Sadie's Spirit, CB Samet [book club recommendations .TXT] 📗

she was no longer inside her body.

The sight stunned her. As a critical care physician, she had seen many corpses. The mortality rate of patients in the intensive care unit was over thirty percent. Death was part of life; no one reached the end of the road alive. But she had wanted to achieve so much more in life, and thirty-two was too young. Her career had been in its infancy, and was beginning to blossom.

Now what? Wander as a ghost forever, or is there a better place to go?

As Sadie floated higher, a bout of nausea struck her. Her fear of heights threw her into a panic. Her irrational phobia had made no sense in life, and made even less sense in death.

She hyperventilated, if indeed it were possible for a ghost to do so. Flailing her arms and legs, she tried to swim through the air; to descend. Glimpses of a distant memory bombarded her: a small swinging box high in the air on a hot summer’s day. As she and her mom rocked in the Ferris wheel, Sadie clutched the safety bar with a white-knuckled grip. Due to an equipment failure, they had been stuck at the peak of the wheel; trapped in a box suspended more than two hundred feet up in the air.

As Sadie eased her spirit back down to earth, her panic slowly subsided. Her feet made contact with the paved road. Solid. Secure. She understood what it truly meant to be grounded.

She looked around at her surroundings as dusk fell. The forest was gone, replaced by a suburban landscape. The street and houses looked familiar.

Mom’s house!

Her mom lived two hours south of the trail Sadie had been hiking along. She ran to the front porch, taking the steps two at a time, and lunged at the doorknob. But instead of grasping it, her hand plummeted through the door, the momentum carrying her stumbling body with it.

She straightened and cleared her throat. “I knew that would happen,” she said to herself.

“Mom!” she called.

Can she hear me?

Sadie darted left into the living room. A familiar pale blue couch and white wicker furniture sat at the center. Empty. The mantle over the fireplace was cluttered with family photos of Sadie, her sisters, and her nieces and nephews. The familiar scene made her nostalgic. She hadn’t been home in over a year.

Life was work. And work was at the hospital. She had patients to see, grants to write, and papers to review.

“Mom!” She walked toward the foyer, then into the kitchen. “Mom!”

Sadie heard voices from the back of the house, so she ran into the dining room.

Her mom, Leila Crawford, was seated at the table wearing a cream-colored silk jumpsuit with a string of pearls around her neck. Three other women were seated around the table.

Spades. They were playing spades, and were oblivious to her presence.

“Mom?” Sadie’s voice faltered as she felt her hope fade into a sad, hollow pit.

Friday night was card night. Her mom always gathered with her friends on Fridays for cards and apple martinis. They usually played and drank until Susan, her mother’s neighbor, became tipsy and belligerent.

With sickening dismay, Sadie realized her mom didn't yet know she was dead. She had been attacked only minutes earlier. Leila entertained guests, unaware that her daughter's corpse lay cold and still on the hiking trail.

When will she realize I’m missing? Sadie wondered.

Tomorrow was Saturday, and although Sadie had planned to go to the hospital to work on her research, she wasn’t expected to be there. Her co-workers wouldn’t suspect anything until she failed to turn up on Monday. Sadie only called her mom on a monthly basis, so Leila wouldn't have reason to worry unless someone from the hospital called her.

Sadie walked toward the table, moving right into the middle of it.

“Can anyone hear me?” she boomed, hands on her hips.

She looked down warily, seeing only the top half of her torso visible above the tabletop. How was she standing inside the table, but still touching the floor? She averted her eyes to the card players.

“Did you see that woman Fred brought to the club last week? She was half his age!” Susan said.

Sadie’s mother nodded her head. “He brings a different girl every week. I’m not sure who he’s trying to impress. We all find it atrocious.”

Susan made a sound of disgust. She looked across the table at Leila, her regular card partner. “We never win at Spades. Why do we play this wretched game?”

“You rush through it without thinking,” Leila replied. “You need to strategize more. You’re like my Sadie, slipping through life in haste. Enjoying nothing and burning her candles at both ends.”

Molly, a blond woman in a pink cardigan, snorted. “Susan’s drinking the vodka bottle at both ends. Wasn’t that the fourth martini you just drained?”

Susan stuck her tongue out at her friend. “Is that all? I’d better get myself another.”

Sadie stomped her feet on the ground like a belligerent toddler, but no one appeared startled. As she became still, she saw the faintest quiver of green liquid in the martini glasses.

Molly stared at it. “Did someone bump the table?”

“Wasn’t me,” Leila replied.

“No, certainly not,” said Susan.

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

Sadie was making no progress at all. She walked away from their meaningless babble to think. She needed to find someone who could see, hear, and help her.

Asher Brenner.

The name popped into the forefront of her mind so quickly that there was no stopping it.

He could help.

Would he help?

He was going to be furious with her.

Sadie stood outside her mother’s house as dusk became darkness. She didn’t know where Asher was these days. How could she track someone down without the use of a computer or smart phone?

A flush of warmth rippled through her as buried memories resurfaced.

“If you want to feel close to someone you’ve lost, say their name with your right palm over your heart,” Asher had said.

He had told her this as a way of easing emotional distress when she was missing her grandmother. At the time, her affection for him had appreciated the sentiment, but her rational mind had known that dead meant dead. No scientific evidence existed to support the notion that someone who was dead could feel love beyond the grave or transmit any feeling back to the living.

Now that she had absolute proof ghosts existed, she figured Asher perhaps hadn’t been as off-base as she had thought.

Sadie placed her right hand over her heart—or at least where her heart should have been if she were not a ghost—and recited his name.

She blinked as the world around her contracted and expanded. As it did, her surroundings blurred like rain on a windowpane as they transformed. At least she wasn’t floating again.

When the watercolor painting around her solidified, she found herself standing on a street in what appeared to be a rural setting.

“What the hell?” Sadie stiffened, listening to her surroundings and hoping she wouldn’t get dragged into the bowels of the earth as a result of her outburst. Were ghosts allowed to swear? The only other sound was the hum of electricity emitting from a neon sign over a convenience store across the street.

She turned around to look at the large structure on her side of the street. A broad, two-garage fire station sprawled before her. It was a rectangular, red-brick building with white doors. The overhead sign read: “White County Fire Services.”

“So this is where Asher ended up.”

Sadie walked cautiously towards the building, which was bathed in bright white floodlights. She walked around to the side of the building and peered through a large window which revealed an exercise room. Two men dressed in navy cargo pants and white T-shirts were lifting weights. Another man was running on the treadmill.

Asher.

Her heart kicked a notch faster, and she was too mesmerized to ponder how, as a ghost, she could feel her heart pounding.

He was shirtless, his skin glistening.

Memories of the many close encounters she had enjoyed with those muscles rose to the forefront of her mind. His dark hair was still short, but he had shaved his goatee. Smooth, tanned skin surrounded a pair of full lips.

How could she—as a ghost—have hormones?

The flushing and arousal she felt would have been precipitated by endocrine glands in life, and that simply wasn’t possible. She needed a cold shower.

As she contemplated never being with him again, her mouth felt dry and a strange longing filled her chest, squeezing it the way a pressure bag corseted intravenous fluids.

Why did I ever end the relationship?

Oh, right. For the very reason I’m seeking his help now.

Asher adjusted one of his earbuds before swiping a towel across his forehead. When he looked out of the window, his eyes opened wide. His gate faltered, and he stumbled off the back of the treadmill and out of sight.

He saw me!

Asher Brenner cursed as he snatched a bag of peas out of the freezer and held it up to his jaw. What the hell was Sadie Crawford doing at his fire station? She had no business arriving unannounced at his