by Brynn Stein
“Well.” Daniel rolled his head up so that his chin now sat on his folded arms, still on the back of the chair. “Seeing is usually believing.”
Elliot shook his head, looking Daniel in the eye. “I think in any other situation I’d still be trying to explain it away. But I can’t do it for this. He saved my life, Daniel.”
Daniel’s smile was Cheshire cat–wide, and evil glinted in his blue eyes. “What happened to Darrell?”
Elliot smirked and swung behind his head the arm with only the pulse oximeter attached. “He’ll come back when I feel better.” He felt a little more lighthearted than he did just minutes before. It occurred to him that he actually liked spending time with Daniel. “But what I’m saying is I don’t think you have to be afraid of him. Ben won’t hurt you.”
“Ben?”
“Remember I mentioned that I’ve been getting weird dreams?”
Daniel nodded. “You never got around to telling me about them.”
Elliot put his arm back down, adjusting the slightly dislodged oximeter. “They’re more like memories really.” He got a sudden chill and reached for the cover. “Ben’s memories. Through Ben’s eyes.” Daniel must have noticed he was struggling because he reached out as far as the back of the chair would allow him, caught a corner of the cover, and pulled it toward Elliot’s hands. “I’ve been leaning toward your ghost theory for a while. Remember I told you I believed something was there? But I never saw evidence of him moving anything until I was lying there, trying dreadfully to reach that damned phone. He moved it to me so I could call for help.”
“Yeah, well, he obviously likes you.” Daniel nodded, back to his original position of head on arms and arms on the back of the chair. “I don’t think he likes me so much. He throws stuff at me.”
Elliot stopped fiddling with the cover and looked Daniel in the eye. “Does he actually throw stuff?” Elliot wanted to clarify. “Or does he just move stuff around?”
Daniel had to think about it. “Well, the lamp he moved around. The stuff in the bathroom, he threw. They came sailing off the sink and clear across the room at me. Granted, the bathroom is a little room, but that shit, he definitely threw.”
“But he never hurt you or even hit you with anything.”
“No, you’re right. He never hit me. I suppose he could have if he wanted to.” He paused. “But I still don’t think he wants me in the house. Maybe he doesn’t like watching gay sex. Geez, maybe you have a homophobic ghost.”
Elliot laughed and wiggled in the bed. Trying to find a comfortable position, he only ended up sliding down so that he lay down now more than sat. “I’ve been getting his memories, remember? He had a male lover. Patrick. I don’t think that’s the problem.”
“Well, then maybe he’s jealous. Maybe he has the hots for you.” Daniel scrunched up his face and lifted his head from his arms. “Can ghosts lust after someone? Or maybe it’s just been so long for him, he doesn’t want anyone to enjoy themselves.” Daniel’s face split into a grin and that evil twinkle was back in his eyes. “If you can’t see your balls, can they still be blue?”
Elliot rolled his eyes and slapped his hand in Daniel’s direction, even though he was too far away to connect with. “How would I know?”
“Anyway.” Daniel’s face had a more serious look now. “I’m glad you believe me, and I’m extremely pleased that the ghost helped you.”
“Ben,” Elliot corrected tiredly.
“I’m glad Ben saved you.” Daniel smiled and got up from his chair, swinging it back to its original position. “I’m going to let you rest for a little while. I just wanted to check in on you.” He grabbed the bed control that was dangling off the side, out of Elliot’s reach, and handed it to him.
Elliot lowered the bed, yawned, and snuggled into the covers while Daniel walked toward the door. “I’m glad you did.” Daniel was almost out of the room before Elliot added, “Come back later?”
Daniel nodded, with his hand on the door, looking back at Elliot. “Sure thing.”
SHERI WAS visiting when the doctor came in the next day.
“We scheduled the angioplasty—stent insertion—for tomorrow morning,” Dr. Proust told Elliot almost as soon as he entered the room. “If everything goes well, we’ll keep you overnight and you can go home the following day.” He stood at the foot of Elliot’s bed, clutching his clipboard as he tended to do.
“If everything goes well?” Sheri, wide-eyed, glanced from the doctor to Elliot and back again. “There’s a chance things won’t go well?”
“There’s always a risk with any surgery. But the risks of this particular procedure are pretty small. I don’t look for there to be any complications.” The doctor glanced at Sheri as he answered her question, and then he turned back toward Elliot. “Someone will be in later to go over all the possible risks, as well as aftercare instructions.”
“Calm down, Cher.” Elliot reached out for her hand and she wiggled around to take it. “You’re more worried about it than I am.” He squeezed her hand. “I’ll be fine.”
She turned back to scrutinize the doctor before asking, “And this will help him breathe easier and everything?”
The doctor had gone through this before, but he held Sheri’s gaze and patiently explained again. “It won’t really do much for some of the symptoms of the congestive heart failure. His heart will still be enlarged. We have him on meds for that. Also, the blood tests showed that there is kidney involvement, as I suspected. The liver is also slightly bigger than it should be. This won’t do anything about those conditions either. We’ll add a diuretic to the medication regimen, as well as some other meds to help the kidneys and liver function with a little more ease. The stent will open his arteries a little, though, and increase blood flow. It should help prevent another heart attack, but there are no guarantees.” Sheri opened her mouth, seemingly to ask another question, but the doctor anticipated it. “If he doesn’t have the angioplasty done, he will almost certainly have another heart attack at some point.”
Sheri closed her mouth but looked just as concerned. She turned back to Elliot and simply gripped his hand tighter.
HE WAS taken downstairs for the procedure the following morning, and another set of nurses took his vitals. Then one of them injected something into his IV. He soon became so groggy that he didn’t remember much of anything that followed. Not the surgery, or the recovery room, or the trip back to his room. Even then, he was still so sleepy from whatever they had given him that he fell back to sleep as soon as they transferred him back to his bed.
When he woke again, Daniel was once again beside his bed, sitting correctly in the ugly orange chair, not straddling it. He was leaning over a pad of paper, and Elliot wasn’t sure at first what he was doing until he heard the scrape of the pencil followed by the rub of an eraser. Daniel was drawing. Elliot hadn’t planned to speak yet, not wanting to break the spell Daniel seemed to be under, but then Daniel flicked eraser bits off his page and they landed on the sheet near Elliot.
Elliot chuckled and brushed them away. “I didn’t know you drew.”
Daniel looked up, startled, and closed his sketchbook. “Yeah. That’s actually what I do for a living. My pieces are in art shows, and I do portraits of people and animals. All sorts of cool stuff.” Daniel grinned, and Elliot didn’t find it difficult at all to imagine this flamboyant free spirit as a successful artist.
“Why have you never told me that?” Elliot found a particularly large eraser crumb and worried it between his fingers. He thought back to the portraits in the living room and the easel he’d seen in the spare bedroom.
Daniel leaned forward, elbows on his sketchbook. “You never asked.”
Elliot had to agree with that but now felt horribly selfish. It hadn’t even occurred to him to ask what Daniel did for a living. He vowed to rectify that.
Daniel collected some of the eraser pieces off Elliot’s bed and held out his hand for the one Elliot was still toying with, then threw th
em in the trash basket near the bedside table.
Elliot rummaged through the folds of the sheet, trying to find more particles. “How did you get into being an artist?”
Daniel watched Elliot’s long fingers absently wander through the wrinkles of the sheet. “I always drew as far back as I can remember. My mom and sister both drew too.” Daniel chuckled as if remembering something. “We used to play this game where one of us would get a picture of a famous actor or model or something, and describe them out loud. The other two would try to draw what was being described, without looking at the picture of course. All three of us did well enough to enjoy the game and played it often. I just never grew out of it. I still particularly like to draw people.”
Elliot smiled and then nodded toward the sketchpad. “So, what are you drawing now?” He found the remote for the bed and stabbed at the button until he was sitting a little more upright. Judging by the whir of the bed motor, the poor thing was as tired as Elliot was.
Daniel grinned sheepishly and sat up taller, patting the sketchbook with the palms of his hands. “Um, you?”
“You’re drawing me?” Elliot found himself, ridiculously, smoothing his hair and straightening his gown. “Like this?” His expression turned to one of dismay as he wiped his dry lips and chin. “Drool and all?”
Daniel chuckled and opened the sketchbook. “No. From memory, mostly.” Daniel turned the book around and held it out to show him. “When we were eating breakfast the other day, we were talking, and you looked so relaxed and had the prettiest smile.” Daniel actually flushed in embarrassment. “I absolutely had to draw that.”
Elliot gaped at the drawing. It was extraordinary. The position and the smile made him look younger and more relaxed than he remembered feeling in years. There was a twinkle in his eye that he hadn’t realized he possessed, but it was definitely him. The errant lock of hair that was forever on his forehead was right where it should be in the picture, along with the little scar on his chin from where he’d needed stitches when he was eight after falling from a tree. The stubble he’d sported that day, and probably had now, almost covered it, but it was still noticeable. “That looks exactly like me.”
“Well.” Daniel smiled and pulled the sketchpad back onto his lap. “It does help if a full-time artist can actually draw.”
“You say you do a lot of portraits?” Elliot was really interested. He doodled designs for houses and could draft plans for new buildings, so he appreciated the time it took to get anything down on paper. But he’d always been fascinated with artists who could draw people. He’d even tried to draw when he was much younger, but his people tended to look like something out of a Stephen King novel, so he’d stopped trying, focusing instead on drafting.
“Quite often.” Daniel leaned forward again, elbows on knees. “I’ve done many commissions from pictures, but actually have people sit for portraits too.”
Elliot reached for the sketchbook again. “Do you have more sketches in there?”
Daniel handed the pad to him. “Mostly just studies of various things. Some scenes from around the hospital.” He chuckled and lightly smacked Elliot’s fingers after he’d taken the sketchpad. “I’ve had plenty of time while I’ve been waiting around for someone to wake up.”
Elliot smiled and opened the book, flicking through the pages. “These are great, Daniel.” Several showed scenes from around the hospital, but almost all of them had people in them: nurses talking to each other at the nurses’ station; a young mother holding a crying child; Malcolm tenderly holding Sheri collapsed against his shoulder, probably asleep.
“These are—” Elliot stopped short, realizing he was about to repeat himself. Then he decided it warranted repeating. “These are wonderful.”
Daniel actually blushed. “Just doodles to fill the time.”
Elliot wasn’t going to dignify that with a response. These were no doodles. But then Elliot’s mind wandered in a different direction. “Have you ever done a commission from description alone? Like the game you used to play?” Elliot had the silliest idea all of a sudden.
“No. That was just something I did for fun with my family.” Daniel leaned forward again to take the sketchpad that Elliot had finished looking at. “Why?”
“Could you draw Ben if I tell you what he looks like?”
“Do you know what he looks like?” Daniel asked incredulously. “You’ve actually seen him?”
“Well, no.” Elliot realized that actually seeing the ghost would go beyond just seeing the things he was moving, and Daniel may feel like Elliot hadn’t been entirely honest with him about the phone incident. “Not as a ghost, anyway. I saw him in the mirror in the first dream I had of him. And in each dream, I have a sense of what he looks like. I’m dreaming from his perspective and he knows what he looks like, so….”
“Sure.” Daniel smiled. “Let’s try it.”
“What? Now?” Elliot hadn’t thought that far ahead. He wasn’t sure what he had been thinking, actually, but it wasn’t that they’d try it now.
“Why not now?” Daniel opened the sketchpad and then dug through a small pouch of different kinds of pencils to find just the right one.
“Well, yeah,” Elliot had to agree and scooted himself up the bed a little. “I have nothing but time, I guess.” Then he looked Daniel in the eye.
Daniel chuckled as he turned pages in the sketchbook until he found a clean one.
Elliot sat a little straighter. “Okay. So, how do we start?”
It took a good half hour, with Daniel changing little details here and there as Elliot directed, but they finally had a beautiful drawing of a young man with light hair and eyes, in a Union soldier’s uniform. Daniel turned it toward Elliot with a flourish.
“That’s him,” Elliot said, pulling the sketchpad closer. “Or damned close, anyway.” After studying the picture for a while, he handed it back to Daniel.
“He’s cute.” Daniel tore off Ben’s picture and handed it to Elliot. “Here you go.”
“How much do I owe you?” Elliot asked as he gathered in the portrait. When Daniel shook his head, Elliot added, “It was a commission, right? How much do you charge?”
“How much I charge depends on the job. But that one is free.” He tore off the portrait of Elliot. “Here. Take this one too.”
“I’m not hurting for money,” Elliot murmured. “I can pay you.”
Daniel smiled and shook his head again. “I know you can. I don’t want you to. These aren’t professional-level portraits. They’re just sketches. I don’t charge for sketches.”
Elliot was amazed. “You mean you do better than this for the ones you charge for?”
Daniel just chuckled. “Maybe a little. Mostly the difference is the medium and what I draw on. I use canvas and paints for commissioned pieces. Not pencils and sketch paper.”
Elliot nodded and didn’t argue any more with Daniel. He’d find some way to pay him back.
Elliot held the portraits up side by side. Somehow Ben seemed so familiar, but he didn’t look right beside Elliot. He belonged with Patrick. Elliot almost asked Daniel to draw Patrick next, but he became so tired, he simply couldn’t stay awake any longer.
When he woke up later, Daniel was gone, and the two portraits had been carefully placed on the nightstand.
Chapter 5
THE NEXT afternoon found Elliot back at his—and Ben’s—beautiful old plantation home. Sheri and Malcolm accompanied him up the walkway and past the supplies on the porch that were still waiting for Elliot to finish the work he’d started.
“I guess I should contract out all those little jobs too,” he said as he climbed the stairs, voice completely dejected. He imagined the pile of replacement spindles whispering useless and old as he passed, and he had to nod along. That was exactly the way he felt.
“You don’t have to stop all exercise, Ellie.” Sheri held out her hand for Elliot to give her the house keys. “Take your meds, stay on the diet the doctor talked to you abou
t, and mild to moderate exercise is fine. I was with you when the doctor told you that, remember?”
“Yeah,” Elliot agreed, but he hadn’t changed his mind. “One of the times. They repeated it ad nauseam. I’m still going to farm it out.”
Sheri shook her head, opened the door, and waved him inside. “Anything you want, Elle.”
Malcolm walked quietly beside them, carrying the overnight bag of items Sheri had taken to the hospital for Elliot.
“Do you want these upstairs?” he asked, already moving to the stairs.
“Sure,” Elliot answered as he headed toward the living room, voice still flat. “Why not?”
Malcolm disappeared up the stairs. Elliot and Sheri continued into the living room. Elliot had every intention of sitting in his recliner for the rest of time, but Sheri steered him to the sofa. He was too tired to argue.
Sheri settled beside him there and placed a hand on his knee. “I don’t like seeing you this down.”
“It’s a lot to take in, Cher.” Elliot patted her hand and tried to straighten up a little, if only to look livelier for her sake. “The last time I was in this house—before the whole heart attack thing—I was healthy, planning on doing a lot of work on the place. Excited to do so, actually.” He looked around at some of the jobs just in the living room that he had wanted to do. The windowsill was chipped and gouged to the point that Elliot wanted to replace it. Some of the molding had come loose or was missing. The whole room needed painting in a more period-appropriate color. “But now that’s gone. I’m not healthy, I can’t do the work, I have a damned heart condition. I have a right to be down, Cher.” He was suddenly very interested in looking at their hands. Anywhere but the room he now couldn’t fix, or at Sheri.
“I didn’t say you didn’t, Elle.” She took his hand in both of hers. “I just said I didn’t like seeing you this way.” She placed her fingertips under Elliot’s chin and lifted his head back up so he had to look at her. “But you’re wrong. You can still do some of the work. Maybe not throwing lumber around, but you could paint or—”
