I See Dead People

Chapter 1

This was never supposed to happen.

I've lost every person I have ever considered family. Jenny wasn't supposed to be one of them. If only I'd driven her to prom, if I'd insisted that she not try to drive herself in her fancy getup, she wouldn't be lying here right now. She wouldn't be hooked up to every machine this hospital owns, just trying to hold on to the last strand of life in her.

The doctors told me she wouldn't make it. They weren't quite that blunt, but they said she wasn't going to wake up. Of course, they said that within the first two days of her stay, and almost a week later, she's still here. She may be lying unconscious on a hospital bed, but she's here.

I have not left this building in eight days, and, as such, I have heard a lot of things. I have heard countless people die just a few rooms away from me. I have heard the screaming of patients whose pain killers aren't working well enough to dull the pain and of families seeing their loved ones for the first or last time.

And, believe it or not, this is not the first time I've heard a man yell, "Can anybody see me?" in the middle of the hallway.

I'm not just a doting big sister and a hopeless optimist. I'm also a psychic. It's not even the fun type of psychic, either -- I can't see the future to predict lottery tickets; I see dead people. More accurately put, perhaps, is that I ignore dead people. They never come bearing smiles and kittens, so I've decided that I want nothing to do with them.

But then the confused ghost has to enter my sister's hospital room, and I tense up. People die in these hospitals every day, but they always stay out of here. No one has any qualms with my sister, and no one knows I can see them. So what the hell is he doing here?

He looks around the room, puzzled, and I avert my gaze. He walks up to me and waves a hand in front of my face, so I unfocus my eyes, gazing blankly ahead of me as though he didn't just block my view of my sister. It takes a moment, but he does back off, turning back around to look at her as well.

Every machine that Jenny is connected to starts to act up, and within moments, the room is flooded with medical personnel. I lose interest in the guy immediately, trying to push my way to my sister's side. The nurses do their best to keep me away, speaking in calm and collected voices with words that barely register. This can't be happening. She's just a kid. She can't die.

And then the ghost walks up to the bed -- quite literally walking through the doctors on all sides to do so -- and reaches out. And that's the last straw.

"Get away from her!" I scream, trying to fight my way over to him. Two nurses grab me, one on each arm, to hold me back.

"Ma'am, you need to leave," one of the nurses says.

But I did exactly what I wanted. I got the ghost's attention.

He looks at me, and, for the first time since he walked in here, I allow myself to look back at him. He's young, probably about my age, if not a few years older than me. He's tall, too -- he towers over everyone in the room, as if God decided that everyone needed to look at him. I guess I see why -- he's certainly not an ugly guy -- but he's also certainly not a living guy, nor is he a helpful guy, so I want him out of here, now.

"Can you see me?" the ghost asks.

I just narrow my eyes.

He looks at me for a moment, then turns his attention back to the hospital bed. Not of my twisting and turning can free myself of the nurses' grasp, and I have no choice but to watch as he reaches back out over my sister, this time with both arms, and almost seems to grab something that isn't there. He groans, clearly in the midst of some struggle that I can't witness, but I can make the safe assumption that he's trying to hurt my sister, and I can't watch that. I avert my gaze, looking down at the floor as I wait for the inevitable flatline.