by E. C. Bell
“He said it would take time to get before a judge. That we just needed to be patient,” he said. Then his voice rose angrily. “Maybe I should get him down here so he can see what’s happening to you.” He glared, and the card game dissolved into a full-fledged fight. Cards and slippers flew, and the orderlies finally jumped in to break up the two geriatric combatants.
I noticed Nurse Melodie. Her eyebrows were pulled down, and her mouth was a tight lipless slit as she stared at me. And James.
“Look at me,” I said. “James, look at me right now.”
“What?” he snapped, but he finally looked back in my direction, and I locked eyes with him, as well as I was able.
“You gotta calm down.”
He glanced around the room, and then back at me. “I’m calm,” he said.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “And if you don’t get control, my nurse will kick you out of here, and probably won’t let you back. So please, calm the fuck down.”
He blinked, comically. “You swore at me,” he whispered. “Are you aware that you swore at me?”
“I am well aware,” I said, even though I hadn’t even noticed I’d used the big bad. “Just trying to show how important it is that you listen to me.”
“Oh,” he said. His mouth quirked an almost smile. “All right. You got my attention.”
“Good.”
“Just maybe don’t do that again,” he said. “Because, well, I didn’t really appreciate it.”
“All right,” I said, and laughed. “I’ll try. Now, let’s talk.” It took me a minute to get my thoughts in order, but I kept staring at him, right into his eyes as I did so, and finally I had a tiny mental to-do list ready. “Did you call Greg? Tell him I won’t be there for the ball game tonight?”
“Yeah, I did,” James said. His face tightened, and that made my heart clench.
“What did he say?” I whispered. “Glad she’s gone? We don’t need her kind—”
“Marie, he didn’t say anything like that,” James said. “He was just afraid that he wouldn’t be able to replace you on such short notice. Afraid he’d have to forfeit the game. And he told me to tell you to get well, soon.”
I frowned. “What did you tell him happened to me?”
“I told him the truth,” he said. “Why, shouldn’t I?”
“No, no that was fine,” I said. I honestly didn’t know if it was good or not, but it felt like we were way past trying to hide the ugliness that my life had become. “I just wonder why he hoped I’d get well. You know?”
“I don’t think he knew how to react,” James said. “So he said the first thing that popped into his head. You know?”
“Yeah,” I said. Then I shrugged. “I guess he could have said a lot worse things.”
“Probably,” James replied.
We were both silent as we thought about things. I was thinking about what Greg Robertson could have said. I didn’t know what James was thinking about.
“Did you get hold of Jasmine?” I finally asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “She cried.”
“Dammit.”
“I told her I’d take care of everything,” he said. “That she didn’t have to worry. I’d get you out of here.”
“So, you lied,” I said. “To my roommate.”
“Basically, yes,” he said. “I didn’t know what else to say.”
“There’s a lot of that going on.”
“Yeah.”
And then, we both thought some more. James reached across the table and touched my hand. I grabbed his fingers hard and hung on like a drowning person would. Loosened my grip when I saw him grimace.
“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You can never hurt me,” he said. “Hang on as tight as you need.”
“Thanks,” I said, but I loosened my grip even more anyhow. “Have you heard from Sylvia?”
“No, not yet.”
“Well, maybe get hold of her and tell her to get to work on proving that I didn’t hurt that son of a bitch. She knows I didn’t do it.” I pulled my hand from James’s suddenly slack fingers and sat as upright as I was able. “She knows.”
“Marie, knowing that ghosts did the deed isn’t quite the same as proving that they did it,” James said quietly. “I honestly don’t know what she can do to prove that.”
“Well, the least she could do is tell Parkerson she believes me,” I said. “You know?”
“I’ll talk to her,” he said.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
We had another think session, and I noticed that the card game had resumed. It didn’t look like the guy who’d lost his false teeth had found them, and I wondered if someone had stolen them.
“So, you want to hear something funny?” I asked, dragging my eyes back to James.
“Sure,” he said. But he sure didn’t look like he wanted to hear about anything funny that had happened to me in this place.
“I saw a couple of ghosts,” I whispered. “In my room.”
He stared at me for what felt like a full minute. “You’re kidding,” he finally said.
I shook my head. “Wouldn’t kid you about a thing like that.”
“They really can find you, can’t they?” he asked.
“Most definitely. The first one is about my age. I think.” I shrugged. “It’s sometimes hard to tell, you know.”
“I imagine,” he said. “What did she want?”
“Oh, it’s a guy,” I replied. Then I smiled. “He’s actually quite good-looking, even though I think he’s stark raving. He told me not to eat anything here. That someone is killing people, and he thinks it’s poison.” I finally realized that James was staring at me. Hard. “Why are you giving me the stink eye?”
“Did you say the ghost is cute?” James asked.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “I guess. Why?”
“You’ve never talked about a ghost like that before.” He frowned. “Mostly you talk about what pains in the butt they are. But never how they look.”
“Because usually they look like hell,” I replied. “So, what if I do think he’s cute? That has nothing to do with anything. What if he’s telling me the truth—that someone in here is killing people—”
“I just don’t understand why you’d mention the fact that you think this ghost is cute,” James said, clenching his hands again. Clench clench clench.
“Stop it,” I said, pointing. “You’ll get the patients wound up again.”
“Whatever,” he said. “Just explain to me why you think this ghost is so cute.”
“Are you serious right now?” I asked. Man, I was too high for this crap. I really was. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re actually jealous? Of a frigging spirit?”
He blinked a few times, like he’d somehow found himself on the edge of a very tall cliff with no recollection of how he’d actually arrived at that spot.
“No,” he finally said. “No, no I’m not.”
“Good,” I said. “Because if I thought that there was even a remote possibility that you were jealous, I’d have to kick the crap out of you. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” he said, and had the good grace to look sheepish. “Man, this whole situation is throwing me for a loop.”
“Me too,” I said. “Want to know something else?”
“What?”
“I think that the drugs my shrink has me on is blocking the ghost. Sort of.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think he was in my room a second time. After they doped me up.”
James frowned. “What do you mean, you think?”
“Believe me, I’m in a lot better shape than I was a couple of hours ago. I could have imagined him, to be honest. But I’m almost positive he was there.”
“Oh.” He looked shocked, which let me know just how screwed up I sounded. I decided I’d deal with that bit of information later. Or never. Whatever came first.
“
Anyhow, he was in my room, and he tried to speak to me. And I couldn’t hear a word he said,” I said. Then I laughed. “If I wasn’t so high, that bit of information would probably throw me for a loop, but right now, it’s more an interesting sidebar. Know what I mean?”
“I guess,” James said. “So what—what—”
“I don’t know what it means,” I said. “It’s just an interesting sidebar. But you can do me a favour. Look him up. His name’s Jasper Flynn. Find out what his deal is—or was. And find out how many people have died in here in the past six or seven years. Probably seven, just to be on the safe side. I think that’s how long he’s been here, anyhow. If he sees a pattern to the deaths, maybe there actually is one, and maybe I need to put my sleuthing hat on.”
“No,” James said.
It was my turn to look shocked. “What do you mean, no?”
“I mean I don’t think you should investigate any deaths while you’re in here,” he said. “I think that you should just keep your head down and wait this out. Maybe it’s a good thing you can’t hear this ghost anymore. Just ignore him, and maybe he’ll go away. You need to think of your situation first.”
My natural snarkiness, which had been kind of obliterated by the drugs, reared its ugly head, and I was glad, because for a second I almost felt normal. “Oh really,” I said. “Well, I think that there might be something going on here, and if there is, I should do something about it. So find out about the ghost, and about the deaths.”
Honestly, I could see that what James had suggested actually was the smart thing for me to do, because the big reason I was even in here was because of stupid ghosts, but for the moment, I didn’t care. If there was something I could do, I would do it. And James would just have to get over it.
“All right,” he finally said. “I’ll get you the information, if I can find it.”
We said our good-byes shortly after, and James looked shell-shocked as he kissed me on the cheek.
Yep, on the cheek. Like I was a second cousin or something.
“I’ll be back when I can,” he said. “I promise.”
“You better,” I said. “I’m counting on you.”
“I know,” he said, and I’ve never seen the man look more miserable in my life. “I know.”
AFTER HE LEFT, Nurse Melodie clamped her strong fingers on my elbow. “Let’s get you back to your room,” she said. “It’s time for you to have a little rest.”
She led me out of the rec area, and down the hallway to my room, and I let her. I don’t think I could have resisted her even if I’d tried. She was right. That conversation with James had exhausted me. Maybe I did need a little rest. Or a nap. A nap sounded like a kind of wonderful idea, even if the bed was too soft.
But when she opened the door, Jasper was waiting for me.
“Who the hell was that guy?” he snapped. “Your husband or something?”
Good grief. His voice had the same tone that James’s voice had. He sounded jealous.
Men.
Jasper:
She Has a Boyfriend . . .
MARIE STILL DIDN’T look great. And she couldn’t seem to focus her eyes. But that didn’t stop her from yelling.
“Jesus!” she cried when Nurse Melodie finally left the room and we were alone. “Is it so important that I’m surrounded by men who act like I’m property or something?”
“Oh,” I said, and tried to rethink. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, you never do,” she said, then shook her head and dropped to the edge of her bed. “God I’m tired,” she mumbled. “Way too tired for this shit—”
Then she stopped and stared at me. “Say something else.”
“What would you like me to say?”
“That’s enough,” she muttered, and waved her hands at me. “I can hear you again. So, the drugs aren’t blocking my hearing permanently. Maybe it isn’t as bad as I thought.”
“Oh,” I said. “So, you couldn’t hear me before?” Explained a bunch.
“Yeah, but now I can.” She shook her head. “Still lots of ringing in my ears, so you’ll have to speak up a bit, but looks like we’ll be able to talk.”
“Well, that’s good then,” I said, though I didn’t know how long it would remain good. What happened when the staff gave her another dose? Would she just be momentarily deaf to me, or would her ability to hear me go away permanently?
I thought about Franklin Gilroy, who’d died here some time before. He was deaf. Maybe he’d be able to help with the communication problem. He was a pain in the ass, though. He either stared out the window or he talked about the good old days, which all seemed to centre on the Vietnam War. And he’d been dead forever. There had to be another way around the deafness, if it happened again. “Can we talk about the killer now that you can hear me again?”
“Sure,” she said. “Any idea who it is?”
“Nope.”
“Of course,” she said, and sighed. Swiped her hand over her face, like she was trying to remove cobwebs, and then glared at me. “First, we talk about James,” she said. “Then we talk about how to catch this killer of yours.”
“James?”
“The guy I was talking to,” she said. “The one you yelled at me about.”
“I didn’t yell,” I said.
“Sounded like yelling to me,” she said. “Even with the ringing in my ears.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just, I don’t get much of a chance to talk to the living, you know? I want you—”
“For yourself?” she asked.
I froze, because I couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not.
“I asked you a question,” she snapped. “You going to answer me?”
I shook my head and took a step back to get away from her sudden anger.
“Well, if you’re not going to talk, I am,” she said. “Here’s the deal about James. He is my boyfriend, even though that’s the stupidest word in the whole of the English language, and you can just knock off with the jealous noises because I do not appreciate it at all. Not from you, and not from him. But especially, not from you. You are dead. Being jealous is way past you, now. You understand?”
“But—but I feel a connection to you,” I whispered, even as I wished with all my heart that I could just shut my mouth.
“Yeah, well, the connection we have is that you are dead and I can see you,” Marie said. “And maybe I can help you solve the problem you have here. I can also help you move on to the next plane of existence if you’re interested, but you have to understand that you and I will never be anything more than what we are right now at this moment. Got it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You don’t have to be mean about it.”
“It seems to be the only way to get through to men,” she muttered. “If I don’t get mean, it’s like I didn’t say anything at all.”
While I digested this nasty bit of information, she sighed and pulled her riot of curly hair away from her face. “Man, I’d give anything for a hair tie,” she said.
“I kinda like it down,” I said. “You look really pretty that way.”
“Did you hear one word I said?” she snapped. “One frigging word?”
“Well, yeah,” I said, defensively. “So you’re saying I can’t even give you a compliment? About your hair, or your eyes, or—” I looked at her chest before I realized what the hell I was doing, and if I’d been alive, I would have blushed like a school kid as I snapped my eyes back to her face and her furious, drugged eyes. “Ah shit,” I muttered.
“See?” she said. “See?”
“Yeah,” I said, carefully keeping my eyes on her face. “And I’m sorry, OK?”
She stared at me for a horribly long moment, then sighed and pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. “Wow, I can barely think,” she said. “This is horrible.”
“The side effects will diminish over time,” I said.
“How long?”
“A week. Maybe two.”
�
��Damn,” she said. “That’s a long time to feel like this.”
“Not really,” I said. “Not in here.”
“Yeah, that’s what I need,” she said, and sneered. “To be reminded that I’m going to be here longer than two frigging weeks.” She shook her head. “This sucks in ways I can’t even describe.”
“Yeah, well wait until you have your first circle jerk,” I said.
She frowned. “My first what?”
“Sorry,” I said, figuring that was probably the wrong thing to say, too. “It was just a joke. I meant group therapy session.”
“Oh.” She sighed. “Fantastic.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Just go along with them. Nothing pisses the staff off more than having one of us say no to one.”
“Got it,” she said. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” I smiled, careful to keep my eyes on her face. Then I decided I’d tell her about Franklin. “Listen, I might know how we can keep communicating even if you go deaf again.”
“Oh?”
“There’s a guy here who knows sign language. I—I could get him to teach it to me. Some of the signs, anyhow. And I’ll teach you, if you want.”
She stared at me for a long moment, and I was afraid she was going to tell me what a stupid idea it was, but she finally nodded her head, slowly. “I guess we could give it a try,” she said. “I don’t know how much I’ll hang on to, with my brain all mush like it is, but . . . I guess we could try.”
“All right!” I cried, a little too enthusiastically, and then nodded. Dealing with Franklin would be worth it, if it meant I’d be able to keep talking to her. “Sounds good. I’ll ask him when I see him again.”
There was a short silence, and I was just about ready to go when she spoke again.
“So, tell me about the other ghost who showed up here,” she said.
“Another ghost?” I asked, and felt my heart clench angrily. “Who?”
“I don’t know her name,” Marie continued, luckily not noticing my burst of anger. “But she definitely wanted me to leave you alone. She was in her thirties, with a bed sheet—”