The Ninth Floor Page 4

  “What happened?”

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” the nurse said.

  I was about to press the issue when Dr. Sadler pulled her over to the side. I looked down at Bee. “What happened?” I repeated.

  “I don’t know.” Her eyes darted away from mine.

  “Bee.”

  “I saw her.”

  “Who?”

  “Mrs. Simpson,” she hissed.

  “Well, she is your roommate.”

  “No.” Bee shook her head. “She died yesterday.”

  I frowned. “I was here yesterday. I don’t remember—”

  “It happened sometime in the night. I wasn’t awake but the nurse, Leigh, told me before you got here.”

  “Was she very sick?” I felt bad for all the mean thoughts I had about Mrs. Simpson.

  “No.” Bee’s eyes filled with tears. “She was fine until she started hearing the voices.”

  I squeezed her hand, knowing what she was thinking. Bee had been hearing voices too. Was she next?

  The nurse left and Dr. Sadler came over to us. “How are you feeling, Bee?”

  They went through their normal routine of questions. I sat in the chair watching them and thinking maybe Bee should be moved to a different hospital. Real or not, if the ghosts were causing her this much stress, she’d be better off somewhere else. I followed Dr. Sadler out of the door. He smiled at me. “Did you need something, Ryan?”

  “What happened in there?”

  “Mrs. Simpson passed away last night, and Bee had a bad dream or a hallucination about her this morning. Sadly, it’s normal for patients experiencing liver failure. Try not to feed into it. It won’t help her.”

  “Maybe we should move her to a different hospital.”

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t recommend it. I’ll adjust her medications and hopefully that will help with the nightmares, but she needs a transplant. That’s the only long-term solution.”

  I caught my bottom lip between my teeth, trying to decide what to do.

  “I know this hard—on her and on the family. You have to be strong.”

  I looked at the floor instead of rolling my eyes. Thank you, Captain Obvious.

  *

  The store was dark and locked up tight when I got there after visiting hours. I climbed the steps to the apartment, worrying about everything. All I wanted to do was go to Bee’s house and crash into my nice clean bed. I unlocked my door and turned on a light, surveying the space.

  With the boxes pushed to one side of the living room I could see it better. The windows were nearly floor to ceiling. The other side though had boxes four deep against the walls in stacks that went above my head. The bedrooms were even more loaded with junk, and the kitchen was probably a fire hazard. I glanced into the bathroom, however, and determined that was where Vivian and I would start. I could squeeze my mattress into the small cleared space in the living room. Other than that, all I really needed was a bathroom.

  There was a knock on the door. I ran over and opened it to find Vivian with a bottle of wine.

  “Wine sounded so much better than ice cream.” She pushed past me and wrinkled her nose.

  “No time for wine. We have a lot to do.”

  “Ryan, don’t be silly. There’s always time for wine.”

  I laughed. “But there aren’t always glasses or a corkscrew.”

  She held up a bag of red solo cups and produced a wine opener from her jacket pocket. Then she shoved everything into my arms and inspected the space. “This could actually be very cool. Look at those windows. So what’s first?”

  “The bathroom, I think.”

  We took a ton of junk to the dumpster downstairs. Vivian was a trooper about the whole manual labor thing. I had her pegged as a princess and figured she’d bail as soon as she saw the mess we were dealing with, but she stayed. We went down to the shop to get the cleaning supplies and she grabbed the stereo.

  “No Britney,” I said as she plugged it in.

  Moments later, Adele was blaring from the speakers, and we were happily singing and scrubbing. While I worked on the bathtub, Vivian opened the wine. This definitely wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

  Vivian handed me a plastic cup of wine, and I took a break, resting on the side of the tub while she polished the mirror.

  So far the bathroom was a monument to the time the building was erected. The floor was covered with one-by-one white tiles with tiny black diamond shaped tiles separating each square. The tile continued half way up the wall where it met a black border of tiles. Above that the walls were painted, but the paint was faded and peeling. All the fixtures were silver. There was a pedestal sink and a huge white claw foot tub. I absolutely loved it.

  I sipped my wine, contemplating whether or not I should paint, when Vivian said, “It would look so cool if you painted the top half of the room teal.”

  I had trouble picturing it. “You think?”

  “Yeah, definitely. We could take down this cheap cabinet mirror and replace it with a pretty black framed mirror. I think the fixtures are okay for now. They’re cleaning up nice.”

  I looked at my watch. It wasn’t too late and the room was pretty clean. “Do you want to run to the store with me?”

  “Sure.”

  We picked up dinner and Vivian picked out the paint and mirror she liked, but by the time we headed back, I was too tired to do any more work. So we dropped off the stuff, locked up, and headed to Bee’s house to eat. Another package sat on my porch, again marked with only my name. I took it inside with us but left it by the door while we sat at the kitchen table eating pizza and drinking wine. Vivian regaled me with stories from her wild escapades. “Why are you back?” I asked.

  Her face went serious. “I had a moment of startling clarity about my life.”

  “So you decided to devote your life to helping others, and I’m your charity case?” I laughed.

  “Not quite.” She grinned back. “In eight years, I never made another friend like you.”

  I shook my head, not knowing what to say. Before I came back, I wouldn’t have even listed Vivian as a friend. We’d been friendly in school, but we didn’t hang out a lot. “I feel horrible, like I’m using you. Not that I’m not grateful—I am. I couldn’t do this without your help, but we haven’t seen or spoken to each other in such a long time.”

  Vivian rolled her eyes. “In college I made lots of friends who loved to hang out with me and party with me, so long as I was buying. Even after I left school, I was still in that scene. Then one day, Daddy threatened to cut me off.” She shrugged. “I realized that, without his money, I’d have no one. That’s when I decided to return to work on fixing myself. I’ve thought a lot about you since I came back. You were the only person who was never interested in my money and always honest with me. You, Ryan Sterling, might be my only real friend.” She held up her wine glass to me and then took a drink.

  “Viv, you have a lot more depth than people give you credit for.”

  “I like to think so.” She laughed. “So the moral of the story is don’t feel bad for needing my help because I’m getting as much out of this as you are.”

  “I have my doubts, but thank you.”

  After we ate, we moved to the living room and conversation shifted back to the apartment above Blueberry.

  “It’s such a great space—and I have so many ideas about what you can do with it.” Viv went on about every possible color combination and all the different styles I could go with. Between the comfortable couch and the white noise of her constant chatter, my eyelids grew heavy.

  Vivian kicked me and my eyes snapped open. “So what have you been up to since you left? Inquiring minds …“

  “Mmmm, I went to J-school at Columbia and got a job working for a newspaper. I worked in Boston until Bee called me, and I quit and came back. That’s pretty much it.” I took a sip of my wine. “How about you?”

  “Art school for a while. Did some traveling, yo
u know, stuff like that. Daddy still has a summer home here that he never uses, so when I wanted to sort out my life I moved in. Oh—” Her hands clasped over her mouth and her eyes lit up. “You could move in with me. It’d be just like old times—plus a lot less work.”

  I wrinkled my nose and shook my head. “I like the work. It makes it feel like it’s mine. Plus, I’ll be able to see that I accomplished something when I look at it after it’s done.”

  “I guess I kind of get that.”

  “So why did you want the job?”

  “Honestly, I’m bored out of my mind. Working at Blueberry is the most fun I’ve had in a while. I get to be useful and help people by doing something I’m actually good at—shopping—and my dad is happy I’m showing some responsibility.”

  I took another sip of my wine and thought about Vivian’s situation. She was probably really lonely. “You wouldn’t want to decorate the apartment, would you? I really don’t have time to do much. I was planning on finishing the bathroom then leaving the rest as is until I could get to it.”

  Her face lit up like she won an Academy Award. “Yes,” she squealed, clapping her hands.

  I laughed and handed her my credit card. “Don’t go crazy. Simple, nice, and comfortable.”

  “You won’t be sorry. And you cannot live there like it is. Who knows what kind of bugs or vermin could be living in those boxes.”

  We talked until the wee hours of the morning. By the time I showed Vivian to a guest room and headed to my bedroom, the wine was long gone and I’d have to be up in three hours to make it to the hospital by the start of visiting hours.

  I’d almost drifted off to sleep when I realized I’d forgotten all about the package.

  Chapter 6

  I frowned at the sound of birds chirping good morning to the sunrise and knew it was going to be one of those days. I walked to the bathroom, “accidentally” thumping Vivian’s door as I went past. In the small shower stall, I let cold water rain over me, hoping it would wake me up. My mouth was dry and cottony. I would’ve given anything to go back to bed.

  When I got out of the shower, I dug through my suitcase for something I could wear to my parents’ house in the evening and still be comfortable in during the day. I settled on taupe riding pants, knee-high brown leather boots, and a long cream-colored cable knit sweater with a blue and white cashmere infinity scarf. I may not have been as formal as my mother would like, but at least I wasn’t in torn jeans.

  I knocked on Vivian’s door before I went downstairs. “Hey, you have to get up. You need to open the store in two hours.”

  She groaned, and I opened the door. “I just went to sleep.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She sat up. “Can I borrow some of your clothes? My house is so far away.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and tapped my foot. “Will you inventory the new shipment before you open today?”

  “I guess,” she grumbled.

  “Clothes are in my bedroom.” I waved. “Gotta run. Lock the door behind you. Coffee’s in the kitchen.”

  I was making a fresh pot of coffee when the box caught my eye. While it brewed, I opened the mystery package. Another note was on the top.

  Did you miss me?

  I set the note aside and pulled back the tissue paper. The “gift” was a framed newspaper clipping of a picture from a children’s charity event we attended as a family when I was about sixteen. The glass had a jagged crack across it, but it still wasn’t quite as creepy as the doll. I put everything back in the box and sat it with the other. Goosebumps covered my arms. What was Ashley getting at with these gifts? What if it wasn’t Ashley? I shook off the thought. I didn’t have time to worry about it. I poured a travel cup of coffee and left.

  When I parked at the hospital, I pulled my phone out of my purse before going inside. I texted Briggs, delighting in the fact that I’d be waking him up, and said I’d be ready for the dogs in a week or so. I was in the elevator when he texted back that he thought they were happier with him. What the hell was that supposed to mean? I told him that the dogs barely tolerated him and loved me, so put them on a plane, dammit. By the time I stepped off the elevator my phone was ringing. I looked down to see Briggs’s stupid smiling face.

  “What?”

  “I told you I can’t fly Sid and Nancy by themselves. If you want them, you have to come get them.” His voice made me a little wobbly, but my anger with him kept me focused.

  “I’ve already checked with the airline and you can fly them here. I’ll arrange and pay for everything. All you have to do is get a note from the vet saying they’re healthy and take them to the airport—then you’ll never have to hear my voice again.”

  He was silent so long I thought he’d hung up on me. Seriously, what was his problem? “Briggs? Hello.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine. I’ll email the flight information.”

  The phone clicked off with no goodbye. I really had no idea what had gotten into him. We never fought, not even once. Briggs was always level-headed and calm. Then overnight he hated me to the point he couldn’t stand to talk to me. My heart wasn’t broken—it was pulverized. It took a moment for the fact that his voice hadn’t sounded tired to sink in. He was already awake.

  I walked into Bee’s room, shaking my head. Dr. Sadler was already there, talking to her. He didn’t look up at me, but Bee turned and smiled. She seemed so weak and tired I was afraid to hug her. Her stomach was more distended than it had been the day before, and Dr. Sadler tapped his fingers against it gently while listening to her breathing with his stethoscope.

  “How is your pain today?” he asked, putting the stethoscope back around his neck and reaching behind him, never taking his eyes off of Bee.

  “Worse today.” Her voice was barely a whisper. I almost didn’t notice he was holding a Starbucks cup in front of me.

  “I will schedule paracentesis for a little later this morning. We’ll only remove about a liter, but it should make you more comfortable.”

  I racked my brain, trying to figure out what paracentesis was. Bee seemed to know because she nodded before she closed her eyes. Dr. Sadler patted her hand and smiled that dangerously charming grin at me.

  “What’s paracentesis?”

  “We tap the water in her abdomen to help relieve the pressure.”

  “Why only take a liter? Can’t you just take it all?”

  He shook his head. “She would go into shock, but we can remove enough that it will make a difference.” He glanced at his watch. “I need to finish my rounds, but I’ll be back. You rest, Bee.”

  “Thanks for the coffee,” I called before he opened the door. He waved over his shoulder and left. I looked back at Bee and chewed my lip.

  “Stop worrying so much. You’ll get wrinkles,” she said without opening her eyes.

  I took her hand and sat in the chair next to her. “Rest. We’ll talk later.”

  Her breathing slowed and evened within minutes. I pulled a magazine out of my purse because I was too nervous to focus on a book. I flipped through it, looking at the pictures. Suddenly something cold brushed against my cheek. My head snapped up, and my hand went to my face.

  My cheek felt like ice.

  “Ryyyaaannnnn …” My name was whispered from Bee’s closet. I stared at the closet, my mind screaming that this wasn’t possible. I pinched my arm hard enough to leave a bruise, but I didn’t snap out of it. I looked over at Bee, but she continued to sleep.

  “Hello?” I said timidly.

  “Oh, hello, dear. How are you today?”

  I jumped about a foot in the air, my hand on my heart.

  The nurse from yesterday walked into the room. “How’s your aunt feeling today?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not a good day.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She gently took Bee’s vital signs, barely waking her up. “What happened to Mrs. Simpson?” I asked as the nurse was starting to leave.


  “Oh, she passed, dear.” The nurse gave me a sad look and shook her head.

  “I know that, but how did she die?” I just needed a reasonable explanation so my mind would stop making up wild scenarios. “Bee didn’t know.”

  “Ms. Simpson wasn’t in the room when it happened.” The nurse glanced back toward the door before taking a couple steps in my direction.

  “Where was she?”

  The nurse looked uncomfortable, but she forced a smile. “I have no idea.” And with that she turned and walked out.

  Goosebumps covered my body as I watched her leave, knowing two things: the nurse was lying and Aunt Bee didn’t dream that whisper.

  I opened the closet door with a slightly shaking hand, but the small space looked exactly as it had when Dr. Sadler opened it. I thumped my knuckles against every flat surface in the closet, looking for anything, but there was nothing. I sighed, closed the door, and stared over at the empty bed. What on earth had happened to Mrs. Simpson?

  I went into the hall to see what room sat against the closet wall of Bee’s room, but there was nothing—just a hallway.

  “You okay?” a man asked as he walked by.

  I looked up at him. He was handsome, tall, fit, and he had no hair on his head except for a line of stubble along his jaw. “I’ve seen you before.”

  He smiled slightly. “I’ve seen you around too. Are you okay?”

  “Um, yeah, I’m fine.” I wasn’t going to tell a perfect stranger that I was investigating if my aunt’s room was haunted.

  He nodded. “Well, see you around.” And he walked down the hallway toward the waiting room.

  *

  They took Bee to x-ray to do the stomach tap and left me to wait nervously in the room. I watched the closet like a hawk, but nothing happened. I called the airline, made all the arrangements for the dogs, and emailed Briggs. The door opened a couple minutes later, and I hopped up, hoping they were back and everything was fine, but Blair walked in. I waved at him and flopped back down in the chair.

  “Where’s Bee?”

  “They’re draining the fluid from her stomach.”

  “Cool.”

  I shook my head—must be a guy thing.