Page 8 of Midnight with the Devil

She picked up her cell phone from her nightstand and checked the time. It was nearly noon on a Sunday morning. She’d missed several calls from her mother. Heart pounding, she called her mom back. Something had happened to her dad before she’d had a chance to say goodbye? She tried not to think about it, about how pale he had been last night.

“Diana! Thank God!” her mother gasped when she answered the phone.

“What is it? Dad?” Diana’s voice broke, and she was seconds away from crying.

“Yes, but I think it’s good news. He came out of the coma. I think…” Her mother choked on a sob. “I think he might be in remission.”

“What?” Diana wiped the fresh stream of tears on her cheeks. She didn’t understand.

“It’s a miracle! Your father called me at around nine. He woke up at six this morning feeling better than he’s been in a long time. He called the nurses to have the doctors come see him. They ran some tests and biopsied his colon.” Her mother took a deep breath before continuing. “They didn’t find any cancer cells.”

That couldn’t be possible. Yesterday he had been mere days away from death.

“Mom, they made a mistake,” Diana said. “They had to.”

“They tested him several times on several different machines to be sure.”

Diana bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. It was too dangerous to let hope take over. Far too dangerous.

“So what does this mean?” she asked her mother.

“I think he can come home in a few days. I’m headed to the hospital now.”

“I can meet you there.”

“No, no,” her mother said. “Let me go. Just in case.” The words she left unsaid were loud in the silence between them. In case it really was a mistake. Better to have only her mother’s hopes broken than both of them. But Diana didn’t want her facing that news alone.

“I’m coming.” Diana hung up on her mother before she could protest, and she hastily dressed and grabbed her keys. Her orange tabby cat, Seth, was perched on the arm of the couch in the small living room, purring as she walked by.

“I’ll be back later,” she told the cat. He lowered onto his stomach and tucked his paws under his chest, watching her as she slung her purse over her shoulder and slipped outside.

By the time she reached the hospital, she was a nervous wreck. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She parked her car and headed toward the oncology department, but when she got to the hall leading to her father’s room, the hairs on the back of her neck rose and she had that eerie sensation of someone watching her.

Just like in my dream.

Diana glanced about but didn’t see anyone except for the nurses at their stations.

“We made a deal. Don’t forget it.”The soft, seductive voice slithered inside her mind, and she froze a step away from the door to her father’s room.

No. It had been a dream. Their encounter hadn’t been real. The man, the devil, that kiss—it had all been a dream.

“You promised me your soul, and I will collect.”

Diana shook her head, trying to banish the voice, and she rushed into her father’s room.

Hal sat in bed, his face full of color and smiling. Her mother spoke to a doctor who was showing her some lab results. It all seemed so surreal. Last night he’d been still and pale as death, his hands clammy to the touch and his chest barely moving with shallow breaths. The man in the hospital before her now was healthy and bright-eyed. Her heart stung with an overwhelming rush of joy.

“Hey.” Diana greeted her father and kissed him and hugged him. He returned her hug, and she was startled by the strength of his embrace. The last few months he had been too weak to do anything but squeeze her hand.

“Hey, kiddo. I think I might be going home in a few days. Can you believe it?” Her father’s eyes sparkled with life in a way she couldn’t remember. He had been ill for two years now, and she had started to forget the man he had been before the cancer.

“Yeah, Mom called me. I can’t believe it.” She hugged him again, her heart clenching in her chest.

“It could be that the treatments really worked and we are just now finally seeing the results,” the doctor explained. “Either way, I think this is good, Mrs. Kingston. We’ll continue to run tests for a few more days to be sure, but I’d like to plan on sending him home on Wednesday.”

Her mother beamed at the doctor. “Wednesday?”

“Yes.” The doctor smiled. “I try not to let patients get their hopes up, but in this case, things look very good.”

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