by Gina Ardito
In fact, one afternoon, while she sat at her kitchen table, poking on her laptop—there was an amazing device!—she paused and stared at the ceiling.
“You know, if you’re not going to talk to me, you may as well stop coming around, Sean. These impromptu visits aren’t as anonymous as you think. And the last thing I need these days is a creepy stalker.”
The pain of betrayal sharpened every word, and he winced.
“For the record,” she continued her diatribe, “I’m working on my will. You’re not in it. Not that I could leave you anything anyway. But I want you to know that, even if I could, I wouldn’t. I’ve met some shady characters in my life, but you really suck. All that bull about how you wanna make sure I don’t kill myself so I don’t wind up like you, and where are you now? Off with some other angel? Hanging out in the Maldives, laughing about me, the idiot you fooled? Hey! I have an idea! What if I strolled into my bathroom right now and emptied all the pill bottles into my throat? Think you’d talk to me then?”
Oh, Christ! She wouldn’t. Would she? Because he couldn’t guarantee he’d get permission from the Elders to get to her before it was too late. Frantic, he waved a hand toward Xavia’s office, hoping to catch her attention while still focusing on Isabelle. “Don’t do it, Belle. Please. Don’t take out your anger at me on yourself.”
A grim smile appeared on her face. “Don’t sweat it, Sean. Before I was allowed to come back here, Justin and Tony went through my house like the safety patrol, removing any item I might use to harm myself. They even took my dental floss.”
On a sigh of relief, Sean relaxed. Thank God for Justin and Tony.
Her mirthless chuckle came out as a choked sob. “It’ll be just my luck that I survive the brain tumor and then die from some virulent form of gingivitis.”
“What’s up?”
Xavia’s sudden intrusion made Sean flinch in his chair.
He pulled himself together and pointed to the image on his board. “Isabelle. She’s really hurt that I’m not communicating with her.”
“So?”
“So...I’m worried she might try to kill herself again just to gain my attention.”
“Is she hinting she would do that?”
“Hinting? Yeah, you could say that. She just came out and threatened to swallow all the pills in her medicine cabinet.”
“Shit. You think she’s serious?”
“Ssh! Just listen.”
On the screen, Isabelle sniffed. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she swiped them away with a balled fist. “I really liked you, you know. I might have even loved you. Which not only makes this whole situation laughable, but it also confirms I’m a frickin’ moron when it comes to picking men. You’re just the last in a long line of selfish pricks who took advantage of me and left me on my own after I’d given you what you needed.”
“Wow,” Xavia remarked on a shaky breath. Pulling up an empty chair to sit beside him at the desk, she repeated, “Oh, wow. She’s hurting bad.”
“I know.” He scraped fingers across his scalp. “And I can’t tell her she’s got it all wrong. Even if I could reach her now, she’d never believe anything I say. And if she decides to try to kill herself again? How the hell am I supposed to stop her when she thinks I used her?”
“Well, don’t worry about me,” Isabelle told the ceiling. “I’m gonna be fine without you. So do me a favor. Go away. Stop hovering over me. Leave me alone.” She bent her head toward the laptop again and typed at a rapid pace.
Xavia tapped her ringed fingers against the edge of the desk. “I think she just gave you the blow-off, Sean.”
For the first time since Isabelle started talking to him during this session, he took his gaze off his screen to narrow his eyes at Xavia. “Gee, ya think?”
She clapped a hand on his bicep and squeezed. “Don’t worry. She’s angry now. But that’s good. It means she’s coming to terms with her situation. She’s gonna be okay. She’s on her way to getting along without you.”
“Yeah, great,” he growled.
How was he supposed to go on without her?
~~~~
Seven days later, Isabelle lay in a hospital bed in the pre-op area while two white-coated torture specialists attached an aluminum box to her head. One of them lifted his arms and, at the first whiff of his body odor, her nostril hairs burned. Great. Dozens of people working this department, she got stuck with the cretin who didn’t believe in personal hygiene. Not exactly an auspicious beginning.
Fear took hold, slamming her heart against her ribs and stealing rational thought from her malignant brain. The discomfort of the stupid frame pressed to her head couldn’t compare to the terror taking hold of her from the inside out.
She shouldn’t have come here. This was a mistake. What the hell did she expect? A miracle? She’d already been given a guardian angel. An absentee guardian angel.
God, how she wished Sean was here. After she made the phone call to that girl’s mom, he’d showered her with praise and cheers. And then...nothing. Like a jilted prom date, she sat around at night, waiting to hear his voice or have him pop up in her dreams. But he never showed.
Oh, he sent her dreams: visions of herself laughing with Tony and Justin, a particularly sensual image of sunshine warming her bare skin on a private beach, and one night, she swam with dolphins in a moonlit sea. All very...nice. Pedestrian. Truistic. None of the messages were personal. And none of them calmed her the way one lousy conversation with him could.
Whatever happened to his promise to stay with her every step of the way? Because, now, she really needed someone by her side.
Some guardian angel he turned out to be. Just like everyone else in her life, once she’d outlived her usefulness to him, he’d flown into the ether.
The tag-team tormentors stepped back, smiling. “All set,” the more pleasant-smelling of the two said. “Just relax, Ms. Fichetti. The doctor’ll be here in a bit to go over last-minute stuff with you, and then we’ll be back to wheel you into radiology for the MRI. Okay?”
Panic thickened her tongue, dried her throat, and she nodded. Was it too late to back out? The cream-colored walls closed in on her, stealing the available air in the room. Gripping the bed rails, she struggled to pull oxygen into her lungs. Her chest tightened, and the thin mattress beneath her swayed, as if on a storm-swept sea.
The what ifs bombarded her yet again. What if the MRI showed it was too late? What if something went wrong? What if the machine malfunctioned and burned her face off? What if the hospital suffered a power surge while her brain was being blasted with gamma rays? The idea of her brain exploding like a hot dog cooked too long in the microwave bolted her upright.
“I changed my mind,” she exclaimed, her hands clawing at the metal box on her head. “I don’t want to do this. Get me out of this thing.”
“Take it easy,” the sweaty intern said, leaning over her again to check the screws above her eyebrows. “Relax. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. I don’t want to do this.” Tears pooled in her eyes and streamed down her cheeks. “Get me out of here. Tell them I’m not coming. I’ll pay them for their time if they want, but I’m not sticking my head into that machine.” She continued yanking on the frame, but the metal wouldn’t budge. “Get me out of here!” Like a trapped animal, she howled her outrage. “Let me go! I don’t want to do this! I changed my mind. Let me go. I wanna go home.”
A team of people burst into the room and set upon her, grabbing her hands, pinning her down, shushing her.
And while she heard all of them, she refused to heed their instructions. Only one person could calm her now. “Sean! I want Sean! Please. Get Sean. Tell him to take this cage off my head!”
“Belle, stop.”
Justin’s voice permeated the haze of strangers, and she reached out blindly, grabbing his shirt hem. “Justin. I changed my mind. I can’t do this. Tell them to let me out of this box. Please. Take me home. Don’t make me stay here. I don’t care if
I die tomorrow. I just wanna go home.”
“Hey, come on, Belle.” A soothing hand brushed across her cheek, but had no effect on her terror. Even when she recognized the familiar scent of Justin’s after-shave. In fact, the sweet, spicy cloves on his neck roiled the nausea in her stomach. No wonder they ordered her not to eat before the procedure: between the intern’s body odor and Justin’s cologne, any food she’d ingested would have roared up and onto the floor by now. “I’m gonna vomit,” she announced. “You have to get me out of here.”
“Stop,” Justin scolded. “You’re okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of. You can do this.”
“No. I can’t. Not by myself.”
“You’re not by yourself. I’m going to be right outside the exam room the whole time. Tomorrow, you’ll come home with me, and you’ll be in the best of hands. Tony and I are going to take good care of you. You know that. We love you. You know we would never let anything bad happen to you.”
No. She didn’t know any such thing. If he really meant what he said, he’d take her out of here right this minute. He wouldn’t let all these people hold her down so they could inject some weird nuclear energy into her skull. “I can’t, Justin. I can’t do this. Please don’t make me do this.”
“Don’t be afraid, Belle. It’s going to be okay. It’ll be over before you know it. You’ll see.”
She struggled against the strong hands pressing into her shoulders. “I want Sean. He can come inside with me.”
“Sean who? Is he a doctor?”
“No. Sean. He’s my—” She stopped short. Even in her dread, she realized she couldn’t explain the existence of her guardian angel. “He’s my friend.” Or, at least, he had been until he stopped spending time with her.
“If he’s not part of the medical team,” Mr. Body Odor interjected, “he won’t be allowed in the room with you, miss.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said on a defeated sigh. “He doesn’t care anyway. He’d only come back if I tried to hurt myself again. And since I made that deal with Tony, Sean doesn’t think I need him anymore. But he’s wrong.” Another sigh while another tear slipped down her cheek and she whispered, “He’s dead wrong.”
Chapter 15
“Sean! I want Sean!”
Isabelle’s cries thundered inside his cranium, and he turned to Xavia, allowing the latest orb ball to whizz by, unhindered. “Did you hear that?”
Xavia stood up straight, head cocked, listening. “Hear what?”
“Isabelle. She’s calling me. Screaming for me, actually.”
Xavia’s expression transformed from bland to concerned, and her posture stiffened. “Why? What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know.”
She stalked toward him and punched a balled fist into his shoulder. “Well, find out. Where’s your clipboard?”
He jerked his head at the corner of the floor near the door, where both their boards sat, cold and empty. Since Isabelle was obviously awake, no messages came from the communication device. The new rules instituted by the Board and the Elders were in full force. Only in her dreams...
“Get Sean! Tell him to let me out of this box!” Isabelle’s terrified pleas echoed in his ears.
What felt like his heart—if he’d still had one—beat rapidly against his chest. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath. He gasped for air, and the cells that made up his Afterlife existence careened inside him, erratic marbles on a slick surface. Dull pressure clamped his head, and he set his hands on either side to ease the sensory overload. Panic overwhelmed him, forced him to seek some kind of escape, but he felt the power of others pushing him back, pinning him in place.
“Sean?” Xavia’s voice came from some invisible tunnel, all shadow with no substance. “What’s wrong?”
At first, he had no clue, but as Isabelle’s struggles intersected within him, he came up with an answer. “I think I’m experiencing an empathetic reaction to whatever Isabelle’s going through.”
Xavia didn’t question the statement. Instead, she gripped his shoulders and focused concerned eyes on his face. “What’s happening to her?”
“I’m not sure. She’s boxed in or something, held down. And she’s terrified.”
“Talk to her,” Xavia urged.
“I can’t. The Elders—”
“Yes, you can.” She left him where he stood, retrieved his clipboard, and returned to shove the device into his hands. “To hell with the Elders. I told you, Isabelle’s your one priority. Not me, not the Elders. Make sure she’s okay.”
“But—”
“No buts. I’m your boss, dammit. For once, don’t question authority, stow your pissy attitude, and do what I tell you. Talk to Isabelle. Now!”
Despite the hysteria surging inside him, he pictured her in his head and placed his fingers on the cold, sterile surface. Resistance met his first attempt at contact, so he doubled his efforts, envisioning himself beside her, holding her hand. Through all his concentration, her cries still pierced the chilly fog inside him.
He had to get to her. Had to reach her. Something, however, some force field, held him here. Blocked him.
“Come on, Sean,” Xavia muttered. “Go. Don’t just stand around. Help her.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
He pushed again, came up against the same solid barrier. “No. Something’s stopping me. Like a brick wall I can’t break through and can’t climb over. It’s gotta be the damned Elders. They’ve blocked me in.”
“Keep trying!” erupted from Xavia while Isabelle continued to call, “I want Sean. Please. Get Sean.”
“I’m working on it,” he shouted at both of them.
“Work harder. And faster,” Xavia ordered.
Too bad he’d never had the chance to figure out how exactly he made the trip from here to there when Isabelle needed him. In the past, he’d barely registered any change in himself before he wound up on the other side. So now, when he needed to get to her, he couldn’t manifest the right combination. He shook his head. “It’s no use. I can’t reach her. Whatever the Elders have conjured up is too thick.”
“Bullshit. If you can hear her, there’s gotta be a way to get to her.”
“I’m doing everything I can. Nothing’s working,” he insisted.
“What if you did that meld thing?” Xavia suggested. “Do you think that would give you enough power to break through?”
“I don’t know.” He considered the idea. Melds allowed bounty hunters to transport heavy burdens, souls with centuries of heartache and grief weighing them down. Would a meld with Xavia give him enough power to obliterate the barriers tossed up by the Elders? “Maybe.”
“How do we do it?”
He opened his eyes, noticed the frantic urgency on her face. Christ, she really wanted him to do this—to disobey the Elders, regardless of the consequences to her. “You are one ballsy woman,” he told her.
“Forget the compliments. Get the hell out of here. Save Isabelle.”
Thrusting out his hand, he slapped his palm over Xavia’s chest where, in life, her heart would reside. Energy pulsed, radiated, blossomed from that simple contact, forcing him up, up and out. For an instant, he rocketed through time and space, past blackest night and brightest days, and when at last he landed, his hand held Isabelle’s. They were in a cavernous white room, a vast steel tunnel towering above them. Behind a large window, four men and a woman, all garbed in white, stood at a console filled with blinking buttons and levers.
Isabelle lay on a long, cushioned table in front of the tunnel’s mouth like a sacrificial offering to some metallic god, a strange geometric contraption connected to her head. As if she’d sensed the moment of his arrival, her cries and outrage silenced.
“Hey, Belle,” he greeted her with a smile. “Did you miss me?”
“Sean.” Relief flooded through her, and he felt her muscles go slack. “You came.”
“Sorry I didn’t get here sooner. What
’s going on?”
“It’s some kind of gamma knife thingy they want to do to me. They’re going to shoot radiation into my brain. They think it might slow the progression of the tumor.” She pierced him with a razor-sharp look. “Will it?”
“I have no idea. What did the doctors tell you?”
“That I had a ghost of a chance.” Her lips turned up in tremulous appreciation at her own jest.
“What’s with the birdcage hat?”
She raised a hand to touch the metal frame. “Part of the procedure. Supposedly, it keeps my head from moving during the radiation so they don’t miss and hit my brain instead of the tumor.”
“Looks uncomfortable.”
“Yeah, well, it’s sometimes painful to be stylish. You should’ve seen my Easter bonnet last year.”
“I bet.” He paused, gauging her tear-stained cheeks, her red-rimmed eyes. Amazing how she could still joke with him, despite her terror. “Are you okay?”
“I am now. Where’ve you been?”
“Not allowed to see you,” he admitted. “Technically, I’m still not.”
“Are you going to get in trouble for being here?”
“Probably. But don’t worry about me. How are you?”
She offered him a bitter laugh. “You mean, besides scared out of my wits and feeling like my head’s stuck in a vise?”
“Yeah, besides that.”
“I’m glad you came. Even if it does get you in trouble. Does that make me a bad person?”
“No. It makes you human. And it makes me glad that I can put you at ease just by being with you. Relax, Belle. I’m here. I’ll stay right beside you ‘til you don’t need me anymore.”
From outside the invisible bubble they’d created for themselves, another voice erupted. “Okay, Ms. Fichetti, we’re going to start the procedure now. Just relax, okay?”