The Haunted

Last night? She’d been knocked out for most of the time she’d been here, but still, it felt like days.

After the nurse left and the three of them were alone, save for the snoring man in the next bed, they were silent for a moment. Her parents looked at each other; then her mom cleared her throat, speaking in a careful, considered way that indicated she had spent time preparing her topic of conversation. “Honey? I know you don’t want to be here. I know this is hard for you, and I don’t want to make it any harder, but your dad and I have a few questions we’d like to ask you.”

Megan knew what was coming next.

“This was all an accident, I know. And I’m sorry I startled you and made you slice your leg open. I should have knocked first. But, sweetie, why were you cutting yourself in the first place?”

She wished she had an answer, but she didn’t. “I don’t know,” she admitted, and started to cry.

Her mom came over to the bed. She couldn’t give Megan a hug—there were too many tubes and monitors in the way—but she did the best she could and curled an arm around Megan’s shoulder on the pillow. “It’s all right,” she said, and used a finger to wipe away tears. “We’ll talk about it some other time, when you’re feeling better.”

Megan didn’t want to talk about it at all. Postponing the conversation would give her time to come up with better answers, but she doubted whether she would ever be able to come up with a real reason. The house was reaching out, she thought again, and that was probably as close as she would ever come to the truth.

She had just awakened, but she was feeling tired already—it was most likely the medicine—and she asked her parents whether it would be okay if she took a short nap.

“Of course,” her dad said.

Her mom gave her shoulder a squeeze and then went back to her chair. “Go ahead, honey.”

When she awoke, it was dinnertime. A nurse was using a button on the remote-control panel at her bedside to raise her into a sitting position so she could eat the wretched-looking meal placed on a tray that was attached to her bed by a metal arm. Both of her parents were still in the same seats, although her dad was watching CNN on the TV mounted to the wall and wasn’t aware that she’d woken up until her mom nudged him with an elbow.

The nurse left, and they all had a good laugh about the awful food as Megan attempted to eat it. No mention was made of her cutting herself, and everything that was happening outside this hospital room seemed distant and unconnected. The snoring man had awakened and was eating his dinner. Loudly. Her dad saw her glancing over there, distracted, and he stood up from his chair to pull the curtain between the beds, blocking her view. Megan smiled at him. “Thanks.”

There was nothing to do and there wasn’t much to say, so after eating as much as she could, Megan used the remote-control panel attached to the armrest of her bed to flip through the channels and see what kind of cable the hospital had. It wasn’t very good. There were the networks, several news channels, several sports channels and a bunch of other stations she wasn’t much interested in. She finally gave up and switched it back to CNN. “It’s my TV and I was going to make you watch one of my shows,” she told her dad, “but there’s nothing on. So it’s all yours.”

It was boring just lying there in bed, and after a while Megan felt guilty for making her parents be bored, too, so she told them they should go home. They both looked at each other uncertainly. “I’m tired anyway,” she lied. “I want to go to bed. You can come back in the morning.”

“I’m spending the night,” her mom said.

“In that chair? Go home. I’ll be fine. Check on James and make sure he’s staying out of trouble.” She’d meant it as a joke, but the second after she said it, a host of unwanted images sprang up in her brain: James cutting himself in the same way she had … James returning to their house to dig a hole in their backyard … James wearing a backward yellow baseball cap and holding a knife.

Her parents, too, looked worried.

She decided to be honest. “I’ll be safe here,” she said softly. “Look after James. And Grandma.”

Her mom nodded grimly. “Julian,” she said. “Go.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll sleep here.”

“Mom …”

“Megan’s right,” her dad said.

“It’s just a cut—” Megan began.

“It’s not just a cut. That’s why you’re here. They had to replace over a liter of your blood. And they’re monitoring you to make sure you don’t develop any blood clots.” She gestured around. “Although I don’t see a whole lot of monitoring going on. I don’t know whether they’re understaffed or what, but these nurses and doctors don’t come by anywhere near as often as they should, and I need to be here in case something happens.”

“Actually, ma’am, we check your daughter on a very specific schedule, and the likelihood of her developing blood clots while being administered the medication that’s in her IV drip is highly unlikely.”