Do you believe in ghosts?
It was a simple question. Five words. One that couple be answered with a very simple and dismissive, "No." But Jimmy couldn't seem to let it through his lips, which he kept tightly pressed together in thought, for fear of the answer being something other than "no".
Doctor Mallard was across the room, latching the door to their murder victim's chamber shut with morose mutterings of having left this life too soon. The man was in his late twenties when he was cleaved in the head with an axe. His eyes, now devoid of any emotion, were bright and shining in the headshot included in his file, and they were the precise blue-green color of the pair that stared back at them, shielded behind coke-bottle glasses. Jimmy tried not to think about it too hard. He forced himself to look away from the picture of Lt. Dean as he closed the folder and filed it away in silence.
Ducky was slipping his arm into his trench coat sleeve, his hat already perched atop his head, when the words came stumbling out.
"D'youblievinghosts?" Jimmy swallowed nervously. "Doctor," he added on for good measure.
Ducky stared at him for a moment from across the room. Jimmy felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding, as if he had treaded upon the one topic he was not allowed to probe. But before he could backtrack, Ducky had removed his hat and shuffled closer to him.
"It is very difficult to enter this line of work and not believe in some sort of afterlife. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. Palmer?"
Jimmy wasn't sure if this question was rhetorical or not, so he remained silent.
"In my many years of performing autopsies for NCIS, examining bodies of people whose lives have left them much sooner than they were meant to, I've discovered that there are a handful of people whose lives seemed to have not quite detached themselves as much as they ought to have done. Yes, in cases such as these, I feel as if they're waiting for answers just as much as we are."
Years ago, when Jimmy was still becoming accustomed to Doctor Mallard's unorthodox way of dealing with his victims, he may have dismissed this comment as a tag-along to the doctor's preference of talking to the empty shells of the deceased. But he listened carefully and quietly, waiting for Ducky to say what seemed to be resting on the tip of his tongue.
"As far as visual apparitions, I for one have never witnessed the body of a victim anywhere other than our autopsy table—other than the crime scene, of course. Nor have I seen any indication of figures draped in white cloth, lurking just on the borders of my peripheral vision. Although my vision is not what it used to be. . . ." Jimmy bowed his head slightly, mulling over his words. Ducky tried to catch his eye. "Is there any specific reason you ask me this, Jimmy?"
He looked up at the use of his first name and met Ducky's eyes. He could see his own reflection in the doctor's glasses. "No, I was. . . I was just wondering, that's all." He chuckled softly. "Saw The Sixth Sense over the weekend and I was just thinking about ghosts."
Ducky smiled. "Anthony, I'm sure, will be proud that you have broadened your cinematic horizons." He placed his hat back on his head. "Do remember that ghosts, Mr. Palmer, are not necessarily those that appear before us in plain sight, such as those that plagued young Cole. Ghosts can be anything as simple as a memory, hovering somewhere in the corner of your heart, leaving an imprint that refuses to go away for quite some time. And those ghosts, Mr. Palmer, I can assure you, are quite real." And with a tip of his hat, Ducky turned walked through the sliding doors, leaving Jimmy alone in the dimly lit morgue.
Jimmy thought to Lt. Dean, the man whose eyes so much resembled his own. How his wife had burst into tears at the sight of his mangled body. How his children retracted into silent shells of the people they appeared to be in family pictures that littered the mantelpiece. Would anyone miss Jimmy as much as Lt. Dean's family missed him? His mother, sure. That one was a given. But had he left an impact strong enough to evoke tears at the sight of his lifeless body? Would Doctor Mallard cry, or would he simply speak in somber tones to his cold flesh before hiring another trainee?
Jimmy looked at his watch. Eight-fifteen. He had just enough time to run home and take a shower before his nine-o'clock date with Breena.
That's what he'd do. He'd scrub the remnants of this depressing day off of him, just like he did every morning and every night and every time he took a midday shower. Then he'd forget it ever happened while he had dinner with a person who might just turn into someone who'd give a damn.
He slipped his coat on and moved toward the door to flip off the last light switch. In the moments before the lights switched off, he saw a shock of thick black hair, a white blouse littered with bright red bullet holes, a pair of eyes that bore into him deeper than any sponge could scrub off.
"Goodnight, Michelle," he muttered, in hopes that she wouldn't follow him home like she did every night.
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