Wraith (32 page)

To my surprise, Kylee smiled at me—an odd, crooked
little smile. Her car rounded a bend and I could see my house in the glow of
the streetlights ahead.

I was home.

"You might be surprised about that," she
returned.

I had been driving for two hours already before the
sun rose.

The faint orange light that broke over the horizon
ahead of me could be beautiful or eerie, depending on one's perspective. I had
not seen a whole lot of sunrises in my life, until I went to Oahu and the time
change made me think dawn happened in the middle of the morning. Those sunrises
had been spectacular. Full of color, warmth, and promise.

This one, stretching out over the rolling plains of
western Nebraska, held more promise than I could ever have imagined… but it
also held more anxiety. Every minute that ticked away was a minute I had lost
forever.

I told you, honey, you're too damn slow.

I gritted my teeth and concentrated on my driving. I
was going as fast as I could—I would not be stupid enough to waste forty-five
minutes getting stopped for a ticket. Or worse—to cause another accident.
Neither would help Zane.

The sky continued to brighten; the largely barren
landscape came to life. I was thankful for the relatively sparse population.
Ordinarily I would see few shadows in a place like this, but lately I'd been
seeing ten times as many shadows as usual, and the barren fields of Nebraska
proved no different. Native Americans, pioneers, farmers, bikers, rednecks… all
were represented. All were ignored.

The lingering specter of the old man, however, I
could not get out of my mind. He and Zane had looked and acted so much alike…
never mind that the old man seemed to know what was happening to him, while
Zane did not. If Zane could have seen his physical body, wouldn't he, too, have
understood?

What troubled me far more was what had happened to
Zane after I met him.

My mind kept coming back to the question; my heart
kept shoving it away. Yes, Zane had grown less solid every day that we had
spent together. Yes, his spirit had ultimately ceased to be visible. But I had
no way of knowing what that meant. I could not and would not assume the worst.

I just had to get to him. Period.

I cast a glance at the speedometer, groaned with
frustration, and eased up on the accelerator. I had to be more careful, or I
would
get a ticket.

The sun rose rapidly in the sky; the miles ground
away slowly beneath my wheels. I turned on the radio to soothe my mind with
other thoughts.

It was pointless.

My brain replayed every moment Zane and I had spent
together, analyzing everything he had said and wondering about what he hadn't.
He hadn't wanted to go back to the past, but he had never wanted to die,
either. All he had wanted was a second chance.

And he had
had
it.

Did he still?

I was speeding again. I took another gulp of the
vile energy drink I'd picked up at the gas station and breathed deeply. My dad
had to be the only person in Wyoming who would buy a used car without cruise
control. Probably because he himself speeded like a maniac whenever he could
get away with it.

The hours ticked by with excruciating slowness. I
was so focused on measuring the miles until Kearney that the significance of
Lexington didn't register until I found myself upon it.

The exit loomed ahead; I could see the overpass at
the interchange.

I found myself slowing the car. A cold chill coursed
through my veins.

It had happened here.

To other eyes, the scene ahead was unremarkable.
Solid walls of concrete patterned with giant hexagonal shapes rose up on either
side of the road, while the bridge above cast a broad shadow over the otherwise
sunwashed interstate. To most travelers the overpass meant no more than a
second's worth of relative darkness. To me, it seemed the center of the earth.
The sunless space seemed ominous; uncanny. I allowed my car to drift through
even as my brain screamed for release—the concrete walls seemed clammy and
suffocatingly close; the darkness absolute. The concrete supports in the center
of the overpass were not simple pillars, but massive gothic arches, and for all
the protection the metal guard rails offered a skidding car, they might as well
be solid walls of stone.

Bile rose in my throat as I glanced across the
median and glimpsed what was left of the westbound guardrail: strips of mangled
iron.

A tortured cry escaped my lips. My foot hit the
accelerator, heedless of the consequences.

"He did
not
die!" I shouted out
loud, needing to hear the words as much as say them. "He wanted to live,
and he fought it, and he
won!"

My eyes misted, but with a mighty effort I forced
the tears back. Under no circumstances could I fall apart now. I had come too
far; I was too close.

Zane's fading away from me in Oahu did
not
mean he was dying. It did not have to mean anything. How could it, when in so
many ways, he had been coming more alive every day? We had so little time
together, and yet he had come to know me so well… better than friends I'd had
for years. He could look at me and guess what I was feeling—he could read my
every mood. He asked me about myself; he was in interested in me, for me.

And what other option did he have, exactly?

I bit my already sore lip. The realization was not a
new one, but I hardly wished to dwell on it now. I had known all along that
Zane's appearing to care for me when I was, in absolute fact, the
only
woman in his world was hardly a fair test of his attraction. If we had met
under different circumstances, would he still feel the same? Among a crowd of
other admirers on a level playing field… would he ever even have noticed me?

Don't ever doubt it, Kali.

His words seared forward in my mind with the force
of a freight train, and the tears I'd been fighting spilled over.

It didn't matter.

All that mattered was my getting to him.

The stretch of road ahead seemed endless, even as
the numbers continued to chip away. Thirty miles to Kearney. Twenty miles. Ten.
Five.

Exit 272.

I was here.

I turned off and headed north into town, staying on
the main drag, as Tara had instructed. The town was classic heartland
generica—perfectly flat, laid out in a grid, and chock full of franchises. But
I could see no signs for a hospital. Six billion stoplights choked the road,
and every red made me pound the steering wheel in frustration. The town was a
little more sprawling than I had hoped, and when it seemed I had been starting
and stopping forever, I tried desperately to remember Tara's directions. She
had said it was only a couple blocks from the main road, and I hadn't turned
off…

At long last, I saw one. A blue sign with a big fat
H on it. It was one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen—and the arrow
pointed straight ahead.

Within five more minutes, I was in the parking lot.
Twenty seconds after that, I was standing at the information desk.

"Can I help you?" greeted a short, stout
woman of late middle age.

"Yes," I said, gulping air into my
oxygen-starved lungs. "I'm here to see a patient. He was in a car
accident. Zane—I mean Zachary—Svenson."

The woman made no response, but set herself to
typing on a keyboard, lifting her nose to train her bifocals to the appropriate
spot on the monitor. The hospital lobby was busy, and probably noisy, but all I
could hear was the clicking of her keys and the heavy whooshing of my own
labored breaths.

"Birthdate?" she said mechanically.

I swallowed. "I don't know the exact day. He
just turned eighteen recently."

The woman clicked more keys. She stopped for a while
and stared at a screen. Then she clicked some more.

I braced myself to keep from exploding.

She stared at another screen. She clicked a little
more. Then she turned away from the monitor and faced me. "I'm
sorry," she said brusquely. "But I can't give you any information
about that patient. He's no longer in our computer."

My breath stopped. Everything about me stopped. My
body went cold. My feet froze into the floor tiles. The lobby swam.

I don't know how long it took me to respond. But my
stupor did not go unnoticed.

"What do you mean, 'not in your
computer?'" I said at last, my voice so low it hardly reached my own ears.
"He was here; I know he was. He obviously
is
in your computer.
What
happened to him?!"

The woman stood up from the stool on which she'd
been sitting. The action made little difference to her height, but I could tell
from her posture that she feared I would collapse before her eyes. Her
countenance softened, her voice became mild.

"All I can tell you is that the patient is no
longer registered in this hospital," she said evenly. "Because of
privacy laws, I can't give out any more information than that. Are you a
relative?"

I shook my head weakly, but I had a feeling she knew
the answer even as she asked.

"I'm sorry, honey," she repeated. "I
really can't help you."

No more information?

No. Freakin'. Way.

I looked back into the woman's small, bluish-gray
eyes. She might be a lover of rules, but she was not inhuman. And I would not
give up now. I would
not
.

"Marsha," I said softly, reading her
nametag, "My name is Kali. I have just spent seven hours on a plane flying
over the Pacific Ocean from Oahu, and another seven hours in cars driving
across three states, to reach 'the patient' before he dies thinking that no one
on the entire planet gives a damn. He was in a horrific accident, he was
brought here in critical condition, both his parents are dead and he doesn't
have a single living family member. I am the only friend of his on the face of
this earth that even knows he's here—and I am
going
to do absolutely
everything in my power to make sure that he does
not
die alone. Do you
understand me?"

The woman blinked. Patches of red had risen in her
cheeks. Her eyes were wide. I was getting to her. "It's not my decision.
The privacy laws—"

"What kind of privacy law protects a patient
from being cared for by somebody who actually loves him?" I argued, my
voice choking up. "Can't you at
least
tell me if he's still
alive?"

The woman stared at me.

I stared back. My cheeks were wet again. My
strangled voice could choke out no more.

I could see the scene on the beach again, plain as
day. The scene in my nightmare.

The sheet was lifting.

It was covering Zane's chin, his cheeks, his eyes...

"Telling you anything about a particular
patient could cost me my job,"  Marsha's voice continued from somewhere
far away. My eyes were closed. My body swayed.

"But I can tell you this," she continued,
her voice suddenly sharper.

My heart thudded. I concentrated on staying upright.

"When patients are medically stable, but in a
coma, they're often transferred to long-term care facilities. There's one not
far from here, in fact. Just four blocks west, on Thirty-First and
Fourth."

My eyes wrenched open. The meaning of her words sank
slowly in. When the process was complete, it was all I could do not to vault
over the desktop and kiss her.

Zane
was
still alive.

He really was.

He was
alive!

I did vault over the desk and kiss her. It couldn't
be helped, really. One has to do what one has to do.

I whirled away toward the door, leaving behind me in
the lobby a trail of far-flung tears, a few confused bystanders, and one very
red-faced information desk clerk.

Zane was in a coma, but he was alive.

Absolutely nothing could keep me from him now.

"You're here for Zachary?" the tall, buxom
nurse loitering in the front lobby interrupted as soon as she heard my words to
the receptionist. "Seriously? Well, it's about damn time. That boy needs
some visitors!"

My heart nearly leapt from my chest.

"Can I send her on back then?" the
receptionist asked timidly. "I know the doctor's supposed to be in this
morning—"

"Bah!" The nurse waved a hand
dismissively. "Doc'll get here when he gets here. He'll be happy to see
her, too. Said all along that boy needed somebody to talk to him, and here she
is!"

The woman's broad mouth smiled, revealing
surprisingly white teeth. She was an immense figure, nearly six feet of mostly
muscle, and her deep voice boomed like a cannon. In another life, she could
have been a drill sergeant. But perhaps not a very effective one; her eyes were
open windows to what I could  see was an exceptionally warm heart.

"Can I… see him now?" I asked, hardly
daring to believe that no more obstacles stood in my way.

"Right now," the nurse agreed cheerfully,
turning to lead me down a blue-paneled corridor. I noticed that she walked with
a limp. "No offense, honey," she chatted, "but you look like you
walked through fire to get here. Where'd you come from, anyway?"

"Oahu," I mumbled, casting glances into
the rooms left and right along the hallway. A prickle of fear coursed painfully
up my spine. This was not a rehab hospital, much less assisted living. The
patients here were elderly, bedridden, frail. The kind of patients no one
expected to check out again.

Zane couldn't be here, with them. He just couldn't.
Unless…

It didn't matter. It didn't matter what shape his
body was in.

He was alive.

"
Oahu?!"
my escort exclaimed.
"You're kidding. When did you get here?"