Spirits of Spring (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 4) (47 page)

possibility that life would never be the same again.

He looked terrible—pale, fragile, and nothing like the
strong Norse god I’d met almost a year ago. Rachel and I seated
ourselves one on either side of him and took his hands in our
own.

“Hey, little brother,” Rachel said, trying to sound like
her usual cheerful self. “You’re out of surgery now—time to
wake up.” She sniffed back the tears as she sat there staring at
him and trying to force a smile.

The
monitors
continued to beep rhythmically;
the
ventilator kept up the steady whoosh of air through its hoses.
Zach remained still.
No movement, no sign of recognition.
His
eyelids sat still, no flutter to indicate that he was inside there at
all.
His body temperature showed normal on the monitor but
he felt ice cold to me. He felt like death.

Rachel continued to try to make small talk with him as
though he may magically answer her at any moment.
I sat
there silent.
I knew what was wrong—I knew that his soul
wasn’t exactly where it needed to be. If I told Rachel my theory,
she
would panic.
I needed a moment
alone with
him
to
convince him to come back to us. Once he understood where
he was, he would rush back into his body and wake up. I
knew
he would.

After about ten minutes, I asked Rachel if I could have a
moment alone with him. She was hesitant to leave him at first,
but consented when I swore that I would only take a minute. I
asked her to close the door on her way out and she did so
without asking any questions.

Once he and I were alone, I felt a tremendous sense of
relief. Zach would be awake any second now. Dad would be
able to call that specialist in Philadelphia and tell him that he
was no longer needed. I carefully eased onto the bed beside
him, held him close, and whispered into his ear.

“I know where you are, Zach. I’ve been there, too. But
it’s time to come back now. You can’t stay there forever. This
isn’t your time to go. If it was, you wouldn’t have made it this
far. Please listen to me. Please come back now.”

I expected instantaneous results. I expected to feel his
hand squeeze mine.
I expected to hear him quietly say my
name, to whisper that he loved me.
Instead, the Holocaust
continued to whirr around me. Instead, there was another hard
shake on the snow globe.
Zach continued to lie there
unresponsive and oblivious to my presence.

One more time, I begged him to return. I reminded him
that his future wasn’t there—it was here with me.
Nothing. I
couldn’t understand it. Why wouldn’t he wake up? Was he
further away than I thought he was?

“Zach,” I said much louder this time, “you need to wake
up now.”

Which each failed attempt, I repeated that phrase
louder and more urgently until I must have sounded like the
lady in the wheelchair. The door swung open, Dad rushed in,
and forcibly removed me from the bed.

“Ruby!” he said sternly, “you need to leave right now.
Screaming at him isn’t going to solve the problem! You need to
go home and collect yourself. Shelly’s still downstairs waiting
for you.”

“Home?” I shouted defiantly, “You don’t really expect
me to go home
now
do you? He’s going to wake up at any
second and I intend on being right here at his side when he
does.”

“No, he isn’t, Ruby. Didn’t you listen to a single word I
said earlier? You’re going home and that’s an order. Don’t
make me call security and have them drag you out of here.
Zach needs rest and minimal disturbances more than anything
else. If you love him, you’ll leave now without causing any
more of a scene than you already have.
Go home, collect your
thoughts, and try to get some sleep.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My own father
was kicking me out of the hospital while my boyfriend lay dying
from a bullet he took to save me. WTF? Why couldn’t he see
that what Zach really needed wasn’t a neurosurgeon—it was
me. He was going to wake up for
me
—wake up
because
of me.
I couldn’t leave now. But I had no other choice.

Dad escorted me to the elevator and I punched the
ground floor button with such force that my knuckle began to
bleed. When the doors opened, I stepped inside and slumped
against the sleek metal wall without acknowledging
his
promise to call me if there was any change in Zach’s condition.
A phone call wasn’t what I wanted—what I
wanted
was to be
there when it happened.

Shelly tried to talk to me on the ride home but I refused.
She agreed with Dad that home was the best place for me to be
so as far as I was concerned, there was nothing I wanted to say
to her. As usual, she kept talking anyway as though I were an
active participant in her conversation. As she parked the car,
she said that she would make me some hot chocolate to soothe
me while I collected my thoughts. I blew a gasket.

“Why does everyone keep saying that I need to collect
my thoughts? Thoughts aren’t going to help Zach at all, are
they? No, they aren’t.”

“Ruby, the only thing you can do to help Zach right now
is to stay calm and pull yourself together. I know you must feel
very helpless but you’re going to have to find a way to deal with
your feelings besides getting angry. Anger isn’t going to help
Zach, either—is it?”

Conversation I never wanted to have in the first place
now officially over. I stormed into the house and straight up to
the attic. I felt so alone. No one really understood what was
going on in my head—not even me. Zach wasn’t responding
and I was starting to doubt my theory as to why. And Clay was
gone, too.
What happened to
him?
Why did he
have to
abandon me now, too?

“Clay,” I said aloud without expecting a response, “You
have the worst timing of any ghost I’ve ever known.”

 

“I don’t know. I thought my timing was damn near
perfect.”

 

“Clay! Where have you been? I thought you were gone
forever!” The attic no longer felt as empty as I did inside.

“You can’t get rid of me that easy, Hot Pants! I’ve been
back since they brought Jeremy into the hospital.
I was only
trying to give you a little privacy. And to see if you even noticed
that I was gone.”

“You shitass!” I exclaimed and threw a pillow at him—
well,
through
him. “I noticed it instantly! I thought you finally
moved on without me. Like Zach’s trying to do.”

“Ruby, you need to get that thought out of your head.
You don’t know what he’s going through. Never assume.”

“But I’m not really assuming here, Clay. I’ve been
where he is.
I know
where
he is. And I know why he isn’t
coming back.” I barely got those last few words out before
unleashing a wail and enough tears to fill Silver Lake.

“Ruby, don’t cry. You don’t know for certain. Death
isn’t the same for everyone. I’d be willing to bet that near death
isn’t, either.”

He allowed me to cry without any more interruptions
until I couldn’t squeeze another single drop out. When I was
finished drying my eyes, he spoke once more. “I remembered
everything that happened the night I died. Do you want to hear
about it now or some other time?”

“Now. I need to take my mind off of Zach until I’m
allowed back in
to see
him
tomorrow—once
I
collect
my
thoughts
.” I accompanied that statement with an eye roll so
potent that I was sure that even if he couldn’t see it, that my
dad
had
to have felt it.

As I leaned back on the futon to listen to Clay’s story, I
could already feel sleep preparing to overtake me. "Hold that
thought a second,” I said as I bounded to the mini fridge for a
can of carbonated caffeine. If Zach woke up—
when
Zach woke
up—in the middle of the night, I didn’t want to risk sleeping
through the call.

“Okay,” I said as I sat down and took my first sip. “I’m
ready now. I’m anxious to hear why your best friend killed
you.”

Clay launched excitedly into his account of everything
that happened the night he died and of how remembering
somehow broke the bond between him and me.
While most of
my big questions were answered, there were still a few loose
ends lingering. My mind was too preoccupied with thoughts of
Zach to put much emphasis on getting the answers tonight.
One question, however, was too massive for me to ignore.

“If you remembered everything, why are you still here,
Clay? Why haven’t you moved on?”

 

“It’s because I need to see Sophie and the baby. I died
for them, Ruby. They’re the reason I’m still here.”

Of course that opened up a myriad of questions in my
head that had nothing to do with Clay. What would happen if
Zach died?
Would he stay earthbound to be with me?
Or
would he move on without looking back?
What if he turned
into something terrible like Allison did? If I had to face Zach in
the form of a wraith, I wouldn’t have the strength to fight him.
If dying for me gave him that much anger toward me, I wouldn’t
want to continue living anyway.

“Well, I can see that your mind is light years away from
me and my problems,” Clay said as he stood up. “I’ll check up
on you later.”

“Okay,” I said, too engrossed in my own thoughts to
comprehend what he’d said to me. Until I was alone again, that
is. Being alone, I was quickly realizing, was the worst thing for
me.

Once I was by myself, my thoughts began to scatter
worse than ever. Why wouldn’t Zach wake up? I wanted to
barge into his hospital room and shake him until he opened his
eyes and looked at me. What else could I possibly do? Despite
what Dad said, there wasn’t anything wrong with him—he was
simply choosing to lie there unresponsive. Why would he do
this to me after everything we’d been through together? It was
definitely my fault that he got shot—there wasn’t any other
way to look at it. Even if he hated me for what I was putting
him through, I would rather he just wake up and tell me that. I
wanted to scream at him and at the heavens themselves. But
most of all, I wanted to scream at myself. I was the cause of
this. He wouldn’t be in that hospital bed if it weren’t for me.

I couldn’t blame him for hating me. I would hate me,
too. As bad as it would hurt, I wanted to hear him shout “I hate
you, Ruby!” at the top of his lungs. Shouting would mean that
on some level he still cared. Silence meant indifference. Was
this
my
punishment
for
causing
his
pain?
His
deliberate
absence hurt me as bad as that bullet hurt him—maybe even
worse. At least he was being given medication to dull it. There
wasn’t a magic pill that could erase guilt and heartbreak. Did
he want me to go away, disappear from his life forever? If I
walked away and stayed away maybe he would eventually
wake up and carry on without me.

At that moment, I resolved to keep my distance.
He
didn’t want to see me anyway. If he did, he would have woken
up when I asked him to. I gave up trying to stay awake—there
wasn’t any point in it. Zach was perfectly fine and only doing
this to punish me.
All he needed was enough time to work
through his anger. Yes, anger was all it was. He would be fine
by morning. I let the exhaustion carry me to sleep, knowing in
my heart that things would be different when I woke up.

My heart lied to me.
34. Dork Side of the Moon
“Tell me about Ruby, Squirt.”

A simple question that had no simple answer. Where
could I possibly begin? She was so complicated. I understood
her, yet I didn’t.
I trusted her, yet I was afraid to share the
darkest parts of me with her. I wanted to be with her, yet the
universe seemed determined to keep us apart.
I loved her,
yet….

No, there was no
yet
about it—I loved her without
question. But love wasn’t supposed to be this hard,
was
it? We
weren’t a normal teenage couple—far from it.
Ruby always
blamed that on her problems but it wasn’t just her. As more
time went on, I was starting to realize that I was just as much of
a hot mess as she was.

I told Grandpa about how Ruby and I met—about how I
had no intentions of falling in love with her or anyone else. It
just kind of happened. And once it did, there was no stopping
it. I told him about who she was and the strange gift she was
now burdened with. I told him about the good times but also
about the terribly dark ones, too.

“So if you love her, why are you so afraid of her?”

“Afraid? I never said that I was afraid of her. I’ll admit
it was pretty intense at first but I’ve actually gotten used to the
whole ghost thing.”

“That wasn’t what I meant, Squirt. Why are you so
afraid to tell her everything you’re feeling inside?”

“Because I’m afraid of what will happen when she sees
the real me—the incredibly broken parts that no one else
knows are there. It wasn’t hard for me to reveal those first few
layers but the deeper I dig into myself, the more I’m afraid of
how she will react. But that isn’t all that’s bothering me,
Grandpa.” I felt my leg begin to bounce up and down like it
always did when I was nervous. “It bothers me that there will
always
be
a
part
of
her
that
I
will
never
completely
understand—a part of her that will always tie her to the past in
some way. She’s like the moon—no matter how hard I look,
there will always be a part of her that’s hidden from me.”