The Last Hour (Thompson Sisters), Sheehan-Miles, Charles [reading an ebook .txt] 📗

I ignored her. Instead, I slowly walked around the table. My left arm and leg had received the same treatment as Sarah’s leg, both of them crushed in the accident. I couldn’t even see my face underneath the chest tube and cloths that covered it.

I winced when I got to the other side of the table and got a good look at what was going on. The surgeons had completely removed the top of my skull at my forehead. As the nurse steadily sucked blood out of the way, the surgeon reached in with the tiny, tiny tweezers and extracted a bone fragment from the grey, folded matter underneath.

Then the surgeon said, in a matter of fact voice, “It’s times like this I think the family would be better off if we just stopped and let the patient go. Even if he lives, there’s not going to be anything in there.”

One of the other surgeons, working on my left arm, said, “We don’t know that for sure.”

“No,” the first one replied. “But I wouldn’t take a bet on this one.”

I winced.

Sarah put her hand on my arm. “Maybe we should go.”

“Yeah.” The words felt weird coming out, my lips numb like I’d been to the dentist. I could feel a nasty headache coming on, a blinding one, and that begged the question: how the hell does a ghost get a headache? It was like a bad joke where I was the punch line.

As we exited the operating room, Sarah gave me a worried look. “If it will help you feel better, you can go look at the goo coming out of my leg again.”

I coughed and said, “Um ... no thanks. I’ll pass on that.”

So we headed back to the waiting room, and I was so distracted I didn’t even notice the little boy at first. But I heard him, loud and clear, when he said, “Excuse me, mister? Can you help me find my mom?”

It was the kid I’d seen from the elevator. About four feet tall and thin as a rail, he wore sweats and a Spider-Man t-shirt. He had a Mets baseball cap on, twisted sideways, the brim pointed off toward his right shoulder.

Stupidly, I said, “You can see us?”

The kid looked at me like I was nuts. And then he said, “Well, yeah.” He was quiet for a minute, and said, “You’re the first person who answered me. Why wouldn’t anyone answer me?”

Crap.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“I’m Daniel.”

“What are you like ... ten?”

“Eight. Almost nine.”

I looked toward the waiting room. I needed to get back to Carrie. But I couldn’t let this kid go alone. As I hesitated, Sarah said, “Let’s see if we can go find your mom.”

We all walked back toward the waiting area and the main hallway.

 Out in the hallway, I said, “So um ... how long you been here?”

He shook his head. “I dunno. I think ... we were going to the zoo. And then I was here.”

Crap. The zoo? “You were with your mom?”

“And my dad,” he said.

“What do you say we head down to the emergency room? I know the way.”

The kid nodded.

Sarah said, “Hey ... didn’t your mom tell you to be careful of strangers?”

He nodded. “She says I can talk to police, and he’s a soldier, so I figured that’s the same.”

I blinked. How ... and then I realized. For the first time since the accident I became conscious of how I was dressed. In uniform. I don’t know why that bothered me, I mean, it’s what I’ve been wearing most of the time lately. But ... did how we appear here have something to do with how we saw ourselves? I didn’t know. Maybe. But then, if that’s the case, why was Sarah in a dress?

Who knew? Sarah was a hard girl to figure out. In any event, we needed to help this kid find his way to his mom.

“All right then, come on. My name’s Ray, and this is Sarah. And what’s with that cap?”

The boy shrugged. “I like baseball?”

“The Mets? Are you kidding me? I’m from New York, and that’s not baseball.”

He gave me a wry look, and we headed out into the hall. We chatted baseball all the way to the elevators, Sarah rolling her eyes the whole way. Then we rode downstairs with a nurse who, of course, didn’t notice us. I don’t think the kid realized the nurse couldn’t see us.

If he could see and hear me, that meant he had enough troubles of his own.

I did say one thing, though. “You know, when we find your mom, she probably won’t be able to see you, right?”

“I don’t get it,” he said.

As we stepped off the elevator, I stopped and kneeled down so we were face to face, and I said, “It’s like this. Um ... you know how when you dream, sometimes you go all over the place?”

He nodded, and said, “One time I dreamed I was on Mars.”

Sarah chimed in, “I had a dream I was a ballerina. Thank God I woke up from that one.”

I grinned. “Anyway ... when you dreamed you were on Mars, did your body go anywhere?”

He shook his head.

“Right. Well ... people who are awake can only see your body. But right now ... all three of us are really sick. And it’s almost like we’re having a dream, and we’re hanging out and talking baseball while the doctors try to make us better.”

“My mom said that’s what it was like when Grandpa went to heaven.”

I winced. “Well, kid, this isn’t heaven. I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s not that. For one thing, you’re gonna wake up in your body.”

Daniel looked scared, and he said, “You’re sure?”

I put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Yeah. I’m sure. Right now, let’s go find out what’s going on with you. Maybe we can find a ball around here somewhere and toss it around, too. What do you say?”

He