Emily's Ghost

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  After that she was wheeled here and then there on the gurney, presumably for the CAT scan. By now she couldn't speak at all, couldn't open her eyes. All she knew was what she heard, and all she heard were things she didn't understand. She felt trapped in her own dream, yet it seemed to her that she'd gone a long time without sleep. She thought about letting herself nod off for a while.

  But then someone said, "Prep her for surgery," and that sent her into a silent panic. She didn't want surgery. She didn't need surgery. Surgery was for the old and middle-aged, for the gunshot and the cancer victim, not for someone who'd hit her head on a stupid table. She tried desperately to object, but no one heard her. Yet she could hear everyone else with clarity.

  "Have you got a consent yet?"

  "Not yet, Doctor; I've faxed the forms to her father in New Hampshire."

  No! Don't tell my dad! You'll just upset him. He has a bad heart. You can't -–

  "Can't wait. Come on; let's go."

  After that they put a mask over her face, just the way they'd done for her tonsillectomy when she was a kid. This is silly, she thought. I had more fight in me when I was five than I do now. She tried to lift her hands, to pull the mask away and breathe clear air. But her arms wouldn't lift when she willed them to.

  Ah, the hell with it, she thought tiredly. I'll take that nap after all.

  Chapter 26

  Comatose. Emily heard the word distinctly. At first she assumed she was still caught in the same boring dream, the one in which she was going around endlessly, trying to get someone to hear her.

  But it wasn't a dream.

  "Dr. Redd, my sister's been this way for over twenty-four hours now! How much longer will we have to wait?"

  Gerry? How did you get here? Who's minding the shop? You can't afford to --

  "I understand your concern, Mr. Bowditch. And again I'll tell you not to worry unduly. It's perfectly normal for Emily to be in a state of coma at this point. But we've relieved the pressure from the hematoma that was threatening her. Now it's just a matter of time."

  "But she looks so -- oh, God. What am I supposed to tell my father? Is she really out of danger? Can you guarantee that?"

  Didn't you hear the man? "It's just a matter of time." Don't be such a worrywart.

  "Well, guarantee is a word we don't like to use around here. This isn't an auto shop, Mr. Bowditch. I wish it were. It would be nice to think that if we just threw enough skill and spare parts at a problem, we could fix it. Let me just say, I see no obvious reason for Emily not to recover fully."

  But no guarantees?

  "Yeah, sure, I understand. I don't mean to ride you on this, but she's the baby of the family. There's us four guys, and there's Emily, who has more guts than the rest of us put together -- and that includes a cop and a Gulf vet. The thing is, we were always tough on her for being a girl. And that made her play harder, work longer, study more. Y'know? Because she was a girl. If it's our fault she's like this ..."

  "Nonsense. You can't go blaming yourself. Emily ran into some bad company, that's all. She's lucky she was able to get away in one piece."

  "Thanks to the senator, yeah. You know she never told us a thing about him? We're a pretty tight family; she calls her dad once a week. Yet all we know about the other night is what we read in USA Today. It's --"

  "Yes, well. I see the head nurse glaring at us. The limit in the ICU is ten minutes. Maybe we should take this outside."

  Stay! Dammit, stay! How could she possibly learn anything if they took things outside? If she were more like Fergus, well, that'd be one thing. She could hop around from room to room. But apparently comas didn't give you that kind of flexibility; now she couldn't hear anything except the hum of the monitors next to her bed.

  Don't panic. She focused on what Dr. Redd -- or was it Wred? -- had just told Gerry: "It's just a matter of time." God. If that wasn't the story of her life lately. She tried to laugh, but no sound came, not even a snicker.

  Comatose. The panic roared in anyway, despite her effort to stay calm. She tried desperately to get out of bed. Within seconds someone was in the room with her, making calming sounds but holding her firmly. After that she felt sticky things being placed back on her chest while a hand -- a nurse's hand, surely -- patted her cheek and gave her a little squeeze of reassurance. Emily began breathing more easily. Just a matter of time.

  After that Emily drifted off, she wasn't sure where. The next thing she realized was pain; someone was sticking her thigh with a pin. "She's fairly deep," he said in a businesslike voice. The pin hurt; she wanted to stick him back. But even before they left the room, Emily went drifting off again.

  Eventually she heard voices.

  "Does she answer to her name?"

  "Not as far as I can tell."

  Ben? You're here, too? I meant to tell you, I need more Mace. I can't seem to go anywhere anymore without needing Mace ....

  "Emily? Honey? It's Benjamin. Hey, kiddo. It's time to wake up. You know how you hate to oversleep ... wake up, kiddo. We miss you ..."

  I miss you, too, Ben. I miss all of you.

  "You poor little kid, you poor --" She heard a catch in Ben's voice, and then she heard him break down. He was squeezing her hand in his huge paw and sobbing. She'd heard him cry only once before, this tough cop brother of hers, and that was at their mother's funeral.

  I'm not dead yet! Don't cry. Don't, don't cry, Ben. It scares me.

  Gerry eased Ben out of the room, and then she was alone again, alone and floating between life and not-life. It seemed to her that she stayed there for a long, long time, floating back every once in a while to check on things, and then away again, she wasn't sure where. She felt like a styrofoam cup on Cape Cod Bay, ebbing back and forth with the tide.

  Whenever she heard her name, she tried to make her way back, but if the seas were running, or the wind was blowing, there was nothing she could do, because she was only a styrofoam cup.

  "Emily, hi, darlin'. I'm back."

  Lee.

  "So. What have you been up to? I know, bad joke. It looks like the burned part of your hair's growing out nicely. So's the shaved part. After this, let your hair grow long. I said you looked nice at that Copley Plaza fund-raiser, but I lied. I liked your hair better before you got it cut."

  Lee.

  "The first time I saw you -- in that hilarious palmist's getup -- it was all I could do not to run my fingers through it. You were on the floor, madly plucking flower petals ...."

  Lee.

  "I know you can hear me, darling ... I can tell from the monitor ... I got a crash course in reading EEGs from the head nurse."

  Lee was holding her hand in both of his now; she felt his heat wrap around her coolness, insulating her. "I like your brothers," he said. "Both of 'em. Too bad Gerry had to go back to New Hampshire. I guess your sister-in-law's due any day now. Gerry was pretty torn up about which hospital to park himself in. Of course, you still have Ben camping out weekends in the waiting room outside the ICU.

  "Ben stays with a cop buddy here in Boston -- Tim Reilly. You may remember Tim; he said he met you at the policemen's picnic back home in Manchester a few years ago. Big guy, built like a tank? Tim came around to say hi last week. We had coffee downstairs together. He remembers you well. No question, I was jealous, darlin'."

  Lee knew Gerry and Ben and Tim? Lee, a coffee klatcher? Lee?

  She felt her hand being lifted to his lips. "I have to leave you now. I ran into Cara Miles in the lobby. We negotiated: I took seven of the minutes; she got three. There she is, tapping on the windows as I speak. I'll try to sneak in again after hours, but I'm not sure how much clout a lame-duck senator can wield. I'll be back, Emily. I love you."

  She tried desperately to will herself into consciousness. She was still struggling when she felt Cara's cool, made-up cheek press close to hers.

  Cara's voice was a discreet whisper, as if she were afraid of waking Emily. "Poor darling. The senator said I should talk to you ju
st as if you were alive -- or whatever; that's not how he said it – but ...

  "I mean, I could probably talk to a doorknob for three minutes if I had to, so .... By the way, you did pick the world's worst time to do this; you've missed all the excitement. There was an uproar after that awful business with that Maria person. Someone, I think one of the paramedics, leaked what they saw to the press, and that was it. They've been all over the senator ever since. There's a pack of reporters in the lobby right now.

  "Not that they have a prayer of making it up here. I've never seen such tight security. I almost didn't get to see you. I suppose I should've brought a People magazine to read to you. They say that's good for comas. But I didn't, so-o-o I'd better run. Take care, darling. You look much better than I thought you would. Hurry up and come out of this. You're taking a lot longer than they said."

  Emily felt Cara's smooth cheek glancing over hers again, and then Cara, too, was gone.

  After Cara left, Emily seemed to ebb farther than ever from wakefulness. In her drifting, dreamlike state she became convinced that there was a full moon, cold and white and serene, pulling the ocean away from the shore, dragging her farther and farther out to sea. No longer could she hear voices on the shore, even distant ones.

  The tide will rise, and I will be able to float nearer to shore again. I will wait for the tide to rise.

  And it did. When Stanley Cooper came in, she was near enough to the shore to smell his cigarette-smoked clothing. She heard his raspy voice with perfect clarity. It filled her with hope that she was on her way back.

  "Well, you've done it this time, kid," she heard him say in his familiar, sardonic tone. "You've gone a step too far. You couldn't just stick to rent control violations. You had to go for the big story."

  The big story is stuck in my computer, Stan.

  "You vowed to take His Highness down a peg, and by golly, you did."

  I never said that! If I did, I didn't mean it!

  "The irony is, you're in here while we're all busy mining your mother lode."

  The mother lode is stuck in my computer, Stan.

  "I've heard that you shouldn't say bad things to comatose patients; they'll hate you later and not know why. I wish I was optimistic enough to believe that. But the idea's hooey, and it's not going to stop me from making a little confession: I'm the one who leaked the story of your going to the séance with Lee Alden."

  Impossible ... I never said a word to you.

  "I'll tell you how I found out. Mrs. Lividus called the newsroom, wanting to talk to you. I chatted her up -- I admit, I have a way with older women -- —and she was very forthcoming. By the way, she's convinced Kimberly produced something that night. The girl thought so, anyway, and was scared half to death. That's why she took down her shingle and went back home to California.

  "And I guess I'll tell you something else. I'm not sure how I feel about having been instrumental in Lee Alden's political death. It was a little too much like shooting fish in a barrel.

  "Well, that's pretty much what I came to say. If you do pull out of this and you end up with an urge to slap me every time you see me, I promise to explain the reason why."

  Emily heard him shuffle to his feet slowly, and then she felt her head being patted clumsily.

  "It'd be a small price for me to pay," Stan added. "Hang in there, kid. The newsroom's not the same without you." He left, leaving the smell of tobacco lingering in the room for a long time.

  I can smell his cigarettes. I must not be dead, because I can smell Stanley's god-awful cigarettes. I remember that Fergus wasn't able to smell the Bourbon roses near the gates of Talbot Manor. But I'm alive. If I want to be. Is this what I want?

  Emily drifted away again, farther from the shore than ever before. She knew nothing, felt nothing, thought nothing. Once she was vaguely aware of a cluster of medical people around her, murmuring. It fascinated her. For the first time she realized she was closer to death than to life. And then they, too, left.

  "Oh, Mother of God! You poor, poor child -- it's me, Loretta Gibbs. Can you hear me? They said maybe you could hear me. Oh, this is awful. What have they done to you ... these tubes ... going in, going out ... and your lips, so dry ... oh, this is terrible. I'll be back."

  Mrs. Gibbs, please don't go. It's so good to hear your voice, to hear any voice. I thought I was gone ....

  "Here you go, poor dear, some water. There, isn't that better? There, there ...."

  Emily felt a small wet sponge being pressed gently to her lips. It seemed to her a long, long time since there'd been anything cool and damp on her lips.

  "Yes, that's better; just like a Popsicle, isn't it, dear? And before you know it, you'll be drinking from a cup, and we'll be having coffee at the library. I'll make those double-fudge brownies you like. I've been so busy, you know. The maple leaves have started to fall, and I'm trying to keep up with the raking as best I can. Most of the roses are still blooming, especially the floribundas. We're having a wonderful Indian summer.

  It seemed to Emily that Mrs. Gibbs stayed a long time, pouring pleasant, simple thoughts into her ear and pressing the cool, damp sponge repeatedly to her lips. Emily let herself be lulled into a kind of nap and never heard the librarian leave.

  Sometime after that Emily dreamed that it was winter and she was walking, half frozen, through waist-high snow. In her dream there was a coat lying on the snow ahead of her, but she couldn't reach it because the snow was too deep. Every step forward was an exhausting effort. But no matter how hard she pressed on, the coat was always lying just out of reach. Finally she got close, close enough to see that it wasn't really a coat; it was a brown corduroy vest with four flaps on it.

  "Hey, darlin'. I've got news: Stan Cooper broke the toxic dump story this morning, and broke it in a big way. He had to have been working flat-out to turn it around this fast. Names, dates, associates -- they're all there. You were wrong about him, Em. If he has a grudge against me, he has a funny way of showing it. They had a call-in poll on Channel Seven tonight. Seventy-one percent of the respondents think Strom should withdraw. He won't, of course, but things look a little less bleak.

  "And here's more news for you: Your office has retrieved the Hessiah Talbot story out of your computer. Phil's read it, and he loves it; I talked with him myself. The Journal plans to go with a big spread in the Sunday magazine section. I've seen some of the preliminary artwork. They're doing a beautiful job with it.

  "Hey. Emily. I'm watching the monitor, sweetheart. I don't see a whole lot of excitement. Darling, this is what you fought for so long and hard. This is what Fergus has been waiting for. Before long that story will be rolling off the press and Fergus will be free. That's what he wanted, Emily. Even if it isn't ... you know he has no choice.

  "Emily ... you have to let him go. I know how much it hurts; I do. Letting go is the hardest thing there is. I've been there. Listen to me. After Nicole died, I didn't want to go on any longer. I'm ashamed to admit it, but ... I, ah, toyed with the notion of suicide.

  "Oh, it was nothing overt, like holding a gun to my head or dumping arsenic in my brandy. But I began to do stupid things, like dashing against the lights in rush hour. And taking my boat out alone in wild weather. And bridges, they began to fascinate me. I'd slow down on them, wondering if I could make it out of the car and over the side before someone stopped me.

  "I don't really know why I kept on living. Habit? Fear? Maybe I just wanted to finish out my term. And then ... I met you.

  "I don't have all the pieces fitted together yet. For one thing, you don't seem all that keen on my declarations of love, not if that monitor is any guide. And of course, you never did say you loved me, Em. I'm painfully aware of that.

  "But to me these are all details. Because I know how right we are for each other, Emily. I know what you feel like in my arms and how I feel when you're not around, as if half of me were missing. I know exactly how the sun hits your cheek and lights up your hair, and I can hear your laugh as c
learly as if I had it at home on a compact disk. I know every smile and every scowl and every single shade you've ever blushed.

  "I even know why you're hanging back now, and I can't blame you for it. Whatever I saw when I was in the hospital, whatever I felt, it was enough to lead me on a search that lasted years. Yet it was nothing – nothing -- compared with what you've seen and felt.

  "I can't make you come back, Emily. I want to, more than anything else I've ever wanted in my life -- more than I wanted Nicole. But I couldn't make Nicole come back, and I can't –

  "God. What is it I'm trying to tell you? Listen to me, Emily. There's a Tibetan saying: Learn to die, and you will learn to live. Somehow I think you're struggling with that right now. I wish I could help you, but all I can do is wait. Here. On this side. Because life goes on. I just want it to go on with you. I love you, Emily."

  Learn to die, and you will learn to live ... to die ... to live.

  For what seemed like infinity Emily clung to a great, cosmic pendulum, swinging in a slow arc through space: to die ... to live ... to die ... to live.

  And then, at last, Emily saw a great, shining light beckoning at the end of a long pathway, and she just let go. She let herself be drawn willingly into the radiance. It seemed to her that there was a sound, not music exactly, but a sound, unbearably poignant, and that she herself felt an extraordinary lightness of being. She began to feel almost impossibly happy, without knowing why. And then she saw that Fergus was ahead of her on the shining path. He seemed to be waiting for her, even though the light continued beyond him.

  As she drew nearer, he lifted his arms to her, and that made her want to run to him. But she was aware that she could no more run than she could pinch herself, that it was joy that was transporting her. It seemed odd, too, that she didn't cry out Fergus's name, and that Fergus had no more need to speak than she did.

  When she was closer to Fergus, she saw him in a new dimension. Once she would have been able to see a flush under his cheeks or the play of muscle in his jaw. Now he was transcendently beautiful, part of another plane of existence, and she felt humbled to be in his presence. She understood full well that she was seeing into his soul, yet the yearning to be one with him was overwhelming. He was part of all the joy and all the love in the universe, and if she were with him, she could be part of it too. She lifted her arms to him, to Fergus -- and to the universe beyond.