by Terri Reid
“I think Clarissa’s right,” Maggie said. “Even though it was really scary and next time I’d want someone there to help us, we did what we wanted to do. We talked to them. We learned that they were afraid of the doctor.”
“But you put yourselves in danger,” Bradley pointed out.
Maggie nodded. “But next time we won’t have to lie because you’ll know we can handle it.”
Mike choked on his laughter and turned away from the table, but not before Bradley saw the amusement in his eyes.
“I’m not sure I know you two can handle it,” Bradley replied.
Clarissa turned to Maggie and then looked at her dad. “We can,” she said with confidence. “We’re just not used to it yet. Just like the first time you saw a ghost. But we know we have to be more careful next time.”
“There isn’t going to be—” Bradley began.
Mary placed her hand on top of his arm before he could finish his sentence, and he turned to her. “I’m sorry for interrupting,” she said. “But could you help me with something for a moment?”
Nodding, he stood up and followed Mary into the privacy of the living room.
“I don’t want them doing something like this again,” he whispered vehemently.
She nodded. “I totally agree with you,” she said.
His jaw dropped for a moment. “Wait. You put your hand on my arm,” he said. “That normally means ‘Shut up, Bradley. You’re going to say something dumb.’”
“No,” she denied emphatically. “You never say anything dumb. But sometimes I want you to consider another perspective before you continue. That’s all.”
He smiled at her. “Well, that certainly sounds better than dumb,” he teased. “What do you want me to consider?”
Mary stepped forward and kissed him, then stepped back. “First, I want you to know that I think I understand your perspective. I understand that the most important thing for you is to protect your family and friends and keep them safe. And I know, without a doubt, that you would do anything to make sure that we are all protected,” she began. “And there’s absolutely nothing wrong or dumb about that.”
He nodded. “Thank you,” he replied softly. “I appreciate that.”
“So, now here’s the but part,” she teased.
He laughed. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Clarissa and Maggie have a unique bond,” she said. “And with that bond, a unique gift. Together they can do things most people can’t.”
“Yeah, I get that,” he replied.
“And they feel responsible for that gift,” she explained. “And, I think, a little pumped that they can do what they do.”
“I still don’t want them running off and doing it without permission,” he said.
“Exactly,” Mary replied.
Bradley stared at her for a long moment. “Exactly what?” he asked, suspiciously.
“Exactly, we don’t want them running off on their own,” she said. “If you forbid them to use their gifts, do you think they’re actually going to stop, or are they just not going to tell us because we’ve forbidden it?”
“Well, if they’re obedient, they’ll stop,” he said.
She paused for a moment, understanding the concern he had for his daughter, the fear he was still feeling from their experience that afternoon. “Okay, let me ask you,” she said. “And I want an honest answer.”
He nodded.
“You are one of the first responders at the scene of an accident,” she began. “A car has rolled over, and you can hear someone crying for help inside the vehicle. It sounds like a child is trapped and can’t get out. There is gasoline on the ground, and there’s a chance it could catch and the car could go up in flames. The other officer, your superior, tells you to stay back until help arrives, but you know that if you wait for them, it might be too late. What do you do?”
He sighed. “I go for it,” he said. “I try and rescue the child.”
“Because you’re not obedient?” she asked.
“Because I think the consequences outweigh the risks,” he replied. “But I’m a professional, and I have been taught how to make those kinds of determinations.”
“And the only way Clarissa and Maggie will learn how to make those same kinds of decisions is if we let them continue to do what they want to do, but with limited exposure at this point in their lives,” Mary said. “And within the rules we set. So, we don’t forbid them to help, but we teach them how to help safely.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “This is really hard,” he whispered to her. “I want to keep her safe, all the time.”
Mary wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned her head against his chest. “I know,” she said softly. “You are the best father in the world.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s go back to the table and figure out the new rules.”
She smiled up at him. “If it’s any consolation,” she said, “we probably need to make sure the Brennans are okay with these rules too.”
“Okay, we probably should set up a meeting for tonight,” he said, “once we get back from the hospital.”
She was surprised. “We’re going back to the hospital?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think we need to check out that file room before the evidence disappears.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Mary held the flashlight and pointed it toward the lock on the door. But her nerves were taut and her hands shaky, so the beam jumped around. She wasn’t sure if she was responding to the fear generated by the ghosts or if her hormones were kicking in again. Bradley was bent in front of her with the keys in hand, trying to put a key into the slot, but the dancing light made it almost impossible.
He turned towards her. “Just a little bit higher,” he instructed.
“What?” she asked, shining the light directly into his eyes.
He tried to shield his eyes from the blinding light. “Mary, you’re blinding me,” he said.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, dropping the beam towards the floor. “What did you need?”
“Well, I did need for you to lower the light to the lock,” he said dryly. “But, um, now I think I need you to fit the keys into lock while I hold the flashlight because all I can see are big, black spots before my eyes.”
Shaking her head, she stepped forward and handed him the flashlight. “Sorry about that,” she said.
He leaned forward, kissed her quickly and placed the keys in her hand. “Good thing you’re cute,” he teased.
She chuckled softly, and the nerves in her stomach loosened. Looking down at the keys, she could see that they all looked alike. “Which one is it?” she asked.
“That’s a good question,” Bradley replied. “And now you get to find out.”
With a determined nod, she moved forward and bent towards the door. “Okay, here goes,” she said, picking up the first key. But before she could try and slip it into the lock, the door knob turned, and the door slowly opened.
Remembering what the girls had said about Jack guarding the door, Mary stepped forward and looked down. “Jack?” she questioned gently. “Is that you?”
The little boy appeared before her, bathed in the light of the flashlight. Mary reached back for Bradley’s free hand, and once she was holding it, she nodded to Jack. “This is Bradley,” she said. “Bradley, this is Jack.”
Jack’s eyes widened, and he shimmered in the light. “Are you a doctor?” he asked tremulously.
Bradley shook his head. “No, I’m the chief of police,” he said. “My job is to protect you.”
Jack smiled in wonder. “You’ll protect me?” he asked.
Bradley nodded. “Yes, Jack, I will,” he said. “You won’t have to worry about doctors anymore.”
Bradley stepped into the hallway, so the door could close behind them. Then he reached over to a wall switch to try the lights. Half of the fluorescent lights in the long hallway turned outward, cast
ing odd shadows against the walls. But it was better than a single flashlight beam.
“Jack,” Mary asked. “Do you know if the room behind the nurses station has files in it? Like the file you slipped through the door the other day?”
Jack nodded. “That’s where they kept all the notes,” he said. “There’s lots of notes in there.”
“Okay,” Bradley said. “Let’s go see.”
The little ghost drifted ahead of them in the hallway, almost as if he was skipping. Mary turned to Bradley. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? He’s still just a little boy.”
When they reached the nurses station, Jack stopped and turned to them. “It’s back there,” he said, pointing to the door behind the counter. “The papers and the shots are there.”
“Shots?” Mary asked. “What kind of shots?”
“The shots that hurt us,” Jack replied.
“Could they have been shots to try to make you better?” Bradley asked.
Jack shook his head slowly. “No, we couldn’t get better,” he said. “We were too sick.”
“Too sick?” Mary asked. “All of you were too sick?”
Jack looked uncomfortable, and he started to fade away.
“Jack,” Mary called to him. “We’re just trying to help.”
“You can’t help us,” Jack whispered, as he disappeared. “All of us had AIDS.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Mary turned to Bradley. “They all had AIDS?” she asked. “Could that be right?”
He pushed a key into the lock and turned it. The door opened before them. “Well, there’s one way to find out,” he said.
Reaching over, he flipped the wall switch, and the overhead light turned on. The room was the size of a maintenance closet. On one side was a counter with metal cabinets above it. On the other side were a file cabinet and several metal carts for transporting medicine.
Bradley opened a cabinet door and found boxes of old medications in cardboard boxes. “Do we have anything to put these in?” he asked.
“Should we remove them from the hospital?” Mary asked.
He turned to her and sighed, running his hand through his hair. “So, let me give you my take on the situation, and then you can tell me what you think,” he said.
“Okay,” she said. “Shoot.”
“We have a hospital with a hidden unit that has been locked for at least fifteen years,” he said. “The maintenance guy knew about it but said in all of his years working here no one has ever opened that door.”
Mary nodded. “Okay, that sounds suspicious and creepy,” she agreed.
“We’ve got thirteen kids,” he said, “of various ages and gender according to what Clarissa and Maggie saw. And one of them tells us that they all had AIDS.”
Mary nodded. “Well, it wasn’t that long ago that people didn’t understand anything about the HIV virus at all. And mothers were passing it onto their children through childbirth or through nursing. Depending on when the children were patients, it wouldn’t be strange to have them isolated.”
“Okay, last bit of information,” Bradley said, holding up one of the boxes from the cabinet. “All of the boxes are from the same pharmaceutical company, and this one is labeled ‘Drug Trial.’”
“Drug Trial?” Mary asked. “As in experimental drugs?”
Bradley nodded. “Exactly.”
“This is not looking good,” she said. “But, still, the drug company could have donated drugs for the children’s care.”
“Okay, my final argument,” he said. “This section is set for demolition in two weeks. No one was going to pick up files, notes, or these extra canisters of pharmaceuticals. They were all going to be bulldozed and lost forever.”
“Yeah, that’s the straw that broke this camel’s back,” Mary agreed. “Let’s get the files and some of the drugs.”
Mary went out of the room and looked around the area. She found two metal trash containers, dumped out their contents and carried them back into the room. “They aren’t fancy,” she said.
Bradley smiled. “But they’ll work.”
Mary moved over to the file cabinet and pulled open the top drawer. Yellowed manila folders filled the top drawers. “I bet you there are twelve files here,” she said, pulling them out and counting them as she placed them carefully in the garbage cans. She nodded. “Yep, twelve files.”
“Those, with the one at home, make up all thirteen of the children,” Bradley agreed. “Anything else in there?”
Mary pulled open the second drawer. A number of notebooks lay in the drawer. She picked up the first one and opened it. “It looks like journal entries,” Mary said. “But it looks like medical shorthand, so we’re going to need someone with more experience to review them.”
She picked them all up and put them in the garbage can alongside the files. “What did you find?” she asked.
“I think I have samples of all of the different kinds of drugs in the cabinets,” he said. “So, whoever we find to be our expert will have to let us know about these drugs too.”
She slowly looked around the room and then turned to Bradley. “I don’t know what we’ve found,” she said, “but it sure seems like these children were victims, not patients. How could that happen?”
Bradley shook his head. “That’s exactly what I want to find out.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Bradley carried both garbage cans in his arms as they walked down the long hallway toward the elevator. Mary walked ahead of him, shining the flashlight in the dim light. Suddenly Jack appeared before them.
“They’re coming,” he said. “You have to hide.”
“What?” Mary asked Jack.
“What?” Bradley asked Mary.
“They’re taking the elevator,” Jack said. “Anna saw them. She’s the lookout. They know someone’s been in the unit.”
“Jack said someone’s taking the elevator up, and they’re looking for us,” Mary explained to Bradley. “He wants us to hide.”
Bradley looked up and down the hallway. The rooms were stripped bare, and there was no good place to hide. Bradley looked down to where he thought Jack was standing.
“How far away are the men?” Bradley asked.
“They’re waiting on the first floor for the elevator,” Jack said.
“On the first floor,” Mary replied. “Bradley, there’s no way we’re going to get out of here without them seeing us.”
Bradley scanned the area, then noticed an abandoned gurney pushed against a wall in one of the rooms. “Ask Jack if he can open the supply room door,” he said. “I need some sheets.”
Jack nodded and disappeared.
Bradley put the garbage cans down and pushed the gurney toward Mary. “So, you’re just going to go into labor a little early,” he said with a smile. He helped her up onto the gurney, and she lay down. Then he slipped the two garbage cans onto the shelves underneath the cart. He looked up and smiled as three sheets seemed to fly down the middle of the hallway on their own.
“Thanks, Jack,” he said, taking them from the boy and draping them over Mary and the gurney. “Okay, let’s see how good we are at acting.”
He quickly pushed Mary out past the double doors and into the lobby just as the elevator doors opened. Three men in dark suits emerged.
“About damn time!” Bradley yelled. “The other elevator stalled on three. She’s in transition. Get the hell out of the way!”
Mary moaned loudly, and the men scattered. Bradley pushed the gurney into the elevator and pressed the button to the first floor. Mary moaned again as the door was closing. Then she screamed, “I have to push! I have to push!”
“Breathe!” Bradley ordered as the door finally closed.
The elevator started down, and Mary struggled to sit up. “Okay, I’m breathing,” she said with a smile. “Now what?”
He grinned at her. “Lie back down,” he said. “This is the fastest way to get us out of the hospital with no questions asked.”
<
br /> She lay back just before the door opened on the first floor. “Should I moan?” she whispered.
He smiled down at her. “No, I think lying there and looking worried is the best bet,” he said. “We don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves.”
“Well, one thing’s for sure,” she said as they moved down the corridor on the first floor. “Those guys don’t work for the hospital.”
“How do you know that?” Bradley asked.
“Because maternity is on two,” she said. “There’s no reason we would be on three to get to maternity.”
“Hopefully they don’t figure that out,” Bradley replied.
“Why?” Mary asked.
“Because it won’t be too hard to figure out who the chief of police and his very pregnant wife are,” he said. “And these guys didn’t look like part of the construction crew.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
“I’m sorry my parents have to tell your parents,” Clarissa said to Maggie as they sat together on her bed.
Maggie nodded. “Well, at least it’s not as bad as we thought,” she replied. “We didn’t get punished for sneaking down to the third floor. Well, not yet at least.”
“Do you think your parents are going to get mad at you?” Clarissa asked.
Maggie shrugged. “They don’t seem to understand things like this like your parents do.”
“I think your mom does,” Clarissa offered.
“Yeah, but Mom is not too keen on me making up stuff,” Maggie said.
“You mean lying?”
Maggie turned to her friend. “Making up stuff sounds lots better than lying.”
“You’re right,” Clarissa said. “It does.”
“But this was our first case together,” Maggie said. “And that was really cool. I loved being able to see all of those ghosts.”
“Yeah, it was pretty cool,” Clarissa said.
Maggie smiled. “I felt like a superhero,” she added. “You know, like I could see through walls, but really I could see the ghosts.”
