First Wish Read online

  I hurried to the nearest computer station with the intention of seeing who was working and had to bite back a curse when I saw Doctor Smith leaning over the counter and talking to a nurse—he was not who I’d hoped for. I was about to head to another pod to see which other doc was on, but I was too late—he’d seen me.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Davies? You worked last night, didn’t you?”

  Richard Smith—some people called him Dicky—was, annoyingly, handsome, though ugliness would’ve meshed much better with his personality. But regardless of his looks, he was a good emergency physician and that was what I needed.

  “Do you have a minute?” I asked, ignoring his question.

  “I guess so, since the daily shit-show hasn’t really started yet. Shoot.”

  “It would be better if we talked in private,” I said, glancing at the nurse, a pretty woman named Cecelia who was always after some doctor or another. I expected a quip, but Doctor Smith must’ve picked up on something in my voice.

  “Sure. Room four is open.”

  He turned away and I followed in his wake, Cecelia raising an eyebrow at me as I passed. That was just great. She was a talker, and rumors spread through the emergency room like wildfire, twenty-four seven. Well, so be it.

  Room four actually was a room, unlike many of the rooms in the department, which were actually nothing but beds with privacy curtains. Doctor Smith went inside and held the door for me, leaned against the storage cabinets once I was inside. I fought the urge to fidget by leaning against the end of the bed.

  “So what is it Davies? You should be asleep after the night you had.”

  There was no joy in his expression at least. “You heard?”

  He nodded as he stuck his hands in his pockets. “Sounds like Vasquez set you up to fail. Not your fault though. Somebody’s got to take them and it’s great way for you to learn. Did you come all the way back here to talk about it?”

  I tried not to bite my lip and failed. I didn’t trust Doctor Smith enough to tell him the unvarnished truth about what had driven me back to the department, but I had to go part of the way at least. “No. Not that. I felt really odd by the time I got home and then had… trouble sleeping. I’m worried I’ve still got Meningitis.”

  Doctor Smith’s eyebrows rose. “Really? You took a full course of CephaLosporin didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know what the relapse rate for Meningitis is, Davies?”

  “I couldn’t remember,” I admitted.

  “Low. Why would you think you’re still infected?”

  “I feel exhausted, and really… off. Like I’m out of whack in the head.”

  Doctor Smith grinned. “Well, that might not have anything to do with Meningitis.”

  “I’m serious. I don’t feel… right.” I couldn’t tell him the truth of course, but I was still tempted. Of course he’d laugh me out of the hospital in all likelihood.

  “Fine. Your neck stiff?”

  “No.”

  “Photophobia?”

  “No.”

  “Phonophobia?”

  I remembered asking the voice not to yell, but that wasn’t exactly phonophobia, which was more a fear of loud noises. “No.”

  “Vomiting?”

  “No.”

  “Fever?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Simple enough,” Doctor Smith said, and he grabbed a temporal thermometer from where it lived on the wall near the bed. He turned it on and scanned my forehead, then looked at the readout. “No fever. There’s nothing wrong with you except you’re tired and you lost a patient, Davies.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s got to be the Meningitis still.” I stood up. “I need you to collect some cerebrospinal fluid and do a gram-stain.”

  Doctor Smith’s eyes narrowed and it took him a moment to answer. “No way, Davies. I’m not sticking a needle into your spine just because you had a bad night.”

  “Please, Doctor Smith,” I said, begging and not caring. “Something isn’t right. It’s been less than two weeks so it’s possible I never cleared it.”

  Doctor Smith shook his head. “Feeling a little off in the head isn’t enough, Davies. You should know better by now. What’s wrong is that you had a patient die on you a few hours ago and you’re exhausted because you’re probably still weak after being sick. That’s it.”

  “Do you think I should take another round of antibiotics at least?”

  Doctor smith shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Get the fuck out of here, Davies. And go get some sleep.”

  He left the room without looking back.

  I thought of looking for another doc that might be more willing to take a spinal fluid sample, even thought of waking Madison and asking her to come in and do it. But anyone capable of the procedure would have the same response as Doctor Smith—until I had more recurring symptoms, especially a fever, no one was going to touch me with a ten-foot pole, much less a big-ass needle. I could self-prescribe the antibiotics, but they were specific to meningitis and any pharmacist would want to know what was going on before they filled the order—and when I couldn’t give them the name of a referring physician, they’d refuse.

  When I finally left room four Doctor Smith was nowhere in sight and Cecelia was no longer at the computer station. I left the department without talking to anyone else, slumped out to the parking garage not knowing what to think. Was I infected? Was I insane? Was I just tired?

  Tired. It’s the most obvious explanation…

  I felt wide awake though, especially when the low morning sun hit my face as soon as I was outside—my internal clock had been knocked ass-up and wasn’t back where it was supposed to be, except that I knew in about an hour I’d feel like I’d been run over by a truck.

  Sleep. I needed to sleep. But what if I woke up and Viv was still there, still complaining about telling her boyfriend that he’d knocked her up?

  With a sigh, I realized it didn’t matter. Doctor Smith was right. I just needed to get some sleep. I worked again in a little more than twelve hours, and nobody was going to be jumping up and down to take the shift at the last minute if I tried to give it up.

  I drove back home not wanting to think of anything, but Viv started up again. I ‘said’ nothing to her, to it, to me, to whatever the fuck was going on in my mind, hoping if I ignored it the voice might go away.

  It didn’t though. No until I crawled back into bed for the second time that day and thankfully, mercifully, sleep came.

  Six

  I woke up just after noon, my sleep blessedly dreamless.

  Drowsy, I lay in bed for a moment, eyelids heavy against the too bright light that came around the blinds on the windows. I needed to put up blackout curtains but hadn’t gotten around to it.

  Viv…

  Fighting the sick urge to call out to her, I forced myself out of the bed and went to the bathroom. A little digging turned up a thermometer—it was inside the first aid kit my mother had given me years ago. I tucked it under my tongue and gazed blearily at the mirror, hoping I’d be feverish—the only other possibility was too damn frightening. It wasn’t easy to wait a full sixty seconds, but I managed. I pulled the thermometer out and it was ninety-eight point three.

  Normal.

  Fuck me.

  Despite the mental turmoil I couldn’t escape, my body felt good after sleeping. Which of course wasn’t good at all. After a light meal I even felt kind of energized, the way I did when I was ready to take a run. Also not good.

  It was impossible not to accept the truth—I wasn’t sick.

  Unfortunately, that meant I was either going crazy—the likeliest possibility—or that there actually was the voice of a dead woman stuck in my head. I couldn’t think of a third possibility, and couldn’t decide which of the first two were more desirable.

  I needed to clear my head so I could decide how to proceed, which meant I needed to run. There might not be a way out of the
mess I’d gotten in, but there had to be a way forward.

  There had to be.

  The voice had been quiet since I’d woke and I ran hard in the cold air, hoping it would stay that way. But just a few minutes away from the house Viv decided she’d been quiet enough.

  I need to tell him… Adrian…

  For a moment I thought about speeding up, trying to pound the voice back into silence with aching muscles and burning lungs, but wasn’t that just putting off the inevitable? Because the voice, whatever it’s cause, wasn’t going away. So instead I slowed to a walk.

  Feeling a little nauseous, I asked, Is your name Vivian? Or just Viv?

  Vivian… who are you?

  My name is Linh. I’m an emergency doctor. I tried to save you but I couldn’t…

  The crash… I was so mad at Adrian, I just wanted to get away from him. But I never thought… and now he’ll never know. I just want him to know…

  Are you real? I asked, aware of how stupid the question was, and how useless the answer was likely to be.

  Real? I… don’t know. I’m me. Just like I always was. Except now I’m here and I don’t know how to get out.

  I made it to a small neighborhood park where they were a few benches for parents or grandparents to sit and watch their kids on the playground. The park was deserted, so I sat and stared at the empty playground without really seeing it at all. You died. And now you’re in me and can’t get out. And all you want is to tell your old boyfriend that you were pregnant with his baby?

  Yes…

  What is that, like your dying wish?

  Yes, Viv answered. My last wish…

  Last wish. What would happen if I was able to grant it? Would that help her move on? What if it didn’t and she was still stuck in my head? What then?

  I tried to imagine going about my life with the voice of a stranger stuck in my head, silent at times, but often ranting about her last wish and what she wanted to do but hadn’t been able to. If I wasn’t insane—the chance of which seemed to be decreasing by the minute—then that sure as hell might drive me there.

  Viv?

  Yes?

  If I grant your last wish, do you think you could move on?

  Move on… I don’t know. How?

  Hell if I know. Pick door number three? You don’t know how you got inside me, you just did it. Hopefully it would be the same deal…

  You would tell Adrian? About the baby?

  If it meant clearing the cobwebs out of the attic, I’d kiss the guy for you…

  Viv laughed for a moment, then cut off. I didn’t get to kiss him a last time. That would’ve been nice…

  Remembering the guy on the couch I wasn’t sure I agreed with her, but, hey, every dog likes a certain kind of bone. I guess that settles it then. I’ll try to grant your last wish if you try to move on once it’s done. Deal?

  Deal. I just want him to know. If he knew—

  She went on like that, and while I thought about telling her I’d appreciate it if she kept it down a little, I remembered when she got louder earlier, and how that felt, and figured I really didn’t want to antagonize her.

  It was easier to ignore her when I was running, so I got off the bench and started jogging once more. A glance at my watch showed that it was almost two—that should be plenty of time to go home, get cleaned up, and visit Viv’s couch surfing boyfriend. If life was good—better than I thought it was perhaps—I could have Viv out of my head before dinner.

  If you find him where Viv tells you to go, that means she’s real…

  I tried to push the thought out of my head by running harder.

  One thing at a time…

  Seven

  The apartment Viv directed me to was a couple of miles off the beltway, part of a dingy looking complex called Bradbury Commons. The three-story brick buildings had seen better days, probably a few decades ago. A few scraggly, badly pruned trees flanked the sidewalks that ran up to ground-floor entrances or stairs. Flower beds lined each sidewalk, but most of them were filled with nothing but weeds. It was nestled behind a just as dingy strip mall that sported a dollar store, two—count ‘em two—thrift stores, a Chinese restaurant, a payday loan business, and a number of other businesses that catered to, and fed off of, the down and out.

  So that’s where you think he is? I asked, sitting behind the wheel of my Accord and staring at the door for apartment one-twelve. I hadn’t seen the outside of the apartment in the dream, but the place before me certainly had a similar feel. I didn’t know what I wanted—for the greasy dude from my dream to be on the other side of the brick wall or not. Either way was going to damage my psyche—if he was there the voice was real and the world didn’t work the way I thought it did; if he wasn’t real my mind had pieced the voice together out of whole cloth and I was nuts.

  He got laid off a few days ago from a landscaping crew. That’s part of why I was so mad at him, because I’d found out I was pregnant and he was just sitting around and not out looking for a new job. Besides, his car is here. He has to know…

  Think I can just leave him a note on his windshield? I asked, only half-joking. I didn’t relish the idea of introducing myself to a stranger and telling him that his just-died-the-night-before girlfriend had been pregnant with his love child, all the while dealing with the very illogical presence of a voice in my head.

  He needs to know, Viv said. I have to be sure he knows…

  I sighed, wishing as we so often do in life that I could skip forward an hour and bypass what was about to happen. But I needed to know, and the longer I put it off the more stressed I’d feel. One-twelve, right?

  Yes…

  And his name is Adrian?

  Yes. Adrian…

  I shut the car off and forced myself to get out. Time to learn the truth…

  It took a while for the door to open after my knock.

  A guy in a blue Metallica t-shirt appeared, the room behind him blocked from view, the sound of a television cackling in the background. He wasn’t wearing the Redskins cap anymore, and maybe he’d showered, his hair not so lanky and greasy, but he looked pretty similar to the guy in my dream. Certainly Viv thought it was her Adrian—what had seemed like shouting before was nothing compared to the racket she started making.

  Just because he looks similar doesn’t mean anything, I tried to convince myself. It was a dream. You might not remember it right…

  “Who the hell are you?” the guy asked. Despite the hour he had a beer in his hand—a Schlitz, cheap and nasty. The same hand had a half-spent cigarette cradled between two fingers. His eyes were bloodshot, with dark circles beneath them.

  I tried to answer, but couldn’t with all the noise in my head. Stop, Viv! Or I won’t be able to do this!

  “What’s wrong with you, lady?” the guy asked, his eyes squinted.

  “Sorry,” I said, as Viv finally quieted down. I wished I could see more of the room behind him. I could just ask his name, which never would’ve been on Viv’s chart—that would’ve been confirmation enough that Viv was real, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “My name is Linh. Doctor Linh Davies. I treated Vivian when she came to the hospital yesterday.”

  The guy only stared and gave no indication he’d heard. I wondered if he was high. If he really was Viv’s boyfriend I wouldn’t hold it against him if he’d been smoking up. After a moment he raised the beer and took a guzzle, then shifted it to his other hand and took a long drag of his cigarette. He exhaled toward my face and said, “Weren’t much help, were you, doc?”

  Ugh… the mental grunt came out of me as if I’d been kicked in the guts. Maybe I saw the address on her chart and that’s how I knew where to find him…

  I clung to the slim possibility, even as there was less and less of a chance that it was true. I took a deep breath and plowed ahead. “We did everything we could, but the accident was pretty bad. I’m very sorry for your loss.” I’d been a physician long enough to know that trying to defend how you’d treated a
patient was usually a waste of time.

  “Sure you are,” he mumbled before taking another swig of beer. “What do you want?”

  I obviously couldn’t say I believed—whether it was real or not—that his girlfriend’s soul had taken up residence in my head after biting the big one. But all he needed to know was that Viv was pregnant, which I could tell him I’d seen in her bloodwork. True enough, but that carried the risk that he might go to the hospital and tell them what I’d revealed—that would be a blatant breach of patient privacy, which was enough to get me expelled from the residency program, maybe lose my medical license, and potentially never work in medicine again. That was frightening, but not nearly as disturbing as the voice in my head—if I wasn’t sick, trying to get rid of Viv was the only option I had left. That meant I’d have to live with the risk of telling him about Viv’s pregnancy.

  Tell him… please…

  “Bloodwork is done on every trauma patient that comes in and when I was finishing up Vivian’s chart last night—”

  “After you let her die,” the guy interrupted, taking another drag on his cigarette. He was getting angry, which was the last thing I needed.

  With no choice, I continued. “When I was looking through the chart I saw her bloodwork and the lab results showed that she had elevated levels of human chorionic gonadotropin in her blood.” I paused, afraid to finish, as the guy’s eyes narrowed farther.

  “What the fuck does that mean? Chorionic-whatever?”

  Tell him! Now!

  I swallowed back the bile that had risen to the back of my mouth. “It means she was… pregnant.”

  The guy shook his head immediately. “No fuckin’ way. We always used rubbers. Now leave me the fuck alone.”

  He tossed his cigarette butt on the concrete at my feet and went back inside, slamming the door behind him.

  Viv erupted.

  NO! He doesn’t believe you! You’ve got to tell him!