Actually, Completely, Irrevocably Dead

Once upon a time it had been more than just a parcel of flesh but now, well, thought Alex as he drifted above the body, he supposed he had finished with it. Whether he liked it or not. There had been no last stand, no wrestling match or exciting gangland assassination, no great fanfare to bid him farewell. Just a short, stunningly painful, heart attack. And here he was, all alone in this otherwise empty hospital corridor, floating just beneath the ceiling, at a complete loss as to what was supposed to happen next. He concentrated. Wasn’t there supposed to be a bright light? He looked left and right. No, it was still a corridor and not the fabled tunnel and the only lights were the standard municipal fluorescents. He sighed. So far, being dead wasn’t half as interesting as he’d been led to believe in Sunday school, all those years ago.

And then it hit him. Hard. Alex was actually, completely, irrevocably, dead. As in, no longer alive. He felt he should cry or exhibit some emotion but…did a ghost cry? And that hit him even harder. Not only was he dead but he was now a ghost, a sort of spirit in limbo, a nothingness. No, not completely nothing, he reasoned, because he could still think. So, what else could he do? He tried to speak but no matter what he said, it only came out as a long, thin, reedy sounding, “oooohhhh.” He kept trying for a few minutes more but “oooohhhh” was his only reward. Alex felt cheated. He’d always been complimented on his fine speaking voice and now it had been reduced to “oooohhhh”. His temper flared and he reached out to punch the nearest surface, the ceiling. His hand simply passed through and, just like one effect of zero gravity, the momentum took his body with it, his astral body, that is. As his eyes took in the structure of the concrete he was passing through, he wondered if there would be anyone or anything available on the floor above to explain what was due to happen next.

It was a ward, a long room full of empty beds. Empty? Where was everyone? Alex realised that something was strictly out of kilter here. Hospitals were always crowded, overcrowded. Patients, teary-eyed visitors, bored doctors and nurses just trying to get through their shift without getting too involved; all these were part and parcel of the jigsaw and none of the parts were there. Then something moved, some tiny hair curling at the corner of his vision. Except, all of Alex’s hair was still on the body in the corridor one floor beneath him. He blinked and there was movement again. He blinked rapidly and the movements blurred into solid forms. There were people, lots of people! He stopped and looked and the room was once again empty. He started blinking. Just like a film, the faster he blinked the more solid the picture, the people. Time flows differently if you are doing something or just watching it. Time dilation: he had learned that at college. Alex wondered if dying was actually just moving from one time zone to another, like England to India or China to Bolivia. Of course you couldn’t take your luggage with you, your body, that is. That begged the next question: where in time or space or any form of existence, was he? And once again, why was he alone? But he wasn’t.

On the far side of the ward, a set of sheets tangled, untangled, changed shape. Hurriedly, Alex blinked at the bed to focus, trying to understand what was happening but the faster he blinked the more the vision became blurred. It was all wrong! He ceased blinking, relaxed and the picture unravelled into a middle-aged woman climbing out of the bed. A naked middle-aged woman. She gazed around slowly, seemingly perplexed and then, looking straight at Alex which should not have been possible, she pointed at his groin, opened her mouth and gave a piercing “oooohhhh”. The ghost looked down, following her pointing finger. He was also naked. For a moment he panicked, pointed back at the woman’s nether regions and matched her ghostly howl. She stopped. He stopped. They attempted to cover themselves as best they could for modesty’s sake but realised it was hopeless as their bodies were diaphanous. Alex shrugged. The woman climbed back into bed and then stood up with the sheet draped round her. That should not have been possible either but all the tales that Alex had heard or read involving ghosts had them wearing sheets. Fine! Alex approved but he now had a choice. Get into bed with another patient and steal her sheet or… There was a laundry trolley at the end of the room with a pile of bedclothes on it. He carefully drifted the length of the ward, still getting used to this new method of mobility. At the trolley, it was a simple affair to wriggle under one of the sheets and then stand up. Look, no hands! His mother would have been so proud. The woman smiled. Alex couldn’t see her face the way he would have been able to if they had both been alive and not hidden under sheets, but in some strange new way he could. She had a beautiful smile. He smiled back. He was no longer alone. His smile widened revealing more teeth. Ethereal molars. The middle-aged woman curtsied as only a ghost wearing a sheet could. Very elegantly.

Who knows how much panic ensued as two sheet shaped monstrosities drifted gently down the length of the ward and disappeared through a wall? Certainly not the newly dead couple. Even if they had been interested, which they weren’t, being too busy adjusting to their new lives, existences, the couple would not have been able to blink fast enough.

“I wonder what her name is, er, was,” thought Alex when the notion randomly flitted across his mind.

“Eleanor,” came a floating whisper, “my mother was a great fan of the Beatles.”

Alex said, did you say that? But all that filled the air was, “oooohhhh!”

“Don’t speak, just think what you want to say. Got it?”

“My,” thought Alex, “you have adapted quickly.”

“Not really, this is the third time in a week that I have passed through the veil. The doctors keep dragging me back even though I don’t want them to. I keep telling them but will they listen? O no!”

“I know just what you mean,” chipped in Alex. “I kept telling them I had pains in my chest. Would they listen? As you say, no! It’s all in your head, they kept repeating. So I guess the heart attack was the second heart of mine, the one in my head! Duh! Self indulgent know-alls! Idiots, the lot of them.”

“I don’t know about all of them. Doctor Ravi had beautiful eyes…”

Alex warbled, “oooohhhh!”

They found each other’s company quite engaging. At one point, as they drifted through an anteroom before entering the main operating theatre, Alex thought,

“You know, you are a really nice person, Eleanor, I sort of wish we had met when, er, before, er…”

“When we were still alive? Yes, it would have been…interesting.”

She gave a ghostly sigh and said,

“I guess we’ll just have to make the most of the time we have now.”

“Why? Do you think this state will end? That we’ll move on again, to some other place or time? Is there another phase of existence?”

Ghosts should not be able to shrug but Eleanor could and did and, in so doing, both deflected the question and ended that particular conversation.

“This being the sort of place it is, catering for the sort of clients it does, you’d think there would be more people who have passed on, wandering about like us,” thought Eleanor.

Alex let this thought percolate for a while and then answered,

“Perhaps the staff here have a good record when it comes to saving lives. Or maybe we’re just missing something, some obvious clue.”

One part of the answer came when they passed through the wall of the morgue. There was a body on the main slab, still covered with its pre-autopsy sheet. This was serving as a card table for the surrounding group of ghosts, some naked, some in sheets. All remarkably cheerful despite the fact that all the markings on their ghostly cards were plainly visible. Alex was strangely upset. Indicating the body, he thought,

“Have you no respect for the dead?”

The body, or at least the ghost of the body, sat up.

“Do you mind! I’m on a winning streak here! Stick your nose in your own business.”

Eleanor signalled Alex to follow and they quickly left, invisible shafts of irritation scratching like fingernails down their ghostly spines.

“Newbies,” the thought went round as the card players waited, calmed, then resumed their game.

Alex cast a mixed jumble of thoughts to Eleanor that ended in an abashed ‘thank you’.

Having come across some other ghosts at last, or maybe a necessary amount of otherworld time had passed, it seemed to have unlocked the gates to the afterlife. The rooms and corridors started to become crowded with naked floaters and rippling sheets. Many had not worked out the language problem yet and so the air was often full of wailing, the confused attempting to ask for help and their neighbours recoiling from the terrible "oooohhhh’s". Alex and Eleanor tried to avoid the worst areas by sliding in and out of rooms and maintenance cupboards, always through the wall, never the door. But their luck ran out when they came up against a large, solid looking, metal door. Alex frowned, a strange thing considering his face was hidden.

“What’s the matter?” queried Eleanor.

“I…I think I recognise this,” he thought back.

“Hmmm?”

“Eleanor, I don’t want to go in there. Let’s go back.”

“Nonsense. What’s to be scared of? Think about it, Alex. What could possibly hurt you? You’re a ghost already!”

“No, no, no. You don’t understand…”

The door shuddered and squealed as it slowly opened of its own accord to reveal another cold corridor. A body lay slumped on its back as a flickering outline of an ambulance man pressed rhythmically down on its chest, pumping and counting.

“Eleanor, don’t leave…” Alex desperately tried to think but it turned into a scream as his ghostly form was sucked into a vortex and life returned to his body.

“Nooooooooooooo!”