Chapter Twenty-six
“There’s probably something else I should tell you,” I said to Holly as we pulled out of the driveway.
“Something else?” she asked, watching my profile.
“Yeah. If I’m going to let you look at my chart, you might see why they ordered the psych consult in the first place, and it’s a bit… It’s kind of way out there.”
“Way out there,” she repeated. “Now you have me curious.”
I flicked the blinker and pulled onto the street. My tires hissed noisily through puddles on the pavement.
“It’s not something I’ve told anyone except for Leah,” I said, “because I’m not comfortable with anyone at the station hearing about it. I want to get back to work as soon as possible and I don’t want anyone to think I’m…well, delusional.”
“I hate to tell you this,” Holly said. “But it’s a little late for that. Since the moment you walked into my house, you’ve been suggesting you had conversations with my sister’s ghost. I’m wondering if I’m a bit short on common sense, because maybe I shouldn’t have gotten into a car with you.”
Not knowing whether she was kidding or not, I slid her a look. “I never said ghost. That’s your word, not mine.”
“Fine.” She held her hands up in surrender. “I just think we should call a spade a spade. That’s all. So what is this ‘other thing’ that’s further out there than what you’ve already told me?”
I gently pressed on the brake as we approached a stop sign, then tried my best to explain.
“When I was in surgery having the bullets removed,” I said, “my heart stopped and I flatlined. They had to take steps to resuscitate me, and as that was happening, I think I had one of those…” I paused. “Near-death experiences. Have you heard of them?”
“Of course,” she resolutely replied. “Did you see a white light?”
Not sure how she was taking this, I glanced at her again and nodded.
“Yes.”
“What else happened?” she asked with curiosity. “Can you describe everything to me?”
Turning left onto a busier street, I increased the wiper speed.
“I felt like I was floating out of my body,” I explained, “and I watched the operation from a place near the ceiling. When I woke up later I knew they had removed my spleen because I saw them do it, and the doctor confirmed it.”
“So you witnessed things you couldn’t have known about in your unconscious state.” She waited for me to respond.
“Yes.”
“Tell me more about the light. Did you move toward it?”
She seemed genuinely fascinated and I was relieved she wasn’t looking at me like I had two heads.
“Yes. Listen, you’re not going to tell anyone about this, are you? I’d prefer if you kept it just between us.”
She made the form of a cross over her chest. “Scout’s honor.”
“That’s not the sign for Scout’s honor,” I said, recalling that I’d spoken those exact words to Leah not long ago.
“No, I guess not,” she replied with a half-smile. “But I promise I won’t tell anyone. Mum’s the word. Now go on.”
Feeling strangely captivated by her interest in my story, I checked my rearview mirror and changed lanes.
“You know all the stuff you hear about your dead relatives greeting you at the pearly gates?” I asked. “It was kind of like that. I saw my grandmother and a bunch of other people I couldn’t really recognize. Then I saw what was sort of like a fast motion movie of my life. It was very bizarre.”
Holly turned her body slightly on the seat to face me. “It’s more common than you think.”
“Is it? How would you know?”
“Because I wrote a paper on it during my final year of undergrad.”
“No kidding. What did you study?” I asked.
“Neuroscience at Harvard.”
Geez. Was she like…a genius?
I turned to look at her with wonder and felt slightly intimidated, intellectually. “Well, I must say that’s convenient. Maybe you’re the one person in the world who can actually explain what happened to me.”
Holly shrugged apologetically. “Sorry. I wish I could, but I was only in second year at the time and my conclusion was that the jury’s still out. There are plenty of religious and scientific theories and I could present them all to you—or just let you read my paper. In the end, I suggested that each of us has to make our own choice and believe what makes the most sense to us. It depends on whether you’re a person of religious faith, or a person who needs scientific proof of something tangible.” She looked out the window. “It wasn’t a terribly scientific paper. I got a B minus. It brought my grade down.”
“Sorry to hear that, but that’s pretty much what your sister said to me.”
At the mention of Leah, Holly faced forward again and fell silent.
I drove up the turnpike ramp and merged onto the center lane. “I’m sorry. That sounded flippant. I didn’t mean it to be. I still can’t believe she’s gone. It doesn’t seem real. What seems real is that I was talking to her a week ago and I swear, she wasn’t a ghost. She was always clicking her ball point pen and I touched her hand and wrote my phone number on her arm. She was flesh and blood, I’m telling you.”
Holly turned her attention to me again and let out a soft chuckle. “Seriously, you wrote your phone number on her arm? Were you trying to pick her up or something?”
I gave a sheepish look and winced. “Maybe I kind of thought we might start something up when I got out.”
“And that’s why you came by the house today,” Holly said, as if to clarify my intentions. “To see her again because you liked her.”
I nodded, and decided to leave the news about Riley for another time, because we had enough on our plate for now.
“At least you had good taste,” Holly said. “Because she was the most amazing person I ever knew.”