Page 5 of Down and Dirty

“Faith.” Jimbo’s voice turned serious. “Be glad the police chief believes in you because if he didn’t, the only place you’d be going is to the county jail. You might want to keep this information to yourself.”

I slowly nodded. The entire town already thought I was crazy, but the last thing I needed was them thinking I was also a killer.

The ride to the hospital took only ten minutes, but that was more than enough time to give Patricia Seymour, the paramedic lady, a reading. The ghosts and spirits had a ton to tell her, words of encouragement, and they’d been opinionated enough to tell her that the new boyfriend was no good for her.

When they pulled me out of the ambulance, a shiver skirted my spine. My muscles tensed and my chest tightened as my stomach roiled.

I swallowed hard at the ER’s doors. Spirits of the dead were everywhere, and I wasn’t talking little old grannies with canes.

The first one we passed was a gunshot victim. The code blue rang out through the building just as the ghost traversed the ER doors, walking out in a daze. Even more were stalking in the halls.

Blocking myself had never been an issue before and was never a real problem until my first trip to a hospital at the age of ten when I’d broken my ankle. Now I avoided them like the plague, just like my grandmother’s retirement home. Only there was no getting out of this visit.

“This isn’t going to be fun,” Veronica announced.

“Yes, it is.” The young ghost Jared’s eyes lit up as he sailed through the door like a quarterback’s football pass.

“Could you go make sure he doesn’t pull anyone’s life support,” I whispered to Veronica.

Veronica sailed off like a mother chasing a toddler through a toy store as I was wheeled into one of the rooms. Since Jared figured out how to manipulate energy, he was an unseen terror, and this was the last place either of us needed to be.

Patricia placed me in one of the ER’s bays as a doctor walked in. His smile was warm as he glanced between us. “Working a double, Patricia?”

“I love my job. Thanks again for putting in a good word for me,” she answered with a smile.

“So what have we got?”

Patricia rattled off my vital statistics before handing him a chart she’d started, and then she left.

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