Pen Pal(87)

* * *



Michael Reece: Listen, I’ve had enough of this. I want…





* * *



Dr. Templeman: Yes? Go on.





* * *



Physician’s note: Patient is fixating on a spot on the wall and becoming unresponsive. He appears to be in extreme distress.





* * *



Dr. Templeman: Mr. Reece, are you unwell?





* * *



Michael Reece: Oh God. Oh my God!





* * *



Dr. Templeman: Mr. Reece?





* * *



Physician’s note: Patient is screaming. Attempts to exit the interview room. Pounds on the door in visible panic.





* * *



Dr. Templeman: Mr. Reece, what’s wrong? Tell me what’s happening.





* * *



Michael Reece: It’s her! It’s her and him both! Oh God! Let me out of here! Let me out of this fucking room!





* * *



Physician’s note: Patient appears to be experiencing psychosis-related visual disturbance.





* * *



Dr. Templeman: Mr. Reece, we’re alone in the room.





* * *



Michael Reece: She’s right fucking there you fucking idiot! Look! Look!





* * *



Dr. Templeman: You’re suffering a hallucination. You and I are the only people in this room.





* * *



Physician’s note: Patient has crouched in the corner of the room and resumed screaming.





* * *



Dr Templeman: Mr. Reece, will you please calm down? I’ll have to call for you to be tranquilized if you can’t control yourself.





* * *



Michael Reece: Stop saying that! Stop saying that! Stop saying that word!





* * *



Dr. Templeman: What word are you hearing, Michael? Is someone speaking to you? What are they saying?





* * *



Michael Reece: BOO!





* * *



Physician’s note: After being restrained by guards, patient received intramuscular injection of phenobarbital and was transferred to the psychiatric department for further evaluation.





Acknowledgments





The idea for this novel came from one of my characters. If you’re familiar with the Queens & Monsters series, in book three, Savage Hearts, Riley is kidnapped by Malek, a Russian assassin. As one does when one is recovering from a bullet wound and being held hostage in the middle of a remote Russian forest, she starts to write a book during her captivity to pass the time. It’s about a woman who doesn’t know she’s dead. I really liked that idea.

So thank you for that, Riley.

There are also several other sources of inspiration for this novel that I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention. In no particular order, they are the movies Ghost, Poltergeist, The Sixth Sense, The Others, Pan’s Labyrinth, and especially Jacob’s Ladder, which I saw when I was twenty years old and never emotionally recovered from. Also the brilliant novels Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult and We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, the novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, the play Hamlet by Shakespeare, and the narrative poem The Divine Comedy by Dante. And finally the ancient Greek legend of Eurydice and Orpheus, which served as both an influence on the story and a name for Kayla’s boat.

There’s one other major influence that’s much more personal in nature: my father’s death.

My father was on hospice care at home for three weeks before he died. I sat with him at his bedside in the house I grew up in and watched him deteriorate until finally, he was no longer there. I’ll spare you the details, but it was heartbreaking. I’m still not over it, and it’s been eight years.

But two significant things happened in those weeks that I will tell you about, because they permanently altered me.

The first thing is that before Dad got to the point where he could no longer speak, he asked me to bring him his address book. He kept it in a big wood roll-top desk in his office, under the framed posters of Amelia Earhart and WWII fighter planes. The book contained the names and phone numbers of all his lifelong friends and extended family members. (He’d put a line through a name if the person had died, but never removed the listing.) Because he was too weak to do it, I dialed the numbers from the book and held the phone to his ear as he called everyone he loved to say goodbye.

Listening to those conversations is one of the most meaningful experiences of my life.

It is also one of the most painful.

To know you’re dying is not an easy thing. To face your imminent death with courage isn’t easy, either. But my father didn’t make a fuss. He simply went about dying as he went about living. With competence and quiet dignity, doing what needed to be done despite whatever he might have been feeling about the situation.