My Purgatory Hell

Chapter 8

"Grief is intensely personal, which makes it difficult to express, difficult to share, and often difficult to witness in others."
― Ardy Kelly

"Wait--how long have we been here?" I asked Samantha. I looked out towards the lake that lay before us, and then back at her. Time was an illusion during our talk--it only felt like a few minutes passed.

Samantha shrugged as she glanced in my direction. "A couple of hours?"

"Hours?" It only felt like a couple of minutes had passed, not hours, since... the accident happened. I couldn't mentally voice the details at this point--I very much liked being in denial.

"Yep. A couple of hours," Samantha confirmed as she gestured for me to close the distance between us. "C'mon," Samantha instructed, holding out her hand. I reached out and grabbed her outstretched extremity. A distant, but oddly familiar feeling overcame me, and soon we were whirling to the hospital where the other driver was being treated for his injuries. The smell of the hospital gave me an uneasy feeling--the aura of death, which was ironic seeing as I was dead. I cringed at the thought but mentally shook it away.

Samantha had brought us to the third floor of the hospital. A woman about my age was pacing back and forth in the hallway. She asked every nurse or doctor that had passed if there was any more news on her father.

"Who is that?" I inquired, but somehow my gut already had the answer before Samantha voiced it outloud.

"Relative of the driver," Samantha stated without looking in my direction. Unease traveled down my spine at her statement. She must have received better news than my family, though, in regards to the accident. Speaking of my kin....

"What about my family?" I questioned--I wanted to know if they heard of my news, like this young woman who stood before us asking about her father.

Samantha shook her head. "Not now. Don't disturb my plan." I felt like I was a kid who was caught sneaking a cookie out of the cookie jar, which I flinched but stayed quiet. Instead, I kept my eyes on the pretty girl. She had soft features that were distorted by panic and impatience at lacking answers.

A male doctor approached the woman with a calm demeanor. "Miss Green? Your father has a lot of swelling which has increased pressure in his skull. We had to put him in an induced coma for the swelling to go down."

The young girl looked panicked, but calmer than she was moments before. "Can I see him?" Her voice was small and child-like, though she had to be around my age.

Nodding, the doctor instructed with a straight face, "Yes. Please follow me." The young woman followed behind the doctor with her hands clutching her arms across her chest. Her eyes kept darting from the doctor in front of her to the nearby open doors with anxiety filling her facial features.

Some part of me ached to give this young woman better news. I even wanted to apologize for my lack of attention and apologize for what happened--what I caused. I wanted show my sorrow and regret, but she was oblivious to my presence. In fact, they walked right through us as if we were thin air.

"What was that?" I asked Samantha, referring to the moment the woman and doctor passed through us.

Samantha gave me a wry look. "We aren't in their plane of existence--therefore, they can pass through us and vice versa."

"For being twelve, you are oddly wise," I admitted with honesty. Her words made her sound as if she were my age.

"I'm fifteen technically," Samantha pointed out a little defensively. She shot me a dark look and argued, "Just because I died at twelve, doesn't mean I stayed that age. On the plane of the living, yes, I will forever be twelve, but my body has decayed to bones. However, on this plane, we continue to age after our death, and we keep the form of our physical body from the moment we died."