Under the Light - By Laura Whitcomb Page 0,21

wouldn’t answer. She muttered to herself and strangled the steering wheel with twisting fists. She drove past a stop sign without slowing down and did not seem even to hear the honking horns. This danger she was exposing her child to made me wish I could take over Cathy’s body the way I had Jenny’s.

I had been an imperfect protector for my own daughter, but I knew I could be a better mother to Jenny than Cathy was proving to be. It struck me then that even if I hadn’t been able to save myself, I could have acted as a kind of guardian angel to my daughter as she grew up if I’d been clever enough to find my way into heaven sooner. Instead, I was foolish and frightened and got stuck. I’d been taught by my father how to milk a cow and at my mother’s side how to make shortbread. But no one had taught me how to die.

At the emergency room, we were escorted into a cubicle, where Jenny sat staring at her hands. I stood behind her chair. The small space flickered with fairylike lights from the fluorescent overheads and reflected off Cathy’s diamond wedding ring as she furiously filled out a form on a clipboard.

I wanted to point out how pretty the twinkling lights were, but Jenny couldn’t hear me, of course, and she wasn’t a baby. She was a grown girl.

The nurse asked many questions and Cathy answered them, never making eye contact with her daughter. Jenny could probably have stood up and walked away and her mother would not have noticed. I took a seat in the empty plastic chair to Jenny’s right.

“The nurse is asking you a question.” Cathy tapped on Jenny’s knee as if the girl had been napping in church.

“So, you threw up the sleeping pills,” asked the nurse. “Is that right?”

“That’s right,” she said.

“But she’s having memory problems,” Cathy insisted.

The nurse asked Jenny about alcohol, drugs, head injuries. She took Jenny’s pulse, blood pressure, temperature. All the while I thought of the things I would want to hear if I were Jenny: Don’t worry about a thing—we’ll take care of you.

Finally we were taken into the emergency room examination area. The doctor was reading his clipboard when he pulled open the curtain. He wheeled a little stool up to the narrow bed where Jenny sat on a white paper sheet. He sat down, smiled, a neutral expression.

“You’re having trouble with your memory.” He clicked his pen. “What did you have for breakfast?”

“I don’t remember,” she said.

“Do you know today’s date?” he asked.

“No.” Jenny looked embarrassed. “Is it fall? It doesn’t feel like fall to me.”

“That so?” The doctor scribbled a note. “Why?”

Jenny flexed her hands, felt her face as if she was still getting used to being back inside her own flesh. “Not sure,” she said.

“What were you doing before you came here?” he asked.

“Taking a bath,” said Jenny.

“And before that?” The doctor, whose tag read DR. A. LAWRENCE, waited, his eyebrows raised.

“I wish I knew,” Jenny admitted.

“What’s the last thing you remember before the bath?”

Jenny swallowed uncomfortably. She slipped her hands under her thighs and stared at her knees for a moment. “I remember being in the Prayer Corner.”

“That wasn’t this morning,” Cathy said. “We didn’t have Bible study today.”

“How long ago was that, the morning you’re thinking of?” the doctor asked Jenny. “Any idea?”

She sighed. I sensed her mind spinning with images, though I could not see the story of pictures there. “I remember going on a trip . . .” Jenny’s voice trailed away.

“Speak up, Jennifer,” Cathy ordered.

I lay my hand on Jenny’s arm and the familiar tingle of spirit touching the living licked through me, cold and warm at the same time.

I did not sense in Jenny any recognition that I had tried to comfort her by my touch. She was still shaking and pale. But I was sure she would learn to recognize my help.

Claims made by the Quick as to the powers of ghosts are often exaggerated. It was difficult for me to move any object in the world of the living. Emotions are what can be heard or at least sensed by the living, rarely one’s voice—sometimes the touch of my hand, but more often it was my desire to reach out.

“I think I went to the country,” said Jenny. “There was a field—”

“No.” Cathy shook her head. “We haven’t taken a trip since last summer, and it was to Sacramento.”

If