nice to me.
I got to really like it when she came in. She didn’t have the freaked out look of my mother or the statue-like look of my father. I could tell from her face that it was serious, but she had a quick smile and a smoky laugh, while she moved slowly but went quickly.
It got so I studied her, so fascinated I was with how she moved. Not fast, but she seemed to use the minimum number of steps, her hands only needing to do things once. Very efficient, but not hurried at all.
“In case you’re wondering,” she says after some time of this with a twinkle in her eye. “I am taken.” She holds up her left hand, a ring on her finger. It is a simple silver band.
“What?” I ask, puzzled.
“Well, the way you watch me boy, I am start’n to think you’re fallin’ in love.”
I turn beet red. My parents had stepped out and I am so grateful for that. “I… Well… No… There is a girl… A friend… we…”
Iona’s laugh is rich and encompasses her whole being. From her eyes to her cheeks to her belly, she laughs with such an abandoned joy I can’t help but smile myself.
“I’m just mess’n with you,” she says as she leaves the room. I’m left wondering how she can be so calm, can laugh like that, in the middle of the chaos that is the ER.
After that things became a blur and then I started hearing voices again.
Here’s what the blur of being seriously ill is: the beeps and mechanical sounds of the hospital that never go away. The smell of antiseptic and the stronger, less pleasant smell of your own biology. Voices nearby talking about you as if you aren’t there. Flashes of faces, the squeezing of hands, the poking and prodding of nurses and doctors.
I remember hearing Billy’s voice at one point, the deep bass of Pastor West, and then seeing the worried face of Helena. But I was only dimly there. I was starting to hear the voices of ghosts again.
Well, I don’t think that last part is normal. But as my fever got worse and my lungs filled up, I was less and less in this world and more someplace else.
I’ve mentioned that I’m an atheist. That means I don’t believe in an anthropomorphized, omnipotent god. It doesn’t rule out the possibility of life beyond the body. Well, I am sure for many atheists it does, but with a literal interpretation of the word it most certainly does not.
“How do we do this?” I hear a voice say. An old lady’s voice.
“Why him?” another asks.
“No one did this for me when I was sick.”
“Maybe it would be better for him to go. That body… my god, it’s been through so much.”
“But he’s so young. Look at his mother, I don’t think that she would survive.”
“Did you see his young lady? Now for that I’d gladly be alive, even in that beat-up body of his.”
“Yes, but we’ve never done anything like this before. Should we?”
“Can we?”
“We must try.”
There are many voices, I can’t tell them apart, but somehow, I know they are ghosts. They have this different quality to them, this sounding like coming from far away, but I know they are very close.
“Enough,” another voice says that I know is Big Ed Lopez. “You all stop your yammer’n. You want to try this, stay. You don’t want to try this, go. And in either case shut your traps and listen up.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. My mother, father, and Helena are there in my little ER area. Another bending of the rules for my mom. You are only supposed to have one guest at a time back there. And while their voices have a more “real” quality to it than the ghosts, I am drawn to the voices of the ghosts.
With my eyes shut tight I start to see them too. Not just flashes of colors, but the transparent look of ghosts. And right at the end of my bed, I see Big Ed Lopez. His short, barrel-chested body, his bright brown eyes, his short black hair shot with grey.
I am so confused. “When did you die?” I say aloud.
I hear my mother’s surprised voice saying something, but I ignore it.
Ed looks right at me, a deep frown forming on his face. “We haven’t much time, people.” There are other ghosts there. Kids and adults. Old and young. Fat and thin. I would guess about twenty ghosts are arrayed around my bed. Not all of them are within the confines of the curtain, but I can see them on the other side of the curtain too.
Ed walks right into my bed and gets close to me. “I died ten years ago, son.”
“But… I… those talks we had. In the graveyard. During the day. I…”
He smiles. “A bit of trickery, I am afraid. I was there to help you along for our friend Lionel.”
And Lionel is there right next to Big Ed, his gaunt face pinched. “And you did help me,” Lionel says in his nasally voice. “I know who killed me now. I am sorry for getting so upset with you, it was… well it was mighty hard to come to grips with.”
“Joe Edwards?” I ask. My mother’s voice is becoming higher in pitch. I am sure this conversation I am having with my eyes squeezed shut is freaking her out, because she knows I’m not hallucinating, that I’m talking to ghosts, and the reason has to do with how sick I am. But I can only focus on one thing at a time.
Lionel’s eyes get so sad. He doesn’t answer but shakes his head.
“Who then?” I ask.
“You all can chew that fat later,” Big Ed says, holding his hands up.
“But…” I say.
“Son, I know you got questions,” Big Ed says. “I promise you they will get answered. But you must be patient. I…”
A coughing fit hits me and all I know for a time is that wracking pain. When it’s over I can’t see or hear the ghosts anymore.
It’s like a bad dream, really. Being sick, seeing and talking to ghosts, coughing my lungs up, having a harder and harder time breathing, burning up with fever. It’s the worst dream ever.
My body is fighting for survival and I’m just kind of along for the ride. There are moments of relief, a cool cloth on my head, the sweet sound of a calm, compassionate voice (Iona, I suspect), and this comforting warmth that flows around me, but they are so brief and then I’m lost to the battle that is being waged.
And then, all of the sudden, the pain is gone and I am standing next to Big Ed in that hospital room in Cedar City, Utah. I recognize it as the ICU. There’s a little more space than the ER and a lot more equipment. The curtained area is dominated by the hospital bed and there is a person in there hooked up to a ventilator. The hiss of that machine and the beep of the heart monitor produce a strangely comforting rhythm.
Big Ed has this wistful smile on his face. He’s got his jeans, button-down western shirt, and shiny cowboy boots on, just like I remember. But he’s a bit transparent, not like when I saw him in the graveyard, but like when I saw him with my eyes closed in the ER.
He’s silent as I look around and look at myself. I’m in jeans and a white T-shirt. At first, I’m really glad to be out of the hospital gown, and then I notice the silver cord that connects with my belly button. It snakes from there to the person in the hospital bed. It dawns on me what’s going on.
“Am I dead?” I ask him.
“Not quite,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Not while that there beeping continues.”
I nod. I’m not scared, I’m actuall
y relieved. All the pain and nausea is gone. I feel good for the first time since my treatments started. Actually, in some ways, I feel better than I can remember feeling. I’m not tired. I’m not hungry. I don’t even have the smallest itch. All I feel is this vague sense of well-being.
“Am I going to die?”
His eyebrows do this little dance on his forehead. “Most likely.”
“We talked earlier, didn’t we?”
“That we did, son.”
“What were all those ghosts doing around my bed?”
“We were try’n to help you.”
I look around the room again and notice my mother. She’s flopped in a grey armchair, her eyes closed, her hair flat and lifeless. I feel something then, a sharp pang of guilt. My illness has been so very hard on her.
“It didn’t work?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Things just aren’t that cut and dried. You are alive, if barely, so we might’a had a part in that.”
I walk over to my mom and look at her. Her head is resting on the back of the chair at an uncomfortable angle, and she’s slumped down with her legs awkwardly dangling out.
“She’s a mighty good mother, that one,” Ed says.
“I will be sorry to leave her,” I say. The pang of guilt that hits me is potent, but doesn’t last long. I keep feeling this sense of peacefulness, this calmness. I was, for all intents and purposes, a ghost. But it didn’t scare me at all.
I turn back to Big Ed. “Are you going to tell me now, how I could see you in the graveyard?”
He looks surprised, as if my question is the last one he expected. Like maybe he expected me to ask him how I survive this. But right then, I’m just so peaceful, and so worn out from the fight, that I don’t want to survive. I’m ready to die. But I am not without curiosity.
“With a little help from my friends,” he says.
“I don’t understand.”
He sighs and shrugs. “Things are different over here. It was an experiment, really. It took ten other souls lending me their energies so that I could appear solid to you. But, even then, only you could have seen me. And we couldn’t do it for long and we all ended up exhausted.”
“But why? Why not just tell me you were a ghost?”
“You needed a friend,” he says with a kind smile. “A ghost would have brought up other questions. And we were doing it for Lionel. He’s had such a time with how his life ended.”
I thought it over some. “And your Aunt Tilly and cleaning out her house. Was that all lies?”
He shook his head. “That was the god’s honest truth. Just ten years earlier. I came here to deal with her estate. I died of a heart attack sorting through that woman’s endless junk. I’ve been here ever since, for some reason, even though my bones got dragged back to be buried in Texas.”
I don’t really like it, but at least I understand.
We stand there for a bit, in a thick silence. I look from Big Ed to my mother to my… my body. It’s strange to think of it as my “body,” but it certainly doesn’t feel like “me” at this point.
“What now?” I finally ask.
Big Ed smiles and shakes his head. “I don’t know, son. It’s not like there’s an instruction manual or anythin’. But I do know that it comes down to you livin’ or dyin’. You can’t stay like this for very long.”
I wasn’t a ghost for long, but I did realize that it can be quite boring. My mom slept, slumped in the chair. The heart monitor beeped, the ventilator whooshed, and the sounds of the hospital going about its business surrounded us. But that was it. Just me looking around and Big Ed standing there patiently.
“Aren’t you going to try to convince me to survive? Tell me I have so much to live for?” I say. It comes out rather sarcastically.
“Well, that there would imply that it’s your choice,” Big Ed says. “But I don’t know that it is.”
I don’t like that thought, not one bit. But I understand it. Leukemia had not been my choice. This pneumonia that is killing me was not my choice. My Uncle Don dying when he did was not my choice or his.
“So what do we do?” I ask. “I mean, if I have no choice, if what I want doesn’t matter. What do we do?” I hear a tinge of the hysterical in my voice. Just a touch, but enough that I know Big Ed caught it.
“What you want matters, son. All I was say’n was that it’s not the only factor. It could, though, be the deciding factor.”
“What?”
“The ghosts and I, we gave you our best, we poured all the energy we could into you, but you just kept get’n worse. Made me suspect you might not want to keep fightin’. I sent them away to rest until we can determine this.”
I walk back over to my mother, that silver cord floating along with me, passing through the hospital bed as if it wasn’t there. My mother’s beauty is still apparent, but it is masked, nearly occluded, by her fatigue and worry. I try to touch her face, but my translucent hand passes right through her. She moans and shifts her position. “Maybe it would be better for her if this ended now.”
Ed snorts out a laugh behind me. “You got shit for brains, boy?”
“What?”
“There ain’t no mother on god’s green earth that would want to see her child die.” His face goes from complacent to angry, red blossoming on his round cheeks. He walks to me, grabs my arm, and drags me through the back wall of the ICU room.
His grip on my arm is strong, but it doesn’t hurt. It’s this numb, barely-there sense of touch.
We pass through a hallway, I catch a glimpse of an exhausted-looking Doctor Rogers down the hall at a nurse’s station. I feel the tug of that silver cord, pulling me back toward my body, but Big Ed’s grip is stronger.
He pulls me through another wall, things going dark briefly, and into a waiting room. It’s a small room, maybe ten by twelve, lined with grey armchairs, a few small tables, and filled with people I know.
I first notice Billy. He’s chewing on his thumbnail and slowly pacing the length of the room, his red hair disheveled. His mother is sitting in one of the chairs, her eyes never leaving her son.
Pastor West is there, his spine erect, a bible open in his lap. His lips are moving as his finger traces the words on the page.
Next to him is my father, his face no longer a stony mask. His eyes are red rimmed, he’s obviously been crying, and he hasn’t shaved in a couple of days. Seeing that feels like someone just ran me through with a sword. My stoic father reduced to this is more than I can take.
I turn away from him and notice, sitting on the other side of the room by herself, Helena. She’s got grey sweatpants on and a Cedar High sweatshirt. She’s sitting loosely in a chair, her brown eyes way too wide, she almost looks catatonic. Her eyes are red-rimmed, like my dad’s, and she’s got dark circles under them like my mom.
“I… I…” I stammer, the emotions that are hitting me are so strong I can’t even talk. I feel guilty for what they are experiencing, but I also feel their love. I feel a tiny slice of happiness that these are my people, but that is overwhelmed by the fear that I will never get to talk to them again. I feel a longing to touch Helena so strong that I don’t know how to bear it. I want to talk to her, to speak to her, to see those faraway eyes come into focus.
“Still think they’d be better off if this ended now?” Big Ed asks, his voice barely above a whisper.
I shake my head. “No.”
“Are you ready to fight?”
I don’t answer right away. I nod towards Helena and Big Ed walks me over, his grip still tight on my arm, that silver cord is taut now and trying to drag me back to my body. She’s not moving, she’s barely blinking. Seeing her that way just rips my heart out.
“She loves you, boy,” he says.
“I… Wait. Are you sure?” I look at Big Ed and there is a frown on his face, but his eyes are smiling.
“Look at her. It’s as plain as the nose on your face. You don’t grieve like that if you don’t love.”
“Bu
t… It’s been so complicated. She has so many boys after her. She has such a complicated life and so do I. We… I…”
“My god, boy. I swear you do have shit for brains.”
I turn back to Helena and look at her again. I hate seeing her that way, god how I hate it.
“And you love her,” he says.
I nod. Of that I have no doubt.
“So, son. Are you ready to fight?”
I straighten up. “Yes. I am ready.”
I’ve had some time to think about my experience as a “ghost” with Big Ed Lopez, and I think “ghost” is the wrong word. I think “spirit” is a better word.
That transparent body that I walked around with, the one that was connected to my physical body with that strange silver cord, was my spirit. The part of me that is not flesh and blood. What we call ghosts are just spirits without a body, but really no different.
I knew who I was. I had my memories. I could move about, but without the body, the flesh and blood, it was a hollow experience. But, most importantly, it still was an “experience.” I was conscious. I was “alive.”
As I look towards the future, that does bring me comfort.
After viewing my loved ones and the pain my illness was causing them, Big Ed took me back to the ICU and my body. That silver cord is taut and dragged me back until we got close and he could finally let me go.
Lionel is standing there at the end of the hospital bed looking rather sheepish.
“I’ll go gather the troops,” Big Ed says, “and give you two a moment.”
Lionel’s shoulders are high, his stiff arms shoved into the pockets of his smock. He looks nervous and like a child that knows they did something wrong.
“I’m sorry I got so mad,” Lionel says, his eyes downcast.
I shrug. “Are you going to tell me who did it?”
His nostrils flare and his mouth twists before his eyes meet mine. “Ann.”
I think back to the tea Ann Edwards, Mom, and I had in our kitchen. How she was twitchy and nervous, her skinny face and hollow cheeks. I look closely at Lionel and I can see the two of them together. They are much more similar than Joe and Ann. They’re both tall and angular, and a bit nervous. Joe is calm and round, nothing like the two of them.
A Boy a Girl and a Ghost Page 28