Chapter 5
Jana POV (Spirit Form):
The first thing I noticed was the silence. The constant, thrumming pain in my side was gone. The heaviness in my chest had vanished.
I opened my eyes. I was floating.
I looked down. Below me, chaos had erupted.
My body lay on the table, pale and still. My eyes were half-open, staring at nothing. Dr. Sanchez was frantically working, her hands deep inside the open cavity of my abdomen.
"Code Blue!" the nurse was screaming. "She's crashing!"
"I can't find it!" Dr. Sanchez yelled. She wasn't trying to restart my heart. She was looking for something else. "Where is the other one?"
Axel was pounding on the glass of the observation window. "What is happening? Save the organ!"
Dr. Sanchez pulled her hands out. She was covered in blood-'but it wasn't red. It was a thick, oily black sludge.' She grabbed the chart and threw it across the room.
"She only had one!" Dr. Sanchez shouted, her voice breaking with horror. She looked up at the observation window, directly at Axel. "There is no second kidney! The left one is gone! There is only scar tissue!"
I floated higher, hovering near the ceiling lights. I felt light as a feather. I looked at my spirit hands; they were translucent, glowing with a faint silver light.
"That's impossible!" Axel's voice came through the intercom, sounding tinny and panicked. "'Kyleigh's doctors swore-'"
"Look at the scars, you idiot!" Dr. Sanchez screamed back, forgetting all protocol. She pointed at my dead body. "'Look at the necrosis! This isn't a birth defect. This was surgically removed years ago!'"
She stopped. She leaned closer to my open incision. 'Now that I was dead, the magical veil Kyleigh had paid for was lifting. The true scent was hitting the air.'
"Wolfsbane," she whispered. "Her organs are saturated with it. She's been poisoned for years. 'That's why the anesthesia failed. Her body was already fighting a war.'"
The realization hit the room like a bomb.
"We killed her," the nurse sobbed behind her mask. "We just harvested her only kidney."
"We have to finish," Dr. Sanchez said. Her face was gray. She looked like she wanted to vomit. "If we don't put this kidney in Kyleigh, it dies too. And then Jana died for nothing."
I watched as they took the last piece of my life-my remaining kidney-and placed it into a cooler. They wheeled it out to the next room.
I didn't follow the kidney. I didn't care about Kyleigh anymore.
I drifted through the wall. It felt like walking through mist.
I emerged in the waiting room. My parents were there, sitting on the leather couches looking at a wedding magazine.
"I think lilies for the altar," my mother said. "Kyleigh looks good with lilies."
"Whatever she wants," my father replied, checking his phone.
They didn't know yet. They didn't know their daughter was a corpse in the next room.
Axel came bursting through the double doors from the surgical wing. He looked wild. His hair was disheveled, his eyes wide with a terror I had never seen in him.
He stopped in the middle of the room. He took a deep breath, inhaling the air.
"Jana?" he whispered.
I floated right in front of him. I reached out and touched his cheek. My hand passed through his skin, leaving a trail of cold mist.
He shuddered violently. He grabbed his chest, right over his heart.
"Axel?" my mother asked, standing up. "Is it over? Is Kyleigh okay?"
Axel ignored her. He was spinning around, looking at the empty air. Looking for me.
"I can smell her," he said, his voice trembling. "Why does it smell like... like rain? Like fading rain?"
Dr. Sanchez walked out. She had taken off her surgical mask. Her face was grim.
She looked at my parents. Then she looked at Axel. And then, her eyes shifted.
She looked right at me.
Dr. Sanchez was a Healer. Her gift allowed her to see the flow of life and death. 'Now that the chaos of the emergency was over, she saw the shimmering outline of my spirit floating in the center of the room.'
Her eyes widened. She covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a gasp.
'I see you, child,' her voice echoed in my mind. Not a Mind-Link, but a spirit connection.
I smiled at her. It was a sad smile.
'Tell them,' I thought. 'Tell them everything.'
Dr. Sanchez straightened her spine. She looked at Axel, who was still frantically searching the room for the source of the scent.
"The surgery was a success," Dr. Sanchez said. Her voice was cold as ice. "Kyleigh will live."
My parents cheered. My mother clapped her hands.
"However," Dr. Sanchez continued, her voice cutting through their celebration like a blade. "There is a price."
"What price?" Axel asked. He stopped moving. He looked at the doctor.
"Go to the morgue," Dr. Sanchez said. "And see what your silence has cost you."
Axel didn't wait. He ran. He ran toward the room where my body lay cooling on the metal table.
I watched him go. A strange pull tugged at my back, like a hook in my navel pulling me upward toward the sky, toward the Moon Goddess.
But I resisted. Not yet.
I wanted to see him break.
'
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