10. Emergency Room 101 #2
“They’re not releasing him already, are they?” asks Liam, searching around for whatever doctor he’s missed who might have been going to tell us that.
“Not those kind of release papers,” Gerald replies, punctuating the sentence with a wink. Then he turns on his heel and attempts to disappear into the sea of people like a trained scoundrel.
Not on my watch.
“Liam, excuse me.” The urge to squeeze his arm comes as naturally as breathing, so I do. But when his gaze lands on my hand again, I feel kind of bad. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that?
I try to slip away super casually, like it was nothing, but he calls out, “Mr Gravely. You’re… You’re leaving?”
It strikes me then just how lost he looks. This poor man. Everything he’s just been through, and he’s stuck here in this depressing, overcrowded emergency room, waiting god knows how long by himself to see if this guy he doesn’t even know will pull through. (Spoiler: he will.)
“No. I’m not leaving. I just want to speak with Gerald. I’ll be right back. Okay?”
Maybe I was too forthright there. Because the embarrassment is written in his pink cheeks and lowered eyes. But the smile he gives me after that… it slams straight into my heart…
Wait, are we doing this?
Is he…
Does Liam like me?
“And then I’ll give you a lift home,” I throw out, words faster than brain, still stumbling over the chances this walking daydream could possibly have anything but fear of me and my house after the sort of day we’ve had.
“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” he says softly, but with a manner that seems very much like he is asking me, very sweetly, to do that.
“I’m doing that,” I declare, also because I had planned to anyway, but after that smile, I’m especially doing that. “Mind my seat while I’m gone.”
This whole time, in the back of my mind, I know Gerald’s scuttling away somewhere, so I’m fast, turning, searching, moving down the corridor. He’s just stepping back from the information desk when I spot him, so I hurry down the end of the hallway to catch him before he disappears.
“Gerald!”
He freezes like a kid caught stealing candy. The lights flicker overhead, but I barely notice them, even if Gerald’s gaze shoots up to the ceiling with an oddly concerned look.
“I’m not done talking to you.”
“Mr Gravely, I’m a very busy man—”
“Busy doing what, exactly?” I come to a stop right in front of him, and again the lights flicker, casting shadows over his face. “Finding more inexperienced people to send to their deaths?”
“No one died,” he spits back. “Look, I’m just giving these people a leg up in life. It’s up to them if they want to take it. And you said you were happy with Liam.”
“I am happy with Liam!” I argue, even though Liam should, by rights, be snuggled up in bed with hot soup and an electric blanket. Preferably with me. Yes, I just thought that, and I’m not taking it back. “The point is, you sent two inexperienced men into a dangerous situation—”
“Raul is one of my most experienced men.”
The repeated comment throws me so much it takes me too long to answer, and when I do, all I have is, “Are you actually joking?”
Again the lights, but this time slower, longer pulses. Gerald’s eyes run across the ceiling, to the nurse at the information desk, who’s looking confused, as opposed to his wary estimation.
It is odd, come to think of it, the lights. In my irritation, I hadn’t really noticed, but…
“I’m going home, actually,” Gerald announces, a strangled tremor in his voice. “I’ll have new men for you tomorrow.”
He tries to walk past me, but I side-step to keep in front of him. “I’m sorry, what? New men?”
“You’re not happy, so I’ll send Liam somewhere else.” The lights again. Gerald’s frantic eyes again. “I really have to leave right now.”
“No, no. Liam has absolutely no experience with ghosts. You can’t send him off into the jaws of death at some other haunting.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“He won’t be fine! You know what happened to Raul today. If I hadn’t been there…”
If I hadn’t been there, Raul would have been dead. These people have no idea how to handle ghosts. And I know Gerald is marching Liam to his death if he sends him anywhere other than… my place.
Gerald’s watching me with his shifty little eyes. He’s got the heart of a gambler, and I can see straight into it. He knows he’s holding all the cards here.
“I don’t want him going off on some other job,” I admit quietly, because he knows it anyway.
His boots squeak on the linoleum floor as he shifts, lifting his chin in early victory. “You just said he has no experience.”
“I know what I said, but—”
“You want me to turn him out on the street, then?”
“The street?” I gasp the words out. What a ridiculous turn of phrase. Or is it? I guess you don’t take a job like this if you have a whole lot of better options. But surely Liam couldn’t have realised how dangerous this would be.
Gerald lets out a flustered, somewhat conciliatory sigh, making me think for a second there might be a touch of humanity behind the grifter. “Look, I doubt he’ll even turn up tomorrow. Kid looks like he’s about to be sick. It’s a high-turnover industry, what can I say?”
And there’s a new concern that settles in my stomach like too much coffee. “You really think he’ll quit?”
He raises both hands in some middling suggestion of weighing the possibility. “If he returns, I’ll try send him your way. If not, I’ll have someone else out there, nine a.m. sharp. Can’t do you better than that, can I?”
The lights wholly stutter now, strobing on and off. Gerald’s head dips like a hunted animal, and he looks so… frightened? He looks actually frightened. “I really have to go.”
I feel bad stopping him again, but I do it anyway, one last time. “Look, please can you give this to Liam, then?”
I fumble in my pocket for my wallet and pull out all the money I have.
It’s five-hundred pounds, given to me in exchange for an antique lamp this morning.
Just as well I hadn’t taken it out of my coat, because now it’s going to become the severance package I know this guy would never have given Liam.
“If he decides to come back, you make that his bonus. Tell him it’s from you.
If not, and he decides to leave, tell him it’s a tip from me. ”
Gerald eyes the money for a beat, then snatches it up and shoves it deep in his coat pocket. “I’ll let you know.” Then he slinks off down the hall, disappearing when the light goes out again, gone completely by the time it comes back on.
Then it’s out.
I give it a moment, expecting it to switch back on, or expecting them to have some kind of back-up system kick in. This is a hospital after all, and they have life-saving medical equipment that can’t stop working.
Surely, they have a back-up system.
But it doesn’t come on.
And I wait.
And it doesn’t come on.
So I grab my phone to use the torch, and when my screen flickers then dies, that’s when I realise.
This isn’t a blackout. This isn’t a normal electrical fault.
This is something wrong.
Something supernatural.
I know it’s not a ghost because I can sense them. I can see them and talk to them. There are a couple down the end of the hall chatting right now. Or they were. Because suddenly they’re looking around, just as nervous as I’m starting to feel.
And when a ghost is scared, you know it’s trouble.
A horrified scream breaks from the emergency room.
And I run.