Saving Elijah

hadn't. She always said Julie was a bad influence on me, though it was more the other way around. But it didn't surprise me she remembered it this way. Anyway, that was another lifetime. I leaned over and put my cheek to Elijah's hand.
    "It was a long time ago," I said, but I slept for an hour or so that night, clutching Julie's letter, hoping to dream of forgiveness, dreaming only of pain.

    *    *    *

    "I have to get out of here for a little while," Sam said the next morning, shortly after he got back from his run.
    Where else was there to go?
    "Just to the office for an hour or so," he said.
    "The office, the moon, the office, the moon," the ghost whispered, making a noise like the clanking of bones.
    "What about Elijah's EEG?" He'd already had two EEGs.
    "It's scheduled for this afternoon. I'll be back before then."

    *    *    *

    The EEG technician was a tall, muscular black man wearing blue, a blue coat, blue cap. He attached electrodes to Elijah's head, smeared the red curls with goop he squeezed out of a tube, all the while sighing and shaking his head, then he went back into his booth and turned on the machine.
    I heard it humming, electronic noises, bells and gongs. I saw the light switch on and off. Elijah lay there, still, silent, gooped, illuminated.
    I looked through the window of the technician's little booth and thought I saw him sigh. Turning off his machine, he began to check the readout, folding page over page, neatly. I stood up, went into his booth, and looked over his shoulder at the continuous black line, dipping and cresting across the long page. Were the peaks and valleys still too shallow for a normal EEG?
    "What does this mean?" I asked him.
    The technician ripped the page from the machine. "I'm sorry. You have to discuss it with the doctor."
    "Well, you know what that means," the ghost said.
    Did I? Could the technician be just following the damned rules? No. No one could be that cruel, not to reassure me if it were normal. I tried to bypass the ghost and speak directly to God. Don't You see this? Don't You see what's going on? Can't You do something? I'll be good, I promise. I'll be good.
    But I didn't hear God respond.
    "You're running out of time," said my demon ghost.

    *    *    *

    Back in Elijah's room, the social worker poked her head in the door.
    "May I come in?" She closed the door softly behind her, and went to Elijah's bed. She took his hand and began to stroke it.
    "How is he?"
    "No change," I said.
    "Where's your husband?"
    "He said he was going to the office." I laughed.
    She said, "Be gentle with each other, Mrs. Galligan. Men and women cope very differently."
    What language was she speaking?

    *    *    *

    I took the elevator to the ground floor and headed for the little shop in the lobby, scanned the array of Mars bars, Twinkies, T-shirts, paperback books, and magazines, a shelf sparsely stocked with an assortment of medicines, a middle-aged woman clerk. It could have been any shop anywhere except for the glass display case of flower arrangements in the corner, and my ghost, hovering above the stuffed animals, flapping huge wings—he had assumed the shape and color of one of the animals in the display, Big Bird. Long yellow feathers ruffling, long orange beak opening and closing.
    "Miss? Can I help you?"
    Miss? She did not realize how old I was. I was old, very old. I asked for the brand of cigarettes I'd smoked before quitting seventeen years ago. I had definitely come a long way, baby.
    "I'm sorry. We don't sell cigarettes. It's a hospital."
    Oh. Right.
    I headed out to the street entrance. I didn't have a coat. I'd forgotten it was winter.
    Everything seemed to be going so fast out here, cars whizzing by, people rushing along. I looked around. Two hospital workers in blue coats were standing under the awning, smoking. I extracted a cigarette from one of them, who seemed vaguely annoyed that I needed a light, too. I retreated to the other side of the doors, closed my eyes, and inhaled until it hurt my lungs, and I felt woozy. When I opened my eyes, the ghost was next to me in the cold, back to Seth, in jeans, leather jacket, boots. He was smoking his own cigarette. He cast no shadow on the ground.
    "Listen," he said. "Look. And see the end."

    *    *    *

    I am in that place again, the Laurel Institute, with the bright cheery walls and the tender Dr. Jane. I have been coming here daily for years. I am sitting on the bed next to Elijah. He is