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A clean-shaven man sat in a chair next to her. He had a buzzcut and wore wire-rimmed spectacles. Whether it was the sadness in his walnut eyes or the way his shoulders sagged under the weight of an invisible burden, Cassie thought he looked ten years older than he was. When he removed his glasses and set them on the bedside table, Cassie saw the lines on his face. They weren’t from age, but from life.
As the man wrapped his fingers around the hand of the woman in the bed, Cassie’s gaze traveled up her arm until it stopped at a tube inserted into one of her veins. A clear liquid Cassie couldn’t identify filled the line, but something told her it wouldn’t be enough to save the woman’s life.
Cassie forced her eyes to keep moving up the woman’s shoulder, through her mass of corkscrew curls, and to her face. Her once rich brown skin was now dull and ashen. Her lips were dry, and tears had turned to crust along her lashes. Minuscule beads of sweat gathered along her forehead. The man wiped them away with a damp cloth.
Despite knowing this was only a dream, Cassie was hesitant to disturb the moment. What if the man could sense her? What if the woman woke up? She didn’t want to intrude, but an unseen thread had wrapped itself around her chest and pulled her to the woman’s medical chart clipped to the end of the bed.
With deliberate movements, Cassie lifted the chart from its holder and looked down at the paper in front of her. She could see the words with crisp clarity but couldn’t read them. Jumbled letters filled the page like a message written in code. None of it made sense, no matter how long she stared at it.
The man in the chair let out a strangled sob and pressed his forehead against the woman’s hands. His lips moved in a silent prayer, and Cassie’s heart broke for him. She didn’t know what was happening to the woman, but she knew time was not on their side.
Cassie replaced the chart and returned to her spot beside the man. There was a low rumble and the room vibrated enough to rattle the machinery. The man didn’t seem to notice. His prayers went uninterrupted.
Cassie looked to the ceiling, afraid it might collapse and bury the three of them in rubble, but as soon as the sensation came, it also went. The floor was stable beneath her feet, and the distant noise was now just a memory.
But not everything was as it had once been.
When Cassie’s gaze returned to the scene before her, a fourth figure had emerged from the shadows. It was another woman, dressed in a white coat with a stethoscope wrapped around her neck. As the woman leaned forward, Cassie realized she didn’t quite belong. She wore low-heeled pumps and a plain gray A-line dress beneath her jacket. She had done up her chestnut hair in pin curls. Everything about her looked muted and faded—including skin that once had been the color of pale sand and now was almost khaki—except her eyes, which were a piercing hazel that stunned Cassie into silence.
If her wardrobe had not given her away, then the transparent sheen of her skin would have. Cassie knew, without a doubt, this woman had died decades ago, and yet here she was, looking more alive than the woman in the bed before them.
The Ghost Doctor leaned forward to fluff the woman’s pillow, and though she had no physical effect on the object, she stood back and surveyed her work as if satisfied. If the doctor registered anyone else in the room, she did a good job of ignoring them. She worked her way around the bed, straightening the blanket and tucking it under the woman’s feet.
When the room shook for a second time, Cassie’s gaze shot to the ceiling. The rumble was a little louder, and she could’ve sworn she felt something fall and hit her elbow. But it went quiet again, and the roof remained intact. When Cassie lowered her gaze, the Ghost Doctor stared directly at her.
Cassie had never seen a spirit like this one. She was almost solid, even bright compared to others she’d encountered. Even newer ghosts, ones who’d died only weeks or days beforehand, didn’t look as present as the Ghost Doctor did in this very moment. She didn’t flicker in and out of existence, and her hazel eyes stared unblinking, rooting Cassie to the spot.
The Ghost Doctor was the first to break eye contact, and when she did, she circled back around the bed, to the far side, and leaned over the woman. She whispered something Cassie couldn’t hear and then inched forward, as if waiting for a response. When she didn’t get one, the doctor checked her patient’s pulse, using the delicate watch on her wrist to time it.
But as soon as the Ghost Doctor took the woman’s hand in her own, alarms blared from the surrounding machines. The man jumped, first looking up at each individual screen and then back down to the woman in the bed. A stillness hung in the surrounding air.
The doctor did not seem affected by the commotion. In fact, she seemed pleased with the development, and as she took a step back, she tugged on the other woman’s arm. Cassie didn’t expect any effect, but when the patient sat straight up, Cassie knew something was wrong.
The woman’s physical form hadn’t moved from the bed, but her spirit turned and placed her feet on the ground. Cassie looked from one version of the woman to the other. They were identical, except for the way the spirit flickered in and out of existence, as though she were the embodiment of a poor connection.
Cassie only had time to gauge the confused look on the woman’s face before the entire room shook for a third time. The rumble was infinitely louder, and Cassie’s instincts drove her forward, reaching for the wrist of the woman in the bed. All she cared about was pulling it from the Ghost Doctor’s grasp.
But when her fingers closed around the woman’s hand, its warmth shocked her. And just as the room rattled one last time, Cassie locked eyes with the Ghost Doctor. Decades of pain and rage and conviction washed over Cassie, so sharp and twisted that she opened her mouth to cry out.
Cassie’s eyes flew open. She snapped her mouth shut, swallowing a scream that would’ve made everyone on the plane crane their heads in her direction. Her heart hammering, Cassie forced her lungs to pull air in and push it back out in a rhythm she could pretend was normal. It took her a moment to remember where she was and what she was doing.
She’d been forced to fly from Savannah to Charlotte before she boarded the plane to New Orleans. How ironic that she had left North Carolina last week after visiting her parents for the first time in a decade, and here she was, already on her way back. But her time at the airport had been limited—too short to pay them another visit—before she headed to her eventual destination.
Cassie breathed a little easier. The hospital room and the Ghost Doctor were already fading from memory, and her body was waking up alongside her mind.
Which also meant it didn’t take her more than a second or two before she realized that while she had wrapped her fingers around the dying woman’s wrist in her dream, the Cassie who lived in the real world had done the same to the woman sitting next to her on the plane.
Cassie released her grip and turned to the woman with wide eyes and an apology on her lips. She felt a flush creeping up her neck and across her cheeks. She considered opening the emergency door and throwing herself from the aircraft.
“Don’t worry about it, honey.” The woman’s smile lit up her face. There was a golden glow beneath her umber skin that made her look ethereal. Wires of gray peppered her dark hair, and though she looked to be in her early sixties, there was something eternally youthful about her. Cassie had heard her accent before, like New York meets the South. It was uniquely New Orleans. “Bad dream?”
Cassie nodded. “You think I’d be used to them by now.”
“Best not to get too friendly with nightmares.” The woman offered her hand. “My name is Celeste Delacroix.”
“Cassie Quinn.”
Cassie took the woman’s hand. It was warm and the handshake firm, but Cassie barely noticed because one minute she was staring into this beautiful stranger’s face, and the next she saw Celeste standing next to her mirror image. A fire crackled between them while stars twinkled in the sky above.
