Jean did her best to return to her normal life. Well, as normal as she could call it. She no longer concerned herself with the medical practice, as all the patients had gone to other doctors. No inventory needed to be done, no patient invoices sent, no instruments to sterilize. Similarly, she did not have to entertain visitors or even clean the entire house.
Doctor Blake would not last the week, Doctor King had said. The nurse and Jean would take their turns ensuring that Doctor Blake was not left alone and was as comfortable as possible. While the nurse was on duty, Jean would do the cooking and cleaning, what little there was of it. There was no one else. Jean hardly wanted to bother making meals. But the nurse had to eat, so Jean pressed on with things.
Though Doctor Blake was not gone yet, Jean felt herself grieving already. She felt small flickers of hope that she quickly extinguished. It wouldn't do to think that there was anything that could be done. Doctor Blake would never wake and speak to her ever again. She had to get used to him being gone.
It was strange, living like this. The exact opposite had happened when Christopher went off to war. She had forced optimism on herself, that he would be home soon, that their boys would see their father before they knew it. It was the small voice in her head, then, that had cautioned such hope. She always had that sinking feeling that he might not come home, that there was a risk he wouldn't escape war unscathed. That little flicker of doubt. She knew that the doubt would be proved right again here.
There was no hope to be had.
Even so, Jean was comforted by her time spend with the doctor while she sat with him. Jean took the night shift so the nurse could sleep. After her late-night wandering where her imagination took to terrifying her so, Jean didn't quite trust herself not to let her mind play those tricks on her again.
She tried not to think about the studio. What she thought she'd seen. What she'd frightened herself into believing. When she did her work in the house, she avoided going anywhere near those double doors. If she tried to open them again, she would most likely find them to be locked. She'd imagined the whole thing.
Jean hadn't let her mind actually go back to that ordeal since it happened. Strange she should think of it now.
"Doctor Blake, I know I've not spoken much to you lately. It is hard for me to speak and know that you can't answer me. I think that's what I miss more than anything. Our chats. You used to pour me a bit of sherry and we'd sit by the fire and talk sometimes. It was nice for me to be treated as a companion to you. Not just a servant. You've never treated me like that. It's one of the reasons I've always stayed with you. I want to do work that matters, to be a value to someone. I know I'm not a member of your family, and it would have been inappropriate for you to treat me as such, but you always made me feel valued, and that's what mattered. Matters." She sighed. "Mattered," she decided.
She shifted in the chair. The premature grief started to settle in her belly.
"I know you can't really hear me. I suppose that's why I'm talking to you now. I feel like I've got to tell someone. You'd think it terribly silly, I think. I'd never say anything if you could hear me. I know it is silly. But I…well, I think I went up to Mrs. Blake's old studio."
Jean felt foolish saying such a thing out loud, but she could feel some of the weight of it lifted even as she began.
And so she continued. "It must have been a dream. But I opened the doors and went up the stairs. I didn't know there were stairs, but that's what my imagination created. And I heard voices. When I opened the door, I thought…I thought I saw Mrs. Blake. From the photographs of her I've seen around the house. She was young and beautiful like she was in the pictures. She was there with a man about my age or so. I don't know who he was."
Even though Doctor Blake could not hear her or understand what she was saying, Jean still was reticent about admitting that she thought the man might have been Doctor Blake's son. It still made no sense, Jean imagining Lucien Blake as a middle-aged man when he would have not even been forty when he died in the war.
She shook herself a little and went on. "Mrs. Blake spoke to me. That's how I knew it was her, even if I didn't recognize her appearance. She spoke with a French accent. A lovely, melodic voice. And she knew me," Jean recalled suddenly. "She called me Mrs. Beazley."
The silliness of it all was starting to take over, so Jean just huffed at herself in slight frustration.
"Anyway, it was just a dream, so it doesn't matter," she concluded.
"It was no dream, Mrs. Beazley."
Jean gasped at the sound of another voice in the room. A voice she recognized.
Standing in the corner of the room beside Doctor Blake's bed was Mrs. Blake. Or the image of Mrs. Blake. Her spirit?
"Y-you're real?" Jean stammered. Her voice shook. Her whole body shook.
Mrs. Blake nodded with a serene smile on her face. "If it helps you to understand, you can consider me a ghost. My life ended forty years ago, but my soul lives on to allow me to attend to my unfinished business," she explained.
Jean frowned. "Unfinished business?"
"As a wife and mother, Mrs. Beazley, you must understand how terribly difficult it was for me to leave a husband I loved so dearly and a young son who lost his mother. There is not much a ghost can do in the mortal world, but I have tried to be with Thomas and Lucien as much as I could," she said.
"Was that your son in the studio with you that night?"
"Yes," Mrs. Blake answered simply.
Jean was feeling a bit lightheaded. "Is he a ghost as well?"
"I will let Lucien explain for himself. But I wanted to see you and speak to you again before I have to go."
"Why me?" Jean asked in surprise.
Mrs. Blake gave that serene smile again. "You are very important, Mrs. Beazley. You have taken very good care of Thomas when I could not. And I hope you might be able to take care of Lucien while I am away from him."
"Where are you going?"
The ghost of Mrs. Blake turned her attention away from Jean to look at her husband. "It is time for us to be reunited at last. Thomas will need me for a while. I will not be able to visit Lucien."
Jean felt dizzy. Drunk, almost. The world was spinning under her feet and she could hardly hold on.
Unconcerned with Jean's predicament, Mrs. Blake walked closer to Doctor Blake. She leaned in close, almost touching him but not quite.
Shining tracks of tears appeared down the ghost's face. Her beautiful, bluish, translucent face.
Suddenly, Mrs. Blake stood up straight. Her shoulders slumped sadly. "He is gone. I must go to him now."
And before Jean could say or do anything, Mrs. Blake was gone. As though she had blinked out of existence. Perhaps she had.
Time seemed to speed up to catch Jean. She jumped up from her chair and ran to Doctor Blake, searching his wrist and his neck for a pulse. Finding none, she shouted for the nurse. Though there wasn't much the nurse could do.
Doctor Blake was gone.