“Where is everyone going? Don’t leave, please. Someone has to help me! There’s a terrible misunderstanding…I’m not dead!” Mila shouted, trotting behind the medical staff.
But they ignored her as they conversed among each other.
Imani turned toward the handsome Hispanic male nurse. “I’m exhausted, Niles. You have no idea how ready I am to get of this hospital.”
“You can’t leave, yet,” said Niles. “We have to at least make an appearance at Amber’s baby shower.”
Frowning, Imani glanced down at her watch. “Attending a baby shower after midnight is something I’ll never get used to. But such is life for people who work the night shift at a hospital,” she said, shaking her head.
Out in the corridor Mila sidled up to Imani and fell into step with her, feeling hopeful that she might be able to draw her attention.
Mila cleared her throat. “Excuse me, I’m not trying to freak you out or anything, but the body that you guys just covered up with a sheet…” She paused and cleared her throat again. “I know it sounds crazy, but that’s me. I’m the person lying on the table in there. I have no idea how this mix-up happened, but I can assure you that I’m very much alive.”
Imani slowed her steps and then stopped walking. She tilted her head as if listening to Mila, and Mila felt encouraged until the nurse looked right past her. Imani resumed walking—at a much slower pace, and with her brows furrowed, as if perplexed.
“Listen, you’ve got to help me…please,” Mila pleaded.
Once again, the nurse’s footsteps halted, and she gazed around the corridor, wearing a look of bewilderment.
“Why’re you lagging behind, Imani?” asked Niles. “If we hurry and get to the employee lounge there might still be some food and cake. I’m gonna be so pissed if there’s nothing but crumbs left.”
Imani quickened her pace, catching up to Niles. “Did you hear something, Niles?”
“Something like what?” he asked.
“A woman’s voice. It sounded like she was speaking in a whispery tone.”
“No, I didn’t hear anything like that. You’re trippin’ over the chick that died in the car accident. Girl, you have to stop letting these accident victims get inside your head.”
“But she was so young…around our age.”
“Yep, she was young, but we often have to deal with the death of kids and even little babies. What we do isn’t easy, especially when a patient dies. And when they do, we have to let it go. Otherwise, we’ll go crazy.”
“You’re right,” Imani said solemnly. “On a different subject, I have to pass on eating cake at the shower, but I’m excited to see the cute gifts that Amber got. I hope she likes the diaper bag I gave her.”
“Who wouldn’t love rocking a Tory Burch diaper bag?” asked Niles. “ But…back to the cake situation… Since when did you start turning down cake from O’Hara’s bakery?”
“Wait…what? The cake is from O’Hara’s?” Imani’s eyes brightened.
Niles smiled devilishly. “Yes, it is. Are you seriously gonna turn down all that buttery, melt-in-your mouth deliciousness?”
“Oh, you’re killing me. Well, I suppose a sliver won’t hurt me.”
“Only a sliver?”
I have to watch my weight if I expect to look amazing in my dress Friday night.”
“What’s going on Friday night?”
Feigning indignation, Imani halted her steps and put a hand on her hip. “You forgot about my date with Logan—the guy I met at Hope’s housewarming party.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s right, I forgot all about your hot date with the hot guy. I’ll be so glad when my Mr. Right comes along,” Niles said dreamily.
“Who said I found Mr. Right?” asked Imani.
“I can feel it. By the way, please find out if he has any fine-ass friends. Maybe the next time you go out with him, we can double date.”
Imani laughed. “I’ll look into it.
“I’m serious. And another thing…”
“Yes?”
“I’m nominating myself as your official wedding planner,” Niles announced with a broad smile.
Imani laughed. “You’re really jumping the gun.”
“No, honey. I’m speaking your wedding into existence. I have a vision in my head of an outdoor wedding near a lake filled with white swans. I see a white and gold color scheme,” he said, waving a hand dramatically.
Imani chuckled. “You’re so over the top, Niles!”
“Honey, no one can throw an elegant soiree the way that I can—and you know it.”
“True, but can you wait and see if he asks me out on a second date before you start ordering flowers and looking at venues?”
“If you insist,” Niles said as he opened the door to the employee lounge.
Mila had listened to the playful banter between Imani and Niles and was left feeling very much alone. The two nurses were living their lives and didn’t seem to have a care. Meanwhile her world had collapsed and it was possible that it would never be the same.
Mila’s first inclination was to stay close to Imani and keep trying to get through to her, but she also wanted to remain close to her body, so she turned around and made her way back to the treatment room.
*****
Inside the room, with its cold and sterile environment, Mila regarded the motionless form that lay beneath the sheet, and she wondered what steps she should take to regain her life. What were her options? Was it possible to reanimate a lifeless body? Did she even want a body that was as badly injured as hers?
She didn’t have an answer. It was simply too much to wrap her head around. Maybe Tucker had been right. Maybe they were both trapped inside an awful, never-ending nightmare.
Suddenly the door to the treatment room swung open, and two male nursing assistants entered the room, wheeling a gurney. The ID badges that were attached to lanyards around their necks read: Nathan Tyson and Hakim Boyd.
Hakim, who was the taller of the two men, ambled over to Mila’s body, lifted the sheet and grimaced. “Jesus! What happened to her?”
“Car accident,” said Nathan, who seemed to have the more dominant personality. “Reckless drivers always end up getting hauled off to the morgue,” he said grimly.
“Was she driving?” asked Hakim.
“Not sure. The guy she was with is already in the freezer—so he ain’t talking,” Nathan said with a smirk.
Both men broke out in laughter, and Mila was appalled by the tasteless wisecrack and their lack of sensitivity.
Scowling, Hakim continued to peer at the disfigured face beneath the sheet, which appeared to be frozen in a scream. “She must have gone through the windshield,” he speculated.
Incensed by the duo’s lack of respect toward her body, Mila rushed across the room, intending to snatch the corner of the sheet out of Hakim’s hand. Oddly, she didn’t hear her footsteps, and when she looked down, she was shocked to see that her feet weren’t touching the ground. She thought she was walking fast, but she was actually floating swiftly.
Moving through the air was an unnerving sight to see, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it. She approached the table and grabbed for the sheet, but it slipped through her fingers. She grabbed for it again, and this time she watched in amazement as her entire hand sliced through the cotton fabric. Each time that she tried to grasp the fabric she was overcome by a sickening wave of dizziness.
In an act of determination, Mila pushed past the vertigo and yanked the sheet out of Hakim’s hand. She held it in midair for only a millisecond, and then her fingers once again went through the white fabric, and it floated downward.
Nathan’s eyes became wide with disbelief. “How the fuck did that sheet raise up in the air like that?”
No idea, man,” said Hakim in a trembling voice. “It felt like something jerked it right of my hand.”
Nathan wore a look of disbelief. “That’s bullshit, man. Lift the sheet up again, and let’s see what happens.�
�
Hakim gave Nathan a look that asked if he was crazy. “Nah, I’m good,” Hakim said, backing away from the dead body.
“You, pussy,” Nathan taunted. “I’ll do it.” He moved in front of Hakim and reached for the sheet.
In a moment of fury, Mila tried to shove Nathan away, but her hands went through his body. In that moment, the overhead lights began flicking on and off wildly.
Nathan stopped cold. “What’s with the lights?” Gazing around, he balled his fists and assumed a boxer’s stance, like he was ready for a fist fight.
Eyes wide with fear, Hakim gawked at the flickering lights. “This shit is getting creepy as fuck, and I’m not here for it. It’s bad enough that they always call on us to transport the deceased down to the morgue, but now these dead fools done started showing their assess and doing all kinds of weird stuff.”
Nathan nodded his head in agreement. “Come on, man, let’s get out of here. We gotta get this dead chick down to the basement before she jumps off the table starts twerking and shit.”
Wearing grim expressions, the two men speedily steered the gurney out of the room. As they headed for the elevator, Mila hurried behind them, determined to stay close to her body.
Despite the sheer will she had exerted in order to lower the sheet and the way her anger was expressed with flickering lights, she found that she was helpless to prevent Nathan and Hakim from sliding her body inside the cold cabinet inside the morgue. Afterward putting her body in refrigeration, the two men hastily departed the chilly room, having no idea that they’d left a weeping Mila behind.
“How could something like this happen to me?” she lamented as she paced the tile floor. My parents warned me against Tucker. They said he was bad news, and if I had listened to them I wouldn’t be in this awful mess.
Thinking of her parents, Mila’s first instinct was to call and tell them about the accident. She needed to explain to them that there’d been some kind of screw-up and that the hospital staff was writing her off as dead.
She twisted around to retrieve her phone from her purse and was hit with the realization that her purse had been left in the wreckage, and had most likely been handed over to hospital personnel.
She desperately wanted to talk to her mother, and as soon as the thought had entered her head, she found herself at her family’s home in Blue Bell, standing next to her parents’ bed.
Oddly, her feet were once again a few inches above the floor, and she was concerned that her mother would freak out if she noticed that her daughter was levitating.
Mila had no idea how she had traveled to Blue Bell or why she could no longer stand with her feet on the floor. However, with her life in shambles, she had to pick her battles, and making contact with her mother was more important than figuring out why she was floating instead of walking.
She gazed lovingly at her parents who were both sound asleep and snoring lightly. She hated to drag them out of their peaceful slumber, but she was in dire need of their assistance. Mila and her mother had always been close, and if anyone in the world was capable of feeling her presence, it would definitely be Heather Pemberton.
Heather Pemberton, lay on her back with her silver-streaked mane fanned out on her pillow. Mila wanted to run her fingers through the shimmering tresses, but remembering the repercussions of touching, she resisted the urge.
Her father was positioned on his side, facing his wife. Mila marveled at the thick ginger hair on his head. At age fifty-five, Thomas Pemberton didn’t have one strand of gray. His hair was as vibrantly red as it had been during his youth, and Mila hoped she’d gotten the same youthful gene as her father. Mila had inherited her red mane from him and she thought it would be really cool if she, too, could retain her vibrant hair color into middle age.
The thought of old age caused the wistful smile on Mila’s face to fade as it occurred to her that she might not ever get out of her twenties, let alone mature into her senior years. With her other-self locked away in the morgue and soon to be buried six feet under, her future seemed bleak.
With no idea which self was the real her, she frantically squeezed her right shoulder and ran her hand along her arm. She was pleased that her body was solid to the touch. Blood still pumped through her veins, air flowed through her nostrils, and she could feel the beating of her heart. It was all proof that she was a living, breathing human being. She couldn’t make sense of why she had a doppelganger, and it was frustrating that no one could see or hear her, but there had to be an explanation.
She thought about the bizarre light display that had occurred in the sky immediately after the crash and she wondered if it had been some kind of celestial phenomenon that resulted in a weird, physical splintering-off that produced two replicas of her and Tucker.
But which body was the replica? The one she presently possessed or the one in the morgue?
It was a confusing and scary time for Mila, and she found it comforting to be close to her parents. If only she could communicate with them. She took a deep breath and hovered over her mother. “Mother!”
Heather’s eyelids fluttered a little, but didn’t open.
“Mother, wake up. It’s me…Mila. Please wake up; I really need to talk to you.”
Oblivious to her daughter’s fervent plea, Heather didn’t stir.
“Dad!” she whispered, moving to her father’s side of the bed. But he, too, remained unaware of his daughter’s presence.
Mila reached out, ready to grip her mother by the shoulder and shake her awake, but remembering the dizzy sensation that was a consequence of touching, she controlled the urge.
A sudden strident shriek startled her. It was the blaring ring of the landline phone that her parents refused to give up, and the sound of it pierced the quiet peace of the Pemberton household. Although they both used their cell phones almost exclusively, Heather and Thomas considered the landline to be a good backup phone.
Jarred awake, Heather jerked her head toward the phone while Thomas, merely shifted his position and resumed snoring.
Groggily, Heather reached toward her nightstand and lifted the handset from its base. “Hello? Yes, this is Mrs. Pemberton. To whom am I speaking?”
Mila eyed her mother, wondering who could be calling in the wee hours of the morning. She didn’t have to wonder for long. At the exact moment that she had mentally expressed curiosity, she was strangely imbued with the ability to hear the voice on the other end of the phone. Even though her mother didn’t put the call on speaker, Mila could clearly hear the caller’s every word.
“Mrs. Pemberton, this is City Memorial Hospital calling, and we’re sorry to inform you that your daughter, Mila Pemberton was in a fatal car accident.”
“Fatal?” Heather scrunched her brows together. Feeling groggy, she believed she had heard wrong. “Please tell me Mila’s going to be all right. She’s not hurt badly is she?” Heather asked, phone tucked between her shoulder and chin as she wrung her hands worriedly.
“I believe you misunderstood me, ma’am. Your daughter has expired,” said the unemotional voice on the other end of the phone.
At the word, expired, Heather gasped. “Oh, my God, this can’t be true! You must have the wrong number. I just spoke to my daughter earlier this evening, and she was fine. She was perfectly fine,” Heather insisted with rising hysteria in her tone.
Snapped awake by his wife’s shrill voice, Thomas Pemberton bolted upright in bed. “What’s wrong, Heather? Who’s on the phone?”
“It’s someone from City Memorial Hospital. The woman is saying that Mila’s been killed in a car accident, but that’s impossible,” Heather cried.
“Give me the phone!” Thomas exploded like he could make the caller take back her words.
“Who is this and what kind of sick joke are you playing?” he shouted angrily into the mouthpiece.
“Sir, I am sorry for your loss, but we need you and Mrs. Pemberton to come to the hospital and identify your daughter’s body.”
The woman on the phone calmly rattled off the address of the hospital, but Tom wasn’t listening. “No, not Mila! Dear God, please…not my baby girl. She had so much to live for. She had her whole life ahead of her.” He clamped his lips together, struggling to keep a storm of emotions bottled up inside of him.
He hadn’t cried in years and had never shed a tear in front of his wife. However, the news of his only child’s untimely demise stripped away every vestige of the masculine pride that he held dearly. Suddenly he began to weep openly, allowing uninhibited tears to stream down his face.
Heather had been in denial about the fate of their daughter, but upon witnessing Thomas’s raw emotional reaction to the wretched news, she had no choice but to accept that Mila was gone. Swept up in a flood of tears, Heather screamed and wailed and angrily shook her fists at heaven.
Discomforted and a little embarrassed at seeing her typically dignified parents putting on such a wanton display of grief, Mila averted her gaze. There was nothing she could do to help them, and her time would have been better spent at the morgue, keeping watch over her other-self that would soon begin to decay if she didn’t figure out a way to bring her body back to life.
Split-seconds later, she was magically transported from her parents’ bedroom and was once again roaming the corridors of the hospital. She had no idea how she’d gotten there, but the speed in which she had traveled was amazingly fast. So fast that she hadn’t sensed any movement at all. One moment she’d been helplessly watching her parents grieve and the next moment she was standing outside the door of the employee lounge—the same lounge that Imani and her coworker had entered.
Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to have any control over where or when she traveled. Apparently she gravitated toward people that she was thinking about, and she was thinking about how connected to Imani she felt.
Mila had never actually associated with a black person before—not because she was racist, but because growing up in a predominantly white environment there’d never been any opportunities to form close bonds with any African Americans. However, she couldn’t think of a better time to add some diversity to her friendship list.
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