Richard looked out the window at another gray sky.  He would have sighed at the sight, but today his lungs felt even worse than they usually did.  Just trying to breathe through his nose slowly was painful enough.

The pain was so bad today that he could almost see what was wrong when he closed his eyes, the globs of crud caking on the inside of his lungs, sticking to him, threatening to turn to stone and drop right through his stomach and bowels.  He tried not to close his eyes, but the skies weren’t all that helpful.

“Well, well, Master Starkey,”  said the nurse as she came to Richard’s bed on her rounds,  “where is our usual smile for the day, eh?”

“Not much I can give, Nurse,”  said the young man.  “Me lungs are doing a number on me, and I feel as bright as the day out there.”

“We all have our bad days, Master Starkey.  You shouldn’t let one bad day make it all right for you to adopt a habit of being morose.”

“That’s your job, isn’t it,”  he said under his breath, not having seen Nurse ever smile in the year he’d been here.

“You can’t let your condition get you down,”  she said matter-of-factly.  “There’s no reason to allow yourself to have such a negative attitude.”

Richard might have laughed at that as he felt the dull institutional colors of the walls and the somber faces of all the staff echo and reinforce the skies’ declared mood, but laughing was the last thing on his mind.

“Right,”  said Nurse, “up with you a bit.  Those pillows need to be changed, right now.”

“But it’s the first time I’ve gotten meself comfy all day,”  he protested.

Her response was a firm hand on his shoulder, lifting him forward while the other hand removed the pillows, and with a snap shed them of their cases.  He felt the pressure in his lungs ache from the position he was placed in before he could lie back again, the discomfort at a new set of pillows not yet broken in making his back itch.

“Is this young man giving you any troubles today?”  Richard heard the Cambridge-inflected voice of Doctor Pulmer on his other side as he came to look at his chart.

“Right sour today, he is,”  Nurse said as she stood at attention.  Even in the presence of her superior, Nurse never seemed to get out of the dour businesslike state she’d been in ever since Richard came to Heswall.

“Oh really, Ritchie?”  The doctor gave a slight condescending smile which Richard thought was even more grating than Nurse’s perfunctory manner.  “Are we feeling all right, then?”

“Me chest really hurts today,”  Richard said to the doctor.  “It was feeling a lot better earlier.”

“Well, my boy, that is the problem with pleurisy, isn’t it?  Some days are better than others, and it won’t be until it’s run its course that we’ll be able to say good bye to you.”

“But it’s been a bleedin’ year, doc-“

“Watch your tongue!”  Nurse reprimanded him.

Doctor Pulmer raised a hand and gave another weak smile.  “Now my boy,”  he said to Richard,  “there are going to be setbacks from time to time, but you are getting the best possible care here at Heswall.  Now if you were with your chums at your school, you might be feeling altogether worse off for it, and that would certainly be a shame if you allowed yourself to get even sicker now, wouldn’t it?”

Richard just looked down.  As far as he knew, he had no chums at Dingle Vale.  He couldn’t even remember anymore what the school looked like, he’d been there so rarely.

“Do count yourself all the better off, my boy.  If this were even, say, before the war, your chances of living on to this age would be slim, but modern medicine can do wonders for you.”

“Wonder if it’ll be worth living on like this,”  Richard said slowly.

Doctor Pulmer tsk’d as he got his stethoscope out and listened to Richard’s chest.  “Ah, we are having a rather large inflammation today, aren’t we?”  he said as he listened, before he made a note on Richard’s chart and said to Nurse,  “Start these before bed for the next week.” 

She nodded to Doctor Pulmer, and the two continued on.

“Right miserable one, isn’t she,”  said a voice to Richard’s side.  He looked over and saw another boy about his age walking along with a cane.  “Mind if I use your chair?  Me wind’s not with me, eh?”

“Right there,”  Richard nodded to the chair by the bed.  He looked over the other beds in the ward.  “That one there,”  he nodded to the empty one on the end,  “that you?”

“Aye,”  the boy said.  “Got ‘ere this morning I did, and a good one to do it on.”  The boy sat down and tried to smile.  “So what they ‘ave you in for?”

“Pleu-reesy,”  Richard almost moaned.  “And you?”

“Armed robbery.  Listen, coppers,”  the boy did a good Edward G. Robinson imitation,  “you won’t hold me ‘ere, see?  Little Rico, he don’t take kindly to it, see?”

Despite the mood and the hurt, Richard smiled.  “Cor, you do that well,”  he said.  “The name Rico, was that your gran’s dad they named you after?”

The other boy smiled.  “It’s Harvey.”  He held out his hand.

“Ritchie.”  He took Harvey’s hand and shook it.  “You do that chap at the cinema well.”

“I do a bunch of ‘em.  Listen, swee’art,”  Harvey did Humphrey Bogart,  “there’s only two seats on that plane, an’ you got to get on board.”

Richard tried to widen his eyes the way Bergman did.

“You don’t get on that plane, you’ll regret it,”  Harvey continued,  “maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.  Now it’s the other git we’ve got to worry about, so if you show ‘im some gam, I might be able to knock him out-“

Richard started to laugh at the new dialogue, but the sudden jiggle brought on a coughing fit.

“Oh cripe!”  said Harvey.  “Cor, I din’ want to do that to you.”

Richard smiled as the coughing abated.  “Best thing to happen to me in a while,”  he said.

“Yeah, I could imagine,”  Harvey said as he took in the décor. 

“And it’s like you to be all glum now, is it,”  said another boy two beds down who started to get up and come closer.  He was breathing more easily but still used the ends of the beds to make his way down there.

“Harvey,”  said Richard,  “this is Lewis.  Right randy one ‘e is, the way he goes on.”

“Randy how?”  asked Harvey.

“Time enough for that later,”  said Lewis, propping himself against Richard’s foot grill.  “You do the cinema, then?”

“Every chance I get,”  said Harvey.  “I’m very keen on the detective pics, with them dark lights and shadows.”

“You seen the one with Cagney and O’Brien, eh?  Called ‘Angel Faces’ or something like it?”

“It’s ‘Angels With Dirty Faces,’” said another young man from the bed on the other side of Harvey’s chair.  “Remember seeing that one a while ago, before I came ‘ere.”

“’wake now, Martin?”  Richard asked.  “This ‘ere’s Harvey, the new lad on the floor.”

“Pleased to meet you,”  said Martin as he extended a hand.  “Richard’s been cheering you up, I hope, the way he does the others?”

“Not today,”  said Richard.  “It’s a bad one, I’m afraid, the way it’s got solid in me.”

“Crimie,”  said Martin.  “No hope soon, eh?”

“Hope for what?”  asked Harvey.

“Ritchie ‘ere is our old hand,”  said Lewis.  “Been near a year now since you been in this place?” he asked him.

Richard gave a grimace.  “I’ve been ‘ere long enough I could be board certified.”

“That’s ruddy bad,”  said Harvey.  “Bet it makes you all crank.”

“Oh I’ve ‘eld up,”  said Richard.  “Been in ‘osptial so long I can almost grade ‘em the way they rate hotels.”

“So how’s this place hold up, eh?”  Harvey asked.  “Please tell me not all the nurses are like the one we saw.”

“She’s the main one for the ward,”  said Richard glumly.  “She treats it like her own domain.”

“And ‘ere I was, hoping I’d at least see a pretty nurse.  You know what they say about nurses and all, eh?”

“Tell me,”  said Lewis, his eyes widening knowingly.

Richard just shook his head.  “I’ve been ‘ere a year, mate, and they all are a pretty ratty bunch, the sodding lot.”

***

That night, Richard wondered if he’d spoken too soon.  As he started to drift off he caught sight of a pretty woman with dark hair in a nurse’s uniform silently walking down the center aisle of the ward.  She stopped at the foot of each bed and looked at the patient before moving on.

When she got to Richard’s bed, he caught sight of her eyes, a cold gray that seemed deeper that the floor of the ocean.  He tried to prop himself up to look more closely at her, but the drugs Nurse gave him on her last round made his limbs heavy.

The night nurse gave Richard a smile before she turned away.

***

“Got to hand it to you, Harvey,”  said Richard the next day as he sat up in his bed with his friends about,  “you show up and the nurses do actually get better looking.”

“Cor, Rich,”  said Martin, “you daft?”

“Which one of ‘em, eh?”  Harvey asked.  “I ‘aven’t seen one yet you’d be able to call good for the eyes.”

“The night nurse,”  said Richard.  “The one who was making rounds after lights out.”

“Missed ‘er, sorry,”  said Harvey.

“I did too,”  said Martin.  “Rotten luck, if she was an easy bird on the eyes, eh?”

“Who is?”  said Lewis, who seemed to have the most energy that morning.  “You finally take me up on what I said, eh?”

“Sod off, Lewis,”  said Martin.  “You and your ‘doomed romance’ talk can go to ‘ell for we care.”

“The doomed what?”  asked Harvey.

Richard and Martin rolled their eyes as Lewis said with a little animation,  “The way I see it, we’re young men in the primes of our lives, or what little we have of it left.  And I say, nay, I implore, we should try and hook up with the young lasses in the girl’s ward, and find ourselves some happiness with them, as it may be too late if we don’t try.”

“Now if that isn’t truly sorry,”  said Richard.  “You’re acting as though we’re all terminal.”

“May as well be,”  said Martin,  “the amount of time we’ve been ‘ere, eh Ritchie?  I’ve been here near as long as you have, mate.”

“I’ve been in ‘ospital before, and I went home to me mum each time.  So it’s taking me longer ‘ere, but I am going ‘ome, lads.”

“’Ere, ‘ere,”  said Harvey.  “That’s the spirit.”

“Besides,”  said Martin,  “ever get yourself a look at the girls there?  If it is me last chance to be a man before I go, it’d be a pretty sad way to do it.”

“Maybe the night nurse is what you need, Lewis,”  said Harvey.

“Cor, what is it with you and nurses?”  asked Richard.

“I was reading this book from ‘merica about ‘em.  Right racy stuff in it ‘bout nurses.”

“’merican nurses,”  said Martin.  “We do things different here, you git.”

“Maybe the night nurse is American,”  said Richard.

“Night nurse?”  asked Lewis.

“Crimey, don’t tell me you didn’t see her either?”  Richard asked.

“So where’s this book?”  Lewis asked Harvey.

Harvey had a sly smile as he reached into the pocket of his robe.  On the cover of the ratty looking paperback was a drawing of a woman in her foundations with an American sister’s hat on and the title: NIGHT NURSES:  What They Gave Their Patients Went Beyond Medicine...

The other three lads kept their eyes on the cover as they made requests from Harvey to read it next...

***

Richard was lucky; he got the first crack at it, and tried to read the book after lights out in what little illumination there was from the windows.  His young inexperienced hormones were racing as he went from page to saucy page, diluting the effects of the nightly medicine Doctor Pulmer prescribed.

As he got to a very delicious scene about the nurses in the shower, Richard noticed the night nurse coming down the ward.  He hid the book, not wanting it confiscated, and tried to sit up.  She kept to her routine, going to the edge of the bed, looking at the patient, then going on.  Richard tried to think of what he could ask her when she got to his bed, his mind racing at what could follow from there...

Three beds before she got to him, she came around the side of the bed, and placed her hand over the chest of the boy there.  Richard couldn’t tell whose bed it was she had decided to linger over, and when she’d been there a few seconds she went to the main aisle of the ward and walked out.

Disappointed with the change of routine, Richard didn’t go back to reading.

***

When Richard opened his eyes early that morning, he caught sight of the gurney wheeling down the aisle.  He raised his head to see the bed the night nurse had stopped at was being stripped by two orderlies.

Nurse saw Richard rising and came over to him.  “None of that, Master Starkey,”  she said in a matter-of-fact tone.  “None of your concern, here.”

“Wha- what happened?  Isn’t that Rodger’s bed?  Is he alright?”

Nurse looked down and gave a sigh.  “Last night, Rodger took a turn for the worse.  That’s all I can say for now.”

Richard felt a lump in his throat.  “Cripie, you don’t mean he’s gone, do you?”

Nurse’s face turned sour and she tried to look busy at the now empty bed.

***

“He kept to ‘imself, he did,”  said Richard to Harvey and Lewis later in the common room.  Two tables over, a checkers game between two girls was degenerating in cross accusations of cheating.  “I didn’t really know him well.”

“Just off and went.”  Lewis shook his head.  “Poor sod.”

“Never know, do you?”  said Harvey.  “Makes you appreciate all the better what’s going on about you when you wake up in the morning.”

The checkers game took a turn for the worse when one of the girls wound back her hand and slapped the other smartly.  Richard saw flecks of blood fly through the air from the other girl’s face as her head snapped to the side.

“Maybe the night nurse was the last person to see him alive,”  said Richard.

“If she’s all this you say she is,”  said Harvey,  “she’d be a good last thing to see before the end, eh?”

Nurse took the girl with the wicked backhand and pinned her arms behind her while an orderly escorted the victim to the dispensary.

“I was up last night,”  said Lewis,  “and I didn’t see no night nurse.”

“The whole night you were up?”  asked Richard.

“Aye, I watched you reading the dirty book, waiting me turn, then I saw you put it away.  I was going to ask you for it, but you looked like you were waiting for something.”

Where the fight had been, two more children had taken over the checkers set, neither child hale enough to muster up the same violence that had been done before.

“And you didn’t see the nurse at all?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“But she...”  Richard started to say.  “How could that be?”

***

That night, Richard stayed awake keeping vigil over the ward.  He did his best to stay alert, even pinching himself.

Half an hour after lights out, Nurse came in and walked over to Richard.  “Master Starkey,”  she said in a low voice,  “when lights go out in this ward, you must get some sleep.”

“But Nurse,”  said Richard,  “I just-“

“None of that,”  she positioned him to lie down.  “Doctor says you must have rest.”

“But I wanted to see the night nurse about something, bec-“

“I am the nurse on duty this night, and unless it’s important I am going to have to insist that you get some sleep now.”

Having Nurse reclaim the night shift took the fight out of Richard, and he went to sleep.

***

His dreams troubled him. 

He imagined he was running from the night nurse, the one only he’d been able to see.

Every time he thought he’d lost her, Richard heard screams around him, screams like hundreds of women. 

Richard tried to make out what they were screaming, but none of it seemed real.

The screams scared him, so loud, so intense.

But not a lot of pain, not the kind of screams you should hear from people who were losing their lives, just seconds away from their hearts being slammed silent and their lungs pushed flat, never to breathe again.

The yells seemed more in want of something other than just help.

They seemed hungry, like an animal trying to pounce on a meal, ready to devour.

Richard wondered if this is what the night nurse sounded like when she spoke…

He couldn’t stand still long enough to get a sense of it, because in the back of his mind he knew, he just knew, that if he stood still she’d catch up to him.

He kept running, and tried to keep up with the other three.

He thought they might have been Lewis, Harvey and Martin, but Richard couldn’t tell in all the running.

He could never catch up to the other three, he was always just a few steps behind them, close enough but not quite.

And at every pace, only just a step ahead of the night nurse...

***

No one was in a good mood that morning as they walked through the green-gray halls, getting in a constitutional as they paced between the wards.  Richard awoke to hear that the girl who was slapped yesterday over checkers had passed on  in the night.

“I didn’t think she’d been hit that hard,”  said Martin.

“It may have been Nurse that did her in,”  said Lewis.

“No!”  said Martin with disbelief.

“You don’t think she’d want to be rid of us, then?”  said Lewis.

Before Richard could answer, Nurse came by with a stern look on her face.  Richard tried to give her face a good look, to see if the scowl she wore was a sign of malice towards him, but could not get a clear look into her visage.

As she passed, she did tighten her eyes on Lewis, and Richard thought he saw Lewis knocked backward a step just from her poisonous gaze.

“Foul deeds indeed,”  said Lewis as he recovered.  “I think it’s a plot.  She wants to off us.”

“That’s daft,”  said Harvey.  “Why’d she do that?”

“Maybe it’s a real nasty disease,”  said Martin.  “Something they don’t want to talk about.”

Richard didn’t say anything; his thoughts were in a jumble.

Doctor Pulmer broke from his stride down the hall the other way as Martin said that and came over to the lads while trying to smile, which for him seemed tougher than usual.  He said,  “Now none of that, you.  I heard what you were saying, and loose talk like that is sure to do a lot of harm if it becomes rumor for the mill.”

“You don’t think there’s some sort of germ flying ‘bout to hurt us?”  asked Lewis.

“Now my boy,”  said Doctor Pulmer,  “if what you lads had were truly contagious, you would all be in isolation, and I can assure you young gentlemen that this is just not the case.”

“So what is the case?”  asked Martin.

“Sadly,”  said Doctor,  “respiratory diseases can sometimes overwhelm the body and prevent it from performing perfectly, and in such cases when a young patient is already weakened by infection and trauma it becomes too much for them.  And I’m sorry to say, even with the best in medical science we do have cases that we cannot sufficiently help.”

“Maybe it was the night nurse,”  said Richard bitterly.

Doctor Pulmer looked as though he’d been slapped.  “Wha- what did you say, boy?”

“The night nurse,”  Richard repeated.  “She was over Rodger before he kicked.  Maybe she knows something.”

“That is an outrageous thing to suggest,”  said Doctor Pulmer,  “that a nurse at this institution might have had a hand in harming a patient.”

“Then ask ‘er what she was doing with him,”  said Richard.

“And which nurse is this?”

“She didn’t give me her name.  But she’s easy enough to find.  She’s young, younger than anyone else, maybe her twenties.  Dark hair to her, and gray eyes.  Can’t miss her.”

Doctor Pulmer’s body seemed to melt slightly as the visible tension that had been building in him dissipated.  “Now, Master Starkey,”  he said with his thin smile,  “are you sure you want to hold to such a notion?”

“So why won’t you ask her, then?”

“Because, Master Starkey, the person you described just does not exist.  I know all the nurses here at Heswall, and there is not a nurse on staff that meets that description.  In fact, our youngest nurse is in her mid-forties.”

“But I’ve seen her!”  Richard insisted.

“Oh?  Have any of you boys also seen this strange night nurse?”  he asked.

Harvey, Lewis and Martin all shook their heads.  Harvey gave a glance to Richard as an apology.

“Right then.  As I recall, Master Starkey, I did put something new into your pill regimen a few days ago.  I should think we need to keep track of its side effects and keep in mind that-“

“What if it’s a ghost?”  asked Harvey.

“A what?”  responded Doctor Pulmer.

“A ghost.  Maybe it’s something he’s just seeing that…”  Harvey trailed as he saw the little shakes building up again in Doctor Pulmer.

“Need I remind you, young man,”  said Doctor Pulmer, trying to stay calm,  “that this is 1954, and not the Middle Ages, and that such suppositions as those will do no one any good.  Now if you excuse me,”  he said as he rose,  “I must attend to rounds,”  and huffed off saying not entirely under his breath something crass about the National Health.

“You think it might be a ghost?”  asked Richard.

“None of us ‘ave seen her, sorry,”  said Harvey.  “I couldn’t let ‘im think you were going daft on us, though, so I tried the ghost on him.”

“None of you’ve seen her?”  Richard asked again.

“Sorry mate,”  said Lewis.  “If she was as gorgeous as that, I’d certainly remember her.”

“Maybe he’s right,”  said Martin.  “Maybe the pills are making you see things.”

“I can’t believe that.  I’ve never gotten that way off medicines before.”

“First time for everything, Ritchie,”  said Harvey, punctuated with a small but steady cough.

No one said anything in response to Harvey’s cough, but the small fit drew everyone’s eyes.

***

“But I don’t want to take me pills,”  said Richard to Doctor Pulmer and Nurse as they stood over him just before lights out, Nurse with a vise grip on his right shoulder.

“Now Master Starkey,”  said Doctor Pulmer,  “we do want to see ourselves get over our pleurisy, don’t we?”

Before he could answer, Richard felt Nurse’s thumbnail dig into his shoulder.  Only when he nodded his head up and down did she stop digging her fingers into his flesh.

“Now then,”  Doctor Pulmer said with his forced smile,  “do open up like a good lad, shall we?”

Any thoughts Richard had of trying to cover the pills with his tongue to spit them out later, or to tuck them into his cheek before faking a swallow, were banished by the glower he got from Nurse as she took the paper pill holder and popped the contents into his mouth the way a dustbin lorry would throw its trash into the Mersey.

“Right,”  said Doctor Pulmer as he took Richard’s left wrist in his hand, his thumb over the veins while he consulted with his watch.  

After what seemed far too long a time for him, Richard asked,  “So am I going to make it, then?”

“Hmmm,”  the doctor only said.

When it seemed twice as long again, Richard wanted to say something about how he needed his hand back, but Doctor Pulmer dropped it suddenly and checked Richard’s eyes.  “No dilation,”  he said to himself before he reached for Richard’s chart and made a note.  “Right, at least there’s no initial indication.”

“Shall I keep special attention to him tonight, Doctor?”  Nurse asked.

“Just listen for anything extra ordinary, elevated breathing, talking in his sleep, and such.”

“And what if I die without making a sound?”  Richard asked.

Doctor Pulmer and Nurse both looked at him as though he’d told a very off-color joke in mixed company, before they turned their backs to him and went on to another bed.

Richard’s heart beat at triple time until lights out.

***

Richard tossed and turned, unable to get any rest.  The scrutiny the doctor had placed him under made him nervous, almost as nervous as Harvey’s worsening congestion.  He could hear the gurgles from down the ward, unmistakably those of the young man whose dirty book from America Richard had long since passed on.

In the faint light of a waning moon, Richard saw her again.  The night nurse who shouldn’t have existed was making her rounds.

Terrified this time at seeing her, Richard cringed in his blankets, hoping that if he piled them up tightly, she’d not be able to touch him and do him harm.

She came again to Richard’s bed.  She smiled once more, the same as always, only this time when he saw her eyes Richard wanted to scream.

She continued on her rounds, looking at each bed as she had Richard’s.  He was glad she’d decided not to tarry over him, and he started to relax the way someone caught out in a storm watching the thunder head passing by would.  But she was still there, in his ward, and just being in the same room as him was trouble enough.

When she got to Harvey’s bed, she came around the side, her hand outstretched…

Richard felt the panic, his fight or flight instincts kicking into high gear.  He didn’t want to be near her when she claimed another person, but Harvey had been a decent enough friend to him.

He chose to fight; he leapt from the bed and with a scream went for her, damning the consequences as his shoulder rammed hard-

The ward was gone.

It seemed too big for a room but too enclosed for outdoors to Richard.  There was faint light from all around but no real source.

She stood next to him.  Her hair was down and flying away from her face, although Richard felt no breeze.  She no longer was in a nurse’s uniform; the thin material that draped over her body combined elements of a funerary vale and smoke from an immolation pyre.

She looked at Richard, but was no longer smiling.

“Who are you?”  he challenged her.  “What do you want with us?”

She simply looked at him.

“I demand an answer from you!”  he shouted.  “I want to know what makes you want to kill us!”

Her face went neutral.  I do not decide when your life ends. Richard heard from what seemed all around him, even though her lips did not move once.

“What’s that?”  he asked, not sure where the sound came from.

The end of a life is a choice made by greater forces than I,  the voice continued.  My role is simply to carry out those decisions.

“What are…  You mean, you…”  Richard stared at her.

I am only the agent to carry out the decisions made.  My role is of conveyance.

“What…  Convey, you say?  Convey where?”

To that which has been decided and deemed.

Richard tried to let that sink in.  “So why do I see you, then?  Don’t tell me it’s my time.”

Yours is a journey that will be far longer.  I am uncertain why you see me now so early.

“You mean, I’m not going to…  Now I’m confused.  Why do you smile, then, when you see me?”

While I am not the determiner, I do know of the plan.  And I do know what is ahead, what you will do before we are to finally meet.

“You make it sound like I’ve got something to look forward to.  Is it that good, that you smile so?”

I have seen you for some time.  I was present and close by from the very beginning, which gives me some sense of connection to you.

“The very…  Oh, aye, now.  Me Mum told me how Adolf tried to wipe out the city right when I was born.  So you were there with me from the get go?”

I rarely get to see someone at the very beginning, and knowing what is to come makes the experience all the richer.

“But…  Poor Harvey, he never did no one no bit of harm.  Does he have to suffer now?”

He is beyond suffering.

“And how do I know that, eh?”

She held out a hand, and Harvey stood next to her.

“Richard,”  he said.  “Cor, you too?”

“Are you all right, Harvey?”  he asked him.

“You won’t believe what I’ve seen so far.  It’s like the cinema just came to life on me in the middle of a fair, and I can be any of the actors in the story.  I’m actually right now solving a case for a bird that might be Veronica Lake, the way she looks so much like her.”

“Are you feeling, OK, then?”

“I’ve never been better, Ritchie.  I’ve never felt so alive.”

“Bad choice of words, mate.”

“Oh, aye, maybe, but that’s just how I feel.  I’ll wait for you over there,”  Harvey pointed into the void.  “It’ll be laughs aplenty,”  and Harvey faded.

It seemed like an eternity before Richard said,  “Well, ‘e seems happy.”

His fate is set, and he has come to where he deserves to be.

“And me, I’m…  I don’t know.”

As I told you-

“But it’s such a hard thing the way me lungs feel, and the way I’m always sick.  I don’t know if I… I just don’t know if…”  Richard could not even come to think it, worried how in the face of what he’d seen how those above her would take to the idea.

She finally came closer to Richard, leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.

Richard’s mind exploded in images, visions and sensations, many things wondrous and amazing, but too out of his experiences for him to fully comprehend.  He felt himself flying through them as though tied to a meteor, so many things to see, so many things to come…

***

“Are we feeling better, Master Starkey?”  asked Nurse.  Richard couldn’t tell if this was a dream or not; he’d never heard Nurse seem even a bit concerned.

“Harvey…”  Richard started to say.

“I’m terribly sorry,”  said Doctor Pulmer.  “He took a turn for the worse last night.”

Richard shot up in bed and saw the empty bed before the headache started to split his skull, and he went down again.

“As for you, young man,”  said Doctor Pulmer,  “I’m taking you off the night course of pills.  You appear to be suffering from some dementia even as they help clear your lungs, and the side effects are worse than the cure.”

“Poor Harvey…”  Richard said.

“Well, yes.  Poor you, too, the way we found you at the side of his bed calling out.  But we’ll stop having you go through that soon enough.”

“I was over there?”  Richard asked.

Nurse nodded and said,  “Right good thing we found you too, the way you were shivering on the floor, or we’d have had to take you away too.  Next time, young man, do stay in your bed when it’s lights out.”

Richard turned over on his side, trying to figure out what he’d seen.

He noticed a discarded wad of gauze on the floor by the bed after Nurse and the doctor moved on.  He tried to sort through what the night nur-  whatever she had been, had shown him, fleeting images all in a jumble.

Fleeting, but mostly happy.

He tied the little gauze into a ring around one of his fingers and tried to figure out last night better. 

As he tried to hold onto what he’d been shown, he tapped on the bed rail, at first a few random taps, before he found a rhythm.  And as he got into the rhythm, his head started to bob with it, and he faintly smiled as he nodded in time…

James Ryan has been on the verge of actually being recognized as a writer in the past; who knows, someday it may happen.... His work has appeared in such places as Dragon magazine, Lacunae, the Urbanite, the New York Times, and some of the better men's room walls across the state of New York. Until he gets the chance to follow the program for disenfranchised neurotic writers, he's doing the regular job and grad school schtick. His wife Susan and son Jamie just nod and smile when he starts to rant, which, all said, makes things that much easier.