My mouth dropped open. “What? What are you talking about?”

His scowl deepened. “You’re such a hypocrite.”

“What?”

“I’m the worst in the world for talking to you and making you look delusional, but then you deliberately talk to his grandma right in front of him!”

“She wasn’t going to let me ignore her when there was the chance her money was going to be lost.”

He rubbed a hand down his face. “So that makes it alright? I can’t believe this.” He took a deep breath in through his nose. “So basically, I ruined your life and she saved it by doing the exact same thing.”

“This was diff—”

“How? It’s exactly the sa—”

“No! She was able to give me evidence to prove to him that I can really see ghosts. Private things that only she would know. You couldn’t do that.”

He stepped forward as I looked up into those gorgeous brown eyes that were glaring daggers at me. The wind picked up around us, but I barely noticed.

He leaned down and I resisted the urge to step back. “You treated me like crap for nothing.”

I squared my shoulders. “No, I didn’t. You did ruin everything. I was set to stay in here for the rest of my life. Now I might have a chance to get out.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

My heart clenched. “Then I’ll be back where I started. Where you put me. Doomed to stay here forever.”

Tears stung my eyes thinking about that, but I would not cry in front of him.

Mrs C stood and stepped between us. “Bickering like this is not going to help anyone. You both need to calm down.”

Some of the wind went out of my sails. She was right. I took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. The wind died down and I cringed. I had to be more careful about doing that, but he’d had me so riled up that I couldn’t think straight.

Mr Newbie ran a hand through his messy dark curls and stalked off into the trees at the bottom of the garden.

Relief settled over my shoulders as I watched him disappear. And I was totally not checking out his broad shoulders. Or his butt.

Mrs C had a strange expression on her face when I turned back around and my face heated. “What?”

She smiled knowingly. “He’s a handsome one, isn’t he?”

Yes, but… “He’s okay, but he’s a jerk.”

Her smile grew and she nodded as if she were saying, “Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.”

I think my face must have been as red as my hair.

It always seemed to be that the good-looking guys knew they were man-candy and acted like jerks.

Mr J stood and stretched his legs. “So, what happens now?”

The change of subject threw me. “Uh, we wait till tomorrow and see what the doc says.”

I sighed. I hated waiting.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Despite the activities that the staff always had planned, time dragged on and it was hard to concentrate on anything.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

I’d immersed myself in a couple of movies the night before, but the morning was hard to deal with.

We’d played some card games, but no one wanted to follow that with a long, drawn-out game of Monopoly, so we’d gone outside for a walk in the sunshine. Then we’d played Charades. I wasn’t very good at it, but it was fun seeing how ridiculous we looked while trying to act out the clues.

After lunch, we’d had some quiet time where most of the patients watched TV and I’d gone outside for more sunshine. And conversation. Knowing that I could be going home tomorrow made it hard to keep my mind on anything.

Waiting was torture.

When I’d made my way back inside, they had moved on to making Halloween decorations and I almost laughed out loud when Holly asked me if I wanted to cut out paper ghosts.

After I’d made a few ghosts, my eyes were drawn to the window where Mrs C made a get-back-to-work gesture and smiled.

She’d told me to keep busy and she was right. Time would pass faster if I immersed myself into the activities provided. And it was better than pacing up and down in my room or out in the garden.

As I started cutting again, a sharp pain made me drop the paper.

Dammit.

Blood dripped from a v-shaped cut on the side of my index finger onto the tablecloth and I grabbed the first thing I laid eyes on to stem the bleeding — a wad of cotton wool that was going to be used for spider webs.

I sighed. That’s all I need.

The pain and the amount of blood meant that it was deep. I hoped it didn’t need stitches.

I stood quickly and called to Holly. The blood was seeping through the cotton wool. I was going to need something else fast.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get you sorted out.”

I began to feel lightheaded. I shouldn’t have stood up so fast. She took my arm gently and led me to the treatment room, talking to me all the way. I sat on the seat she indicated as she quickly grabbed a clean cloth; the blood was now dripping between my fingers and onto the floor.

“Hold this on the wound to help stop the bleeding.”

The pain started to subside a little after a while and I tried to relax. I was never good with injuries.

Holly smiled. “That’s it. Relax. Take some deep breaths. It’s gonna be alright.”

I did what she asked and started to feel better.

Once she had things prepared to treat the wound, she pulled up a chair opposite me. “Okay. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

I cringed before taking the cloth away. “It’s pretty bad.”

My mouth dropped open as I stared at my finger. It looked like a shallow cut, not like the deep cut I saw only minutes ago.

Holly raised her eyebrows, but took a closer look. “Look at that. You were in a panic for nothing. It’s not too bad. It doesn’t look deep. You must have thought it was worse than it is.”

“But…”

… what about all the blood? That was not a shallow cut. What was happening? I’d always been a fast healer, and I seemed to be able to heal even faster since the accident. But this was ridiculously-fast.

“It’s okay, Maddie. I’ll clean it up and put a Band-Aid on it. You’ll be right as rain.”

I sat and let her go to work, but my mind was reeling. Did I imagine the cut being worse? That had to be the case, because no one could heal that fast. I was sure it had needed stitches.

I looked at all the blood on the floor and knew there was something going on here.

As I stared out into the hall, Mrs C peered around the doorway, eyebrows bunched up. “What happened? Are you okay, dear?”

I checked to see if Holly was looking, then gave her a small nod. Mrs C sighed and her shoulders visibly relaxed. “Oh, good. I was worried.”

She wandered off down the hall again and I turned to thank Holly.

Her smile was genuine and I couldn’t help comparing her to Janice. They were so different. Like night and day. And all those other silly clichéd comparisons running through my head.

I really needed to keep pushing for Janice to be fired and I cringed thinking about what she would do when she found out I’d told Dr Calthorpe about her behaviour.

Despite that, I had to speak up. I couldn’t sit by and do nothing. Janice needed to be as far away from vulnerable people as humanly possible.

When we returned to the others, Mrs Dawson asked how I was and wasn’t entirely convinced when I told her the cut wasn’t that bad. I caught Janice openly staring at me and turned away. I couldn’t really blame her. The blood was still on the tablecloth and the smell of disinfectant and the wet patches on the floor told me that someone had cleaned up the blood.

Things seemed to settle down after that.

It was hard to eat my lunch. It felt like there was a large rock in my stomach. I had to wait it out till one o’clock.

Just before one, Janice walked up to me in the hallway and I tensed. What did she want?

She gave me a fake smile. “I wonder what the doc’s gonna say to you today? I figured things didn’t go well for you yesterday when you ran out of there like your hair was on fire.” She chuckled.

So many retorts went through my mind, but I didn’t put a voice to any of them.

She smirked. “Got nothin’ to say?”

Nothing that won’t get me into trouble. And I’m not risking my freedom for you.

“Well, you better make yourself comfortable. He’s written up his reports and it looks like you’ll be staying here a looong time.”

My stomach sank like a stone. “What?”

“It’s not looking good, my girl. I’m guessing you’ll definitely be here for Christmas, so better get used to the idea that you won’t be going home anytime soon.”