SEEING DEAD THINGS: A Paranormal Women’s Fiction Novel (Roxie’s Midlife Adventures Book 1)

by Leigh Raventhorne

  My stomach immediately knotted at that memory and I heard the heart monitor on the side of my bed speed up. I tried to draw a few deep breaths—which was not easy to do with your mouth wired shut. I had to draw in through my nose and whistle it out through my teeth. The monitor slowed to it’s normal rate.

  What was up with that? I dismissed it as anxiety, trying not to think too hard about why. I already knew from experience that doing so would lead to a blazing headache later.

  ***

  “Guess what?” Connie asked brightly, walking into my room and shutting the door behind her.

  “You got me. What’s today’s torture?” I enunciated as carefully as possible, mopping gently at my mouth to contain the mess. Talking was getting easier but it sounded like I was speaking through clenched teeth. Probably because I was.

  “Your catheter comes out and you get a real shower!” She smiled like I had just won the freaking lottery.

  “Uh, what?” I knew I had a catheter. A nurse, sometimes even a male nurse, came in to empty the bag and record the output. I knew they dealt with this stuff every day, but, ewww. Things were getting irritated down there and I desperately wanted it gone but . . .

  “You heard me.” She had washed her hands and was gloving up now. “It’s time. You’ve been on your liquid smoothies for a couple of days now. You graduate to a slightly thicker diet today, so you have to be able to use the bathroom. And won’t a shower feel good? No more of that dry shampoo Sam’s been using in your hair?”

  What fresh hell was this? Like I hadn’t been completely humiliated with the daily sponge baths already? I nearly had a heart attack during the first one. A male nurse had presumably drawn the short straw. Lucky for both of us, Sam had been present and knew me well enough to send the young man out and request female nurses only for this task in the future. After he was sent away, relief written clearly all over his face, she had laughed hard enough to nearly wet her pants. She actually had to go check.

  This was my first experience with a catheter, so I had no idea how it worked. Then a thought occurred to me. Who had put it in? I had been unconscious. I broke out in a sweat and could feel my face flush.

  “Roxie,” I had asked her to call me that instead of Mrs. Bell. “It will be over before you know. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. I do this all day. Along with bedpan duty and much, much worse. You will feel so much better with that thing out of you. Believe me.”

  I went to that place that I’m sure all women my age escape to during procedures like this and tried to tune what was happening down there completely out. What were the first ten numbers of Pi? Three point one four one five . . . something.

  “Take a deep breath and let it out slowly, Roxie,” Connie instructed. I felt a tug and a pop. “There! All done. See, that wasn’t so bad. The trick is—” she held up a small bottle proudly in one hand and the cup-like contraption that must be the catheter in the other.

  How had that even fit up there?

  “Proper lubrication and easing it out slowly. Makes all the difference in the world.”

  If she said so . . . although it did feel better. The discomfort I hadn’t even acknowledged with everything else going on was now mostly gone, but I wasn’t sure if my happy place would be happy again any time soon.

  Connie disconnected what must have been about two dozen cables hooking me up to the various monitors. Then she unhooked me from the I.V. stand, capped off the I.V. leading into my arm, and helped me sit up. A wave of dizziness had my head spinning.

  “We’re just going to get you used to sitting up for a few moments. When you’re ready, we’ll walk over to the bathroom.”

  I waited for the room to stop tilting as she moved my legs to the side of the bed. From there she helped me stand and we hobbled over to the bathroom. Finally, a mirror! I was shocked by my appearance. My eyes looked bruised and there was bruising around my mouth and jaw. My lips were chapped and peeling. My normally thick, dark auburn hair, despite Sam’s best attempts with dry shampoo, looked lank and greasy. I squinted at the thin streak of steel gray that stood out right at the front. That was new. What the heck?

  Connie hustled me over to the shower. “Do you think you can stand okay on your own?”

  “You going to shower with me, Connie?” I snorted.

  She laughed. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve held a patient upright in the shower.” She proceeded to point out the bars to help me support myself and how to work the shower itself. There was even a little seat in there. “I’ll help you undress and then I’m going to take the monitor tabs off before you get in. Your skin is going to be irritated but the shower will help. When you’re done we’ll moisturize you, get you into a fresh gown, then it’s back to bed.”

  After I showered and washed my hair, I couldn’t believe how much better I felt. I would never take showering for granted again. Connie began working lotion into my parched skin while I got a really good look at my upper body in the mirror. Had I lost weight?

  I mentioned this to Connie, trying to ignore the fact that I was naked as a . . . whatever you call a naked thing. My mind went kind of blank.

  “You went almost a week with nothing but nutrients through an I.V., and almost another week with a feeding tube. You’ve probably lost about fifteen pounds or so. That’s common. Don’t worry, as soon as your jaw is back to normal, you’ll likely gain it back.”

  Worry? I was ecstatic. I had been trying to lose the stubborn twenty pounds that had creeped on since I got married for years now. Ten of that was gained after Steven made me quit my job. That and the stress eating whenever I had to deal with my stepdaughter.

  Thinking of Michelle made me uneasy, for some reason, but it didn’t surprise me in the least that she hadn’t been up to visit me. I pushed my thoughts of her away, tuning back in to what Connie was saying.

  “I’m going to put new patches for the monitors on again, placed next to where the old ones were, then we’ll get a fresh gown on you.”

  I was holding the minuscule white towel I had used to dry myself with in front of me while she did all of that. Connie did her best to respect my modesty but this was more than a little different than the monthly spa visits Sam and I used to treat ourselves to. Speaking of spa visits, I saw the condition of my legs. They were in desperate need of a razor. As were other areas.

  Once I was back in bed, exhaustion hit me hard. I was out before Connie even finished hooking me back up to everything.

  And I woke up screaming.

  ***

  “Write down everything you remember.” Sam handed me the tablet and pen. “Even if you don’t think it important.”

  “I know the drill. Probably better than you. Don’t you have a pen and some real paper in there?” I asked, pointing at her attaché. I was angry and trying hard not to take it out on her. I knew why she hadn’t been able to tell me what happened before I could remember it on my own. The clues had all been there, I just had to let my psyche catch up. Plus, there were the legalities.

  Sam handed me a notebook and pen, saying nothing. I immediately felt ashamed for snapping at her.

  I closed my eyes and breathed slowly out of my nose. Mainly because if I did this with my mouth right now, it resulted in a whistling noise. I could not wait to have this hardware removed in two weeks.

  “He’s seriously in jail? What happens now, Sam?”

  “Yes. Now, you focus on you. Let me take care of everything else. I just need your statement. You might have to answer some questions from the police, too. The rest will take some time, but you know that.” She paused, then asked more gently, “You’re sure about this, right?”

  What other option do I have? I nodded, feeling sick. Steven’s fist coming at me and the sound of my head hitting the edge of the pool kept going through my mind, over and over. I couldn’t go back to him.

  “You are going to be fine, Rox. Better than fine. You are so strong. And I will be with you every step of the way. He won’t kn
ow what hit him when I’m through with him.” Her vehemence didn’t surprise me. She and Steven had never truly gotten along. He had seemed great about our friendship up until we were married, then anything that took my attention away from him became an issue.

  I sighed. There were lots of other forty year old divorcées out there, many far worse off than me. I could do this. Right?

  When Sam had showed up this morning, I asked her about the new addition to my hair. She’d shrugged and said that it must be from the head injury. Trauma perhaps.

  “If it bothers you it can always be covered up. When you’re up to it you can schedule an appointment to have your hair done or maybe we can do a spa day. Personally, I think it gives you a rather edgy look.”

  Edgy? That was a word I would never have used to describe anything about myself. I decided not to worry about it for now. I had too many other things on my plate.

  Chapter 5

  The next week flew by. I gave my statements, both to the police and to Sam. I decided to leave out the part about the—whatever it was—that I was now convinced had scared Steven away. It was the one thing I really had no idea how to explain. I didn’t allow myself to consider how much worse it would have been had he not been scared off.

  Dr. Rhea was pleased with how my jaw was healing and would remove the latex and outer hardware holding my jaw together in another week. It freaked me out that the screws and metal plating used to repair the jaw itself were permanent. She assured me that I would still be able to go through metal detectors without issues and that I wouldn’t even know that they were in there. Other than that, I just needed to be even more meticulous than I already was about dental hygiene from now on. Oh, plus no hot liquids and no alcohol for at least another week. I honestly don’t know which bothered me worse. I was dying for a cup of coffee, even a cold one.

  The day finally came for my release from the hospital and Sam was right there for me, just like she had been the entire time. I didn’t know how in the world I could ever thank her enough for everything she’d done for me through all of this. When they wheeled me to the front door in a wheelchair, her red Cadillac was already waiting to pick me up.

  “Get in. Time to bust you out of here girlfriend!” she teased.

  “I’ve never been so ready to leave a place in all my life,” I groaned. “The question is—what am I supposed to do now? I don’t think I’m ready to go back there. What happens when Steven gets out of jail? We both know they can’t hold him for much longer. I can’t believe he’s been held this long.”

  “Oh, Sweetie . . . no worries. He will probably get out on bail soon, but there’ll be a personal protection order in place before he does that keeps him well away from you, or he goes right back to jail. He’s the one who won’t be able to so much as come to the house to get his stuff,” Sam assured me.

  She chewed her lip for a moment, then continued, “By the way, you’ve given me temporary power of attorney until you were out of the hospital. It was a bit of a liberty, I know. I also notified your bank of the situation and was able to put a temporary freeze on the joint accounts. It won’t hold much longer but it was the only way to slow Steven’s chances of making bail before you got out. I was able to convince the judge he was a danger to you and high flight risk, so bail was set really high. His, um, daughter has been raising quite the fuss about it, though. In court and out.”

  Processing this took a moment. “Thank you Sam. I think I will take you up on your offer to stay with you for a while, after all. I need real sleep for a day or two before I even have to worry about going to the house and . . . everything else. In the hospital, every time I shut my eyes, somebody came in to poke me, prod me, or to check if I was asleep! And those machines, with the constant beeping! How a person is expected to get any actual rest in a place like that, is beyond me.”

  We both mulled over all that she had told me as we drove the short distance back to the entrance of my subdivision. We did a drive-by past my house. Everything looked perfectly normal from the outside, so we headed to Sam’s house. I’ve always felt very comfortable there. Even though her place is directly behind mine, it’s practically from an entirely different era. It was the original farm house on the land that part of, if not all of, my subdivision was built on. Having always been single, with plenty of cash to blow, she’d made a real showcase of it. She had told me once before that it was built in the nineteen-twenties and, as was the custom back then, it was a big two-story box with lots of bedrooms upstairs. At some point between when she bought it and when my house was built, she’d had the entire upstairs remodeled into two luxurious bedroom-suites on either side of the central staircase. Each suite contained it’s own large bathroom with heated tile flooring, gorgeous garden tub, separate shower, huge walk-in closet, and a reading area.

  Sam’s room was done in deep pinks and the other—the one I would be staying in—was all soft yellows and glossy whites. Obviously no compromising with a man over colors here.

  I’d always said that the only taste Steven had was in his mouth. He always insisted that every wall be painted egg shell or beige. “Neutral colors are better for resale value.” If he’d said it once, he’d said it a hundred times. Boring!

  Up in my room, I sat down in the extra-deep, overstuffed, soft Italian leather love seat in front of a large window overlooking a wooded area. For being near such a large subdivision, I couldn’t see any other houses from this window.

  I can decorate like this now, too, I thought. After what he did, we’re through. I’ll never forgive him for that. Unconsciously, my hand went to my mouth, which was still slightly swollen. Oh, who are you kidding Roxanne? You’re forty—almost forty-one. You have no job to speak of anymore. And you’re going to be divorced. How will you even be able to buy the paint, let alone afford to keep the house? You’ll have to let Steven have it, or sell it, or—something.

  With those revelations, the floodgates opened, and there was no stopping the tears. I put my hands to my face and let myself cry it out. Your marriage is over. You wasted the best years of your life on him.

  I had reduced my hours at Sam’s law firm to the point I was only on-call or doing occasional contract work from home when they had heavier than normal workloads. What was I going to do now? I had loved my job at the firm, but being gone for so many years would mean that the office dynamics had changed. I wouldn’t be in the same position I was before. Would everyone see me as a victim? That thought bothered me more than any other, I think. That brought on even more tears.

  Sam came in and, seeing me crying, sat down next to me and hugged me tight. “Don’t worry Roxie, it’ll all work out. You’ll see. Don’t worry about it today. I brought you some pajamas. There are fresh towels in the bathroom and clean sheets on the bed. There’s even a new toothbrush on the counter. How about you take a nice hot bath and get some sleep. Whenever you get hungry, just come downstairs. I’ll whip us up some kind of creamy homemade soup for later and keep it warm. Just rest, Sweetie.

  Yes. That’s what I’ll do. I’m lucky to have a friend like Sam.

  ***

  The first day I was home alone at Sam’s house, sometime after she’d gone to work but before the crack of noon, I came downstairs in search of food. Barefoot, I was still in the two-piece pair of pajamas I had left here from one of our girls nights in. A quick glance out the window told me it was a gloriously bright, cheerful day outside. Assuming there was such a thing any more. I walked into the kitchen heading straight for the coffee pot—Dr. Rhea had just said no hot coffee, but I knew where the ice cubes were—only to stop dead in my tracks. There was an old man sitting at the snack bar on a stool, looking out the window at my old backyard, smiling. I did my best attempt at screaming, but it came out more like a wounded pterodactyl’s mating call, I think.

  “Who the hell are you?” I demanded, working hard to enunciate through my jaw hardware. And to not drool.

  The old man turned my way, seemingly unfazed by my behavior. �
�Hello there! My name is Elmer. Elmer Jenkins. I live here, Roxanne.”

  Okay, how does this old guy know my name? And why has Sam not mentioned that someone else lives here now? Where’s my phone? Do I need to call the police?

  I stepped backwards a couple of steps closer to the front door, in case I needed to make a dash for it. “Sam never told me about you. How long have you lived here?”

  Elmer smiled at me calmly. He did have a kind and gentle look about him. “Oh, I’ve been here for over thirty years now, I guess,” he said.

  “That’s not possible. What the heck are you trying to pull here? Sam’s lived here for eight years now.” We didn’t drink so much on our monthly wine tasting, movie marathon, and occasionally man-bashing weekends that I would have failed to notice an old guy hanging around, right? And I distinctly remembered her telling me that her grandparents were dead.

  “That’s correct. I remember when she moved in here quite clearly. It upset me greatly, at first. I also remember when you and Steven Bell built that house over there, what was it—four years ago?” he asked, pointing vaguely toward my house. “Samantha bought this house from my children after I passed away, from my estate sale, you see.”

  Wait. What?

  “Come again? Your what?” I asked.

  “You know what an estate sale is Roxanne. After I died, my children sold my house and divided up or sold all of my belongings.”

  “Huh. You don’t look very dead to me . . . Elmer. Am I losing my mind here? Am I really out of the hospital, or is this just some weird-ass dream?” I wondered, those last questions more for myself than him.

  I moved forward quickly and poked him in the arm with my right fore-finger. Not. My whole hand went right through his shoulder without touching a thing! My hand went ice cold. Cue up yet another, but somewhat better, scream.