My head hurt. I felt like I was going to barf, and when I tried to talk there was some kind of tube crammed down my throat. The room was unfamiliar, but I suppose I’d figured out that I was in some hospital.
There were railings on the side of my bed and, looking through them, I could see my mom asleep in a chair. Behind her was a big cabinet with all kinds of tubes and dials and stuff, and on top of the cabinet, wearing one of those embarrassing hospital pajama-gown things was a little bald-headed kid.
What?
The kid was looking down at me with this smirky look on his face, and I’m wondering who the heck he is and what he’s doing sitting on top of all that expensive-looking equipment when it hits me: I’m looking right through him at the clock up on the wall!
3:15 A.M. My first ghost.
Lights out again.
The next time I woke up the tubes were gone. I must have been unconscious when they extubated me. I suppose I’d forgotten about my weird three AM hallucination. I mean I’m not all that certain what was going through what was left of my mind right then, but I'm sure it wasn’t ghosts. Most likely I was focused on how crappy I felt.
Everything hurt, but my head hurt the worst. Then I felt like puking again.
“Uh-oh, he’s looking like he’s gonna hurl.”
“Dude better roll on his side. He don’t want to choke on his own vomit like Hendrix. .”
“Hope he uses the emesis pan so he don’t stink the place up.”
I looked up. I saw that bald-headed kid again. Only now there are two bald-headed kids, and they were floating in midair – right at the foot of my bed!
I rolled onto my left side and barfed, just managing to grab the little pan on the bedside table in time.
“Whoa! Dude! Bulls-eye!”
“Dude blew serious chunks!”
“Dude tossed mega cookies!”
“The man spewed mightily!”
“Puke-a-delic!”
“Hurl-a-riffic!”
I flopped over onto my back again. “Haven’t you comedians got anything better to do with your time?”
“Whoa! Dude! Is he talkin’ to us?”
“He’s lookin’ right at us! Dude, can you, like, see us?”
I had to admit I was starting to get nervous at this point. “Uh, yeah, I can see you.”
“Whoa! He can see us and hear us!”
I took another look at the baldies. They were pale white, kind of like they were made of fog…but smoother than fog… It’s hard to explain. Still, I was looking right through them, seeing a faded image of the poster on the wall behind them. Weird. But as I looked closely, I could see they weren’t exactly alike. True they were both bald as cue balls, and they were both wearing those dorky hospital gown pajamas that are always threatening to expose your butt, (and neither of them seemed able to string more than three words together without saying “Dude”).
But the one on the left was about half a head taller than the one on the right, and he had this open-eyed surprised-looking expression on his face most of the time, while the shorter one looked more smirky and smart-alecky. My guess was that the shorty was the brains of the operation.
“Who are you guys?” I asked.
The taller guy’s eyes got even wider. “See! He’s, like, talkin’ to us!”
“I can see that, dork, calm down.” Shorty squinted at me suspiciously. “Okay, how many fingers am I holding up?”
I was starting to get annoyed. He was holding up two fingers looking like a shriveled up version of a hippie flashing a peace sign.
“You’re holding up two fingers, but that still doesn’t tell me who the hell you are and why you’re floating in midair above the foot of my bed! What’s going on here?”
“Sssh, chill. Just a sec. Lemme check your vitals dude.” Shorty started looking at the machines next to my bed. “Temp. is a little high, B.P.’s normal, heart rate a little elevated, but not that bad.”
“Dude’s pretty freaked,” the taller one put in.
“Hence the heart rate; still, he don’t look like he’s gonna die or nothin’.”
I didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking. “Die?” I croaked.
“That’s the weird part,” Shorty said, looking perplexed, “Mostly nobody can see us ‘cept when they’re dyin’ and dude, if I might say so, you don’t even look close.”
“Thanks I guess,” I coughed a little. My throat hurt something awful, from that tube, I suppose. “But you still haven’t told me; Who are you?”
The taller guy brightened up. “Oh yeah. Sorry, I’m Dave; he’s Ernie. We’re ghosts.”