by L. T. Ryan
Cassie tapped a finger on her chin. “We never saw the Ghost Doctor at Tulane, but she obviously isn’t from UMC if it’s that new.”
“Don’t ghosts haunt where they die?”
“Not always.” Cassie looked around and lowered her voice. No one was paying attention to them, but she didn’t want to risk being overheard. “They go where they have particular ties, like where they died, where they’re buried, even where their family is, even if they’ve moved across the country.”
“And you said the Ghost Doctor is different from all the others, right? So, maybe she’s stronger, which means—”
“—she’s able to move around more freely.” Goosebumps erupted over Cassie’s skin. “If she started at Tulane, something could’ve pulled her away from there. Then she found UMC and stuck around.”
“And just because you’ve only seen her at UMC doesn’t mean she hasn’t traveled back to Tulane.”
A grin erupted over Cassie’s face. “Are you starting to take my Ghost Doctor theory seriously now?”
“I’m not not taking it seriously,” he said. “But we still haven’t proven anything. And even if we figure out she’s responsible for the uptick in murders, it doesn’t mean we’ll be able to do anything about it. Unless we can exorcise the whole hospital.”
Cassie had never done an exorcism, and she told Jason as much. “Or we figure out what she wants and help her move on.”
“But we can only do that if—”
“—we know who she is.”
Cassie loved being on the same page as Jason. It reminded her of working with David, which could be as effortless as breathing. She and David had cultivated their relationship over an entire decade, and though David trusted her, he sometimes treated her like a kid. Jason, on the other hand, treated her as an equal.
“What’s the goofy grin for?”
“Nothing.” Cassie tried to stifle it, but she couldn’t. And she didn’t really want to. “I’m just glad you’re here.” Her eyes grew wide. “I mean, not because of the circumstances, obviously. I wish things were different. I wish we didn’t have to be doing this. But since we are, I’m just glad it’s you.”
“I’m glad it’s you, too.”
Cassie held Jason’s gaze for as long as she could before looking away, her face aflame. She kneeled and began perusing the bottom shelves. “I’ll start down here. You start up there. Let’s find anything we can on the history of the Tulane Medical Center.”
Their second search proved more fruitful than the first. After about fifteen minutes, Jason ushered Cassie over to a table and splayed a thick volume in front of her. It smelled ancient and made her nose tingle, but there was something oddly satisfying about flipping through the yellowed pages.
“This one has pretty much everything you need to know about the medical center.” Jason was bursting with pride. “There are a few books over there, but none of them had this.” He flipped about two-thirds of the way through the book and pointed at a staff registry.
Cassie frowned. “But no pictures.”
Jason held up a finger. He turned a few pages and swept his hands out in front of him as if to say ask and you shall receive. “This is Doctor Emma Thornton. She started off as a midwife, but she soon became a licensed physician. She wasn’t the first woman to become a doctor in New Orleans, but she was the first at Tulane.”
Cassie leaned over the book. There was a crystal-clear, black-and-white photograph of the woman. She wore a black dress with a high collar. Her face fell in shadow, and she’d pinned her hair back into a high bun.
In other words, everything about her was wrong.
“This isn’t the Ghost Doctor.”
“I figured as much.” Jason hadn’t lost any of his enthusiasm. “She seemed a little too old. She received her license in 1876. So, I kept looking.” He flipped the page. “Dr. Dorothea Bridge. She was Thornton’s apprentice, eventually taking over her practice when Thornton retired.”
The woman kept the same style as her mentor, only her dress was the customary white. “That’s also not her.”
Jason held up another finger, dramatically waiting a few seconds too long before turning the page again. “Bridge took on her own apprentice. Dr. Shelley Marie Cohen. She was licensed in 1932 and practiced until her untimely death in 1947.”
Cassie sucked in a breath. She looked down at the page in front of her, and the Ghost Doctor stared back. She wore a gray dress with a jacket over the top. She’d pinned her dark hair back in curls. Even her hazel eyes were exactly as Cassie remembered them. And just as hypnotizing as in real life.
“That’s her.”
“Yeah?” Jason sat down next to Cassie. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.” She drew the book closer. “Does it say how she died?”
“She was administering to her patients when there was a gas leak. They couldn’t evacuate the hospital in time. She refused to leave until everyone was out. She and twelve of her patients died.”
“How?”
“They suffocated.” Jason’s voice was somber now. All the excitement from earlier was gone. “Painless, as far as deaths go, but no less terrifying.”
“And no less tragic.”
Jason seemed to sense Cassie needed a minute to absorb what he’d found. He left her to read through the woman’s biography on her own while he perused the other books.
Dr. Shelley Marie Cohen had been a remarkable woman. She was twenty-eight when she became a licensed practitioner. She had known Dr. Thornton, but had never worked underneath her. That responsibility had fallen to Dr. Bridge, who had treated Shelley Marie with a kind but firm hand. All three women knew their colleagues and the public would scrutinize them more than any of their male colleagues, so they worked twice as hard to prove themselves. Their track records were impeccable, and the community at large had come to respect them.
But that didn’t mean Dr. Cohen walked an easy path. She never had as many patients as her male colleagues, and she wasn’t allowed to work on the more interesting cases. She had a particular interest in the spread of viral infections, but she could never get close enough to study them on her own.
Her superior bedside manner meant she often had to break terrible news to patients and their family members. After a prominent New Orleanian socialite found herself on death’s door, she begged Dr. Cohen to help her. Within days, the woman recovered and returned to her life as though nothing had ever happened.
Historians now believe Dr. Cohen merely examined the woman and found something another doctor did not, but at the time, rumors spread like wildfire. Whispers told tales of how Dr. Cohen had made a deal with Death. If she looked upon you favorably, she would spare you. But if she sat by your bed, took your hand in her own, and leaned close, then you knew your time was up.
Though there was no proof, some historians believed someone had set the gas leak. If there had been an explosion, as the arsonist had intended, it would’ve destroyed the tools used to open the gas valve, thus destroying the evidence. As it was, no one was convicted of causing the gas leak or killing thirteen innocent people. That day, New Orleans lost a pillar of their community and a brilliant doctor.
Cassie brushed a tear from her cheek. Dr. Cohen had been an exceptional doctor, but in a time when science bordered on the mystical, they had heralded her as some sort of angel of death. It made sense if she continued that role after her death.
Jason sat down next to her. “Find anything?”
“I’m not sure.” Cassie stared at Dr. Cohen’s picture. “She was amazing at what she did. People back then didn’t understand that what she did was science, not magic. They thought she had superpowers, but she was just a normal person.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I’m confused.” Cassie looked up at him, not bothering to hide the tears. “I expected to find someone who had been cruel and inhumane. But she loved every single one of her patients.”
Jason pointed to the book. “His
tory doesn’t always tell us the whole truth. Sometimes we have to find that out on our own.”
“How?”
“Usually by talking to those that came before us.” He grimaced. “Though there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to find anyone who knew Dr. Cohen well enough to give us answers.”
“And if we can’t get answers, then we can’t figure out what she wants. Which means there’s no way we can help her move on.” Cassie blew a piece of hair off her face. “Another dead end.”
“Another wrong turn.” Jason laid a hand on her arm. It was warm and comforting. “But I thought of something else.”
Cassie closed the book on Dr. Cohen, both literally and figuratively. “What?”
“Charli was a real person. She existed somewhere. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to get a job.”
It took Cassie a second to catch on. “The hospital. She’d need to give them some personal information to volunteer there.”
“I texted Vanessa. She said most of the volunteer workers go through one or two major organizations.” He looked at his watch. “It’s too late now, but we could stop by tomorrow. See if they can help us figure out what happened to her.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Cassie wished she felt something other than disappointment, but at every turn they made, an obstacle rose to force them into changing course. She was glad Charli wasn’t a total dead end, but the Ghost Doctor remained an elusive mystery.
One she was tired of trying to solve.
27
Jason and Cassie stayed in the car until someone unlocked the front door of Dana’s Friends, a non-profit volunteer organization in the heart of downtown New Orleans. The bank to its right and the grocery store on its left dwarfed the building, but the bright green sign in the window was enough to catch attention.
The temperature had dropped overnight, and even though it would hit the mid-sixties by that afternoon, the early morning was dim and wet. A steady drizzle made the city look hazy, and the ice-cold drops of water sent goosebumps skittering across Cassie’s skin when they finally exited the vehicle and rushed across the street.
Jason pushed through the open door with Cassie on his heels. It was a cramped room, with three large tables and a smattering of chairs. Posters and bulletin boards covered every inch of wall space. Several people huddled in the back over paper coffee cups. When the bell chimed, a woman with short curly hair and golden-brown skin set down her cup and greeted them. Up close, Cassie saw her coiled hair had streaks of magenta. She wore large, round glasses that made her look like she belonged back in the 1970s.
“Hey there.” Her voice had a southern twang that made Cassie think of cowboy hats and Texas longhorns. “How are y’all today?”
Jason ran his hands up and down his arms. “Could do with a little more heat out there.”
“I hear ya.” The woman craned her neck to look through the front windows. “Supposed to stop raining at some point, but I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“My name is Jason.” He held out his hand. “This is Cassie. We’re hoping you can help us with something.”
She shook both their hands. “My name’s Poppy, and I’ll do my damnedest.”
“We’re trying to contact one of your volunteers. Charli?”
The woman’s mouth twisted into a sympathetic smile. “Unless you have a warrant of some sort, I can’t give away anyone’s personal information.”
“We’re not cops,” Cassie said.
“And we’re not looking for personal information,” Jason supplied. “We just want to contact her.”
“Unfortunately, that falls under personal information.” When the woman shook her head, her curls bounced. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.”
“Can you at least tell us if she worked here?” Cassie didn’t hide the desperation in her voice. “Her name was Charli, without the e, and she had tattoos and piercings.”
“I know who you’re talking about.” Poppy cast a glance around the room. “Maybe you want to look around for a bit? See if you’re interested in helping us out sometime?”
Jason seemed to catch on before Cassie did. “Of course, thank you.”
“Let me know if you need anything else.”
Cassie waited until the woman walked away before turning to Jason. “Another bust?”
“Maybe not.” He pointed to the walls. “Who knows what we might find.”
Cassie took a step closer to one of the bulletin boards. There was no order to the chaos. People had pinned business cards to the middle of posters, which sat atop informational handouts. The topics ranged from insurance to proper care to women’s rights and rampant racism in the health industry.
Then there were photos of the volunteers mixed in with everything else. Sometimes they were grouped in front of the hospital or standing over someone in a hospital bed, offering them food or reading them a book. It looked like Dana’s Friends also organized fundraising opportunities throughout the city, from 5K runs to block parties to book sales.
Jason pressed a finger to a picture of a group of women standing outside a library pushing shopping carts full of books. Three of them were older, at least in their fifties. One of them was in her late twenties. Black hair. Tattoos and piercings. A forced smile on her face. She looked like she was trying to hide behind one of the other women.
“That’s gotta be Charli, right?” Jason asked.
Cassie leaned closer. “Who does that look like to you?”
Jason placed his face next to hers. Their cheeks were almost touching. When he stood back, his eyes were wide. “Stephanie.”
Cassie kept looking at the picture. It was hard to tell because they were night and day, but the two shared some similarities. The slope of their nose. The point of their chin. The angle of their cheekbones.
They kept looking and found two other pictures of Charli, though none of them were clear enough to make a hard call. It seemed she hated being photographed and usually turned her face to the side or hid in the back of a group. Still, there was no denying it. The two were hauntingly similar.
“This doesn’t make sense.” Jason pointed to a picture of Charli hoisting a bag of bottles during a can drive. “Stephanie said she had no idea who the woman was.”
“People lie, you know.”
“But why?” He shook his head. “I don’t mean why do people lie in general. I mean, why would she want to lie? To us?”
“She only half lied. She said she didn’t know Charli, but she sent us to Pete’s Bar. Maybe she wanted to help but was afraid to.”
“She might know more than she let on, then.”
Cassie ran her fingers through her hair. “What if she’s Charli’s sister? Like the guy at the bar said? She could’ve been the one to tell them Charli died. The one to pick up her check.”
“What if Charli’s not dead?” Jason grabbed the back of his neck and squeezed. His entire forehead screwed up in thought. “What if she and Stephanie know something, and they were too afraid to tell us?”
“We need to go back.”
He nodded. “But how are we going to get her to talk?”
“We’ll worry about that when we get there.”
Cassie twisted toward the door, but as she turned, the words HOSPITAL and JUSTICE jumped out at her from a poster near the front window. She stopped so abruptly that Jason nearly knocked her off her feet.
“Sorry—”
“Look.” She pointed at the words that caught her attention. “Justice for Naomi. Hospital malpractice. Don’t become the next victim.”
“Call if you have any information,” Jason continued, “or if a loved one has died under suspicious circumstances at UMC, Tulane, Curahealth, etc. Anonymous tips welcome.”
Cassie looked at Jason and saw her own expression reflected on his face. What had started off as an investigation into Jasmine’s death for the sake of the family’s sanity had exploded into a case of multiple deaths across several hospitals, wi
th no tangible evidence connecting them.
“I’m taking a picture of this.” She held up her phone. “We can call the phone number after we talk to Stephanie again.”
Jason nodded, but didn’t speak. Cassie wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was.
What have we gotten ourselves into?
28
As they rounded the corner to Stephanie’s apartment, Cassie and Jason pulled up short at the exact same time. She could feel his brain spinning with possibilities in tandem with hers, but it took her a full thirty seconds to understand what she was looking at.
The door to apartment 718 was wide open. A male voice emanated from somewhere inside. Pauses in conversation made Cassie think the man was on the phone. The silence between his sentences was deafening. Something was wrong.
Jason approached the door first. Cassie stood behind him and pushed up on her tippy-toes to see over his shoulder. Everything looked as it had yesterday—the kitchen table, a single chair, even the lone recliner. A pair of pint glasses sat on the counter. They had Pete’s Bar emblazoned across the front.
A man emerged from the back room. He held a phone to his ear. Gray hair and a matching beard covered most of his face and head. His beady black eyes caught sight of them. His mouth turned down. He wore a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Either he’d been lounging, or he didn’t care about appearances.
The man hung up the phone and eyed the two newcomers. “Can I help you?”
“We’re looking for the woman who lives here.” Jason’s voice was soft. “Stephanie?”
“She don’t live here no more.” The man’s voice was gruff, but not unkind. Cassie got the impression he lacked people skills. “Moved out last night. Last minute.”
“Do you know why?”
“Didn’t ask.” He looked them up and down. “You interested in renting?”
“No, sorry.” Jason hesitated. “Did she mention where she was going?”
“Like I said, didn’t ask.” He never took his eyes off them. “What’s it to you?”