Tara Calaby
THE GHOST OF YOU
I sign the release without reading it.
“Remember, these are experimental drugs,” the scientist says, handing me a plastic cup of water and a purple-tinted pill. “Blood pressure medication, ostensibly, but with a side-effect profile that’s unparalleled. The visions are completely safe, although they may be overwhelming. Physical responses—nausea, dizziness, nosebleeds—are more concerning. Anything like that happens, Beth, call us or go straight to the E.R. You can withdraw from the trial at any time. Got it?”
I nod and swallow the pill. It catches in my throat and I gulp a second mouthful of water to dislodge it.
“Fifteen minutes?” I ask.
“If that,” she says.
I settle into the corner of the couch and pull out a book for the wait.
#
You are filmy at first, a diaphanous arrangement of colours and lines that brings immediate tears to my eyes. I blink them away and, as I watch, you solidify. The arc of your lips, the bend of your jaw—every part of you is just as I remember it.
“I missed you,” you say.
My breath escapes: a harsh, sobbing sound. “I missed you more.”
You smile and it’s so loving, so pitying, that I think I’m splitting in two. “I guess you did,” you say. “But I’m here now.”
“Can I touch you?” I ask.
You stretch one hand towards me. I reach for you and when our fingers meet you are sunshine warm.
#
They send me home with fourteen pills, rattling inside a plastic bottle with four different warning stickers on its side. I’m supposed to take one pill a day. The first lasted three hours, so that’s twenty-one hours without you and it feels like far too long. Only yesterday, you were gone forever, but I’m greedy. I want to bury my nose in your hair and hear you sigh my name.
I sit at my computer, but I can’t work. I heat a meal in the microwave but, when I pull back the plastic, it smells like something died.
You look down at me from the photograph on the living room wall. There’s that wedding-day grin beneath those everyday eyes. I press my palm to your stomach, but the canvas is cold.
#
“Remember our tenth anniversary?” you ask.
My hands are buried in the curls of your hair. “That terrible tour guide,” I say. “Got us lost in the canals.”
“Everything stank of fish and mould and you looked so beautiful.”
“You always were a flatterer.”
“Were?” you ask.
I feel sick and yet somehow elated. Were, I think. Before you left me. When you were more than grief and a gravestone and a half-empty bed.
“I’m here now,” you say, reading my face like always.
“You’re a hallucination.”
You kiss me once. Twice. Press your forehead against my cheek. “Better than nothing, right?” you say and by god you are so much you that it hurts.
#
When the pills wear off, you fade like a rainbow in a darkening sky. I can pass a hand right through you, where minutes earlier you had been heat and flesh. In the last moment before you disappear, you lift one hand, forming the shape of half a heart. By the time I’ve curved my hand into the other half, there’s only air to meet it.
I’ll be quicker next time, I think, but it never happens. It feels too much like admitting it's goodbye.
#
On the sixth day, I take two pills. I can’t bear to watch you fade.
“Is that safe?” you ask, your head pillowed on my lap. Your lashes cast long shadows from the lamp beside the couch. You’re beautiful, always beautiful. I love you so much it burns.
“I’m just a little dizzy,” I say. “It’s nothing. I don’t mind.”
I hold you until you disappear. Your weight lifts from me and, for the first time in days, I weep.
#
The phone connection is fuzzy. “I need more pills,” I say above the static.
“You were given enough to last until your next appointment,” the woman says. “Fourteen days: fourteen pills.”
“One a day isn’t enough. You don’t understand,” I plead. “She leaves. Every day, she leaves me all over again and I can’t—I won’t—keep saying goodbye.”
“For your safety—” she begins.
“To hell with my safety!”
“If you’d like to speak to a psychologist—”
I hang up on her. My nose is bleeding. I fetch the tissue box from the bathroom and take another pill.
#
“You’re not well,” you say.
The room is lurching, but you are straight and perfect in front of me, despite the worry in your eyes.
“You’re here,” I say. “That’s enough.”
“But your nose—”
The clump of tissues is soaked with blood. I discard it and pluck more from the box, wadding them together and pushing them to my face.
“Three more pills after this one,” I say. “That’s twelve hours, total.”
“Tomorrow,” you say. “There’s no rush. I’ll always be here.”
“They won’t give me any more pills.” I catch hold of your wrist with my empty hand. It smears blood across your palm. “Twelve hours. That’s it. That’s not enough.”
Your lip twitches the way it always does when you’re trying to be brave. “There’ll be other trials,” you say. “Hell, you’ll be able to buy them soon.”
“With what?”
I’ve let everything else fall away, living only for these moments with you. I don’t work; I barely eat. I’m on pause mode when you’re not here.
“You’ll think of something,” you say. “You always do.”
You’re right. You’re always right. But I don’t say it: not this time.
“Hold me,” I say instead. When I step towards you, I stumble.
You wrap your arms around me and the smell of your perfume mingles with the metallic taint of blood. The three remaining pills are in my pocket. You stroke my hair as I swallow them down.