of the next man the narrator puts in front of you.”
“You told me that too!”
“Did I?” said Gillian. “That was impolite of me.”
“I always thought so,” said Frances.
“I could have been kinder,” said Gillian. “I may have been on the spectrum.”
“Don’t think you’re getting any more character development now you’re dead,” said Frances. “You’re done. Let’s focus on my character development.”
“You’re easy: you’re the princess,” said Gillian. “The passive princess waiting for yet another prince.”
“I could kill the emu,” said Frances.
“Well, we’ll see, won’t we, Frances? We’ll see if you can kill the emu.”
“Maybe.” Frances watched the emu, alive again, but still incapable of flight, run across the star-studded sky. “I really miss you, Gillian.”
“Thanks,” said Gillian. “I would say I missed you too, but that would not strictly be true as I’m actually in a constant state of bliss.”
“I’m not surprised. It’s so beautiful,” said Frances. “It’s kind of like the northern lights, isn’t it?”
“It’s always there,” said Gillian.
“What is? The northern lights? They are not always there. Ellen paid a fortune and didn’t see a thing.”
“This, Frances. This beauty. Just on the other side. You just have to be quiet. Stay still. Stop talking. Stop wanting. Just be. You’ll hear it, or feel it. Close your eyes and you’ll see it.”
“Interesting,” said Frances. “Did I tell you about my review?”
“Frances, forget the review!”
Gosh. Gillian sounded quite cranky for someone who didn’t have anything to do except lie back and enjoy the exquisite beauty of the afterlife.
34
Yao
“Where are you now, Frances?” asked Yao.
He sat on the floor next to her stretcher, and removed her headphones so she could hear him.
“I’m in a story, Yao,” said Frances. He couldn’t see her eyes because of the mask but her face was animated. “I’m writing the story and I’m in the story. It’s quite a nice story. I’ve got a kind of magic-realism vibe going, which is new for me. I like it! Nothing needs to make sense.”
“Okay,” said Yao. “Who else is in the story with you?”
“My friend Gillian. She died. In her sleep, when she was forty-nine. It’s called Sudden Adult Death Syndrome. I thought it was just for babies. I didn’t even know it was possible.”
“Does Gillian have anything to say to you?”
“Not really. I told her about the review.”
“Frances, forget the review!”
It wasn’t professional but Yao couldn’t hide his frustration. Frances kept talking on and on about the review. Shouldn’t authors be used to bad reviews? Wasn’t it just an occupational hazard?
Try being a paramedic. See how you go when a psycho husband holds a knife to your throat while you’re trying to save his wife’s life, which you can’t save, because she’s already dead. Try that, Frances.
Frances pushed up her mask and looked at Yao. Her hair stuck up comically as if she’d just got out of bed.
“I’ll have the seafood linguine. Thank you so much.” She snapped an imaginary menu shut, pulled her mask back over her eyes, and began to hum “Amazing Grace.”
Yao checked her pulse and thought of a long-ago night after a university party when he’d looked after a drunk girl in someone’s bedroom. Yao had listened to her incoherent, slurred rambling for hours and made sure she didn’t choke on her vomit, before he finally fell asleep and woke up at dawn to her face inches away from his, and her sick-sweet breath in his nostrils. “Get out,” she said.
“I never touched you,” Yao told her. “Nothing happened.”
“Get the fuck out,” she said.
He felt like he had taken advantage of her, raped an unconscious girl. It didn’t matter that he would never do such a thing, that he wanted to make a career out of healing; at that moment he was the representative for his gender and he had to cop it on the chin for all their sins.
Guiding Frances on her psychedelic therapeutic journey was nothing like looking after a drunk girl. And yet … it kind of felt like looking after a drunk girl.
“I haven’t had sex in so long,” said Frances. White spittle gathered at the corner of her mouth.
Yao felt a little ill. “That’s too bad,” he said.
He looked over at Masha, who sat with Ben and Jessica, their three shadows enormous on the wall. Masha nodded as the couple spoke. It seemed like their therapy was going well. Delilah was talking to Lars, who had sat up from his stretcher and was chatting calmly with her, as if they were both guests at a party.
All his patients