Chapter 9
Frank
I hate this. Not just the stiff black suit and the rainy weather outside, but the veil of grief that has fallen over Haunted Health.
I lean on the window of my office and glare at the muddy earth below.
The fresh grave, the empty chairs, and the collection of flowers offend me.
They shouldn’t be in the butterfly garden, but the pack allowed her to be buried here.
She shouldn’t be buried at all. I guess her emails home told tales of finding a place where she belonged…
her greatest wish granted in the days leading to her death.
Is that why she was taken from me? When you get your heart’s desire, your time is up?
What about my desire to love her? Why shouldn’t she experience that too?
She deserved the world…not to die young.
Yet what she wanted ends with her burial place.
My office is stuffed to the walls with her family, her pack leadership, and the four owners of Haunted Health.
She wouldn’t want us pretending to play nice.
While Bracken and Leader Grant exchange pleasantries, her family glares daggers at me.
I accept every one of them. If the roles were reversed, I’d hate me too.
My ego took the woman we loved…because I was convinced I could save everyone… except the Fae.
Why didn’t I suspect she was Fae? Why didn’t all the super werewolf noses in her family smell her magic?
We scoped her for lesions to verify her colitis.
Why didn’t we perform a microarray to verify the genes involved?
That one genetic test would have indicated she wasn’t human and started her on a better path to recovery.
A path where I would have thrown her out on day one…
“Just so you know, it is the official stance of the pack that Haunted Health isn’t to blame for the death of Alette Werebrown,” announces Leader Grant. The massive bear shifter tests the limit of my office chair as he leans backward enough to take the front legs off the ground.
“What? But—” the protest dies on Alette’s sister’s lips.
“The pack thanks you for all your efforts in saving her life. She was quite ill in mind, body, and spirit before she arrived. What happened couldn’t have been avoided,” Leader Grant says with a wave of his massive hand.
“We appreciate your faith in Haunted Health and understanding in this matter,” Bracken says, always the diplomat.
How can he stand it? To pretend that we weren’t negligent in her care…
that we didn’t refuse to listen to her. He’s saving the hospital from lawsuits.
I get it. But for fuck’s sake, we chased her through our ventilation system!
On some instinctual level, she knew surgery would kill her, and nobody listened.
I researched ways to convince her to let me operate; I pushed her to see things my way…
as if I knew her body more than her. All my degrees, awards, and studies shouldn’t replace the experience she had in her skin…
But I thought—no, I knew—I could take care of her better than she took care of herself.
Yes, I wanted her to be pain-free, but more, I wanted to be the hero who took the pain from her.
I can blame Leader Grant, her family, or the ironclad surgical cures for her disease… but ultimately, I’m at fault.
They sit, passing around the blame like a hot potato, when it’s mine.
“She was such a sweet girl,” her mother says, dabbing her nose with a soggy handkerchief.
“She will be greatly missed by everyone,” Leader Grant says, patting her hand awkwardly.
“She was my best friend. How am I supposed to go on without her? Her little nieces and nephews won’t know her—” Her sister, who never visited Alette once during her stay with us, flies into a panic.
This family returned to this very building for the birth of her pups, yet didn’t drop in on Alette.
Did she even know her family was here? She must have heard or seen them through the vents… and chose not to interact with them.
“We will teach the littles about Alette, love,” her blockhead husband says.
The longer the family stays in my office, the more I despise them.
They took in Alette, but they didn’t help her assimilate into the pack.
When her disease hit critical mass, they forced her into Haunted Health. Why didn’t they listen?
The grieving family portrait they paint is at odds with the loneliness Alette felt.
I just want them to go away. Everyone. It wouldn’t hurt me to close down Haunted Health.
I doubt I will be able to operate again.
Every expanse of flesh will be Alette, waiting for me to deal the death blow.
What if another Fae patient ends up on my table?
How can I trust our pre-op procedures again?
When I wanted a cure more than my next breath, I killed the one I love.
I flex my gloves in front of my nose, hating the stubby, metal fingers encased within.
I made them for typing on the computer, but never wore them.
My hands were meant for surgery, not writing reports.
However, they’ve been a gift since Alette died.
I wave the pointer finger at the windowpane.
Will I ever wear a scalpel on this finger again?
Will my pinky fingers be traction? Without surgery, do I have a purpose?
“Thank you for the lovely service,” Mrs. Werebrown says as she hugs Bracken.
“It’s the least we can do,” Bracken says, shaking hands with Mr. Werebrown. “She brought so much joy to our patients in her short stay with us. We had talked about hiring her as a patient relations specialist. She was that special.”
“She would have loved that,” Alette’s sister says.
I snarl at the window. How would they know?
Her emails? I doubt she talked about running from Liam, sleeping on the floor of the vents, and dodging fans larger than her.
Nobody knows what she would have loved…except the patients she opened her heart to.
Mrs. Mills was going to take her to the human realm.
I should have let her take Alette…instead of insisting she be cured first.
Then Mrs. Mills got it into her head to fix us up.
What an impossible dream…
I traded love, family, and companionship when I traded my fingers for robotics.
Even wearing these gloves feels like a betrayal—as if I want to go back on my part of the deal.
My fingers squeeze, but there are no nails to dig into my palms. I don’t have the nerve endings to feel the pain anyway.
No feelings…except the hole in my heart.
“Avoiding the operating room won’t bring her back,” Bracken says, pulling me from my misery. The room is emptying. Drake has her hand on Mr. Werebrown’s back as she escorts them out of the office. She gives me a look of pity over her shoulder that pricks my temper.
The door closes us inside with a resounding click.
“Do you want a collection of graves out there? Welcome to Haunted Health, where you can join Alette in our butterfly garden…for eternity,” I grouse.
“You said, no Fae. I pushed—”
“She wasn’t your patient,” I snap, turning to face him.
“She could have been—just as easily. You didn’t know she was a changeling. I knowingly brought in Fae—the ones with the twins—thinking I could beat the consequences. You aren’t an evil doctor, Frank. It was an accident. There was nothing you could have done differently.”
“Thanks, but—”
“Just promise to think about it,” he says, squeezing my shoulder. “Take a break, but don’t give up on Haunted Health. There’s a hospital of monsters waiting for you to recover, and a waiting list a mile long of monsters who want you to save them. Alette wouldn’t want—”
“Alette doesn’t get to want, does she? She’s dead. I killed her. You called the time of death. We couldn’t save her. She doesn’t get to want anything because we took that from her!” I sob as I crash into the arms of my best friend.
“Frank,” Bracken whispers, but he doesn’t launch into a lecture.
Instead, he lets me cry in his embrace and stain his sharp suit.
My shoulders shake as I wail. I didn’t cry this hard when I lost my face and hands.
An ache settles in my chest as I gulp for air.
I’m shutting down. Who I was is gone. It’s like a part of me died with her—the part that could perform miracles and knew everything.
“I’m heartbroken,” I croak, pulling away from him. “I don’t have the heart to operate because it’s broken.”
“All right, man,” he says, wiping a stray tear from his eye. “I won’t push. I’ll give you space…to…yeah…”
I turn back to the window so that he can make a hasty retreat.
I don’t blame him for not being able to handle my grief.
My own heart struggles to handle the weight.
It’s not pretty or sweet. She melted the ice around my heart, so the killing blow hit us both.
I let down my guard and dared to wish for love.
Was it a lesson of ego that she was taken from me, or a punishment for all the families I failed to comfort in the waiting room? I was so sure. I thought they wouldn’t need my sweet words when my deeds saved their loved ones…but Alette had a different magical medicine, didn’t she?
“Am I to learn from you or mourn your passing? What am I supposed to do now? How can I continue to be Dr. Stein when your death now defines me?” I scream.
I want to kick over my chairs, swipe everything off my desk, and destroy the room in a fit of temper.
But grief doesn’t act like anger, does it? It won’t burn out if I throw a tantrum.
No, it will fester. Drive me mad.
I bury my face in my hands as I collapse in my desk chair. My elbows hit the table. I have no more tears to cry, so I heave and moan.
“Are they gone yet?”
“Leave me be,” I croak.
“I can’t,” says the feminine voice. “No, I won’t. I can’t stand to see anyone sad, but you? Please, no. I would have soothed your pain immediately, but I wasn’t ready to face everyone. Not yet. Not when I don’t know the rules. But I couldn’t stay away…not from you.”
The air catches in my lungs. Through the watery blur of my tears, a ghost stands in my office.
I jump to my feet, knocking over my chair.
Have I lost my mind? Is this what it means to be delirious with grief?
You see the dead? Alette wears a glittery ballgown and a crown of flowers made of light.
Tiny photons dance around her. She’s an aberration… but it’s still her.
“Frank, please believe it’s me. I don’t know how. My body is in that grave…but I’m here. Please believe. Don’t send me away.”
I run around the desk to stand before the ghost. My face tingles when she rests her palm on my cheek.
I tremble with fear as I raise my hand to cup hers.
If she vanishes because I dared to touch her…
She stays. The weight of my robotic gloves sits on her hand as if she were corporal, but she’s not.
If I focus on the wall behind her, I can see through her.
However, if I hold the image of her features… her beautiful face is before me.
“How?” I whisper, allowing my scientist’s mind to grasp for straws.
“I asked for a miracle, and you gave it to me. No more pack. No more pain. No more threat of surgery. I don’t need to eat when it causes me such agony. Frank, don’t cry. I’m free.”
“I wasn’t aware I was crying. Oh, Alette, I have so much I want to tell you. Oh, I’m so sorry. First and most of all, I’m so sorry.”
“You aren’t listening,” she says tartly. “I don’t want your apology. I came to you for help. My corporal form comes and goes within Haunted Health, but I don’t exist outside of these walls.”
“Of course, I’ll do whatever you want,” I say, taking her hands in mine. “Name it. It’s yours.”
“I want the life we were building. I want the dates. I want the hospital work. Mostly, I want to explore what it means to be us. Can you do that? Can you fall in love with a ghost? Because I fell for you a while ago…”
“Yes, Alette, yes!” I shout, picking her up and twirling her around. “A second chance? I don’t deserve one, but I’ll do my best to be the one you need.”
“Just be you,” she says, kissing me hesitantly.
“Don’t let what happened to me make you forget who you are and the responsibility you have to the patients in this hospital.
More than a warm shoulder to cry upon, they need your gifts.
The thankless, invisible job you do behind the operating doors is your calling. ”
“I don’t know,” I confess. “I’m so scared. What if I kill again?”
“Then you will prove that you aren’t a monster, Frank. You’re human.”
“I don’t want to be human, Alette, just like you don’t want to be a ghost.”
“Says who? I chose to spend eternity as a ghost—your ghost.”