Just after Dave-the-ghost’s little introduction a nurse bustled into the room. “Hey, look who’s awake.”
She asked questions, looked at the numbers on the different machines around my bed, and wrote stuff on a clipboard. All the time, though, I’m looking nervously at those two wispy figures hovering up in the corner of the room by the T.V. set.
The nurse finished her notes, she said, “Dr. Wills is going to want to have a look at you. I’ll tell your mom you’re awake. She’s just out in the waiting room.”
I don’t really want to describe what it was like when Mom came in to see me. It was about what you’d expect: totally embarrassing.
My mom usually isn’t one to get all emotional, but you could tell the accident had shaken her up. She looked like she had been doing a lot of crying, which kind of freaked me out; it was so out of character. Then, once she realized I was going to be OK, it set her off again.
That and I’m sure I looked pretty awful.
All of her crying and “my poor baby” stuff would have been bad enough if I didn’t have to watch Dave and Ernie poking each other and giggling. When Ernie started pawing all over Dave and sobbing, “Oooh my poor baby,” it was too much.
“Knock it off!” I croaked.
Mom looked startled and not a little hurt. I had to come up with an explanation for acting like a jerk, and even though I was pretty messed up and woozy, I could see that blaming my rudeness on a pair of ghosts that talked like burned out skaters was not going to cut it.
I said some lame stuff about being tired, (which was true enough), and she said it was okay and all, but I could see her feelings were still hurt.
After she left, I turned on the baldies, “You guys give me a break. I want to get some sleep here. Go haunt somebody else, okay?”
Ernie gave me a sincere look. “Dude, hey sorry. I can dig that. You look pretty fried.”
He turned to his partner. “Yo, D-man, let’s cruise the dayroom, see what’s on the tube.”
Dave, who seemed even more sorry, looked at the clock on the wall. Suddenly his face brightened up. “Whoa! It’s almost 6:30!”
Ernie burst out in a huge grin. The two of them gave each other a high five and sang out in unison, “Sponge Bob Square Pants!”
Instantly they vanished.
Sponge Bob??
I lay back, stared at the ceiling and sighed. As I dozed off, I started thinking to myself how this ghost business could get complicated.
As things turned out, that was a major understatement.
“Yo, we just checked out the duty roster and, dude, you’re gonna have the Snider as your very own personal nurse.”
I cracked open an eye, again.
Hospitals.
Just about the time you fall asleep, somebody comes by to check your vital signs, or hassle you with a bunch of lame questions, usually starting with, “And how are we feeling tonight?”
“I don’t know about you,” I’ll be thinking, “but I’m feeling like I’d like a full night’s sleep!”
I’d think it, but I wouldn’t say it out loud.
At least in most hospitals, the people that are waking you up at three A.M. are alive.
“Snider? Who’s Snider?” I looked up at the corner of the room where Dave and Ernie were poking each other in the arms and bouncing up and down with excitement. They just couldn’t wait.
I wondered…for what?
Dave stifled a giggle. “Oh, dude, Snider, we used to drive her nuts! Ernie, remember the time when the T.V. news guys came in the unit…”
“…cute kids with cancer – details at eleven.”
“…right, whatever, anyway Ernie’s got this tube of vampire blood…”
“I saved it from Halloween. Hey, you never know…”
“Dude! He dumped a whole tube of the stuff over his head…”
“Then I’m staggering around in the background while they film the T.V. guy talking to the camera.”
“You looked so gross, man that was excellent!”
Ernie launched into a fit of hysteria. “And Snider…” he gasped.
“Such language!”
“And on T.V.!”
“In front of children!”
“Shocking!”
They were both rolling around in midair, totally out of control. Dave came up for air first, “Oh dude, remember when you messed with the DVD’s…”
“…and the little kids are thinking they’re gonna watch The Lion King…”
“…instead they’re watching Return of the Vampire Cheerleaders.”
“That was too cool.”
“Snider man…”
“I thought she was gonna explode!”
“I thought she was gonna code!”
“Code Red on Pediatrics! Snider just had a cardiac arrest!”
That managed to set them off again – rolling around in the air, sounding like demented howler monkeys.
It was at that moment that Nurse Snider walked into the room.
Bad timing.
She looked okay to me, a middle aged woman, hair held back in a bun, going grey, (I could imagine why).
She smiled professionally. “And how are we feeling this morning?”
Something in that voice though, I can’t explain to you what it was…but I was thinking of how if she was ever a substitute teacher, by the end of the day there would be a lot of stuff flying around the room.
I was about to give her some kind of polite response when…
“Yo, Snider, I think there’s something wrong with my throat!”
Ernie.
He put both his hands in his mouth, one on his upper jaw, one on his lower, and pulled them apart. Wide. I mean really wide. Impossibly wide! You could have shoved a soccer ball in there easy, and I’m not exaggerating one bit!
I can only imagine how I looked right then. My eyes must have been as big as Frisbees. Nurse Snider gave me a hard look. “Are you okay?”
I opened my mouth and made a weak croaking sound. Then I heard Dave. “Yo, Snider, I think I need a shot!”
I’d never been mooned by a ghost before.
I didn’t take it very well.
“Aagghh!” (Imagine something between a scream and hysterical laughter). “No! Stop! Go away!” I was waving my arms frantically and generally acting like a psycho.
As things worked out, I was the one who ended up getting the shot.
Just before I went under though, I saw Dave and Ernie peering at the clipboard at the foot of my bed.
“Whoa, dude,” Ernie looked up at me, “they’re gonna keep you here ‘til Monday for ob-ser-va-tion!”
He and Dave looked meaningfully at each other then sang out in unison. “Psych-eval!”
High fives.
Another night in the hospital. Three more meals of hospital food. More quality time with the undead.
Strangely though, the last part wasn’t so bad. The guys calmed down some, mostly because I sulked and ignored them until they promised to cool it.
“Okay, okay we’ll be good,” Dave promised.
“Absolutely. Hey, you’re the first dude that’s been able to, like, see or hear us that ain’t set to croak.”
“Kick the bucket.”
“Meet your maker.”
“Buy the farm.”
“Right, right, “ I interrupted, “what’s the deal with that anyway?”
Ernie frowned. “Beats the heck outta me. I wonder though…”
“What?” I cut in.
“Well, dude, your chart says you were near drowning and you coded at the scene…”
“In English,” I interrupted. “What’s coded?”
“Dude, you coded. Your heart stopped. You’re not breathing. Somebody’s doing CPR…”
“Dude,” Dave cut in, “you were like, dead.”
“Deceased.”
“Done for.”
“You were pushing up daisies.”
“You were surfing the Tunnel of Light.”
That brought me up short. “Say what?”
“What?” Ernie looked at me.
“What did you just say? The thing about the tunnel.”
“Dude!” Ernie smiled. “You’ve been there haven’t you? I thought so.”
I told them my story; floating down the river, getting caught in the current, floating above the river, flying down the tunnel, Grampa Nick. They actually listened quietly, nodding knowingly.
“Dude had an N.D.E.” Dave said when I finally finished.
“N.D.E.?”
Ernie nodded, “A Near Death Experience. Yeah. Your body’s dead for awhile but through the miracle of modern medicine you came back alive. It happens.”
“And then I wind up seeing you guys.”
“Now that’s different,” Ernie admitted.
Dave nodded. “Fer sure.”
Then they told me their story.
They were both cancer patients. Dave had lymphoma, Ernie had leukemia. They’d been in and out of the hospital for much of their lives.
Together.
Keeping each other going through chemotherapy (“Ugh, how’s you like to spend all day every day feeling like you’re about to blow chunks!”), radiation therapy (“Dude, saves money on haircuts!”), remission, more chemo, more radiation, bone marrow transplants.
Dave shuddered at that one. “Man, that was the worst. That’s what finally got me. I thought I had a shot at it – a cure you know, but…”
Ernie folded his hands in prayer and looked piously at the ceiling. “You passed on.”
“Perished.”
“Expired.”
“Yeah,” Dave said, “there I was floating up by the ceiling looking down at all these people crowded around my bed. Monitors are all beeping like crazy, Snider’s up on the bed pumping on my chest doing CPR, tears all pouring down her face…”
Ernie sniggered, “I think she liked you.”
Dave punched his arm. “Get outta here! Anyway, next thing I know I’m zooming down this strange tunnel-like thingy towards…”
I cut in, “…the brightest light you’ve ever seen…”
Ernie laughed. “Dude’s been there…”
“…done that.” Dave finished. “So there I am flying down that tunnel and all of a sudden I’m thinking: Ernie! What about my man Ernie? I mean, what’s he gonna do without me?”
“Live a long life of quiet contemplation.”
“Yeah right, you were totally wasted, dude. I know, ‘cause next thing, there I am in your room, floating over your bed, and you looked bad.”
Ernie laughed, “He’s dead and he’s criticizing how I look!”
Dave rolled his eyes. “But you could see me there. You were talking to me and stuff.”
“That freaked out the family. They were all, ‘Who’s he talking to?’ They’re thinking I’m nuts.”
“Nuts was the least of your problems, dude, that was your last day on Earth.”
Ernie raised an eyebrow at that. “Yeah? So what do you call this? Mars?”
I’ve got to say, this was the most interesting conversation I’d had in a long time.
“So, Ernie, “ I asked, “why are you guys ghosts? I mean, Dave came back for you, but then why didn’t you…”
“…pass on? To the Great Beyond?”
“The Other Side?”
“Heaven?”
“You? As if!”
I interrupted before they spun out of control again. “Yeah, why are you guys still here?”
Ernie looked serious. “Okay it’s like this. I’m laying there, not long for this world, and me and Dave…Dave’s ghost anyway…are talking. Dude, I’m thinking, we’ve seen it all. We’ve been through it all. And now here’s Dave, back from the dead…”
“…the Big Sleep.”
“…and now I’m not so scared, you know? I mean, I’ve been fighting this thing for what seems like forever and I know that my bag of tricks is about to come up empty, and suddenly, it’s okay! Here’s my best friend; he’s just dropped dead and now he’s here telling me all about it. So now I’m like, ‘Death? No problem. I can handle this.’”
So then,” added Dave, “we figure this is a hospital, right? There’s kids coming in all the time that aren’t going to be walking out of here…”
“…and if Dave can come back and help me out, maybe I can come back and we can both help out…”
“…together.”
“Teamwork!”
“Partners!”
High fives.
“All right,” I said, “that makes sense; sort of. Except that nobody can see or hear you.”
“Unless they’re about to check out.” Ernie cut in.
“Except me.”
“Except you.”
“So what’s that all about?”
Ernie shrugged, “Beats me.”