Saving Elijah

pulled away. Once unleashed, my crying had turned into howling. And the ghost who called himself Seth Lucien was there, patting me on the back. "There, there," he said. "There, there."
    Elijah slept.
    Alex, my parents, and Sam's parents all came up from the hospital cafeteria about ten minutes later. Sam went home with the children that night, for the first time. In the quiet hours after everyone left, I held Elijah's hand and began to pray, more formally now. The only actual prayer I could remember was a psalm, and only a line or two near the beginning. I went out to the desk, asked for a Bible, and found the psalm. "My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved ..." I read Psalm 121 over and over, while the ghost of Seth Lucien whispered savage words he delivered in his inflectionless, affected coo. This I heard in my ear for hours on end, but I wouldn't look at him, and I kept reciting the psalm. "He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep."
    "Speaking of sleep, my Dinah, you really should be grateful the kid's unconscious. Think of all those who die in pain, imploring God to intercede. Think, Dinah! It could be so much worse. He could be conscious and looking at you with pleading eyes."
    I turned away, I prayed and listened for the sound of God's glorious, booming voice, or His still, small voice, or any voice discernible over Seth's sibilant murmurs.
    "What's wrong with you, Dinah? A decent mother would have taken her child to the hospital."
    I tried to defend myself. "The doctor didn't act like it was any big deal."
    "Don't these doctors make all sorts of pronouncements, and aren't they always so sure? Weren't they sure when they gave those pregnant women thalidomide in the fifties?" He bent his arms at the elbow and began to flap them like flippers. "Well, weren't they? Of course they were. And you believed every single one of Elijah's doctors, like a submissive child, no matter what they told you to do for him, or not do. Truth is, you should have let Elijah be. You got him too many doctors in the first place."
    "But I had to! He had so many problems."
    "That's a pile of dog turds if I ever heard one. You were trying to make him over in your own image. You're just like your mother, much as you deny it. You were embarrassed he was your son. You wanted him to be smart like you! Smart, smart, smart."
    "I wasn't. I didn't. I wanted him to be happier. Less frustrated." It was my mother who wanted him to be smart, wasn't it? It was Sam who couldn't face his handicaps. Not me.
    "You were never even there. You were out working all the time, trying to fix everyone but you."
    I got off the bed, walked over to the glass wall, drew back the curtain and looked out. A lone resident was sitting at the central desk.
    "Leave me alone, Seth. I beg you."
    "Beg?" The ghost began to pant like a dog, and the face distended and lengthened and darkened, and the nose became a snout. For a moment I saw a black poodle, then the ghost was back, zipping up to the ceiling. "I will leave you alone if you don't stop calling me by that name."
    I turned. "What is your name?"
    A whisper. "I have no name."
    No name? "You told me you were Seth."
    "So I did, my Dinah." In an instant he was beside me, as if the air had slurped him there.
    "Stop calling me that. I'm not your Dinah. I never was."
    "Oh, but Seth loved you."
    "Seth? Love? They don't belong in the same sentence."
    He stamped his foot. "He did."
    "I don't care. It was almost twenty-five years ago."
    "But a passing moment for me, my Dinah. A passing moment—and an eternity."
    I took a step backward. "Who are you, really?"
    "I already told you. A kind of a ghost."
    "What kind?"
    "Think of me as the Angel of the PICU."
    "How can a ghost be an angel?"
    "How the hell would I know?"
    "What kind of angel? Are there different kinds?"
    He spread out his hands. The air in the darkened room shimmered and moved, undulated like an exotic dancer. "I'm a specialist."
    "What do you specialize in?"
    "Being a nuisance." He grinned. "Some of us hang around questioning God's judgments. Some of us think God may make some mistakes." He clamped his hand over his mouth and drew in air like a siphon. "Oops." He leaned toward me. "After all, who would question God? Right?"
    "I do. I question God." I went back over to sit on the bed with Elijah, took his hand.
    "Well. Any mother would in your situation. Remember Job?"
    "Of course."
    "Then you