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‘Well...’ Anna decided to play along. ‘What kind of ghost exactly?’
‘He says it’s a sparkly white woman. She appeared by the television at midnight. He checked the time.’
‘And the TV wasn’t on? Maybe it had been on standby.’
Jamie shook his head. ‘Nope. I asked him that, and he said it wasn’t on the TV, it was in front of it.
‘Midnight. Well, perhaps it was one of the nurses. Darren was recovering from surgery, and he may well have been disoriented or drowsy...’ Anna shrugged.
‘I mentioned that too and he told me he knows the difference between a nurse and a ghost.’ Jamie grinned. ‘I imagine that ghosts don’t bring you custard and expect you to eat it.’
‘No, I imagine they don’t.’ Anna put her mind to the problem. ‘Well, we have another room that’s empty at the moment. If it makes Darren feel better then he can move to that one. And we can arrange for an extra bed if his mum would like to stay with him overnight.’
Jamie nodded. ‘That would be great. His mum’s on her own and has younger children, but she has a sister who helps out. I can arrange for one of our outreach workers to go and stay with them if her sister can’t manage.’
‘Okay. We’ll do that, then. Anything else, apart from the custard? Does his leg hurt him?’
Jamie smiled, pointing to the green list at the bottom of the page. ‘It hurts a bit but he says it’s okay. I took the liberty of checking...’
Of course he had. But it felt less like a liberty and more like a helping hand. ‘That’s great, thanks.’
Anna scanned the rest of the list. Nothing there, apart from the usual dislikes that everyone had of hospitals. ‘Perhaps you’d like to take Darren up to the roof garden this afternoon if he’d like a breath of fresh air. I think we have some binoculars somewhere, I’ll see if I can find them. He might like to do some sightseeing with them.’
‘I think he’d like that.’ Jamie shot her an uncertain look. It wasn’t like him to hesitate before he asked for something for one of his patients. ‘Are you...? Is someone going to be in Darren’s old room tonight?’
‘I doubt it, there are no new patients coming in today. We’re not going to fill it with garlic and brick up the door, though.’
‘Garlic’s for vampires.’ Jamie grinned suddenly. ‘They’re entirely different. If I’ve learned anything thing from Darren’s games, it’s that you need to be armed with the right weapon when you face any given opponent.’
‘Well, whatever the right weapon is, we’re not going to be using it. Darren’s a little boy in a strange place who thought he saw something.’
‘He told me exactly what he saw. More than once.’
Anna puffed out a breath. She knew what Jamie was doing, and it was the right thing. He was listening to the most vulnerable person first, and believing what they said.
‘Jamie, you can go and look around the new room with him, and check it out. We need to do everything we can to put Darren’s mind at rest and help him to heal, but there’s no ghost. It’s all very well to believe what he says, but there has to be some filter of whether it’s actually credible or not.’
Jamie gave her a reproachful look. If he could just wear contacts or dark glasses it might help. His moss-green eyes spoke to her on a level she couldn’t resist.
‘I filtered. I still can’t work out what he saw. You don’t believe in ghosts, then?’
Anna shrugged. ‘I like to think I have an open mind. That doesn’t mean I won’t look for an explanation for something I don’t understand. And you’ve got too much time on your hands. If you want something useful to do, you can help us move him.’
Darren’s mother arrived, and Jamie took her down to the coffee lounge to explain everything to her. Once she’d approved the plan, the new room was made ready for Darren. His things were gathered together, and then Jamie lifted him out of his bed, carrying him across the central nurses’ area, his mother walking alongside.
Anna swallowed hard. The thing Darren most needed right now was love and care, and Jamie was giving him just that. He’d make a great dad. And she suspected that making babies with him would be an ultimate pleasure. One that she’d never enjoy. She turned her back, hurrying away.
* * *
‘Everything okay?’ Anna had spent the evening in her office, doing a few jobs that could have waited. The ward was quiet now, and in darkness.
‘Yes, Darren settled down to sleep and his mum’s with him.’ The nurse gestured towards the closed door of Darren’s new room. Anna nodded, turning her gaze towards the half-open door of the room he’d occupied last night.
‘Is he there?’
The nurse grinned and nodded. Anna walked towards the door, slipping inside the darkened room.
‘So you decided to try your hand at ghost-hunting, did you? Or do you just have nothing better to do on a Friday night?’
