“Typical lawyer! Why don’t you just wheel her out in her bed now to the station, for God’s sake!” her mother muttered while smiling at Jennifer and continuing to stroke her forehead.
Jennifer tensed and shook her head vigorously and her mother shot her father a longer stare, which this time hit home. He softened his tone. “Relax, sweetie, it won’t be a line-up, you will just have some mugshots to look at.”
Jennifer wasn’t relieved. Her stomach tightened. She knew the assailant’s face was somewhere buried away in her mind, along with all the horrific details of the attack. Seeing it again would unleash all the fear and trauma she’d experienced. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She would have to force herself to take part in the police investigation.
Her mother must have sensed her anxiety, because she dived in to rescue her with good news. “What your father didn’t tell you is that you can leave the hospital today,” she announced.
Jennifer nodded. It wasn’t the good news she had hoped for. “What about John?”
Her parents looked at each other for a moment. She felt her mother’s hand on her own as she softly said, “He’s still in a coma. The doctors can’t say when he will come out of it. But the fact that he’s in one means his body can focus all of its energy on survival.”
Her mother carried on reciting more of what she had heard the doctor say, but Jennifer wasn’t listening. Confirmation that John was still in a coma was all that she needed. She stared blankly, past her parents, toward the glass partition and door to her room, barely registering the movement in the corridor or the rooms beyond it. Her dream of John visiting her last night as a glowing orange spirit seemed so real, so vivid.
In the background, she heard the escalation of yet another one of her parents’ arguments. It distracted her just long enough for her eyes to focus and hold her gaze on a group of people gathered round the bed of a patient in the room opposite. A family visiting, she guessed. Nothing unusual about that except…She rubbed her eyes because, unnervingly, she could see the tiniest hint of a faint yet familiar orange glow, as though one of the people standing over the bed had a silhouette. She gasped as the silhouette became wider and brighter. Then, out of the thick of the group, a glowing orange head and torso stepped out. The head turned toward Jennifer. She could just make out the facial features: they were not menacing or monstrous—they were elderly and kind. The man didn’t seem to notice Jennifer, who was now frozen in shock, staring at him.
The arguing between her parents stopped. They looked at her, and then at each other. She was unresponsive to their questions. Her father placed his hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. “Jennifer, what’s the matter?”
“Can’t you see him?” Jennifer whispered back in shock.
Her parents turned to look in the direction in which she was staring and even moved, blocking her view, but Jennifer didn’t care. She already knew they wouldn’t see the spirit. She rolled onto her back and shifted her gaze toward the ceiling, barely registering her parents’ voices. Her doubts of seeing John as a spirit last night had just died.
Jennifer slowly realized that her view of the ceiling had become crowded with blurred images of three faces—the worried faces of her parents and a nurse who she recognized from the night before. The images gradually sharpened into focus. They will sedate me again if I don’t appear normal, and I might never get out of this place, or worse, I might get transferred to a psych ward. God knows I’ve given them reason to do that.
“Jennifer?” she heard the nurse say calmly as a thick finger moved in front of her eyes and Jennifer accurately tracked it. “I’ll just get the doctor to check her over. Just to make sure.”
Jennifer looked at the nurse and smiled. “It’s OK. I just had another memory of the accident. I’m OK! Really! I don’t need anything,” she insisted.
Twenty minutes later, an attractive, middle-aged man in a white coat arrived to interrupt her parents’ chatter at the end of her bed. She recognized the Italian-accented voice she had heard the evening before. Dr. Di Luca, it turned out, was bearded, wore stylish glasses, and had Mediterranean-style olive skin. His hair was mostly gray––normally a welcome indication of experience and wisdom, but right now she didn’t want his good advice or his prognosis—all she wanted was for him to discharge her.
“Jennifer Miller,” he said, looking at his notes and with the same warmth as before. “I’m glad to say that you’re through the worst of it. You lost consciousness from a concussion caused by a head injury. You came out of it without all your faculties—at first.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Forgive me. I will explain in simpler terms,” he said, smiling. “You couldn’t see or hear at first, as you know. Now you can do both, and your speech is coherent. Nightmares related to the attack are unfortunately normal. As are flashbacks. You may experience repeated, sudden states of shock, like the one Nurse Bailey just informed me about. On the other hand, headaches and dizziness are not a normal part of recovery from concussion. If they occur again, come back and see me for tests,” he cautioned. He turned to nod at Jennifer’s parents. “She needs to be at home, in familiar surroundings. No mental strain, so no school for a few weeks.”
“We don’t live together; we’re divorced.” Jennifer’s mother clarified with a detectable hint of satisfaction. “She’ll be staying with her father like
