My dad was right; Amy was in trouble. According to the neighbours in the complex, her relationship with Demetrio was a volatile one to say the least, and despite being showered in diamonds and beautiful clothes, according to one of the hospital porters, this isn’t the first time that Amy’s been a visitor to the hospital. By the sound of it, she’s been a frequent guest of San Pedro de Alcantara Hospital with various bruises, breaks and black eyes.
It’s horrible here; more so because all I can see between the hospital staff going about their business are the spirits of people who haven’t had a happy ending. They wander the hospital corridors as if looking for something and the noise inside my head is unbearable. There’s an elderly man, muttering something in Spanish. There’s a middle-aged woman, limping and wearing a bewildered expression on her face.
‘It’s OK, Sam. They will find their way soon,’ Ange whispers in my ear. ‘I was the same – didn’t have a bloody clue where I was. Bit of a shock I can tell you when you suddenly realise you’re dead!’
I cover my ears with my hands and close my eyes tightly in the hope that they will go away and find the light, or whatever it is they are supposed to do next, but it’s no good, I can still hear them inside my head.
‘Dónde estoy? Dónde estoy?’ the old man repeats over and over again.
‘Estoy perdida,’ the middle-aged woman shouts above the old man.
Aghh, just go away, please!
‘Uh-oh.’ Ange says. ‘Sam?’
I open my eyes.
It’s then that I see Amy, a few feet away, wandering the corridor and looking equally lost.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
‘Amy? Oh my god, no!’ I whisper.
I watch as Amy walks up the corridor, looking left and then right, as if she’s looking for someone. She too is dressed in one of those shapeless hospital gowns and looks different, almost serene, as she glides up the corridor, which is ironic really because Amy has never glided in her life. She’s not what you would call a glider. She’s more of a ‘Here I Am!’ kind of a girl.
Tears sting my eyes. No, not Amy. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if I can see Amy, it means only one thing - she’s dead.
It takes me back to when Jack drowned and I could hear his voice inside my head. He too had crossed over, albeit for only a few minutes, but it is the worst feeling I have ever experienced; to know that someone you love so much might not be in your life any more.
‘She isn’t dead, Sam,’ Ange whispers in my ear.
‘But she must be; I can see her. I wouldn’t be able to see her if she…’
‘Disculpa, senora. You come in with the girl with the stab wound, yes? Err, Miss Amy Evans, yes?’ A nurse suddenly appears in front of me.
‘Um …’ I avert my gaze from Amy for a second, then look back again. She’s gone.
‘Senora?’
‘Um, yes, sorry … I… Amy, she’s …’ I can’t quite bring myself to say the word out loud. I can’t believe this is happening. Why, oh why didn’t my dad warn me earlier? Give me more notice? Maybe if I hadn’t faffed about, waiting for that moron footballer to go out, or hadn’t taken no for an answer in the first place, I would have got to her in time. I would have been able to get Amy to the hospital in time for them to do something and …
‘Can I speak with you, yes?’ the nurse interrupts my thoughts.
‘What? Yes, of course, but …?’
The nurse leads me by the arm to a small room as I look behind us to see if I can see Amy. I can’t.
The room is sparsely furnished with just a coffee table and three plastic chairs. I slump down in one of them.
‘You’re a relative, yes?’ the nurse asks.
‘No, I’m her … I was her best friend,’ I whisper.
‘She has family, yes?’
‘Um … no, yes, but I’m not sure where her mum lives. Somewhere in Spain, but I’m not sure … oh my god, I’m going to have to tell Lorraine. How am I going to tell her that her daughter is dead?’ The tears sting my eyes again.
‘Your friend is not dead, senora. She is in a coma.’ The nurse smiles kindly at me.
‘A what? No, she can’t be. I saw her, just out there. I saw her, in the corridor …’
The nurse looks puzzled and I realise just how mad this statement sounds. Even with the language barrier dividing us, it sounds mad.
The nurse sits in the chair opposite me and looks at me intently for a moment.
‘Miss Evans is in a coma. At the moment her injuries are serious and we are doing everything we can to help her. Now we have to wait. She has severe brain trauma.’
‘Wait? What for?’
‘We wait to see if she comes out of the coma. I’m afraid it’s not looking great. There’s a one per cent chance that she will survive this,’ the nurse explains. ‘We have treated her injuries, and now we have to wait. You inform her mother, yes? And la policía will want to speak with you, yes?’
‘Yes, of course, but I don’t understand. I saw her; just out there.’ I point to the corridor.
‘Holy shit! Sam? Is that you? What the fuck is going on?’
‘Oh my God. Amy?’
That was definitely Amy’s voice I just heard. I swing my head round and the nurse jumps back a little.
‘That was her! That was Amy. I heard her!’
‘Would you like to see her? Si?’ The nurse asks.
‘Huh?’
I don’t understand what’s going on here. One minute I’m seeing Amy in the corridor and the next I’m hearing her voice inside my head and yet the nurse is insisting that she’s in a coma.
‘You like to see your friend? Sometimes it’s good for them to hear a friendly voice.’ The nurse encourages me.
‘Sam?’ It’s Amy’s voice again. ‘Where the hell am I? And who the hell are you?’
‘I’m Ange, Sam’s best friend, actually!’ I hear Ange snap at Amy.
Oh God, what is going on here?
The nurse escorts me out of the room, down the corridor and into another small room where she squirts my hands with antibacterial gel and puts a gown and a mask on me. All the time I can hear Amy’s and Ange’s voices squabbling in my head.
‘What do you mean, you’re her best friend?’
‘I am. In fact, I’m more than that; I’m her spirit guide, her guardian angel.’
‘Oh yeah, well I’ve known her for years, unlike some who have known her for, ooo, let me think, five minutes! And where the fuck am I?’
The nurse escorts me to another room. It’s full of machines bleeping and buzzing and it all looks very clinical, like something out of Holby City. And there is Amy, lying on a bed, eyes closed and very, very still. Despite the bruising and black eyes to her face, and the multitude of tubes attached to her, she looks just like she’s asleep. Her stained tracksuit has been folded up neatly on a chair, along with her jewellery, including the silver bangle I bought her for her twenty-first birthday.
‘Talk to her, si?’ the nurse says quietly.
‘Amy? It’s Sam here,’ I say self-consciously to her lifeless body.
‘Sam. What is going on?’ I hear Amy’s voice in my head. She sounds very irritated.
‘Durh! She really is a dumb blonde,’ Ange mutters.
Amy’s lips aren’t moving. She’s just lying there. I don’t get it. If Amy isn’t dead, how can I hear her? I make a living out of hearing dead people, but I’m being told that Amy isn’t dead.
‘God, did you learn nothing on that course you took recently?’ Ange huffs.
‘Ange, this isn’t the time or the place, is it?’ I whisper, as I push a stray piece of hair from Amy’s face.
‘Yer think? The reason you can hear her in your head is because she’s on the other side, durh!’ Ange says.
‘But she can’t be. The nurse said she’s not dead.’
‘Oh shit! I’m not bloody dead am I?’ Amy suddenly says. ‘Oh Jesus Christ, tell me I’m not dead!’
‘Jeez, wil
l you stop screeching for one minute?’ Ange replies.
‘Ange? You want to explain?’ I ask, looking down at Amy. She looks so peaceful and content and she’s not cold, like I expected, despite only being covered in a white sheet. Ange sighs again.
‘She’s not dead. She’s in a coma.’
‘Who’s she, the cat’s mother?’ Amy snaps.
‘Well, if the cap fits and all that! Anyway, as I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, your so-called best friend is between worlds at the moment, Sam, which means she’s not technically dead, but she’s not technically alive either. She’s kind of floating about up here.’
‘I am not floating!’
‘Yeah, whatever!’
‘Oh God.’ Tears form in my eyes again.
‘See that machine there above her head? That’s what’s keeping her alive at the moment,’ Ange whispers.
‘What? So I’m not breathing on my own?’ Amy wails.
‘Not down there, luv, no.’
‘But how do I get back down there?’
‘How the hell should I know? Believe me, if I knew I’d help you go back down there in a shot. You’re seriously getting on my nerves.’
‘You are such a bitch! And OMG, look at the state of me!’ Amy screeches again.
‘Yeah, you do look a bit rough,’ Ange agrees.
‘Right, that’s enough!’ I can’t believe I’m in a Spanish hospital, refereeing a slanging match between my spirit guide and my comatose ex-best friend, who isn’t technically dead but isn’t technically alive either.
‘Oh Amy! What are we going to do with you?’ I whisper, stroking her hair.
‘Well, you could start by working out how I get back into my body!’ Amy says. ‘You’re supposed to be the expert here.’
Aghh! This is so frustrating! I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. One minute I’m talking to Amy’s motionless body and the next I’m hearing her in my head. Or maybe I’m just imagining it and…
‘You’re not imagining it, Sammy.’
It’s my dad’s voice. And about bloody time!
‘You did a good job getting to Amy in time, but as Andrea pointed out, her body isn’t well enough right now for her to go back to it.’
‘But … how long? She isn’t going to …’ I can’t say the word.
Ange and Amy have both gone very quiet. It’s as if we’re all holding our breath.
‘Who knows, Sammy? Who knows? Her injuries are bad, Sammy. When it’s your time, it’s your time, you know that.’
‘Oh My God! No!’ I hear Amy gasp.
I look down at Amy sleeping peacefully.
‘I’m so sorry, Amy. We’ll get you through this, sweetheart. Trust me, I’m a psychic.’
I kiss her on the forehead and then I cry – a lot.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
‘So there’s nothing more they can do at the moment,’ I sniff into the phone to Jack at the other end, as soon as I get back to England. ‘They said she will either come out of it or … or she won’t, but in the meantime …’ I swivel my head from side to side. ‘Amy is … she’s in my head, Jack,’ I whisper, ‘you know like when you drowned last year in Australia and you could speak to me?’
‘You can whisper all you like, Samantha, I can still hear you!’ Amy says.
Oh bugger!
‘And apparently she can hear me if I whisper too!’
I can imagine Jack at the other end of the line, shaking his head.
‘Yes, he is,’ Ange says.
‘Hey, he’s my friend, not yours!’ Amy says.
‘Oh, yes, and we all know how you treat your friends, don’t we?’ Ange retorts. ‘Anyway, haven’t you got somewhere to be?’
‘No, actually, I haven’t,’ Amy snaps back. ‘Unlike you, I’m not dead.’
‘Yet!’ Ange says. ‘And when you do die, you’ve got to go through a whole dead person process before you can communicate with the living.’
‘IF I die,’ Amy snaps back at Ange.
‘Oh, you are so naïve, aren’t you? We’re all gonna die someday, Amy.’
‘Aghh! Will you two just shut up for one minute!’ I snap.
‘What?’
‘Oh no, not you, Jack. These two – Ange and Amy. Since Amy went into a coma, she’s kind of trapped in between worlds. She’s kind of a … what would you call it? A part-time spirit? Until she comes out of the coma, if she comes out of the coma …’ I try to explain, but the more I try, the madder it sounds. I bet Jack’s thinking … oh my God, what must Jack be thinking? I bet he’s having second thoughts. I mean, who in their right mind would want to marry someone who spends their whole time talking to dead people, huh? There’s not going to be just the two of us in this marriage, there will be dozens, no hundreds, maybe thousands!
When I first met Jack, I worried about the usual kinds of things other young women worried about; you know, whether Maybelline was better than No7 or whether I could still get away with wearing a miniskirt, that sort of thing. Now I worry about dead people. I think about them from the moment I wake to the moment I go to sleep, particularly if they come through to me with a desperate problem. Bloody dead people!
‘Sam?’ Jack says quietly and seriously.
‘Uh-oh,’ Ange says.
‘What do you mean, uh-oh?’ Amy asks.
‘I mean something’s up. I can feel it in me waters,’ Ange whispers back.
Oh no. He has had second thoughts. He’s thinking I don’t want a psychic for a wife. I don’t even want to be a psychic wife. I only ever got into this to earn some money to pay my bloody rent and now look at me.
‘Jack, you don’t have to say anything. I know what you’re going to say. It’s all too much for you, this psychic malarkey …’ My voice breaks with huge sobs.
‘Sam?’
‘Yes?’ I snort.
‘Ewww!’ Amy and Ange chorus.
‘Sam, I would love you even if you were Buffy the vampire slayer. Don’t worry; you’re doing a fantastic job. You have an amazing gift, whether you like it or not. Think I can’t handle a few ghosts? Ha! I laugh in the face of them ghosts!’ Jack does a theatrical laugh. ‘What I was going to say was, don’t forget that I’m …’
‘But you must wonder what it would be like to have a normal girlfriend. I mean this is hardly a conventional relationship, is it?’ I babble on. ‘What if I become possessed like my mother, or … or what if you decide you would much rather be with someone who is normal? Someone who doesn’t talk to dead people?’
‘Sam! Look, I love you, OK?’ There’s a lot of background noise and I can hardly hear him. ‘Look, I have to go,’ Jack says quickly.
‘What? Where? What were you going to say?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jack says. I hear someone call out Jack’s name, ‘I have to go. I’ll call you later. Loves ya.’
‘Ah, he is lovely, isn’t he?’ Ange says.
‘Oi, he’s spoken for! My best friend is about to marry him!’ Amy snaps back.
‘Your best friend? I think you’ll find you lost that right when you did the dirty on Sam, didn’t you?’ Ange has a point.
‘Well, we will soon find out who’s her best friend when she chooses who is going to be her maid of honour, won’t we? Besides, you might not be around when she gets married.’
‘Listen, luv, whether I’m dead or alive, I’ll be attending that wedding, so I should get your coat if I were you!’
Oh great! I’m having a bit of an inferiority complex here about my boyfriend not loving me and these two are fighting like cat and dog, although I have to say, as weird as it sounds, it really is nice to hear Amy talk again, even if it is only in my head. As it stands, her body is still too weak to come out of the coma, but she’s still the same sassy girl she always was and although what she did to me was beyond horrible, somehow that doesn’t seem to matter any more. All that matters is that she gets better.
Her mother, Lorraine, has spent the past week hiring someone to sit next
to Amy’s bed. She couldn’t do it herself, you understand: her time is much too precious to sit with her only daughter. No, instead she hired her maid to sit next to her bed, instructing her to call if there was any change.
The sleazeball of a boyfriend who hurt Amy was arrested by the police and is awaiting trial in some Spanish cell. I hope he rots in it. I also hope to God that Amy pulls through so that she can testify against him.
‘I really loved him, Sam,’ Amy whispers. ‘I thought he was the one, you know. I thought he was like your Jack. I thought he was my Evermore.’
‘You are frigging joking, aren’t you?’ Ange butts in. ‘Have you actually seen what he’s done to you? You look like shit. And I bet it’s not for the first time, either. I tell you, if my Danny ever did anything like that to me, he’d be right out of the door!’
‘Yeah, but he wasn’t always like that.’ Amy defends her dire choice in men. ‘He was really nice to me – once.’
‘Once a woman-beater, always a woman-beater,’ Ange says sagely.
Err, girls, can you just bugger off a minute and take this elsewhere, please? I think.
‘Oh, sorry, Sam. Yeah, we’ll just …’
The voices stop. Thank God!
Once I’ve settled the kittens down, fed Missy and Spencer and had a nice relaxing hot bath, I flick the TV on and ring Miracle. I wonder who it was calling Jack away from the phone.
‘You sound exhausted, Sam,’ Miracle worries.
‘I am.’
‘You are going to have to shut the door on them sometimes, my love,’ she advises.
‘But, what if …’
‘If Amy dies?’
‘Yes. If I shut the door on them then I can’t keep an eye on them all, can I?’
Miracle has warned me about this before; about mentally closing the door to the spirit world so that I can get a bit of peace and quiet and be normal again for five minutes, but I just can’t do it. Even with Ange, I worry that something might happen to her if I’m not around, and what if my dad needs me urgently or someone else I know, you know, dies and I’m not there to talk to them and comfort them?
‘If you don’t, Sammy, then you will eventually exhaust yourself and you may lose your powers altogether. But more importantly, you may lose what you have here. You can’t live to honour the dead, Sam. We’re all entitled to a break, you know. You wouldn’t be expected to work twenty-four hours a day, every day, in another job, would you – except perhaps in China.’ Miracle laughs her throaty laugh.
Oh Great, Now I Can See Dead People Page 19