Day Nine

Once she reached shore, she released the swimmer. The girl’s breath was ragged and she had to lean over her knees to catch her breath as the waves continued to crash and break relentlessly at her feet. The swimmer was resting in the shallow water, dazed, violently bobbing with each wave. Even though he was standing a good distance away, Alfie could see her shiver, goose pimpled from cold and the shock of the situation. And the swimmer too was breathing heavily.

“Nice on,” said Persephone.

“Thanks,” Ivan flexed his throwing arm. “I still got it.”

Alfie’s dinner girl reached down to touch the swimmer she had just saved. He was sitting, propped up on his elbows, coughing. She knelt down to look him in the face.

And just like that, Alfie understood her life had changed forever. It was if the world had completely stilled and was leaning in to see what was going to happen next. The Swimmer put his hand over hers and got awkwardly to his feet.  He was saying something to her and she was smiling in a kind of aw it was nothing will you ask me to coffee  way. She led him to where her towel was waiting, bent to pick it up and not at all to Alfiie’s surprise, offered to share it with him.

“And that,” said Ivan with pride, “Is why they call me the Love Doctor.”

“Break it down Ivan,” Persephone scolded him, “She still has a long way to go.”

Had Alfie ever cared to find out, the girl who brought him his Sunday roast dinner was called Clarice and as Ivan knew, she needed a little happiness in her life.

In the life of a ghost, time had a strange way of moving. Sometimes it was straight forward but seemed to slow down, other times, it sped forward and still, at others, it moved backward. The only thing that remained the same was that he could not interfere. He could only watch helplessly from the side lines.

But Ivan and Persephone had both managed to do things ghosts could not do in what had been his limited understanding. Ivan had picked up a stone and threw it, Persephone had rubbed herself against his legs and Alfie had opened a window without even thinking twice about whether or not he actually could.

There had to be some weird rule or some sort of clause that allowed them to do something extraordinary for a ghost. Of course, Alfie had heard of poltergeists but had discounted them as something of fairy tales and nonsense. He remembered his grandfather from England telling him about his experience in a séance his wife had dragged him to. Cupboards opened and closed but grandfather had seen the strings pulling them. There were thumps around them but he had remained unconvinced they were anything other than a restless human in the next room. Breath on the back of his neck had been dismissed as a drafty room. His wife of course had been angry to have been taken in as a fool and she would never speak of it. Grandfather, on the other hand, never stopped teasing her. It was how he got the Great Scar on the side of his face: he had teased his wife so much and so often that one day she had hurled a pan of hot bacon grease at him. Mercifully, most of it had missed but what had caught him, left a burn scar that ran from his right ear and fanned all the way across his face. He stopped teasing her of course—but only if she was in hearing distance.

“Yep, the old girl has a temper,” he confided to Alfie once he recovered the use of his jaw. The wound still oozed pus every time he spoke. “But at least she stopped talking about that damn medium all the time.”

From the kitchen, Alfie heard something crash to the floor and instinctively, he had jumped and shielded his face from any potential airborne bacon fat. He may not have gotten the best grades when he was in school but he sure knew when to shut his mouth when a woman was mad.

So when he found himself in Clarice’s kitchen in the middle of a row, he took a seat and listened.

“Everyone has to do a job they hate!” She was shouting at the good looking but dim beefcake in front of her. He was still in his pyjamas, unshaven and scratching himself.

“I don’t want to work in a factory for minimum wage,” he yawned. “And I’m not going to either.”

“You’re just going to hang around here, eating and drinking and taking up space.” He eyes glinted dangerously as she eyed up the kitchen knives.

“Yeah and so what? What can you do about it? You married me.” His lack of interest even annoyed Alfie who had not had to live with his apathy for more than a few minutes. The husband shrugged and left Clarice alone in the kitchen. When he left, she hurled a glass after him. He turned and looked at her casually, smirked and carried on. 

He called back: “You sure made a hell of a mess for yourself to clean up.”

Clarice eyed up the knives again and then grabbed a broom. Furiously, she began to sweep up the broken glass. Once it was all in the pan, she looked at and then hurled it all over the room again. Alfie flinched, expecting to be cut by the glass.

“Whoa,” laughed Ivan.

“You really shouldn’t laugh,” cautioned Alfie.

“I should think not,” agreed Persephone, swishing her ghostly tail.

“She’s going to kill him,” Alfie said, remembering the way she had looked at the knives.

Time wavered, then flickered and Alfie found himself back in his own kitchen, sitting in the same chair he had always claimed was his, contemplating the body at the bottom of the stairs that no one had yet discovered.

The kitchen clock said it was Tuesday 10:05. He had been dead for 24 hours and he found himself missing the company of Ivan and to a certain extent, even Persephone. He wondered how he was going to meet up with them ever again.

Without warning, Lucy entered the kitchen, ignoring him as usual. He had no idea if she really couldn’t see him of if she really was ignoring him.

“Lucy?” he asked tentatively.

To his relief, she jumped.

“Oh Alfie!” She turned to him and seemed to be genuinely glad to see him. Her eyes sparkled with tears and he completely forgotten the ruined body that had lain in the nursing home for so many months. She sat down with him at the table. He wanted to take her hands but knew he could not.

He stretched his hands out anyway and she placed her hands in hers. For the briefest of moments, Alfie felt his skin against hers. Then the feeling was gone.

“I’ve missed you so much and since I’ve been dead, there’s so much I’ve thought of to say to you,” he babbled. “I’m so sorry about that fight we had when I hit you. I feel like—“

“Alfie, get a grip.”

He stopped. “But—“

“It’s over and we have far bigger things to worry about.”

There was that sucking sound and they were squeezed together to the reality of their daughter’s troubled heart.

Beth had always been far too sensitive for her own good, according to Alfie when he had been alive. The girl should grow a backbone and stop trying to take on the problems of the world, he had always told Lucy in their quiet moments. But now, watching Beth with tears on her cheeks and huge rings beneath her eyes, holding the hand of her ill daughter, Alfie was once again filled with such loathing he would have thumped his head against the bedpost if he thought it would hurt him.

In the wake of his own death, Alfie had thought only of his own sadness and his own feelings. He had completely forgotten that his own flesh and blood had been suffering.

Beth’s husband came in quietly and stood quietly beside her. The little girl did not move. She only made a sound that did not seem to have any sort of meaning. The girl twisted in an unnatural way on the bed.

“Hi Julie!” the father whispered, putting a hand on Beth’s back. Julie made that strange noise again and rolled her head in the pillow.

“She recognises you!” Beth said adamantly.

Her husband pressed his lips together, as if to prevent himself from saying anything. On the bed were some letters which he just glanced at. Then he left the room without another word.

Alfie followed him. Beth’s husband sat in the living room for a very long time without moving. He seemed to be looking outside but Alfie did not think he was really seeing anything.

He remembered that when Nathan had been hit by a car and the doctors had said he would be brain damaged, he had reacted the same way in his own living room. He could almost convince himself it all wasn’t really happening.

Alfie went back to Beth and Lucy.

Lucy was sitting on the bed reading the letter. She looked up at him and Alfie knew immediately that the letter was bad news.

“Dammit Julie,” Beth said, “Just  do something, prove them wrong, but just do something.” She stood up with her hands in her back pockets. “God, how do ordinary people bear it?” she asked the ceiling. Her hands had moved to her hair as if pulling it by the roots.

“This is the worst part about being dead,” Lucy said. “Having to watch.”

Ivan needed to speak to Ivan and Persephone again but he didn’t want to leave Lucy in case he couldn’t find her again. Then again, he had no idea how to find Ivan and Persephone anyway.

“What did the letter say?” Alfie asked.

Lucy turned to him and for a moment, he didn’t think she would tell him. She swallowed hard. “It’s from Tom.” Alfie must have looked blank. “Beth’s husband.”Alfie remembered him. He hadn’t been sure he would be good for Beth but then thought his serious and practical ways might be just what someone as sensitive as Beth needed. He could wade through the emotional barriers and see what had to be done and actually get it done in the same manner that Beth had become paralysed by worry.

“What did it say?” he asked again.

Lucy took a deep, steadying breath. “He wants Julie to go into a hospice. He can’t take anymore and won’t take anymore. It’s the hospice or he needs to leave.”

Alfie sat down on his granddaughter’s bed, watching her laboured breathing. “They have medical insurance?” he asked although he knew someone as practical as Tom had probably thought of such an important thing long before.

“It just comes down to the simple fact that Beth thinks Julie will get better and Tom doesn’t. She wants to stay here and he wants to move on.”

Alfie nodded in understanding and went back to the living room to check on Tom.

Tom was sitting on the couch with a beer in one hand and the remote in the other. He was snoring lightly. On the screen was a picture of Ivan and Persephone holding up a sign that read:

We need to talk

Go through the portal to your right and we’ll meet you across the street

Don’t worry about Lucy

Without thinking too much about it, Alfie exited the house, crossed the street and entered into the next portal that he saw.

Ivan and Persephone were curled up on a couch watching the television intently. Without looking up, Persephone said: “We have a situation.”

Alfie was stunned into quietness. He had a situation. He thought of Beth’s tear streaked face and Tom’s resignation.

But there was no time for that for the sucking noise started and the three of them found themselves squeezed into another hospital room.

On the bed was a woman who was elderly but not totally decrepit. She looked like she was sleeping although from the amount of medical machinery around her, Alfie knew she wasn’t simply in slumber.

To his surprise, Ivan sat beside her and rested a ghostly hand on her head.

“It’s Ivan’s sister,” whispered Persephone. “She has a tumour and collapsed today.”

Alfie looked back at her. She did not have the look of someone who had lain for weeks in the same bed and had atrophied muscles and bedsores. There was plumpness in her face and her hair had been recently styled. Her nails had had a recent manicure.

There was a rush of people coming into the room. Someone screamed and was dragged, still screaming down the corridor. More people crowded around the bed.

“It’s not her. It’s not her!!” someone moaned.

“I just can’t believe it,” whispered someone else.

Alfie looked from face to face. They all had the wide eyed stare of people who had been given unexpected terrible news.

“My sister was the hardest ass bitch in the world,” Ivan said to Alfie and Persephone. “She would not have wanted people to be hanging around her bed looking at her when she was unconscious.”

“What is her name?” Alfie asked, thinking there was no such thing as a lost cause. He thought of Julie and her father’s mistaken belief that there was no hope.

Ivan sighed deeply. “Her name was Sarah.”

Alfie’s son Nathan had been given a grim prognosis too. Doctors said he’s never walk again and would never recover the ability to speak. Alfie and Lucy ignored them and brought Nathan home. Lucy, who had so much experience in  caring for people, spent hours massaging Nathan’s limbs and flexing lax muscles. She taught and although it felt weird to him to be touching his son’s flesh, he did it—probably far more than was strictly necessary. In time, Nathan did improve, learned to walk and talk again and except for a very slight slurring of his speech and a limp when he was tired, there was no sign that he had once been so close to death.

He was just about to tell Ivan not to give up hope when Lucy was squeezed into the room. She took one look at Sarah and then looked at Alfie.

“She won’t recover,” she said.

“I know,” Ivan said.

“How do you—“ Alfie started.

“Trust me,” said Lucy.

“And me,” said Persephone.

“And me,” said Ivan. “You don’t know my sister but I do. She would have wanted to go quick. Not hang on with every dignity lost.” Ghostly tears shone in his eyes.

“Is there a will or something?” asked Alfie. People talked all the time but he knew what mattered was the legal stuff.

“She hasn’t signed yet.” Ivan shook his head. “She wanted to talk to her kids first. To tell them she didn’t want to be resuscitated.”

“But she doesn’t need to be resuscitated yet,” Alfie countered.

“Not yet,” said Ivan.

Just then, Sarah sat up and blindly looked at them. She threw her head back and howled then flopped back on the bed.

Pandemonium erupted and all relatives were shoved out of the room. Alfie had heard of some of the medical procedures on television but he was still shocked to see Sarah’s shirt ripped open and the delivery of the violent shocks to restart her heart.

Ivan was crying openly, the heels of his hands pressed to his ears.

“We got her!” shouted a doctor far too young to be making decisions about life and death shouted. He had the look of someone who had just climbed Mount Everest.

“That should be worth one down the pub!” a colleague congratulated him.

Ivan, Persephone and Alfie looked at each other in recognition.