Page 47 of Wired Ghost

Weirdly, he wasn’t all that curious about it.

It was what it was.

He made his play and won the pile of Necco wafers. He scooped them towards him, and hollered, “Kenny!” and tossed his boyhood friend one of the candies. Kenny took a big step forward and caught the wafer on his tongue, and they all cheered.

He tossed more of the Neccos to his Army buddies, and they tried to catch them in their mouths, but most of them missed. Even Grandma tried to catch one, and it landed right on her shelf of cleavage, and they all laughed more than Jake remembered laughing in years.

And then, just that suddenly, the rosy bubble around the parlor burst, and Jake was swimming somewhere deep underwater.

The pressure of the depths squeezed his lungs. He kicked and thrashed, trying to get to the surface, but the water was thick and viscous as oil. His lungs were burning, and the sense of weight was immense. It reminded him of those last horrible moments in the lava tube, but worse somehow—as if his lungs were already filled with fluid and heaving like a bellows, and yet doing nothing to alleviate his terrible need to breathe.

He flopped like a fish onto dry ground, and landed in a bed.

He could feel the sheets, the mattress, the blanket over his legs, the IV in his arm. But he couldn’t see, and when he tried to move, nothing happened. He was trapped deep inside his body. Smells of disinfectant and something fake floral assaulted his nose.

He heard the beeping of monitors, and voices.

Familiar voices.

Words sorted out of the sounds hitting his ears like individual pebbles.

His mother: “I don’t think he’s breathing.”

“Give him a minute.” An unfamiliar voice—a doctor? “We just took the tube out. The body has to get the message to do it on its own.”

“What’s that wavy line?” His sister Patty’s voice.

“That’s brain activity. He had us worried there, for a while, but he seems to be coming back online, as it were.”

“Oh, please, Jake. Breathe! Breathe!” His mom pleaded.

Yes,Jake shouted.Yes, dammit, I’m here, and I’m alive!

Nothing happened. No one heard him. Even his eyelids refused to obey.

The sense of an anvil sitting on his chest intensified. It hurt, so badly—and then his mouth opened, and he gasped. Air flowed into his damaged lungs as his breathing reflex finally kicked in.

And that hurt like hell, too. His throat felt raw, his lungs bubbled.

“He’s breathing!” Patty shrieked. He felt her arms go around him, felt her tears wetting the sheet covering him.

His mother pressed his hand against her cheek. “Jake, Jake—we love you.”

Where’s Sophie?He screamed.Sophie!

They didn’t hear him.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Sophie

“He’s alive!”Patty’s voice on the phone was a shriek of joy, blasting Sophie’s ear drum.

“I don’t understand,” Sophie said stiffly. She’d been so completely sure he was gone. She hadn’t been able to afford hope, not even a teaspoon of it.

“We came in to unplug him as scheduled. The doctor was all excited; he showed us the brain graph, told us that Jake’s brain waves had been fluctuating but increasing. We decided to take him off the ventilator, anyway, and he started breathing on his own! Now he’s showing signs of waking up!” Sophie heard excited voices in the background, a jumble of exclamations. “He’s coming around, Sophie! Get your butt over here. I don’t care what our mom says, nothing will bring him back from the dead like having you there!” She told Sophie the room number. “Hurry!”

Sophie lurched up from the bed so quickly that she tripped and fell to her knees on the carpet. “On my way.”

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