Believe, page 10
So I watched. I was hungry to see it.
It turned out that each one was different. Sometimes—this is what happened that first time, in fact—there’s just a movement, invisible like wind, that I could feel pulse through the room. Then the machines go silent, death is pronounced, and that’s all there is. No ghost. Nothing.
But other times it’s different. On about my fifth death I saw something that’s exactly what I imagine my death must’ve looked like. There was a code blue—that means they’re trying to revive a body that’s trying to die. As the doctors were doing their business, a shimmer seemed to grow in the air above them. It developed a shape, and then I could see a person: it was the guy lying on the bed, but he was kind of there-not-there, transparent. Ghost-like.
When the machines went blank and the doctor called time of death, I watched the old guy floating there. He looked confused, and then a peace seemed to transform him, and he didn’t look old any more, and he began to glow and fade at the same time. Then that wind—and he was gone.
I was jealous of every one of the deaths that ended that way. But I was also grateful because it could’ve been worse. I saw other kinds of deaths, and I was glad I’d escaped anything like that.
One time there was a young guy brought into the emergency room, where I visited now and then. He was a drug overdose case. He looked like he’d been living on the street, and it was a pretty short space from when he arrived to when they gave up on him. I stayed by his bed, though, because I was surprised: there hadn’t been anything when he died. No wind, no figure, no sense of movement. Nothing.
I waited and watched.
After a while I noticed that something strange was going on with the body. At first, I couldn’t tell what it was. Then I realized it was the ghost of the guy, but he was overlapping with the physical body so closely, it was like seeing a blurry form on the bed, not two distinct things. There was tension in the room; it seemed like the ghost was trying to get back into the body, to force itself back into existence.
It’s not as if there was any flailing around, but it the atmosphere in there was uncomfortable, stressful. I thought it probably came from the desperate soul and what it was trying to do. The people in the beds on either side of the surrounding curtains started moaning in pain, I think because the spirit’s frustration and anger affected them. The bad feeling in the room was getting stronger.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I moved closer and reached out to the guy.
“It’s over,” I said, or thought, or whatever it is that happens when I try to talk now. “Time to let go.”
A ghostly head lifted away from the corpse, and for the first time since I’d died, I was seen. Our eyes locked, and after a moment of shock he screamed. Not a real sound—again, I’m not sure what happens when we ghosts try to make sounds—but something happened when he opened his mouth. The lights in the room flickered, a nearby person shrieked in what sounded like unbearable agony, and then it was as if the guy’s spirit ripped itself to shreds. It seemed to be pulled apart like pieces of tissue paper, and the pieces writhed and darkened and became shadows—under the bed, behind the rolling cart, in the corner of the room. And even though I couldn’t really feel anything anymore, it seemed to me like those shadows were colder than before, and maybe dangerous. I got out of there as fast as I could.
That wasn’t the only time I saw a bad ending like that. But it got so I could tell when that was coming. Something in the air, in the room, something indefinable let me know. When I felt that, I got out.
But in all the deaths I saw, everyone who died went somewhere.
Except me.
I watched every death I could. I tried to keep track of patterns. I tried to figure out if there were rules to how things worked out—rules that maybe, somehow, had been broken when I died. If I could figure out how to fix it, then I could move on.
But time went on, and nothing changed.
One thing really stayed with me: the feeling of being seen by the drug overdose ghost. It was lonely being surrounded by people and never getting to be part of anything, not getting to participate, interact. I wanted it to happen again. Then one day, after another one of the good deaths had just wrapped up and I was wandering along the quiet, pre-dawn hallways of the maternity ward, it occurred to me: if I’m a ghost, I should be able to haunt people, and if I can haunt them, then I can be seen again!
I had no idea how to do it. Clearly, just floating around and being there wasn’t doing the trick. I decided to see what would happen if I picked one person and followed them everywhere. Maybe that kind of focus would make a difference.
First, I picked a female nurse, but once I realized I’d have to follow her into the bathroom, I stopped. Next, I picked a young male orderly, one of the guys who does clean up and restocking and some janitorial stuff. I figured there was a good chance he’d be alone in some broom closet at some point, and maybe there I could make an appearance.
There are some funny, and a little embarrassing, stories I could tell about that guy, but they’re beside the point. After about three months of being his shadow any time he was at the hospital, I gave up. It was no good, the living seemed to be oblivious.
Feeling incredibly low and hopeless, I found my way to the pediatric ward. Kids always cheered me up, even sick kids, because they were so sweet and imaginative and honest. I guess maybe it shouldn’t have made me happy to be there, but it did, so that’s where I went to drown my sorrows.
It was night, the lights were dim, and there weren’t many people around. I went in and out of rooms, pausing here and there to read a chart or just look at a sleeping child. And then one of them woke up while I was in the room and saw me.
She was little, couldn’t have been more than six years old. Her hair was black, and when she opened her eyes they were silver, like ice in moonlight. I froze when I realized she wasn’t looking through me, she was looking at me.
“Hello,” she said, sounding sleepy. “Are you a doctor?”
“No,” I tried to speak, but she frowned and cocked her head slightly, like she couldn’t hear me. I just shook my head no and smiled a little.
There was no conversation. She mumbled a few things after that, then fell back asleep. I stayed close, right by her bed—I couldn’t wait for her to wake up again. The morning shift nurse bustled in around 5:00 am, and after checking various things she wrote in the chart “Fever broken” and the time. The parents arrived shortly after the sky grew light, and the little girl sat up and told them all about the dream she’d had of the strange man who had visited her, who smiled and stayed with her when it was dark, and she was scared.
I was still there, right beside her bed, but she didn’t see me anymore.
You’re thinking the same thing I am: she had a fever; maybe fevers were the key to being seen.
You can bet I haunted the infectious disease wing. And yes, people with fevers were more likely to see me. But fevers do funny things to you—you don’t think straight, you don’t know the difference between reality and fantasy, and even though it was great in the moment, when they came out of it, all they remembered—at best! —was a dream, a weird fever vision. I had no more reality to them than that.
It wasn’t enough.
I racked my brains. I thought of every legend and myth and story I’d ever heard about ghosts. Who sees them? Why? What happens to them?
I tried everything I could think of: little kids, fevered or not—but mostly they weren’t any different from the adults. There was one…but he died within an hour of seeing me, and the only difference was that when his little ghost appeared above his dying body, it looked down on itself, and then over at me, held my gaze for a few seconds, and then glowed its way into oblivion.
Also, it waved at me as it went.
Otherwise: no joy.
I was very depressed. I gave up trying. I’d stay in one place—a room, a hallway, a broom closet, an elevator, it didn’t much matter to me—for weeks on end. Time lost meaning. I was aware of its passing only insofar as the things around me moved and changed. But for me there was nothing. I had only the hope that maybe one day I would fade into nothingness since there seemed to be no purpose for my existence. Maybe I was an oversight. Maybe I was a cosmic glitch and would eventually just wither away like an unused appendage.
It wasn’t a great time for me.
Everything changed the day she walked into the emergency room.
Madame Josephina Electratoria was only there because her neighbor had collapsed on the sidewalk in front of her door, and she felt it was her duty to drive him to the hospital, thus clearing the way for her customers. She was dressed in grey sweatpants and a black sweater. I was existing by the front desk. She came in, helped her limping neighbor to a chair, and then came over to register him.
“He is Bernie MacMillan,” she said briefly, handing some cards over to the nurse, “and I’m just dropping him off.” She sounded annoyed and tapped her fingers impatiently on the counter.
“What is your relationship to the patient?” The nurse asked without looking up.
“I’m just his neighbor,” she replied, “and I’m trying to be a good Samaritan, but I need to get going. Can’t I leave him here with you now?”
“Ma’am we’ll need you to stay with him until the triage nurse can see him,” the nurse murmured, eyes glued to her screen, fingers tapping her keyboard and entering information from the man’s cards.
“Great,” she rolled her eyes. “How long will that take?”
“We can’t be sure,” the nurse’s voice was flat as cardboard.
“Well, that’s just wonderful,” she said sarcastically. “Jesus H. Christ, no good deed goes unpunished, eh?” She smacked her hands down on the counter, and then said, “What’s your problem?”
The nurse finally looked up. “Excuse me?”
But she wasn’t looking at the nurse. Or talking to her.
She was looking at me.
“Well?” she demanded, leaning over the counter toward where I was. “Take a picture, it lasts longer!” She turned angrily and stomped back into the waiting area where her neighbor was slumped in his chair.
She’d seen me.
She was alive, and she’d seen me.
I followed her, stopping a few feet away, waiting for her to look over and see me again.
“Look,” she said, not raising her eyes from the magazine she’d begun to page through angrily. “Whatever you want, I’m not interested. I’m leaving any minute, so get lost.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I don’t have any place to go. And you can see me.”
I didn’t expect her to answer. The little girl hadn’t been able to hear me, why would this woman? But she did.
“Of course I can see you. And your homelessness is not my problem,” she said.
I watched her, took her in. Her hair was curly and fell below her shoulders, streaks of an improbable red visible here and there. She had long fingernails painted red, and I could see signs that she’d washed heavy make-up off her face, especially around her eyes. Her voice was low and strong, and she moved like a person who was used to being in charge.
After a few minutes she sighed and looked up at me.
“What?” She demanded, but suddenly sucked in her breath and held very still. I saw her eyes dart over at the nurse behind the counter, and then back at me. Without looking, she reached a hand over to her neighbor, who seemed to be asleep in his chair, and patted his shoulder. He moved a little, made a noise, and resettled. “I can see you,” she said at last, narrowing her eyes.
“Yes!” I said. “And you can hear me!”
“Yes,” she spoke low, under her breath—I could tell she was making an effort not to be heard by the nurse now. Suddenly she rose from her chair and crossed back to the front desk. “Where are the restrooms?” She asked, and followed the nurse’s pointing, looking over her shoulder at me and nodding her head for me to follow.
She didn’t have to worry. I wasn’t letting her out of my sight.
In the bathroom she checked under the stalls to make sure we were alone, and then turned on me. “You’re dead,” she said, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“I don’t really know,” I admitted. “Quite a while, I think.”
She started pacing. “Did you die here?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve been here…ever since?”
I just nodded.
She was quiet for a few seconds. “I guess that…most people don’t see you around here, then?”
I told her about my attempts to haunt, my deathwatches. I told her she was the only one who had heard me, ever.
She listened, glancing at the door. “I’ve got to get back to Bernie. But you,” she stepped right up to where I was—if I’d been alive, she’d have been right in my face, “are coming with me when I leave.” She turned on her heel and went back to the waiting room.
I followed, waiting with her until her charge was taken to triage. Then I followed her out the doors.
It was strange because it wasn’t. It had crossed my mind that perhaps if I left the hospital something different might happen to me. Maybe direct sunlight would do something, like it does in the vampire stories.
But no. I just followed her. She could still see me. I moved into her car with her, and moved with her car through the sunny morning. She explained things as she drove.
“I am Madame Josephina Electratoria,” she began. “I am the only member of my family still in the family business: I’m a medium.”
To say that this was a surreal experience is redundant, because pretty much everything since I’d died was surreal. But listening to her talk, I felt like I’d landed in some afterlife version of an Anne Rice novel: she came from a long line of female mediums, descended originally from gypsies. Only the women in her family had The Gift. She knew when she was only six years old that she had The Gift because her dead grandmother had come to her and told her so, so she grew up and set up shop and made her living communicating with the souls of the dearly departed for those left behind who had questions or unresolved issues. “I tell fortunes too, give Tarot readings, all that stuff—it’s kind of expected,” she added.
Problem was, after her grandmother, she’d never seen another soul.
“I’m good with people, I can read them really well,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s not hard to be convincing. But I know the difference, even if they don’t. And you’re the first spirit I’ve seen since I was six.”
We arrived at her place. I followed her inside. It was on a side street near a busy shopping area I remembered, and her professional rooms were downstairs while she lived above. True to the stereotypes, her “office” was draped in scarves, herbs and other witchy-looking stuff hanging from the ceiling. A stick of incense smoked on a small table in the corner, and the light was dim.
She led me through to the back, into a cheerful, bright kitchen, and sat down at the table.
“Stay with me,” she said. “Let’s see what we can do together.”
“But what could I do? You’re the only one who can see and hear me,” I pointed out. “I won’t help you convince your customers of anything.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to stay. She was interesting, this was something different, and I still felt a sense of elation at being seen by someone alive.
“Who knows?” She exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air dramatically. “Maybe it won’t make any difference, and you’ll just be someone to talk to when I close up shop,” she got up and poured herself a mug of coffee as she talked. “But maybe…just maybe you’ll bring a whiff of the afterlife along with you; maybe other ghosts will sense you, and come calling when their loved-ones walk in.”
I understood: she wanted to use me to do her job authentically.
Well, what else was there for me to do in this world? I agreed.
The first client was to arrive that afternoon. Josie (that’s the name she told me to use outside of working hours) transformed herself from slovenly to mysterious, with dramatic makeup and clothes that said “gypsy” and “psychic,” very exotic. The doorbell rang at 1:00, and Madame Josephina was ready.
I hovered in the room, mostly staying behind her, as she conducted the session.
It was a little old man who spoke with a thick accent, grieving for his dead wife. He wanted to communicate with her, just once more, and had come to Madame Josephina for help.
I watched as she went through her act. It was a good one, I had to admit. Exactly what you might expect, based on campy Hollywood movies and carnival sideshows, yet she brought a kind of gravitas that kept it from being demeaning or ridiculous. I kept an eye on the old man and the room in general, but nothing appeared, and although she gave me questioning looks periodically, I had to shake my head: no other ghosts showed up.
We kept at it, though, because she loved having a ghost to talk to, and I loved being able to talk, period. Neither of us minded too much that nothing more came of it.
But then one day, something did.
A teenaged girl came in. She didn’t have an appointment and acted like she was afraid to be caught there. When Josie welcomed her inside, she closed the door quickly behind her, and went right to the silk-draped table in the center of the room. Josie cocked an eyebrow at me, and proceeded to her accustomed chair, sitting slowly as she asked, “How may I be of service, child?”
“It’s my Mom,” the girl said, leaning forward. “She died and,” her eyes teared up and she wiped away tears as she spoke, “and I just miss her so much. I think,” she sniffled loudly, “I’ve been thinking a lot, and I think I just need to know she’s OK, and then I can…” Without finishing her sentence, she just looked beseechingly across the table, hope and sadness all mixed together in her face.
