Walking Ghost Phase Read online

  “Is it permanent?”

  “Memory loss from a concussion?” Collins shook her head. “The effects usually go away in a few hours. You'll notice soon enough.”

  A sense of relief washed over Emily, and she caught herself smiling at Collins. Then a blur of green appeared in the corner of her eye. “Excuse me, nurse,” the man said. It was the main soldier from the intersection. He handed Collins a note.

  “Who's Ric—?” Collins started to ask.

  “My unit doctor,” the soldier interrupted. “We need a sample taken to the lab ASAP.”

  “We don't have the equipment for this type of testing.”

  “It was just delivered.”

  Collins gave an uncertain nod and then turned to Emily. “I need to collect some of your blood.”

  “Why?” Emily asked.

  “Precautionary,” the soldier said. He hovered beside Collins until she filled the vial.

  “I'll be right back,” Collins said, and hurried down the hallway. The soldier stayed right on her heels.

  Alone now, Emily watched a few gurneys careen past her. On the opposite wall, the hands of a hanging clock had stopped at eighteen minutes past one. An Asian girl, about ten years old, sat beneath it and dangled her legs off the side of the gurney mattress. When a guttural cough came from somewhere down the hallway, the girl leaned forward and stared with a curious tilt in her eyebrows. A glaze of dried tears covered her cheeks. Moments later the girl seemed to have lost interest in the terrible sound. She now looked at Emily.

  Emily smiled, but the girl had already turned her head. Her eyes appeared bewildered by something in Emily's lap. Emily stared at her fingers, which moved with an unconscious twiddle as if she held an object, a camera it seemed. An image of the LCD screen flashed in her mind—fuzzy pictures of landmarks, outlines of ghostly apparitions.

  A patter of footsteps came down the hall, so Emily shoved her hands under the sheet. Nurse Collins stopped beside the gurney. “How are you feeling?”

  Until Collins asked, Emily hadn't noticed her normal breathing. The acidic burn in her chest had also eased. “Better. Thank you.”

  “Great.” Collins held out an empty vial. “Do you mind if I take another sample of your blood?”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “The lab tech said he needed another.” Collins leaned near Emily and whispered, “I think he lost the original. I'll make sure he tests this one right away.” Emily nodded, and Collins sat and began drawing the blood.

  “I came to Washington with three others,” Emily said.

  Collins smiled.

  “But I can't remember their names—or their faces.”

  “Give it time. I left you alone for what—five minutes?” After filling the vial, Collins grabbed a clipboard off the wall and set it on Emily's lap. Under the clamp was a blank sheet of paper and a pen. “Once I get back, I bet you'll have written down their names, addresses, phone numbers and even favorite colors.” This time her departing smile showed a slight waver.

  Emily held the pen against the paper. Her memory focused on the scenery in the pictures: the murky waters of the Reflecting Pool, the etched writing on The Lincoln Memorial, and the marble slabs of the Washington Monument. Now the people in the photos appeared as featureless masses, leaving only a black outline around their bodies. Her head throbbed, and the blood flow in her ears sounded like waves crashing on the beach. Her hands fidgeted with the invisible camera again.

  Then her mind locked on a single picture. It was something in the background. At the edge of the Washington Monument, a man in blue coveralls was talking to a park ranger. She didn't sense anything familiar about him, but her thoughts locked on his corner of the image.

  The gurney rattled, snapping her out of the thought. “Emily?” It was Ron. “We had a room open, and I've been asked to take you there.”

  Emily trembled with excitement, and not because she was leaving the hall. She knew Ron's name, remembered his face. The sensation overwhelmed her to the point she didn't think to ask questions. Her answer came out in a blend of words. “Let's do it.”

  A short trip later, through the chaos of injured patients, Ron opened a door and pushed Emily into a dimly lit room. As she slid off the gurney, her knees wobbled and soles of her feet stung. Ron steadied her until she climbed on the hospital bed, which was much nicer than the gurney—not hard as a rock. Ron seemed satisfied with her approval, and he hung a metal clipboard on the end of the bed.

  Emily pointed at it. “Is that my diagnosis?”

  “Yep,” Ron said.

  “What's it say?”

  Ron smiled deviously as he looked at the clipboard. “I'm not supposed to do this, but I won't tell if you don't.”

  “Promise,” Emily said.

  Ron scanned the sheet for a moment, when his face went blank.

  Emily leaned toward him. “What's wrong?”

  “With you? I—I don't know.” He showed her the clipboard. “I've seen a lot of diagnoses but never this one.”

  She read the words—letters actually—inside the preliminary diagnosis entry box. ARS.

  “Do you feel okay?” Ron asked.

  “Yeah. My stomach hurts a bit, but other than that I feel fine. Could the letters mean concussion? Maybe memory loss? Amnesia something something?”

  “Not a concussion. Not certain about memory loss.” He hung the clipboard back on the footrest. “Your doctor should be here soon, but I'm sure it's nothing.” He went to the door. “If I don't see you again, Emily, take care of yourself.”

  “You too.” She winked. “Thanks for everything, Ron.”

  Emily was alone again. A single lamp illuminated the walls in a faint glow of orange. Gray light crept through the closed blinds, casting a striped pattern on the floor. On her right was an empty bed, the sheets perfect and untouched, so she expected to have a roommate any second. Waiting for that moment to arrive, she rolled on her side.

  A nightstand separated the two beds, and on top of it was a crème-colored phone, the same model her grandmother owned. Emily reached for it, realizing another memory had returned—or maybe one she had never forgotten. Mom was probably home now. Tuesday was grocery day, and Emily wondered if her mother managed to unpack a single item before she found herself glued to the television. The Washington explosion likely showed on every channel. Emily needed to call her. Tell her she was okay. She lifted the phone off the cradle.

  “The land lines in the rooms are currently down,” a strange voice said. Emily flipped over and jerked back at the sight of the man in a blue business suit. He had snuck in her room and was now standing about a foot from the bed. “I apologize if I startled you. I thought you might be asleep, so I wanted to remain quiet.”

  She returned the phone to the cradle. “Are you my doctor?”

  Before he could answer, a man who actually looked like a doctor, the tails of his lab coat lifting in the air and a stethoscope swinging around his neck, rushed through the door. Two soldiers followed him. “You have no right to be here,” the doctor said to the man in blue.

  “Sir,” the lead soldier said to the man in blue. “We tried to restrain him, but he wouldn't listen.”

  “It's all right, Corporal,” the man in blue said. “He can stay.”

  “What's going on?” Emily asked.

  They ignored her. “This is a civilian facility,” the doctor said. “You have no right to interfere with my patients.”

  The man in blue nodded at the soldiers, and they shuffled out of the room. He turned to the doctor. “When that bomb went off, the entire city became anything but civilian.”

  “I'm trying to treat patients, and you have men with guns running around the halls. You think you're helping? These people are already frightened enough.”

  “Hey,” Emily said. “I'm here, too.”

  The man in blue looked at her. “Emily, I apologize again. You shouldn't have to see this.”

  “Who are you?”

  �
�My name is Richard Logner. I'm a Colonel in the US Army. This gentleman is Dr.—?”

  “Thomas Russell.” He extended his hand toward Emily.

  She didn't shake it. “Can someone just tell me why I'm here? What's ARS?”

  Dr. Russell glanced at the clipboard, not answering.

  Logner sighed. “Four hours ago, a low yield nuclear device detonated in the vicinity of the National Mall. The subsequent blast range was limited to a small radius, but it still released a sizeable shockwave. Rescue workers pulled you from the debris of a collapsed structure. You were lucky to survive.”

  “So I'm all right? I can go home soon?” Her gaze hopped between the two men.

  Logner sat on the edge of the bed. He rubbed his thumb and index finger around the bridge of his nose. “Emily, one of the effects of any nuclear detonation is the release of high levels of radiation. We receive radiation every day—from a cell phone, for example, or watching television. The foods we eat also contain trace levels of radioactivity. Our bodies are effective at repairing almost all instances of damage caused by these minute, sporadic occurrences, but when a person exceeds a certain dose, especially all at once—”

  “What are you saying?”

  Logner glanced at Dr. Russell. “You have the results?”

  “I'm—not familiar with this method of testing,” Dr. Russell said.

  “Very well,” Logner said, and took Dr. Russell's clipboard. “Emily, as I said before, we receive radiation every day. We measure this in REMs. The average person receives about half of one REM in a given year.”

  “Just tell me what's wrong.”

  Russell and Logner looked at each other. Then Logner continued. “Based on the deterioration of certain key markers in your genome, we can estimate with a high degree of certainty that your exposure level was somewhere in the range of—” Logner's face tightened. “— eight-hundred to one thousand REMs. This amount of exposure in a single dose…”

  Half of Emily's mind heard his voice trail off to rambling, meaningless words. The other half understood everything he said, more information about ARS than she ever wanted to know. Acute Radiation Syndrome.

  Her level of exposure had destroyed her bone marrow and immune system. The remaining white blood cells were fighting the infection, and she would feel better, able to walk around the hospital, shower, watch TV, perhaps talk to her mother. For a time, she might seem whole. They even invented a name for that period—Walking Ghost Phase. Eventually her white blood cells would no longer reproduce, leaving her vulnerable. Dr. Russell planned to administer morphine for the pain, but no drug could heal the damage. Nothing could. Soon infection would overwhelm her system.

  Emily was going to die.

  She thought of her mother staring through the window at the park where children played, never again to see the little girl she pushed on those swing sets years ago. Emily worried about the three individuals who traveled with her. Were they good friends? Was another doctor delivering the same news to them? Did they even make it out at all? And if so, did they remember her?

  “I want to call my mom,” Emily said, her voice barely audible. “I need to see her before I…” She swallowed, hard. “She should be here with me.”

  Dr. Russell looked at Logner. Emily did, too.

  Logner glanced at his watch. “The wireless towers are still operational, but you might have trouble getting through.” He pulled a sleek black cell phone from his pocket and handed it to Emily.

  She dialed her home phone number. A second after she pushed send, a robotic voice came over the line. “All circuits are busy. Please try your call later.” She brought up the number again and pressed send. The robotic voice spoke the same message for each of her six tries. She tossed the phone on the sheet, between her feet.

  “Emergency services are using cell phones to coordinate,” Logner said as he picked up the phone. “We'll give it another shot later, okay?”

  “Can you get her here?”

  Logner shook his head.

  “Please?”

  “I'm sorry.”

  Emily lay back and held her hands over her cheeks, wiping away the tears. “This isn't happening. Not to me. I'm only eighteen. I'm going to college in the fall.”

  Dr. Russell approached the bedside and placed his hand on her wrist. “Emily, if you need to speak with someone, I can make arrangements.”

  “I just want to be alone right now.”

  Dr. Russell nodded, and the two men walked to the door. There, Logner whispered something, but his words drowned in the hallway chaos. Then he closed the door behind the doctor, went to the chair in the corner and sat.

  “Aren't you needed somewhere else?” Emily asked.

  He smirked. “I'm sure the Feds have it under control. But you—you shouldn't be alone right now.”

  “Please, just go.”

  Logner didn't move.

  “I'm about to call security.”

  Logner raised his eyebrows. “Did you not see the armed men in the halls? Do you think some rent-a-cop making a dollar or two above minimum wage is going to make them stand aside while he escorts away a ranking officer?”

  “Just leave me alone. Please?”

  “Emily, I'm not here to harass you or make this situation more painful than it already is.” Logner looked down between his polished shoes. “I'm here because I have to be.” He pulled a wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket, flipped it open and removed a picture. He held it out, but Emily kept her gaze on the white sheet across her lap.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the second hand of the analog wall clock make three complete rotations. But Logner continued to hold out the picture. Finally, she huffed and turned her head. In the photo, a blond-haired girl, maybe seven or eight years old, was smiling, showing off two missing teeth. “Daughter?” she asked.

  “Yes. Our house burned down a couple months ago, so it's one of the few pictures I still have of her.” Logner gave a slight smile. “Us older folks aren't quite as into this digital technology as your generation. Maybe then I could have saved more.”

  “She—died in the fire?”

  “No.” Logner returned the photo to his wallet. “That picture is twelve years old.”

  “I'm sure she's worried about you.” Emily's tone reeked of sarcasm. “Why don't you try to find her?”

  “No, she is dead.”

  “Oh…I'm sorry.”

  “How she died is why I can't let you go through this alone.” Logner glanced between a slit in the blinds. “Almost a year ago, after she graduated from high school, she came to me. Now, I've never claimed to be the world's greatest father, but I knew whatever she had on her mind was important. She said she wanted to discuss something with me, although we had never discussed anything before. We kept a mutual understanding. She always respected my advice, and I gave her the space she wanted. But that night, she abandoned our arrangement. Against my wishes, she was going to join the service.

  “I've been in the Army for almost thirty years. It's a respectable career, an honorable one even. But as a father, I felt terrified. My only child wanted to enlist while our country fought two wars. I know this may not matter to you now, but don't think for second that women don't serve in combat operations. I knew that too well. It's why I was afraid.

  “She didn't want to hear my reasons. Said she didn't care. Had made up her mind. And maybe I said a few things I shouldn't have said. But she didn't back down, not an inch. That night, she left the house for good. After her basic training ended, her sergeant called and told me when she would deploy, but I didn't go to the base and see her off. I let her board that C-130 without telling her goodbye. I didn't write her. Didn't tell her I was sorry. It was the biggest mistake of my life.”

  Logner's eyes glistened. “A few months later, I was home, sitting in my favorite leather chair, where I had rocked her to sleep many times when she was a baby. Then the doorbell rang. Two soldiers were standing on my porch. I recognized one o
f the young men, having served alongside his father. I also knew what the young man did, why he greeted me at my front door. He delivered the news no parent of a soldier wants to hear.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She was traveling in a convoy when an IED detonated near her Hummer. The convoy came under attack, and her unit commander ordered a general retreat. They left her, although she was still alive. I often wonder if she thought about me before she died. I only hope she didn't hate me. I missed her so much, but I couldn't even tell her. She didn't deserve to hear me say those things, and she damn sure didn't deserve to die on that road without a single person by her side.”

  Emily's eyes burned.

  “You don't need to be alone. At least let me stay until you can reach your mother or someone else.”

  Emily smiled through her tears. This man lost his daughter, and he asked to honor her memory by spending time with a perfect stranger. He probably had better things to do, places he was needed. But he chose Emily. Now the thought of the man's daughter sitting alongside the road and dying without anyone to comfort her or hear her last words began to sink in. What if Emily couldn't reach her mother? What if she remembered something important? Could she expect some random nurse or doctor to carry her message? No, she didn't need Logner for that task. Her mother did. “Okay,” Emily whispered.

  Logner tossed her the cell phone. “Try again.”

  She did, and the robotic voice came over the line. “All circuits are busy. Please try your call later.”

  She handed the phone to Logner, and he looked at the display. “I know this area code. Nashville?”

  She nodded.

  “I was stationed at Fort Campbell many years ago. I suppose this was your vacation?”

  “Some choice, right?”

  Logner narrowed his eyes. “You didn't come here by yourself—did you?”

  “No. I was with three friends.”

  Logner quickly hopped out of the chair. “Why didn't you tell me? What are their names? They could be here. If not, I can have the head nurse call the other hospitals.”