Page 5 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

The world got swimmy for a while.

Hazel dimly heard sirens, a concerned voice asked her to open her eyes, and people lifted her onto a stretcher. All of those couldn’t have happened at the same time, but she couldn’t tell how far apart they were. “Hazel Lewis,” she rasped, answering questions. “Thursday.” Her throat hurt. Her leg hurt more.

Somebody was cutting off her pants leg, fully exposing the wound, and she yelped even though they were being gentle. “Jesus, what happened?” a high voice asked.

“Wire,” she managed, picking the nearest equivalent she could think of.

“Tetanus shots, then,” said the voice.

“Allthe shots,” a deeper voice answered. “Let’s just get this cleaned—fuck—”

A sting almost as sharp as the electrical shock flooded out from the bite, and Hazel faded away again.

When she woke up the next time, she had a tube in her arm, a huge bandage on her upper thigh, and a general floating sensation that was miles better than anything she’d felt in the last few hours.Morphine. The word drifted toward her, passed close enough to touch, and then wafted off into the distance. She’d made it to a hospital, then.

The view when she dragged her eyelids open confirmed it: bed with bars on it, white sheets, blue blanket, TV bolted to the opposite wall.

As she was getting her bearings, licking dry lips and rubbing her eyes clear, the door opened. A nurse in bright green scrubs walked in and smiled. “Back with us?”

“I think so,” Hazel said, “though I’m not sure I want to test that theory.”

The nurse laughed and came over to the bed. Up close, she saw their name tag saidAnita, She/Her/Hers. “We’ll go slow. Do you know where you are?”

“Not exactly. I know I’m in a hospital.”

Nothing in the room helped her get more specific. The walls were white, bare except for the TV, a clock, and a metal strip over Hazel’s bed that held plug outlets and a white phone. A couple of generic gray chairs occupied one corner, out of the way, and a blue curtain covered the window. When Anita drew it aside, Hazel could see treetops and a few buildings in the distance. The sun was setting behind them.

“Orange River,” Anita said.

“Oh.” It was a name on a highway sign, making Hazel remember that she was two states away from her home. “How long have I been out?”

“Four hours or so. You were very dramatic at first, but you didn’t give us a lot of trouble once we got your bleeding stopped. Do you think you can drink something?”

“God, yes.”

Anita chuckled. “Just ginger ale for now. We’ll save the margaritas.”

She left the room, giving Hazel a few minutes to stare at her blanket-covered legs, then out the window. Neither gave her much information, but both fixed her in the material world and confirmed that the last half day had been real.

A lump of bandage covered the mark on her thigh. Hazel touchedit gently, felt no pain, but hissed and snatched her hand back when she pressed a little. Painkillers couldn’t do everything.

“Your whole back’s one big bruise,” Anita said, returning with ginger ale in hand, “and you pulled a muscle in your shoulder. If we’ve done our jobs right, you won’t feel either, but be careful how you move. Here you go.”

Hazel took a long sip, feeling the cool liquid flow down her throat. It stung a little, and she put a hand to her neck.

Anita nodded sympathetically. “You wore out your vocal cords,” she said, “and you probably breathed in a bunch of dust when that house collapsed. Nothing that’ll last. Youwillhave a scar on your leg, but they can do some surgeries to make it smaller later on. If you want.”

Caring about a scar struck Hazel as so odd just then that she could only stare at Anita, then shrug. Her health insurance probably wouldn’t pay for it—she suspected she’d be out of pocket enough to eat Clarence’s fee just from the hospital stay—but that was a problem for later, and the least of those.

“My car?” she asked. Her bag, including her wallet, had been in Clarence’s room, and so was almost certainly a lost cause.

“Probably in the impound lot,” Anita said with a sympathetic grimace.

“Figures. Cell phone’s in there.” Digital gadgets and the ethereal interacted in unpredictable ways, each using its own form of liminality. Sometimes, like with Chapman’s TV, the results were strange. Usually the electronics just broke. Discovering that had cost Hazel three laptops, and she’d stopped taking any technology more advanced than a ballpoint pen along on séances.

Anita wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Hazel’s arm. “Is there anybody you want to get in touch with? We do have phones here, and we can probably find a computer you can use for email.”

The machine beeped, the cuff tightened, and Hazel thought through her options. She’d taken an extra weekend day at Rochambeau Accounting and gone to Chapman’s on Friday evening, so her bosswouldn’t miss her. Her college friend Martine had two kids under ten, her fellow occultist Summer wasn’t in any shape for last-minute travel, and her ex Brandon would drive her up the wall if he swooped in to try to manage the situation. Her family was out of the question.