He figured finding his own body and Jennifer shouldn’t be too difficult. Most of the privacy blinds to the individual rooms were open, revealing the occupants and their life-support systems. Two nurses sat hunched together at a central station, their faces lit up by the glare of computer monitors. Above them, an LED wall clock read 01:20 a.m.
He approached the fifth room on his right, and his mood lifted at the very sight of her before feelings of pity and love overcame him. She was lying flat on her back with her face upward, her slender body and graceful limbs now still, her blue eyes, which had only yesterday shone with delight at the sight of him, now closed and shut off to the world. He came closer to her bed and marveled at her profile, the elegant and perfect proportions of her chin, nose, and mouth. He remembered seeing her for the very first time on his first day at his new high school when he had strolled into class late with casual overconfidence All the students had turned around to see him, but it was Jennifer’s profile, as she turned to catch a brief glimpse of the newcomer, that had caught his eye, and a slow-budding flirtation had bound them together ever since.
He moved closer to her, and, noticing her eyelashes twitch, reached out his hand to touch hers. It passed straight through, causing her arm to flinch slightly. The ping of the monitor registered an increased heartbeat briefly before settling again to a regular beat.
He stood back as one of the nurses approached. She opened Jennifer’s gown to check the heart sensor on her chest. This was how he would see her breasts for the first time? As a ghost, a spirit––whatever he was––while she lay unconscious? He thought it highly inappropriate, but looked anyway. Besides, who would know? And why not? They were beautiful, and he still felt like a red-blooded male even if he no longer looked like one. He didn’t have long to admire Jennifer’s body. The view was suddenly closed off as the nurse did Jennifer’s gown back up and checked the pulse oximeter clip.
John followed the nurse back to her station. “All good. Just some bad dreams she was having, I guess,” she announced to her colleague and typed something into her computer before continuing. “Just a concussion, according to her doctor. Took a nasty fall, poor darling. She should be fine. Her boyfriend’s a different matter. He was stabbed. The surgery saved his life but now he’s in the coma unit. Such a nice-looking boy…”
John tuned out as the words ‘in the coma unit’ sunk in. He suddenly had the feeling that the spirit of the old man may have been right; maybe he was as good as dead, destined never to recover from his coma and stay the way he was as a spirit or accept the seemingly open invitation to move on to the afterlife. He suddenly felt very fatigued. Perhaps it was from the fall he had suffered earlier, its effect catching up with him, or maybe it was a result of the devastating feeling he now felt inside. A feeling that maybe this really was no dream. He pushed himself to leave the ward. If he could find the coma unit and his father, then maybe he could overhear a conversation about his condition and the prognosis.
His legs felt sluggish and the floor seemed to soften and stick like spilt honey as it demanded increasing amounts of effort to get a firm rebound from it. He suddenly felt an overwhelming need to rest and noticed that his glow was dimmer than it had been.
Passing through the door that led out of the ICU took longer than before, but his concern faded as a group of people standing in the waiting area outside caught his attention. One of them was his father. Another was Jim Donovan, and next to them, there was a couple, both about his father’s age. John couldn’t help calling out to his father, standing in front of him to try to get even the faintest of reactions. Nothing worked.
A man in a rain-spattered, tan leather jacket, and trousers with very damp cuffs, was addressing the gathering. “I promise you, we will put the full resources of the department into finding and prosecuting the attacker of your son and daughter.”
The man was clearly someone from the police, probably a detective, but John’s interest lay with the couple––he didn’t recognize them, but he figured they could be Jennifer’s parents. A second later he was proven correct.
“We have to see our daughter,” the woman said sternly, sidestepping the detective as she made her way to the intercom next to the ICU entrance. She was dressed in hippie style, wearing a flowery dress and sandals. The contours of her face were perhaps a little less sharp, her skin a bit puffier with age, but John could see a striking resemblance between mother and daughter. A brief conversation ensued through the intercom, the door buzzed open, and one of the nurses John had seen earlier let her in. The nurse waited with the door open for Jennifer’s father to come through.
John regarded him for a moment. His boyish looks,
