The Promotion Part II

James sits in his chair motionless, blankly staring out of the window behind Dr. Currie.  A cold silence falls over the room.  Sentences form and disintegrate in his mind as he tries to respond to what he just heard.  He feels a miserable weight of discomfort.  He cannot bear to be in his chair and yet cannot bring himself to get out of it.  He looks at Dr. Currie whom through the duration of his silence has been watching him patiently and raises his eyebrows expectantly.

“Yes?” She responds.

“Say something!” James hysterically implores her.

“What would you like me to say?”

“That this is some sort of outside of the box therapy technique.  That my office is punking me right now and there’s a hidden camera in here somewhere.  That you’re some kind of sadist, and you make up crazy stuff like this to scare impressionable patients.”

“James, you know none of those things are true.”

“I don’t know that you’re not a sadist! I don’t even know who you really are!”

“Granted, but you and I both know that the scenarios you just mentioned are your mind’s attempts to substitute a more tolerable situation for the real one you are in.”

“Are you sure you’re not a shrink? Because you really sound like one.”

“James.” Dr. Currie leans over the table and looks earnestly into James’ eyes. “I know this is extremely difficult for you.  But denial is not helping you right now.  I am going to have to press you to come to grips with the reality of your situation.  You will not be able to make any kind of progress until you do.”

“Why do you even care about my progress?”  James mutters to Dr. Currie with dejection.

“It’s my job.”

“Your job?  Who do you work for?”

“Upper Management.”  Her large blue eyes house a conspicuous shimmer as she answers.  Anxiety grows inside of James as he ponders what her answer could mean.

“Earlier when...”  The sinking sensation James feels in his core is still weighing on his words to the point that they barely escape his mouth.  He gathers himself and attempts his question again. “Earlier when you asked me where I thought I was, I said that I was physically in your office but mentally in my cubicle.  You said I was ‘half right.’  Wh…What did you mean by that?”

“You were right about being mentally in your cubicle.”
“Where am I right now?”

“That’s a little difficult to explain.  All that you are experiencing right now is a combination of your mental input and our efforts to communicate with you.”  James thinks hard about what he has just heard. 

“So all this.”  He gestures his hands in circles around himself.  “It’s a dream?  It’s not real?”  In synchrony with the hopeful upward pitch of his voice the sun behind Dr. Currie grows intensely brighter.  The light lands on him in the chair and he feels that exultant rising feeling in his chest that precedes the moment of waking from a nightmare. Dr. Currie leans through the wall of light that surrounds her and slams her hands on her desk.

“No James! No!  You need to face this!  If you must call this a dream then it is the realest dream you have ever experienced.  You can’t wish it away.  It’s not sunny outside; it’s pouring rain!”  The warmth growing in James’ core gets snuffed out by Dr. Currie’s retort.  “Say it!”

“Say what?”

“Say that it’s pouring rain.”

“It’s pouring rain.”  As he uttered the words grey storm clouds swallowed up the sun that was once beaming through the window and their shadow fills the room in the light.  Thunder rumbles the walls of the office and streams of water cascade down the window. 

“You are not physically in this office. Where is your body, James?”  James’ shivering ghost tries to move its disembodied lips but he is too gripped by terror to move them.  “Your body is on 42nd and Northridge.  Why is it on 42nd and Northridge?” 

“B...be...because...because.” He closes his eyes and settles his mind on the truth.  “Because I’m dead.”  With his declaration the ground outside the window begins to recede as if the entire building is rising into the clouds. The view of the window is now filled only with dark storm clouds spewing lighting and rain.  The weight of discomfort holding James in the chair lifts and he slides off of his seat onto the ground into a crumpled pile of despair.  He looks up at Dr. Currie’s mahogany desk that towers over his dejected phantom.  He can no longer see Dr. Currie but he can hear her voice.

“I realize that was extremely unpleasant, but you just got over your first and probably most difficult hurdle.”

“Great.”  James says unenthusiasistically.  His eyes look up blankly at the dark room periodically lit by flashes of lightning.  “What’s the point of all this?” He laments to the ceiling.  “My boss...they said I needed an evaluation.  I was getting a promotion.  Why did I dream all of this?”

“The purpose of this evaluation is to determine if you are prepared to move on.”  Dr. Currie looked up at the frozen clock on her office wall.  “As you can see, we are in no rush we can move at whatever pace we have to.”
“Huh?”

“This might be a good moment for us to take a break.  Get up and walk around the office a bit to           relax your mind.  We can resume at your leisure.”  James solemnly gathers himself from the floor of Dr. Currie’s office and makes his way toward the door.

He opens the door and walks into the hallway leading in the reception room.  The darkness from the surrounding storm clouds obscures his vision of the waiting room.  It is just as well to him that he cannot see.  He is too drawn into his own thoughts by the gravity of his discovery.  He feels cheated.  He kept getting close to moving up in the office only to be sidetracked by happenstance.  First it was downsizing, then it was Cassie misplacing his documents, and now it was Death’s turn to deny him the fruit of his work. 

James’ fretful train of thought is stopped when a flash of lightning fills the dark hallway and illuminates the distraught tattooed face of the man he saw leave Dr. Currie’s office earlier.  James lets out a small scream and is immediately embarrassed.  He tentatively walks toward him.

“D...Deon?”    James calls out to silhouette in the darkness.  He remembers what Dr. Currie said about his “dream.”  For a few long seconds he wonders whether the ghost of a real person is there or just something from his imagination. 

“Deshawn, bruh.” The apparition responds.  “Like Sean wit a ‘D’ in front of it.  Deshawn Jones.”

“James Barber.”  James extends a hand into the darkness and it is shook by another ghostly hand.  He is real.

“What you in for, bruh?” 

“Um…” James hesitated for a second not understanding his question at first.  “Car accident. What about you?” 

“I got shot right in front my own house, man.  I told her it wasn’t my fault but you think that matters out here?” Another flash of lightning illuminates Deshawn’s distressed countenance as he shakes his head in resignation.  James stands in awkward silence.  He wonders who shot him and what they had against him.  He thinks about the tattoo on his face.  Was it a revenge killing?  “Did she sign your paper?”  Deshawn asks James hopefully.

“Paper?  What paper?”

“If she signs your paper you can go back.  That’s her job she decides whether you can go back or whether you get ‘moved somewhere else.’  I think it’s just some red tape tho.  They tell you they might be able to help you so when they don’t help they can say ‘Well we tried to help you.’ You know how it is, man.”

A sweltering indignation grows inside of James’ being.  Why had Dr. Currie not given him a chance to go back?  Why was she pressing him to ‘move on?’  James is not going to let bureaucratic sleight of hand prevent him from getting his life back.  He sprints back down the dark hallway.  A flash of lightning shows James the handle of the door.  His surroundings shake from the thunder outside as he barges into Dr. Currie’s office. 

“Why didn’t you tell me about the paper?!” He shouts at Dr. Currie who calmly looks up at him from her desk.

“Which paper?  Your file has a lot of documents in it.”  Dr. Currie adjusts her glasses while shuffling through the folder labeled “Barber, James.”

“Don’t screw with me Currie!” James slams his fists onto her desk.  Dr. Currie looks sternly at James from her seat.  He snatches his hands off her desk.  “Sorry.  Sorry, it’s just I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me that I could go back.”

“Well James, when we began you didn’t even know that you were dead.”  Dr. Currie answers in a matter-of-fact tone.  James thinks to himself.  He feels as though he still has an argument.

“Why did you tell Deshawn?  Why did he get to know?”

“Once Deshawn realized what happened he asked me about it.”

“How did he know that it was an option?”

“Well he didn’t, precisely speaking.  He is experiencing this process as a legal proceeding.  Deshawn sees me as a sort of legal advocate.  He immediately asked me if there was some kind of release document I could sign for him. ”

“I don’t understand I just talked to him in the hallway of this building, how…?”

“That’s complicated James and not very helpful.”

“I talked to him a second ago.  He’s there in the hallway of this building.  I shook his hand, and I talked to him in the hallway out there.” James points to the darkened hallway outside the still open office door. “What’s complicated about talking to a person?”

“A lot actually.” Dr. Currie responds adjusting her glasses.  “This is not that different from what you have experienced in your career as a human.  Your soul spent its entire existence seeing the world as it believes it to be, not as it is.  While you had bodies you could reference material things and make sounds and symbols that you can hear and see as a common medium of communication.  However, without the benefit of physical bodies or a material world to assist your souls’ whispers to one another, it is harder for you to be under the impression that you share the dream called ‘reality’ with others.”  James’ phantom scrunches its semblance of a forehead.

“What?!”

“I told you that wouldn’t be helpful.”

“So…D-Deshawn doesn’t know he’s in this office building?” 

“James.” Dr. Currie rolls her eyes. “You’re not in an office building.  I mentioned earlier that all that you’re experiencing is a combination of…”  James’ consciousness loses track of Dr. Currie’s technical revelation as he allows the severity of her words to sink into his mind.  The room becomes so dark that he cannot see anything but the billow of the black storm clouds in the window in front of him.  Lightning pierces through the storm clouds and lights up the room again but instead of coming through only the windows its brilliant flash penetrates the walls and the floor of the office as the room and all of the objects within it grow transparent.  James falls to the ground, clutching the vanishing carpet with shaking hands.  The insubstantial walls fail to keep out the torrent of wind and rain as they rip through his ghostly form. James’ desperate attempts to cling to fading objects are futile.  The storm thrashes him out of the room into swirling winds and darkness.  James’ pained screams are drowned out by the rumble of thunder all around him.  He flails and kicks against the cold force of the tempest but he cannot even bat away a drop of rain because his limbs are only an idea.

He hears what sounds like distant wailing.  He looks up to see other souls, tumbling wildly through the shadows of the storm clouds.  Out of the cacophony of screams he hears Dr. Currie’s voice calling his name.  He focuses his attention to a point that seems to be miles away from where he is helplessly falling through space to see Dr. Currie’s head peeking through the clouds, the wind blowing her blonde bangs in every direction.

“Jaaaaaames!” She screams with a volume that barely cuts through the thunder. 

“Dr. Currie?” James squints his hypothetical eyes to see her.  Dr. Currie’s slender arm points through the clouds that surround her to a point to James’ left.  He turns to see the leather office chair tumbling in the wind beside him amidst the debris.

“Sit in the chair!”  He looks back at Dr. Currie eyebrows upturned with despair.

“But it’s not real!”

“Sit in it anyway!”  James reaches out into the wind and grabs the arm of the chair.  As soon as his hand makes contact with the solid material of the chair, Dr. Currie’s office room reforms around it.  James finds himself sitting on the firm ground beside the leather chair in front of Dr. Currie’s office, safe and dry from the thunderstorm outside.  He picks himself off the ground and sits in the leather chair.  His terrified shaking hands clasp the chair desperately.

“You don’t have to do that.” Dr. Currie looks at his shaking hands.  “It will stay here as long as you do.”

“Whatever.” James’ response is more pant than speech.  Dr. Currie opens James’ file.

“Now then, as you have found out by way of conversation with Mr. Jones, there is such a document that I can sign for you…”  She pulls out from the manila folder a sheet of paper titled ‘Mortality Reinstatement Form.’  His clutching left hand lets go of the chair and reaches for the paper, but Dr. Currie pulls it away from him.  “At my discretion.”

“What? Why?!”

“That’s also complicated.” James grips the chair with both hands even tighter.

“No no no no no no, Please! No more ‘complicated.’”

“Upper Management does not grant many of these.  We have many factors to consider.” James remembers what the apparition of Martin Reigns said when he told him to go to the counseling center.  They were interviewing multiple candidates.  Deshawn was in the office when he arrived! They were going to pick one of the candidates for a promotion!

“Well, Dr. Currie I honestly believe I am the most qualified.”  James snaps into interview mode.

“I am an honest working, productive member of society, I have a wife and child that are depending on me.”

“James…”

“I make charitable contributions from my income every year.”

“Mr. Barber….”

“Dr. Currie, I don’t have as much as a speeding ticket on my record.  Are you really going to consider a gang member over..?”

“STOP IT!!” Dr. Currie pounds her fist in the table.  The outburst snaps James out of his interview mode and he notices Dr. Currie’s expression of utter disgust fixed on him.  “You didn’t listen James; you seldom listen do you?”  Dr. Currie shakes her head and looks to the ground as if she is coming close to giving up on him.  “I didn’t say we cannot grant many reinstatements, I said we do not grant many of them.  There’s no scarcity of resources. Okay?  This is not a competition.  You don’t need to defeat anyone to get me to sign this paper for you.”  James slumps in his chair, feeling ridiculous about his tirade. 

“Well what do I have to do then?” Dr. Currie turns her lips up in a contempt smirk, gets out of her chair, and walks toward her office door.

“Why don’t you just ask that ‘gang member’?”  She looks back at James and opens the door.

“He’s much closer to being reinstated than you are at the moment.”  James gets out of his chair, not sure if this means this session has ended.  “Go!”  Dr. Currie gestures her hand through the open door. 

His uncertainty clarified, James makes his way into the opaque shadow of the doorway.  As he walks into the hall, Dr. Currie slams the door behind him.  Alone in the darkness, James hopes that he did not offend her to the point of disqualifying him from being reinstated.  He may not enjoy his life all the time, but he wants to live it.

  He wanders through the hallway which for some reason feels longer than when he had walked down it the first time.  With each step he takes, he feels less safe.  James knows he should have reached the waiting room by now.

He walks faster as his anxiety grows.  He gives up his tentative approach and begins running down the hall, preferring to run into something than continue in the intolerable isolation of unbroken obscurity.  As James runs further through the hallway without hitting a table, or wall or even a person, fear begins to grip him.  The distant roaring of the thunder begins to sound like a looming chorus of deep voices all around him, ridiculing his aimless sprint.  He panics and screams into the void.

“Deshawn! Deshawn! Are you out there?”

“Out where?”  James turns his head in the direction of the sound of Deshawn’s voice. To James’ right he sees Deshawn sitting at a metal table with a lone overhead light shining down on his pensive ghost.  He looks up at him and laughs. “I ain’t out anywhere man.”  James walks closer to where Deshawn is seated.  James points over his shoulder. 

“Where are those voices coming from?  The laughing?”

“Those the other inmates dawg, I’d get up outta that hallway if I was you.”

“Inmates? We’re in a…” Deshawn furrows his brow, throws up his hands.

“Look man if you wanna stay out there I ain’t gonna stop ya,” The laughing voices feel closer.  James decides that he decides that getting out of the hallway is more important than figuring out who the voices are.  He runs out of the hall towards the metal table where Deshawn is seated and sits in the chair across from him.  As soon as he lands in the seat his surroundings morph.  The darkness morphs around him and forms a holding cell.  His three piece business suit transforms into a dirty green prison jumpsuit, a six digit number written across the chest.  James grabs the fabric of his shirt.

“Whoa!”

“I know man, they still nicer than the ones we had in juvie tho.” 

“When did you go to juvenile?”

“Eight years ago, I was fifteen.” Deshawn shakes his head and laughs.  “It was so dumb bruh. But I was scared.  I grew up with just my mom and my brothers, two older brothers.  When I was six, my oldest brother got shot in a robbery, he died a month later after two surgeries.  And my other brother had some problem with one of them Northridge Posse dudes.”  James gulps.  He had heard news reports about the Northridge Posse and they were the reason never drove past 15th and Northridge for any reason.  “They jumped him after school, he got stabbed six times man.  The EMT’s got there in time, but he’s paraplegic now.”  Deshawn face scrunches in pain as he recalls the memory.  “And I just remember lookin’ at Darrelle, he used to play linebacker at our high school and then he was in a wheelchair, just ‘cause some NP’s was trippin’.  All I could think about was not gettin’ hurt like that.  I was talkin’ with one of my friends about it, and he said ‘Hey if you scared, you can have one of my burners, dawg.’”  James furrows his brow in confusion.

“A burner?”

“A handgun, man.”

“Oh.”

“A lil while after that I was at school, and my teacher was walkin’ by,” Deshawn shakes his head and laughs.  “And it falls outta my locker.  She went crazy. She already didn’t like me that much, but she saw that gun and lost it!  Next thing I knew I was doin’ three months in juvenile.” Deshawn exhales and clasps his hands together under his chin as he recalls the experience.  “My mom came to visit; I ain’t never seen her like she was that day.  She was so angry.  She looked at me and asked me, ‘why would you wanna trust your life to the same thing that took your brother’s life away?’  Bro, I never forgot that day.  Before that all I was thinkin’ about was bein’ afraid of what happened to my brothers.  I never thought about how I was about to become a part of the same mess that messed up my whole family.  Dawg, it’s like you can get so caught up in just makin’ it, you forget what makes that matter in the first place.”

“What’s that?”

“Family, bruh.  When I got out of juvenile, I was like ‘that’s what I’m gonna be about.’  So I finished high school, and got in Stone Technical College.  Started working on an Associate’s in Construction management.  Met a girl there too!”  Deshawn’s face brightens.  “Her and I had a baby girl six months ago.  Man, that’s when I started thinking, ‘I really need to do this right.’  I got a job with a construction company and I was saving up for a ring for her, man.  You know how it is, it’s what all those old school cats be talkin’ about.  Get a job, get a place and all that.”

“I mean it sounds like you did what you need to do to get your life back together.”

“Yeah but that don’t matter tho!”  Deshawn smacks the table.  “After all that.  I still end up in here!  I can’t believe it!”  As Deshawn’s ghost tears up again, James realizes although he knew how he died, he never found out why.

“What happened today anyway?  I mean, you got out of all that other stuff.  Who shot you?”

“Yo, when I got outta juvenile I knew that I had start doin’ my life different.  At the same time I didn’t want to forget about people who were there for me through all this.  That’s why I got this tat when I was eighteen.”  Deshawn points to his teardrop tattoo.  “That’s for my brothers.  And all them other people in my life that was tryin’ to get me do the stuff I wasn’t to supposed to be in, I told them ‘look y’all can keep my number.  If you need somethin’ from me hit me up, but you know I ain’t doin’ nothin’ wild no mo.’ I mean folks used to talk about me goin’ school and everything.  But after a while, a few of those dudes started to be cool with me.  All through college I still talked to Reggie; that was the guy who got me the gun.  I was at my mom’s house, when Reggie rang my phone.  I picked it up and he was screamin’ sayin’ he was in trouble and needed to hide somewhere and he was comin’ to my house.  He hung up before I could say anything.  Maybe like ten minutes later he was runnin’ down the block to my house.  He was outta breath I couldn’t really understand what he was sayin’.  He said somethin’ about him gettin’ involved in a robbery, but it was one of the NP’s top dawgs’ crib, and he had been green lit. I was finna ask him did someone see him go to my house when this black car pulled up.  The back window rolled down, and I saw the flash.  Next thing I knew I was lookin’ up at the clouds feelin’ the bullets burnin’ in my chest, thinkin’ ‘I won’t get to give Layla that ring.’  Then it was all over.” 

James and Deshawn sit in uncomfortable silence, both of them with their arms folded against the metal table looking in opposite directions.  James scrunches his brow wanting to fill the silence but not finding adequate words.  To his relief, Deshawn finally says half to himself and half to James.

“Why did it matter man?” He turns his face to James.  “What did I do all that for?  I did what my mama said, I got the education I stayed outta all that other stuff.  They told me that was how you get somethin’ out here.  And I did that and I still got nothin’!”

“But…I mean we all end up with nothing eventually.  I mean I had a job, a wife, a kid, a nice house, one of the best cars in the lot, and I slammed it into a tree.”

“Yeah but you had the life tho’ man.”

“Had the life. I don’t have it anymore.  And I was hardly living it while I had it.  I was always at work, or thinking about work I never really thought about…I mean geez, we’re all gonna lose it all.  You didn’t have long life, but what you had you dedicated to the people that were important to you.  You lived the majority of your life loving your family.”  James’ voice trailed off.  “That’s more than some people can say.”  Deshawn leans back in his metal chair with his eyes closed and strokes his chin.

“So it’s like…so it’s like no matter how much you have you gonna lose it and have nothin’.  But since you’re gonna have nothin,’ havin’ somethin’ to lose while you have it is better than havin’ nothin’ to lose and then havin’ nothin’.  So that somethin’ you had even though it’s gone is still more than nothin’.  So even though it’s now it’s nothin’ it’s still somethin’. Is that what you sayin’ dawg?”

“I…I think so.  Maybe…I don’t even kn…”  James response is interrupted by the door to their room being opened.  It takes a while for James to recognize the young man standing in the doorway as the receptionist from the Care Center.  He is now dressed in a police officer’s uniform. 

“Mr. Jones.”  The guard calls to Deshawn.  “Come with me.”  Deshawn smiles.
“It’s still somethin’ ‘cause it ain’t nothin’.”  Deshawn gives James a handshake that he doesn’t know what to do with and gets up from the table.  “I like that man. That should be on a t-shirt.”  Deshawn pulls up his pants and follows the guard out of the door. 

James leans forward and clasps his hands under his chin.  Alone in the room under the sole overhead light’s conical halo, his mind works hard to figure what he allegedly just said to Deshawn.  Before he can decipher his own words he hears heels in the hallway clicking to the rhythm of a very deliberate gait.  Soon the door opens a second time, revealing Dr. Currie.

“I think we can continue now.”  She says adjusting her glasses.  She walks toward James with his manila file in her hand and sits in the chair across from him.  As soon as she sits down, the room morphs around them into Dr. Currie’s office in the Walker Care Center.  James looks around at the transformed space and grips the handles of the leather chair was a hard small metal seat not more than a few moments ago.  He looks up at Dr. Currie.

“How did…?”

“It would be best if we didn’t get into that right now.” She interrupts James with an outstretched hand.  Dr. Currie opens the manila file and pulls out the Mortality Reinstatement Form.  “Do you understand my hesitance to sign this for you?”  James looks contemplatively at the flashing billow of storm clouds in the window behind Dr. Currie.

“Well…I guess I don’t pay enough attention to my family.”

“You guess?” Dr. Currie says with a chuckle.

“I’m neither husband nor father of the year, I understand that.  But I still don’t think you are giving me enough credit here.  I mean I work so hard for them.  I want Ashley and Cassie to have what they deserve.  It’s the least I can do for both of them to work hard.  I want Cassie to be able to go to whatever school she wants, I want her to be able to practice soccer at the best places and pursue that as far as that will take her.  I wanted to save up for a retirement so that Ashley and I could spend our golden years together.  Was that all wrong?  I’m at my job all the time because I don’t want my ladies to want for anything.”

“They want for you James.  I don’t doubt that your heart is mostly in the right place.  But I do not think it would be prudent to grant you a reinstatement if you are going to take that time to secure more furnishings for people who are slowly becoming strangers to you.”

“Strangers?!  Don’t you think that’s overstating it? I know my own family.”

“Cassie hasn’t played soccer in three months.”

“What?” James squints his eyes trying to remember. “I bought her a soccer ball, I remember taking her to soccer practice. That can’t be right!”  Dr. Currie raises an eyebrow.

“Oh no?”  She opens a drawer at her desk and pulls out a folder labeled: “Barber, Cassandra” with a green sticker displaying the word “Active” next to the name.  She opens it and pulls out a picture of James’ brown-eyed brunette daughter grinning wildly, dressed a tiny red pin-striped baseball uniform wearing a red baseball helmet and proudly holding a bat.  “This picture is from last week.”  James takes hold of the photograph and stares at it in amazement. 

“I don’t get it.  She said her least favorite part of soccer was when the ball flew at her head.  I mean…why would she like softball?”

“She said that the last time you didn’t stay late at work and took her to practice, which was three months ago.” Dr. Currie digs through Cassie’s file.  She picks out a sheet of paper and reads. “In her own words: ‘I like softball sooooo much better than soccer mommy.  In soccer when the nasty ball flies at your head they don’t let you use your arms and you just get hit in the face.  In softball when the nasty ball flies at your head they let you have a bat and you can HIT IT! Hit it far away!’  That quote like that photo is from her game last week when she batted in two runs, and you weren’t there!  That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” James lowers his head.

“Is it really that bad?”

“James.”  Dr. Currie leans over the table.  “You died this morning.  And your soul ran past your family and kept going to work.”  She puts away Cassie’s folder and takes out the Mortality Reinstatement Form.  “I’m not going to sign this for you if you’re just going to use the extra time to ignore your family.”  James starts to tear up. 

“Please, Doctor.  I see it! I see it! I did wrong by them!  Let me make it right.  I can’t leave them like this.  Let me do this!”  Dr. Currie looks into James Barber’s crying eyes with no affect.  His entire being wades through the expectant silence with unbearable apprehension. He realizes it.  What he really lost.  What he did not really have even before he lost it this morning.  He knows enough about what he took for granted to finally fear losing it forever. After a contemplative pause Dr. Currie finally speaks.

“I will grant you an extension Mr. Barber.”  She hands the sheet of paper over to him.  “Please take a moment to look over the form.” 

He eagerly takes the document from her hands and reads through its familiar sounding bureaucratic jargon.  His vision locks onto the empty space beside the “extension length” section.

“It doesn’t specify how long I’ll have.”  He says pointing to the clause.

“Of course not.” Dr. Currie responds straightforwardly. “That’s why you can’t waste any more time.”

“Right.”  James says with resolve.  “Whether I get the promotion or not they are what’s important.”  Dr. Currie chuckles.

“In all likelihood the settlement with your automobile company will be worth much more than whatever raise Martin Reigns would’ve been likely to give you.  I wouldn’t worry about that.  You worry about catching up with your roommates.  They can still be your family yet.”  Burning anticipation grips James as he watches Dr. Currie lift the ink pen from her mahogany table and move the point toward the blank space for her name.  She marks in elegant cursive: “Val Currie” across the line at the bottom of the sheet of paper.  She reaches into her drawer and pulls out a green sticker that says “Active” and puts it on James file next to his name.  James’ weeping ghost is heavy with jubilation.

“Thank you!  Thank you so much!”  She extends a hand across her desk which James emphatically shakes.

“It’s been a pleasure James.”  She says with a smile, however after this utterance her face turns serious once again.  “I will see you later.” As soon as James lets go of her hand he hears ticking to his right.  The minute hand on Dr. Currie’s wall clock reanimates and the clock finally reads, ‘8:33.’  James is so excited to see time moving once again he does not realize that he is sinking into the leather chair.  He cannot get up from it.  His form has grown heavy that he is descending into the chair as if it were deflating air mattress.  His weighty ghost gets sucked through the furniture and the floor beneath it. 

James finds himself fiercely plummeting with the rain from the storm down to Earth.  He accelerates severely with each moment he drops to the ground.  He is barely able to discern trees from clouds and far away buildings.  He tries to scream but his chest is too heavy to let out any sound.  He finally lands violently on a lumpy object on the ground.  The impact forces out the scream it only emerges as a small faint breath exhaled from the weak lungs of his wounded body that is lying face up on the pavement of Northridge Avenue. 

“We got a pulse!”  James hears a voice call from over his bloody head.  His blurry vision makes out the vague forms of EMT’s just before he dips back into unconsciousness.

James Barber’s eyelids fling open to the sound of his weeping wife’s voice. 

“James!”  She exclaims clasping his hand with hers.  He looks around.  He is lying in a hospital bed with Ashley and Cassie standing beside him.  “Oh my God James! They said your heart stopped!  They said if they didn’t get there when they did…why didn’t the airbag deploy that’s a brand new car?”

“We don’t have to worry about that now.” James says sitting up slightly to see if he can move.  “I made it and I get to see you all, that’s all I care about right now.”  As James senses return to him he notices the chatter of a reporting newscaster on the television in the hospital room.

“Police are investigating a shooting on the North side.  Witnesses say a black car drove by the home of…”

“Oh gosh.”  Ashley says reaching for the remote.  “We don’t need to hear this right now.”

“Wait don’t change it.”

“What? Why?”  James looks attentively at the television as the report continues.

“The police have released the name of the second victim, Deshawn Jones who is in stable condition at St. Matthews Hospital.”

“Alright Deshawn.”  James says to himself in satisfaction.  James folds his hands on his chest, and serenely listens as his daughter deals with her anxiety by talking to him about softball.

The End