Evie opened her eyes. But as the doctor explained to her parents and sister, it didn’t mean she’d woken up. It might’ve been a promising sign, especially for a patient who’d been under for as long as she had, but they shouldn’t get their hopes up. Not until she began to move.
And she did, about a week or two later. During a pain stimulus test, when a nurse dug a thumb into her shoulder, she flinched. That merited some medically approved excitement.
Over what must’ve been weeks, she inched her way toward measurable consciousness. Opening and closing her eyes, sometimes on request, gradually beginning to flex her fingers and toes.
Danny and Carlos helped keep watch for me, since I couldn’t be everywhere at once. I had a new Haunt to find and then run, plus keeping the ghosts occupied in the meantime. And she wasn’t our only coma patient to watch over.
At last, she started to talk. Or at least tried. It started off as whines and groans. They weren’t so pleasant to the ear as her usual voice. She hadn’t spoken for so long, she almost had to start over completely, as if she were a newborn.
That made me the most nervous. Aside from the possibility she’d never wake up at all, merely move to a minimally conscious state. Being able to sit upright again, blinking for yes or no, even swallowing food on her own, might’ve been the most her parents could dare dream.
I could only hope I hadn’t made a mistake—that she hadn’t been better off dead.
* * *
Ren hadn’t woken up yet, either. Rather, he hadn’t regained consciousness. His eyes opened, and his arms and unbroken leg flailed, and his moans were loud enough to be screams. Once again, they had to tie him down to his hospital bed, so he wouldn’t yank out any more tubes, or worse, try to scratch at his head. His skull had been opened up for surgery, leaving jagged movie-monster stitches zigzagging down his shaved head, under the bandages and netting keeping his scalp on.
Then his moans got more coherent.
“Mal.”
“What did he say?” asked his mother, who had even more gray in her hair now.
His sister shook her head, not looking up from the textbook in her lap. Her homework couldn’t wait until after this family emergency, especially when it had already gone on for weeks. Her other brother had gone back to work already.
“It didn’t sound like anything to me,” she said.
He opened his eyes. It almost looked as if he could see me.
Just in case, I did a sweep of every floor, from the basement morgue to the upper wards, clearing out more geists than usual. No wonder I’d never liked hospitals.
Ren’s family didn’t know it, but we all took turns looking after him. They talked to him during the day and put on movies and music they knew he loved. And most nights, when I wasn’t blowing off steam playing at Clementine’s, I did the same. I’d lie beside him in the hospital bed, sometimes whispering, and other times singing.
Most of the time, I chatted to him about nothing much, like the doctor had advised his folks they should do. I told him about the ghosts, how we were managing, where we were looking for a new Haunt. Or I reminisced, taking us back to our first date, or when we tried to be roommates, and especially our precious little time of being properly together.
Sometimes, I couldn’t help it.
“Come on, Ren,” I said. “Remember what I told you. You deserve to live. I promise it’s worth it.”
When he opened his eyes, some tears fell.
“You’re here,” he said.
He slipped away again. Too bad I couldn’t wake up his mom and tell her the good news.
She heard it herself the next morning. He said her name, asked for the date, then conked out. Next time he woke up, he said exactly the same thing, calling for his mom, and then asking her the date. According to the doctor, that would happen often enough to get annoying. His short-term memory would be one of the last things to come back.
“What’s Mal?” asked his mom.
The doctor shook his head. “Who? What?”
“He keeps asking for it.”
“I don’t know what that is,” admitted the doctor.
Ren winked at me. I held my finger to my lips.
* * *
It got really crowded upstairs at Clementine’s while we were in the market for another abandoned building. We didn’t want to settle for just any foreclosed house or old barn. Our new home needed some character, old enough to have history, big enough for us to sprawl out.
Alastair must’ve taken forever finding the first Haunt, no doubt wandering on foot, visiting places he’d known while alive, looking for something still standing but no longer occupied. But I didn’t have to follow his footsteps exactly. I searched online at a nearby library in the dead of night. There were websites that listed locations of abandoned places, filled with pictures taken by urban explorers. I wouldn’t mind having to scare those kinds of people off, once we settled in somewhere.
Danny or Carlos would keep me company as we explored each abandoned hospital and boarding school and military fort, defunct subway stations and crumbling theater houses. We’d make as if we were a heterosexual couple house-hunting in the suburbs.
“Look at this bathtub, honey,” said Carlos, peering over a claw-footed tub so full of rainwater, it had become a self-contained swamp. “Spa night!”
“How about this for a man cave?” I asked, when we got to the surgical theater.
We even checked out a theme park. Even though we obviously weren’t about to move in, we needed to blow off steam. We took turns pushing each other on the defunct Tunnel of Love and House of Haunts and the rickety old Ferris wheel that would’ve fallen apart anyway in a squeaking heap of rust if we hadn’t touched it.
When we got to the hotel, we couldn’t even joke around. We were silent with awe, looking up at the chipped art deco ceiling, stepping over the jeweled remnants of a fallen chandelier. After that, we followed the dingy red carpet twisting and tangling down endless hallways, up so many floors with room after room, enough for every ghost to have one to call their own. The views of the city skyline from the broken windows and sometimes missing walls were lovely, so much sunlight splashing inside that plants grew from the dusty floors. And most importantly, it had a ballroom. Not as grand as our last—the gilding long faded from the columns, walls marred by graffiti, but we could fix that. We started by tearing down the boards from the tall windows, letting in some light.
Danny flapped triumphantly. “What do you think?”
It felt like a silly question. But she looked to me all the same.
I said the same thing I soon told the rest of our sprawling family, crowded around the boarded doors, watching as I spread my arms with pride.
“Welcome to the new Haunt.”
* * *
Ren and I were as alone as we could be, with his mother asleep in a chair in the dead of night. He could sit up well enough, free of his restraints and bandages. His hair had started to grow back, short and awkward. It made him look so young—everywhere but his eyes.
“You’re still here,” he said, again.
“Where else would I be?”
He tried shaking his head, but couldn’t quite manage it, wincing in pain instead. “Didn’t we break up?”
So that memory hadn’t been forever lost to brain damage. After all, he’d been outside of his body for it. I’d been prepared to act as if it hadn’t happened and stay with him for as long as he still needed me. I hadn’t planned as far as having to break up with him again. I’d done it for a reason.
“Second thoughts?” he asked, but he sounded doubtful, not getting his hopes up.
I shook my head to try and knock the tears back in. “Well, you literally killed yourself. I couldn’t leave you alone. But…”
His voice went rough. “You don’t have to say it again.”
Thank fuck. “Do you want me to leave?”
“Stay,” he said, quickly. “Just a while longer.”
I couldn’t help it. I did my best to throw my arms around him. My eyes spilled over, after all, but the tears weren’t just mine.
“I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this,” I said.
“Don’t be. I probably would’ve tried at some point, anyway. If I hadn’t met you, who would’ve talked me down?”
I pulled back to look into his face. “So you don’t regret coming back?”
He tried for a laugh. “Not after the grief everyone’s giving me. I would’ve been in the same mess as you when we first met.” His smile looked pained. “I’m an idiot.”
I grinned back. “But you’re alive.”
His face went grave. “It better be fucking worth it.”
“You won’t be alone,” I promised. “My sister could use a friend.”
“How’s she doing?”
I didn’t have a lot of time to check on her, with two patients and a hotel to run. I’d found her in class, and at a café where she apparently worked, but that wasn’t much to go on. “We’re going to find out.”
* * *
Ren got his phone back in the morning. At first, the brightness made him wince with an audible gasp. He dropped the phone, clutching his temples.
His mom and I both spoke at once. “Migraine?”
The doctors had said those might be a problem. They’d been keeping the lights off in his room. His sister reached over to dim the phone brightness while his mom supplied some ibuprofen.
Once he’d recovered somewhat, I leaned over to see as he checked his phone again. He’d missed eight texts and three calls from Cris. With her pride, it might as well have been double.
“Do you mind if I make a call?” he asked.
His mom stayed put. “Go ahead.”
“I mean, in private.”
After bitching him out in Japanese, she relented, since his sister pointed out in English that it could be about a girl.
“Sort of,” said Ren.
Once we were alone, he said, “I hope she didn’t start drinking again.”
“Let me go see.”
I spirited straight to her. She was sleeping in, not in her own bed. At first, her phone didn’t wake her. By the time it did, and she managed to find it in her purse, it had stopped ringing.
“Try her again,” I said to Ren.
He did, putting the phone to his ear.
“You asshole,” said Cris. “I could call anytime, you said, and you’d talk me through it.”
“I’m in the hospital.”
He let that sink in, before smiling and saying, “Sorry, who’s the asshole?”
She apparently forgave him. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
“It’s a long story,” he said. “But I can’t wait to get to the punchline. So, I died. Only for a couple minutes, but long enough. You’ll never believe who I saw.”
I went to check if she was still on the line, since she’d gone so quiet, not even breathing. She covered her mouth, but her tearful eyes were smiling.
Ren’s voice crackled on the line. I didn’t need to see his face to hear his grin. “It’s crazy.”