“I’ve seen worse.” A smile lifts one corner of his thick mustache. “I’ve seen better, too.”
“Does the Welcome Wagon know you’re a perv?”
His mustache falls. “I have no control over a patient’s nekked state. It’s my duty to greet new arrivals and explain their circumstances. I keep track of all incomin’ and outgoin’, calm fears and answer questions.”
Great. I have a few of those, but before I can ask, a nurse moves from the side of my bed and walks straight through me. It’s a bump and whoosh and charges the air with little snaps of static electricity. She doesn’t seem to notice and continues down a hall past closed doors as tiny gold and blue pops follow behind in her wake. “That was—”
“Shh,” he whispers, leaning forward in anticipation. “Wait for it.”
I don’t know why he’s whispering. No one can hear us. “What?” I whisper.
“Shh. Wait for it….”
The nurse turns toward a room and all the tiny pops catch up, pass through, and snap her fingers when she touches the door handle. She yelps and jumps back, shaking her hand.
“Woo-ee, it never gets old.” The golfer laughs. “That made my day.”
If that makes his day, then he must lead a very dull life, but it does get me to thinking that maybe carpet isn’t really to blame for static shocks after all.
“The bigger the spirit, the bigger the snap, crackle, and pop, and you got her good. Last month a doctor’s hair stood straight up after he passed through a three-hundred-pound football player.” He clears his throat and straightens. “But physical contact with the livin’ is discouraged. For obvious reasons and such.”
I’m a cosmetologist and can carry on polite conversation with just about anyone, but this guy says a lot about nothing, and I have important things to get to the bottom of. “Where was I?”
He turns to me and answers, “The in-between.”
“In between what?”
“Life and death. You were revived several times, so your path was put on suspension until your destination was determined either way.” He squares his shoulders. “Our trauma doctors stubbornly fight for every life. We are the best trauma hospital in the state, and that includes Parkland, no matter what Ingrid claims. She was concierge at Parkland the day President John F. Kennedy died, after all.”
“Well, all I—”
“All hell broke loose that day, I can tell you,” he says over top of me. “How she got promoted to director of Southwest Thirty-One is still a mystery.”
“That in-between place was scary as all git-out,” I say, stopping his tangent before I get real aggravated with him. “I don’t ever want to get stuck there again.” He looks like he’s not going to give up on his Ingrid rant, but I can talk water uphill if I have to. “I didn’t know what was goin’ on or where I was headed. You said I was dead and now I’m not. I was there and now I’m back here. You didn’t explain anythin’ before I got sucked up again.”
“There wasn’t time. I told you to stay on the path. I did my job.”
Well, he sucks at his “job,” if you ask me. “Isn’t there a manual or guidebook or somethin’ on what to expect when you die?”
“No. There are no Dyin’ for Dummies books.”
I think he just implied I’m a dummy. I think he’s getting back at me for calling him a perv. I tell myself not to get worked up, but I can’t keep my eyes from narrowing.
“What happened to you is uncommon, but I’m sure you’ve heard of folks dyin’, then comin’ back. With you dyin’ several times on the operatin’ table, and with the Pacific Rim catastrophe, you’re lucky you got back here as quick as you did.”
Pardon me if I don’t feel all that lucky. “There’s been a catastrophe?”
“Yessiree. Catastrophes tend to gum up the works. When tens of thousands of folks pass in a big earthquake, and a hundred thousand more with the tsunami…” He shakes his head. “It’ll get sorted out eventually.”
That might explain the crowded paths I saw, but… “This isn’t the first disaster since God created the world, and you’re sayin’ he hasn’t come up with a catastrophe plan in all that time? What’s he been doin’?”
“That’s not for me to know.”
Of course not.
“I’m just a concierge is all.”
He’s just a wing nut is all.