The Mammoth Book of Ghost Romance (Mammoth Books)

by Trisha Telep

  “Uh . . . yeah,” he said, flipping her a quick wave – which left him mortifyingly re-exposed. He clamped his hand back between his legs. “Fine. Everything’s fine. Thanks. Yeah.”

  To her credit, she didn’t laugh at him, at least not to his face, and he managed to beat a hasty, if not immodest, retreat. Before he could scurry inside for the relative cover of his living room, however, he stumbled to a halt. There, in the patio door lock, glinting in the early morning sun, were his keys, dangling from the lock in the patio door.

  Right where I left them last night, he realized.

  “Goddamn it,” he muttered.

  As Jack pulled into the lot facing the sprawling hospital complex in South Lake Tahoe, California, he was surprised to find a local news channel’s van parked in front of the main building. A relay mast and satellite dish had been mounted on top, and he could see someone setting up a camera and tripod on the sidewalk approaching the entrance. A blonde woman in a bright-red coat stood nearby in conversation with a man dressed in a wool overcoat.

  “Here he is now,” he heard the man say as he climbed out of the Jeep. Biting back a groan, Jack recognized his voice: Bill Rumpke, the hospital’s chief of staff – his boss. “Jack? Over here. Jack!”

  Perfect. Jack glanced at himself in the side-view mirror and winced at the visible shadows around his eyes, the scraggly growth of day-old, hungover beard stubble on his chin and cheeks. Just perfect.

  “Uh, good morning, sir,” he said as he hesitantly approached the entrance. Eyeing the news crew warily, he added, “What’s all this?”

  “KLVE-TV news.” The blonde woman stepped forward, her toothy grin too dazzlingly white to be anything other than artificially tinted. She thrust her hand out to him. “It’s a pleasure, Dr Harris.”

  “They’re here to do a story on you,” said Rumpke.

  “Me?” Jack blinked in surprise.

  “The thoracotomy yesterday,” Rumpke elaborated. But before Jack could do more than sputter in protest, Rumpke glanced past his shoulder, smile widening. “Ah! Here come the Bennetts now.”

  Jack turned as a middle-aged couple walked through the sliding glass doors of the main entrance. He recognized them from the night before – the parents of an accident victim he’d worked on in the emergency room. Though bundled up against the winter chill, they were both clearly dressed in their Sunday best beneath. The woman carried a framed photograph in her hands. Both she and her husband had looked uncertain, somewhat hesitant, upon their exit from the hospital, but brightened visibly now to see the news van – and, more specifically, Jack.

  “Dr Harris!” the woman exclaimed. When she drew close enough, she hugged him, enveloping him in a tight, sudden cloud of Chantilly perfume.

  “Mrs Bennett,” he managed somewhat breathlessly as her stranglehold momentarily choked him. “It’s, uh, nice to see you again.” Because her husband had his hand outstretched, dangling in mid-air, Jack reached for it, accepting the fervent clasp. “Mr Bennett.”

  “Dr Harris,” Mr Bennett said, his eyes glossy. “We can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done.”

  Jack always found it unnerving to see a grown man cry, especially one who was nearly the same age as his own father. In his line of work, he saw this entirely too often, but it never made the experience any less unsettling. “Like I said last night,” he offered in clumsy reassurance. “Just, uh, doing my job.”

  Laura Bennett had been delivered by ambulance to the emergency room following a single-car crash in which she’d skidded off the road and struck a tree. The impact with the driver’s side airbag had left her suffering from fractured ribs and the ragged edges of broken bone had punched past her lung into the thick muscle of her heart. With every beat, it hemorrhaged; with every contraction, it forced itself closer and closer to arrest.

  “Give me one milligram atropine by IV push, stat,” Jack had ordered, cutting a deep incision beneath her breast. Using a surgical expander, he’d spread the third and fourth ribs apart, allowing him unobstructed access. While another doctor, Pete Howard – his best friend since medical school – tilted her lung out of the chest cavity, Jack worked quickly to repair the damaged heart underneath.

  “I need your finger—” with the tip of the scalpel, he’d guided a nearby trauma nurse “—right here. Put pressure on that wound.”

  The nurse, Margot Williams, quickly complied and, when she’d stepped beside him, he caught the distinctive whiff of patchouli. The residents liked to call her “Weirdo Williams” – though never to her face – because she liked to talk about alternative medicine and all things supernatural, like crystals, Ouija boards, divining rods and tarot cards.

  On that night, though, Margot had been all business, and hadn’t said a word as Jack had sutured the torn cardiac muscle closed. Just as he’d slipped the last thread into place, Laura’s exposed heart had quivered and shuddered in the throes of arrest – then abruptly stopped. On the monitor, the spasmodic spike of her pulse rate abruptly flatlined.

  “She’s coding,” Pete had shouted.

  While around them the flurry of activity continued unabated and more frantic than ever, Jack had reacted on instinct, reaching into Laura’s chest to cradle her heart against his palm. Using his other hand, he pressed against it, rhythmic and deliberate, gentle but firm.

  Aloud, he’d called out, “I need one milligram, epinephrine, intracardiac, stat, then ten more of atropine by push, q-five.”

  In his mind, he kept count – one and two and three and four – as he’d pumped her heart, forcing blood to cycle through its inner chambers.

  “You did great,” Pete had told him later, as they sat together on a curb outside of the hospital. Within moments of beginning his cardiac compressions, Laura’s heart had started to beat again on its own and she’d been carted off unceremoniously to an awaiting operating room. In the aftermath, as the rush of frenetic adrenaline had faded, Jack had felt exhausted, spent, like he’d just gone ten rounds, pay-per-view, with a heavyweight boxing champ.

  “What say we kick out of here at shift change, head down to T. Bomb’s?” Pete had asked.

  “No thanks.” Tom Bombadil’s – or T. Bomb’s as it had been affectionately dubbed – was a favorite after-shift gathering spot for the hospital’s interns and residents.

  “Come on,” Pete had pressed. “I’ll buy you a Jack and Coke. After that resuscitation, man, you deserve one. A double, even.”

  Despite his fatigue, and the inner voice of reason nagging at him in reminder that he had another lengthy shift to pull in less than twelve hours, Jack had agreed. And the rest, as they say, was history.

  “Dr Harris, is this type of procedure common?” the TV reporter asked, thrusting a microphone at Jack as the light from the camera glared in his face.

  “A thoracotomy? Uh, not too uncommon.” Jack gave a wary glance to his boss. “It’s used for a variety of purposes, both in emergency—”

  “But it’s the first time in our facility’s twenty-two-year history in which one has been performed for resuscitation.” Rumpke barged into both the conversation and the camera frame. “During the procedure, Dr Harris used his hands to pump the patient’s heart. His heroic efforts saved her life.”

  “Heroic?” Embarrassed, Jack winced. “I don’t know if I’d call it . . .”

  “He’s right,” Mrs Bennett offered timidly.

  The reporter turned and Mrs Bennett held the framed photo in her hands toward the camera. Clearing her throat, she said more loudly, “I said he’s right. Dr Harris is a hero.”

  Jack glanced at the photograph, did a startled double-take, then jerked back as if he’d been slapped in the face. What the hell? he thought, blinking in bewildered shock at the image of Laura Bennett. He realized he’d seen her before. Last night as a matter of fact – only not in the emergency room because he hadn’t noticed her face then. He’d been too busy with her heart.

  I saw her after that, at T. Bomb’s, he realized. I took her hom
e with me. She’s the girl I had sex with last night!

  “Is everything alright, Dr Harris?”

  After the interview, he’d gone up to the cardio-thoracic intensive care unit, where Laura Bennett had been admitted following surgeries that had lasted well into the early morning hours. She was resting now, surrounded by monitor screens, IV stands, automatic pumps and a tangle of tubes, cables and wires.

  It can’t be the same woman. With a frown, he shook his head. There’s no way.

  At the sound of Mr Bennett’s hesitant voice from behind him, he turned in surprise.

  “I’m sorry,” the older man said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I just didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Is everything all right?”

  Jack cut one last glance back at Laura, then managed a smile. “Everything’s fine, Mr Bennett. I just wanted to see how she’s doing.”

  “They did some kind of scan on her, a CT, I think?” Mr Bennett walked into the room, dropping his coat onto a nearby chair. “Anyway, it didn’t show any signs of brain injury, thank God. Her surgeon’s optimistic about her chances of recovery. Said it could take days, weeks even, for her to come out of it, but he seemed to think she’d shake this off.”

  “That’s good news,” Jack said. “I’m glad to hear it, Mr Bennett.”

  “Call me Frank,” the older man said, offering a smile. “My wife will be sorry she missed you. She’s run down to the cafeteria to get some breakfast. You ask her, she’d say you hung the moon.”

  Jack smiled again, embarrassed. “I appreciate that.”

  “You know Laura’s a singer?” Frank said, gazing at his sleeping daughter with a sorrowful, nearly wistful expression. “Like a little bird. I guess she started performing down at Harrah’s about a month or so ago, three nights a week in the piano bar. It’s not much, but she’s sure been excited about it. Said it could be her big break.”

  He sounded momentarily choked and drew his hand to his mouth. Because he said nothing more, Jack took it as his cue to leave. Just as he stepped across the threshold, however, he stopped again. “Does Laura have any sisters?” he asked, adding in his mind, Who happen to look exactly like her?

  Frank shook his head. “No. Claire, my wife, she’d have had a whole houseful of children if she could have, but the doctor told her when we were younger she’d probably never have babies. It took us five years of trying before we wound up with Laura. We always said after that we’d had more than our fair share of miracles, but . . .” His voice grew strained again. Then, quietly, hoarsely: “Looks like the Lord must’ve had at least one left in him for us last night.”

  “Hey, man!” Jack grimaced as Pete Howard clapped him heavily on the shoulder. “You’re a real celebrity now. I saw the TV van outside. That’s some shit, huh?”

  “Yeah. Terrific,” Jack grumbled as they stepped into a waiting elevator together. As the doors closed and they backed against the far wall, making room for other riders, he glanced at Pete. “You make it home OK last night?”

  “Took a cab.” Pete laughed. “Had to get up at the ass-crack of dawn to go back for my car. How about you?”

  “Like you don’t know.”

  Pete blinked at him. “Huh?”

  Jack rolled his eyes. “Come on.”

  “No, seriously. What?”

  Jack frowned. “The girl last night.” Frankly, he was astonished and impressed that Pete had not only managed to keep mum about it to that point, but also looked genuinely bewildered at the mention. “Blonde hair. Red dress. Hot as hell. I left with her. Don’t you remember?”

  “I remember you coming up, saying something about hitting the road, but by that point it was late and we were both pretty fucked up.”

  Jack’s frown deepened. “Whatever, man.”

  “Seriously, I have no clue what you’re talking about,” Pete insisted. “What was her name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She didn’t tell you?”

  “Of course she did. I think so, anyway. She must have.” With a glance to make sure no one could overhear, he leaned toward Pete and added, “We fucked in the bathroom at T. Bomb’s.”

  “You? No way.”

  Jack frowned. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  Pete laughed again. “It means you’re the lamest guy I know.”

  “Thanks,” Jack muttered.

  “What? It’s true. I mean, you hardly even date, for Christ’s sake.”

  They reached their floor. As the doors slid open, Pete glanced at him, his brow raised. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You really banged some chick at the bar.” When Jack nodded, annoyed, he laughed again and clapped him on the back. “Holy shit, man. There may be hope for you yet.”

  Thirteen hours later, with another completed shift under his belt, Jack returned home. Exhausted, he dropped his keys and wallet in their customary places and ducked into his kitchen.

  God, I swear I can still taste the stale scum of Jack and Coke from last night, he thought with a wince. He could sure as hell still feel it rattling around inside his skull, a dim but tenacious ache.

  Propping the refrigerator door open with his hip, he pulled out a carton of orange juice. Not bothering with a cup, he unscrewed the lid, drew the container to his mouth and tipped his head back. Just as he started to drink, he caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye, something outside on his patio.

  It was fully dark now, the glow of the living room light reflected off the glass, and, with a curious frown, he put the juice away and approached the windows. He thought he saw a silhouetted figure standing out among the heavy shadows, but it wasn’t until he reached the door, cupped his hands to the glass and peered out that he saw the wink of light off red sequins and realized.

  “Laura,” he gasped, startled. Grabbing for the handle, he threw the door open wide, even as he heard the soft, rapid-fire patter of her bare feet slapping the deck as she ran away. “Laura,” he cried, taking off after her. “Laura, wait!”

  Just as she reached the stairs, he caught up to her, grabbing her by the elbow. “Wait,” he gasped as she struggled in his grasp. “Laura, stop. Stop it!”

  Whether the sharpness in his voice startled her, or she’d simply exhausted herself, he didn’t know, but she fell still, her breasts hitching up and down as she hiccupped for breath. It couldn’t be her, and he knew it; the rational part of his mind understood that there was no way in hell Laura Bennett was standing on his patio, alert, conscious and walking of her own accord. And yet, somehow, impossibly, it was; her face that he caught sight of beneath the mess of her hair, her unmistakable brown eyes, the full curves of her mouth.

  “Please help,” she whispered. “She’s after me.”

  Jack swept his gaze down the steps toward the driveway. He didn’t see anything, no vehicles except his Jeep, no hint of headlights or the sound of a distant motor, maybe a taxi driving away.

  “Who?” he asked, but she didn’t respond. Her skin was like ice and he could hear her teeth chattering together. “Come on. Let’s go inside, OK? It’s freezing out here.”

  She still didn’t speak, but offered no resistance as he guided her into the house. He led her to the sofa, and then knelt on the floor in front of her as she sat.

  “Do you know where you are?” he asked. “Do you remember how you got here?”

  “I was lost in the woods,” she murmured. “I . . . I was cold and couldn’t find my way.”

  He grabbed a blanket off the nearest sofa arm and wrapped it snugly around her, letting her clutch the folds of it closed beneath her chin.

  “She’s after me,” she mumbled again, shivering. Her eyes darted nervously to the windows.

  “Who is?” he asked, but again, she wouldn’t elaborate. When she looked back in his direction, he said, “It’s OK. You can talk to me.” Because he didn’t know if she’d remember or not, he added, “My name’s Jack Harris.”

  She reached for him, brushing her fingertips against his
face, tracing the line of his mouth. “Jack.”

  He nodded. “I’m a doctor,” he said. “I can help—”

  His voice cut short in surprise as she leaned forward and pressed her mouth against his with an unexpected passion. Immediately, her tongue slipped against the seam of his lips, then past.

  “Wait,” he said, trying to draw away. “Laura, stop.”

  She caught his face between her hands and pulled him back, kissing him again, fiercely, deeply. The blanket fell from her shoulders as she slipped down from the couch cushions to the floor, her thighs sliding to frame his hips as she straddled him.

  No panties, he realized, biting back a groan as his hands fell against her thighs, tantalizingly revealed as the short hem of her red dress slid up. Just like last night.

  Her lips trailed to his cheek, then his throat, settling against the delta of his jaw. He could feel his body responding to her; the crotch of his pants felt uncomfortably tight, the zipper digging into him as he swelled beneath it.

  “Stop,” he whispered, as he felt her reach between them, her fingers busy at his fly. But the truth was, he didn’t want her to. In that moment, he was as overwhelmed with desire – an irrepressible, undeniable need for her – as he’d been the night before. When she pushed him back against the floor, he didn’t resist, instead raising his hips so she could jerk the hem of his shirt loose, and then open the front of his pants.

  She kissed him again, and he tangled his fingers in her hair, pulling her near. Within moments, he was inside her, spearing into her warmth, and she rocked against him, drawing him in more deeply. She sat up astride him, the motions of her hips growing faster, sharper, and he clasped her waist between his hands to urge her on. Arching his back, he matched her pace, driving himself into her, watching as she tilted her head back, her long hair spilling past her shoulders, her breasts bouncing beneath the sequined bodice of her dress with every forceful thrust.

  “Jack,” she gasped, shuddering with pleasure, bringing him to a sudden, crashing climax that left every muscle in his body rigid, straining, trembling with release.