“Doctor!”

I looked over my shoulder.

Finally, a nurse!

“Seizure, clonic phase!” I explained.

I stepped back, looking at the me that now stood next to Andalon and the ghost.

I saw through two sets of eyes.

I looked at the nurse again.

“C-Could you … could you handle this?” I said. “I…” but I just looked down, shook my head, and lost my words mid-mumble.

“It’s fine, Doctor,” the nurse said, “I’m on it.”

I gave a little bow in thanks and then walked off, around the corner.

I went down a hallway, to a niche with drinking fountains and a vending machine.

What’s going on?

I turned toward my… dopplegenneth?

We cringed at the same time.

Our eyes closed in perfect unison.

He stood next to Andalon, and was a perfect replica of my “default self”. He had everything: my work clothes—white coat, slacks—and the associated accoutrements, all the way down to the lucky yellow bow-tie, red polka dots and all.

And I saw him fully decked in PPE, though I also saw what he saw as he saw me.

Or is it what I’m seeing of myself?

Meanwhile, the ghost didn’t seem to notice that there were now two of me. On the other hand, not only did Andalon notice, she was still visibly upset. She kept staring at us with trembling eyes.

I’m sorry, Andalon, I thought-said, thought-apologizing, I didn’t mean to yell. I was angry with the situation, not with you.

Andalon sniffled. “Really…?”

"Yes, really."

"Yes, really."

“I don’t understand what’s happening here,” I said.

I’m here.

But I’m also here.

And I can hear you.

And I can hear you.

And me.

And me.

Echo?

Echo.

Echo.

Echo.

Echo.

Echo.

Echo.

Echo.

The ghost-boy stomped his feet.

“What the Hell is going on!?”

“My mind has…”

“…fractured,” I whispered.

I was one mind, in two channels.

Or was it one person in two minds?

I was experiencing the world through two bodies at once. I saw the world through two sets of eyes—

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—And heard my own words through two pairs of ears.

The added sight occupied the darkness of the non-space beyond the limits of my body’s vision.

I looked First Me in the eyes.

Wait, does that mean you are… Second Me?, I thought

“We can figure this out as we go. Just go help—”

“—I need a doctor here!”

Fudge! Another crisis!

I shook my head.

“—But which one of us is real?”

“If the clothes are any indication, probably me,” I muttered.

I—Second Me—pointed down the hallway. “You go take care of that crisis,” I nodded. “I’ll take care of this one.” I pointed at Andalon and the ghost-boy.

Nodding, I—First Me—ran off to deal with the latest emergency.

Andalon and I—as Second Me—watched as my flesh-and-blood self run off down the corridor—though the ghost didn’t seem to notice. I was about to ask Andalon what would happen when First Me moved out of sight, when reality answered for me. As soon as I (he? we?) rounded the corner, the three of us teleported to follow along after him. It was as if the Angel had reached down and photoshopped our surroundings. One minute, we stood in the hallway, the next, we stood in front of the doorway to the room First Me had entered.

Again, the ghost screamed. “What the hell is going on!?” He pointed at Andalon. “Who is she?” He pointed at me. “Who are you? Why are there two of you?” He stomped his foot yet again. “What’s happening to me!?”

Probably the most disorienting part of this experience was the fact that, much like Andalon teleported from one place to another to keep up with my physical body, now that I, too, was non-corporeal, Andalon, the kid, and I kept teleporting as my physical self moved around the Ward.

Fortunately, the call for help came from a single room. As long as I could stay there, I wouldn’t need to worry about the unnerving sensation of standing in one place with my physical body while teleporting from one place to another in my ghost-body.

I entered the room. The first thing I noticed was the ECG by the patient’s bed. It was fluttering wildly.

“Dammit!” the doctor yelled. “Even the ECMO isn’t working!”

If ventilators could transform into a “final form”, they’d turn into membrane oxygenators. These machines were used for ECMO, short for “extracorporeal membrane oxygenation”, and were nothing more or less than artificial lungs. You hooked up the patient’s bloodstream to the input ports on the membrane oxygenator. The flat, bulky, hexagonally shaped machine did the work of accepting carbon dioxide from the incoming blood and replacing it with fresh oxygen.

“Why the heck are we fixating on the ECMO?!” I yelled.

Please don’t yell, Second Me, I thought-asked, I can still hear you. Well, me.

And to answer our question, it’s because describing things makes us feel better and helps us cope with stress.

“That…” Shaking my head, I sighed. “Yeah, that pretty much checks out.”

Andalon clapped her hands together excitedly, beaming. “So many questions!”

The ghost-boy shot me a desperate look.

What should I do, First Me?

I’m trying to handle this! Just… do something!

I figured I might as well get the obvious question out of the way before my worries drove both of myselves crazy.

“What just happened to me, Andalon? How? Why?”

“It’s a wyrmeh thing,” Andalon said. She tilted her head to the side. “I think.” Then her eyes widened and she nodded confidently. “Oh! Thinks! That’s right.” She smiled. “Wyrmehs can thinks lots of thinks. It’s like a big thinks-pile.” She raised her arms. “And now you can, too!”

Suddenly, one of her explanations from earlier that morning came rushing back to me.

“Wyrmehs are supah good at thinksing. They need to be, to hold all the ghosts they save. They can think many many thinks, all at once. It’s like,” she tilted her arms to the side, “here’s a think,” she tilted her arms to the other side, “and there’s a think,” she stuck her arms up, dangling her nightgown’s poofy sleeves, “and there’s another think.” She brought her arms down. “Lotsa thinks, but they’re all the same think, and they’re all in one wyrmeh.”

Andalon nodded. “Andalon said that!”

The boy yanked his hand away from her. Andalon flinched beneath his burning glare.

“Do you know her?” he asked, stepping off to the side, toward a painting on the wall—a cypress in pastel.

Andalon pouted at the apparent rejection. “Andalon is Andalon,” she explained, miffed. “I tolds you that already.” Her arms stiffened at her sides.

This was a big deal—and I wasn’t just talking about my brand new identity crisis. The boy… this ghost wasn’t hostile. I’d only encountered one non-hostile ghost before, but he’d disappeared before I’d barely gotten two words in edgewise. But I had a feeling that this ghost wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. If me fracturing into two dopplegenneths wasn’t enough to make him disappear, I struggled to fathom what would.

Almost as curiously, the boy didn’t seem to have noticed that we had teleported.

I turned to Andalon. “Why did you bring him to me?”

“I saved him. I brought him to you. Now he’s in you.” She pointed at me.

So, he’s now in the afterlife? I thought-asked. In Paradise?

I’d noticed the kid hadn’t shown any indication of being able to hear myselves’ thought-speech, so I figured that would make a good way to communicate with Andalon—and myself—without startling him.

“Yeah! Yeah!” Andalon said, nodding happily. “Now he’s safe.” She turned to smile at him.

“Safe?” He gave her a worried look. “Safe from what?”

“What do I have to do?” I asked.

The other doctor then gave me my instructions.

The patient was experiencing severe blood acidosis due to lung and kidney failure.

I closed my eyes. Seeing the world through two sets of eyes was extremely disorienting.

Focusing on the present helped to distract myselves.

Oh fudge.

First Me didn’t need to explain himself. His thoughts were my thoughts, and my thoughts were his. I knew what my—well, his—question was and asked Andalon for him.

“Do I,” I asked, pointing at myself (Second Me), “have control over my body?” I pointed at him (First Me).

She shook her head. “Nuh-uh.”

While I was doing all of that pointing, I found myself staring at my phantom arm. I hadn’t noticed it until now, but… it didn’t feel dead at all. None of my phantom body did.

Meanwhile, my flesh-body absolutely did feel dead, except for the parts that had already turned wyrmy—my chest, my tail.

This is good. This helps.

Focusing on that difference helped keep me from completely losing what little sanity I still had left.

Also, since the flesh-body dopplegenneth wearing PPE, I could distinguish between my two eyeball-feeds by remembering that my disembody was the one that saw the me in PPE.

Call it a head’s up display (HUD).

Yeah, “eyeball feed” sounded too weird.

But I was right. Being able to remind myself which HUD was which by keeping track of which one had the PPE visor in front of it was impossibly useful, because the alien neurophysiology responsible for me having more than one HUD current multiplicity didn’t come with a built-in awareness of the two HUDs’ positions relative to one another. I would have loved if it had been just a simple matter of “here’s one on the left-hand side of your perceptions, here’s one on the right-hand side of your perceptions”, but no, there was no left-hand HUD, right-hand HUD. Both of them just existed, and at the same time.

It was weird as heck.

So was the feeling of being both dead and alive.

Ghost-boy stomped his feet again. “Why are you just standing here?”

I turned to Andalon. “How do I fix this?”

Andalon held her hands behind her back and looked up at me.

“Uhh…”

Actually, never mind that.

Stop trying to take control of everything and listen for once.

We can use this!

How?

Divide and conquer!

You help the ghost-kid. I’ll help everyone else.

Gotcha.

The doctor ran up to check the console on the wall, and then cursed.

Whatever he was looking for, it wasn’t there.

“What’s going on!?” The boy was irate.

Sighing in resignation, I bowed in apology. I shook out my shoulders and then took a deep breath.

I got down onto my knees and looked the kid in the eyes.