8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Another ghost.

People were crammed into the shuttle, most were drakcol but not all. My friend, I guessed I would call her, sat in the back, her foot tapping on the smooth metal floor.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her, taking in her pinched expression and tense muscles. Her tail slashed the air, smacking the person next to her who growled in warning. She quickly apologized. “I wish you could hear me. Whatever’s wrong will be okay.”

I mean, I didn’t know that, but I hoped for her sake it would be.

When the shuttle landed, it jarred everyone besides me inside. The woman leaped to her feet and pushed her way through the crowd, sending off rounds of growls that she ignored. I trailed her, sliding through people, leaving a wake of shivers in my path.

She rushed down the street, and I paused in my step for a moment. This part of the capital, if we were still in the capital, wasn’t as nice, not that it wasn’t beautiful or was rundown by any means. The buildings were shorter, though they still had spires and plenty of windows framed with balconies. Plants were still plentiful, but they weren’t as prominently displayed, and many drakcol wore uniforms versus street clothes.

My friend ran down the street, feet pounding with every step. She stopped in front of a wide building with numerous windows and terraces that wrapped around each level. The glass doors slid open, seamless with the windows beside it, and she dashed inside.

One look was enough for me to realize what kind of business this was. Injured people sat on metal stools while harried people ran long instruments over them and asked questions. The walls and floor were sterile gray without a trace of plants anywhere.

It was a medical facility.

The woman headed down a hallway without any bland artwork or even boring scenery pictures to liven it up, then started up a staircase. Like the apartment building, it had a wide square space for drakcol to fly up, but she ignored it. On the third floor, she stopped in front of a door and palmed the panel next to it, making a bell chime.

The door slid open, and an older drakcol with jagged pink scales sat next to a desk crowded with tablets. His hair was steel-gray and cropped close to his head, and he wore the dullest, most boring, gray uniform. It was like a onesie made of scrub material that had a high collar and no sleeves, showing his thin arms. He gave her a small smile, revealing his toothless gums. That, plus his jagged scales, told me this dude was old. Like dirt old.

“Tinlorray,” he rasped, waving her in. His claws were so long they were curling back toward his skeletal fingers. “Enter. I thought you weren’t going to make it.”

“Sorry I’m late, Dr. Maklownil.” She tilted her head to the side, offering her throat, which he ignored.

“Let me see them,” he said, gesturing to the stool in the cramped office.

Tinlorray spread her gray wings that each had a single talon midway down the bony ridge on top. The reason why she walked instead of flying became immediately apparent. An angry red stretched over the delicate membrane, and her right wing was oddly crumpled, the bone broken. The doctor tutted as he examined the massive wings that nearly spread from wall to wall, knocking some screens off the desk, which he ignored.

He ran a long wand with a wide flat tip about the diameter of a baseball over one wing, then the next. Dr. Maklownil grunted at whatever the readings were on his tablet, bony fingers clacking on the glass. “Your left wing should heal normally with some scarring. The right…” he trailed off.

“It won’t recover, will it?”

“Not without reconstructive surgery,” he said.

“Which is something you can’t do here.”

“No, this facility is not equipped with the necessary surgical suites. We can send an appeal to the Seeker Council for a medical facility in the capital to do the surgery, but they are busy. It will take time, though you will have the surgery eventually. This is a delicate procedure and will require an expert. I would be honored to help you file the necessary paperwork, of course.

“But more than that, you have my apologies. I can keep treating it so it doesn’t pain you, but your flying days are over unless you have the surgery, even then the nerve damage may be too severe.”

“I understand,” she said before biting her thin bottom lip. “How is he?”

The doctor stood, exiting the cramped office. I followed the two of them down the hall and up to the fifth floor. They eventually stepped into a long room with a window opposite of the door. The never-ending breeze fluttered in, stirring the sheer curtains and the green ferns on each side. More plants filled the terrace as well as a couple of stools. Four beds lined either side, and monitors, flashing with blue lights and unreadable symbols, hung above them.

A mountain of a man lay in the bed nearest to the window. The drakcol had dove-gray scales accented by shoots of emerald green and gold. His reddish-brown hair was shaved on one side, revealing a massive scar that ran from near his temple all the way to the back of his head. The skin around it was mottled with the same green and gold around his scales.

He was handsome with his long face, thinner top lip and plump bottom one, and wide forehead, but something was wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something was off. It was like he was empty.

Tinlorray stopped at his bedside and grabbed the lifeless man’s hand. “Doctor?”

“Yolkeltod has no brain activity. He’s gone, Tinlorray. No matter what I do, I cannot bring him back.”

Her chin trembled, and she smoothed the deep blue blanket over him. “My little brother will be fine. He has to be. He’s a warrior soul, a fighter.”

“There is nothing to be done. We are merely keeping his body alive.”

“No,” she snarled.

The doctor didn’t act bothered, standing beside her, not speaking, as tears rolled down her cheeks.

My jaw worked side to side. “I was wrong. It won’t be okay. Nothing will be fine.”

A man came up behind Tinlorray, his long brown hair hanging in a sheet down his wide back. I started when he looked in my direction. I was seeing double. The man in front of me was the same as the one in the bed. His blue eyes stayed on me and his nose crinkled.

“Who, or better yet, what are you?”

He was dead or rather a spirit like me. Yolkeltod wasn’t the first ghost I’d met before. They were few and far between, shockingly. Most people didn’t hang around long.

“I’m Caleb Smith. Human.”

Yolkeltod jerked. “You can see me?”

“Yep. I’m dead, and so are you, I guess. Sort of. I mean, maybe you’re not. I’m not sure. I’m not an expert. But you're here and there, so… yeah. Dead.”

He chuckled. “Like I hadn’t figured that out.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

He lifted his palms, which I was pretty sure was the equivalent of shrugging. “It’s not your fault.”

Tinlorray sniffled and drew my attention. I stepped back; whereas, Yolkeltod crowded her, trying to soothe her. She didn’t sense his presence and kept straightening the blanket over Yolkeltod’s body.

Dr. Maklownil slipped out, leaving Tinlorray to her grief.

I watched, feeling voyeuristic. The longer she cried and the more Yolkeltod tried to comfort her, the more my emotions swelled. I wanted to go home. It had been years since I’d seen my family. However, even if I had been there, it wouldn’t have changed anything. Their grief had long since subsided; I was a distant memory now.

Zoltilvoxfyn. He heard me. Suddenly, I needed to see him. Talk to him. Have him talk back. A real conversation, not my empty babbling. Maybe I shouldn’t have run off. I mean, moving on wasn’t the worst idea. I had thought about doing it when I headed to Earth.

It might be time to consider the idea once more.

When I started to back out of the room, Yolkeltod called out, “Wait.”

“What?”

“Can we talk? Please. You’re the first spirit I’ve seen.”

I nodded, which made his forehead crease. Nodding didn’t mean the same thing in Drakcon culture. I figured it out pretty quickly when Seth had kept doing it and confused the hell out of everyone.

I said, “We can talk.”

“Thank you.”