Walking With A Ghost

Chapter 6

The next morning, I awoke gently to the sunlight falling through the thin slits of the blinds on to her face. She squinted for a second, recalling where she was. Great, it wasn't all just a horrid dream...I wanted to go home NOW. By home, I meant the Leaky Cauldron, with Tom the bartender and all the shop keepers, and the locals and the regulars...and my friends...I never knew how much they meant to me until now. And now they are gone! I picked up the remote attached to my bed with a tangled plastic cord, and flipped the television on. It was supposed to be beautiful all week long, sunny and in the 80s according to the cheery newscaster. There was some Muggle stuff about some politician giving a controversial speech, and I watched the rest of the news in fascination. I even watched a talk show, a soap opera, and a movie. It was amazing how much free time I had now, it was nearly scary. All I had to do was eat, sleep, watch tv when I was awake, and go to my check-ups and physical therapy. This was the life. But I couldn't help but wonder every once in a while (about three times every ten minutes) what James and Sirius and the rest of the crew were doing...

(Back at the Leaky Cauldron)

"But she has to be somewhere!" James cried out, pacing in front of the fireplace. Sirius was slouched in an armchair, exausted from nerves but running over accounts of what locals had said when they described Mona and when she might have been passing by constantly in his mind. Where did she go? It was as if their best friend had vanished off the face of the planet! James had written to Peter, Remus, and Lily telling them what happened, and asking what they might try to do. The best friends hadn't gotten any replys yet, since everybody lived quite a distance away.

"I never should have come here, or ignored her, or she'd be fine and safe!" Sirius burst out, rubbing his tired eyes. Neither James nor Sirius had barely slept at all in the past five days, ever since they waited up until sunrise the next morning, waiting for Mona Lisa to return.

"Don't blame yourself lad," Tom said, hunched over a mug he was cleaning. "She'll turn up sooner or later, Miss Proctor can take care of herself." A woman seated at the bar looked kindly at the boys, having witnessed their distress for the past two hours.

"Why don't you go get some sleep, Tom and I will watch and tell you if something happens." And they were shooed off to their rooms upstairs. James collapsed on the bed, falling asleep immediately, while Sirius stayed awake, staring at the ceiling. He was really panicking, what if Mona had been kidnapped by a Muggle? Or been hurt, or gotten lost, or...he gulped. Heaven forbid, raped! He turned over, and curled up next to the wall. They didn't even get to say good-bye...

The next morning, both boys awakened to the sound of tapping on their window. Three owls floated outside, each clutching a letter. Sirius leaped out of bed, and opened it up, snatching the letters. The first one was from Peter: it basically said that he was sorry, but couldn't come down because his mother was sick with the Muggle flu and he didn't want to leave her alone. The one from Lily was much more helpful, it said:

To James and Sirius,

I can't believe this happened! Be sure to ask people even miles away, Mona does have a tendancy to wandar. Try to think of somewhere she might like to go when she's upset, somewhere peaceful like a garden or a park or a church or something. I'm not entirely sure, you know her better than I do. Ask anybody you see, but she'll turn up eventually. I'll come down as soon as I can to help you search, just keep looking until I get there. That'd be why she isn't coming back probably, keep looking!

Lily

Another letter was clasped in a ruffled looking owl, that nearly collasped from exaustion on the desk. James recognized it as one of the speed owls that were said to be able to fly three times faster than a normal owl. It was from Remus, who was still in holiday in France! It consisted of a very bitter paragraph:

I'd come back right now, I knew something like this would happen if I left. But I can't because it's almost the full moon, and my parents don't want me travelling back abroad for obvious reasons. I want to come anyways, but I can't! I really want to kick you right now for letting her out of your sight, Sirius. Once you find her, give her a hug from me. Suggestions? Um...try looking around local hospitals. She might have been hurt in an accident. Wait, don't go until Lily gets there since she's probably coming down. No offense, but you'll probably be put in a mental hospital if you try to communicate with normal people. See you when school starts, and you'd better have Mona with you or else.

Remus

Sirius gulped a bit. The last time he'd been hexed by Moony was in their fourth year, and it hadn't been pretty. They'd forgotten what it was about, but Sirius still tasted vomiting slugs in his nightmares sometimes. He definately didn't want to repeat the experiance.

"Let's go, we should go ask around parks like Lily told us." James tossed Sirius his jacket, and they headed out into the Muggle world together.

(Back at the hospital...)

"Three jacks!" Mallory triumphantly slammed down three cards face down on the large stack forming on my rolling food cart. We (meaning I, Mallory, two other nurses, Jacquelin and Tina, Nathan the surgical intern, and Mikey the anestesiaologist) Together, they decided to spend all their free time in my room, since they all thought I was cool or something. I'd say more bizarre than cool, but it's their opinion. Today, we all decided to play cards together, and since everybody went broke twenty minutes earlier we all were playing B.S.

"B.S.!" Mikey laughed, flashing the fact that he currently held all four jacks. Mallory's mood drooped as she was forced to take all the cards that were growing in a pile into her hand. We kept going around and around, until Nathan's pager beeped, and a code blue was reported on the fifth floor forcing everybody but me and Mikey to dash from the room at top speed. I swear, this hospital never sleeps or stops moving! It's insane!

Mikey sighed, and I took in his appearance. He wore his hair short, but his bangs fell low over his forehead and into his eyes. He was a blonde, tall, and in my opinion very handsome. He also wore thick, rectangle glasses with large, plastic black frames. He constantly had this aura of innocence and "hug me I'm an adorable puppy" about him, that no one could ever resist. Including me, and everybody else. Which is why he was the only one who walked away from our ridiculous poker tournament without losing over $800. I didn't care, I wasn't going to be paying it back. But I did have to say, I would miss these people when I got better. Maybe I'd come back to visit or something, they'd probably have forgotten me by the end of the month.

That's what I hate about time. Honestly, time sucks. It's like sand, you try to hold it in your hands but you can't, it always slips through the cracks between your fingers anyways, and eventually you're left with nothing. Empty handed, only with the gradually fading memory of what you once had. Oh well. I guess I should just enjoy my time here, or not, since I was still longing for contact with the magical world. My friends would probably be bald by now from tearing out their hair...

"So..." Mikey interrupted my thoughts, looking a bit uncomfortable in his folding chair.

"So..." I said back, not having any idea what to tell him. Why do moments like this always happen? We just sat there in silence, staring around the room. A small knock sounded at the door, and a short, African woman was standing at the door with a large stack of papers. I knew who it was, this was Mikey's boss, Rosemary.

"Labs came back." she snapped at him, dumping the enourmous load into Mikey's arms, making him grunt under the weight, and sag a bit from trying to hold it. "Go on now, do your little analyzing thing. I'm not gonna read all that crap!" Mikey muttered under his breath, and bid me good-bye sadly. Though he was sure to leave me a couple shots of extra morphine, was it? To take on my own. They helped out a lot, especially when you want to be able to sleep.

So we parted ways, Mikey wandering off to his messy office, where he was somehow able to decipher the cryptic number language of the labs. How he does it, nobody else in the hospital really knows. It's amazing how much you learn about people in such a short period of time. I drummed my fingers on the plastic bed guards that made sure I wasn't going to fall out. Now what? At times like this, I'm never more aware of how much I don't belong here. The magazines are just totally foreign, and the television may be fascinating, but it's too confusing to try and stay up to date. I yawned, and let my tired body drift back to sleep.

About fifteen miles away, two teenage boys were crammed into a telephone booth, clutching the telephone in the middle of them along with detailed instructions on how to operate it from a Muggle born woman in the Leaky Cauldron. Sirius hadn't understood a word of it, and James really didn't either, so they were just going to try their luck with the "phone book."

"All right, first up, London Recieving." James announced, and dialed the digits into the keypad, feeling so happy about being able to work a telephone, or as Sirius called it, a felly-tone. There was two rings in the earpiece, that James was holding at mouth level, so Sirius grabbed it and turned the u-shaped black thing over. There was a click, and a voice sounded on the other end! Of a person! Sirius squealed in excitement and suprise, then was quickly hushed by James.

"London Recieving Hospital, how may I help you?" A woman's voice pleasently issued from the phone's speaker, and the two friends frantically searched the written on napkin the nice witch had given them in the pub, about what to say to the woman.

"Uh...we'd like to see if somebody is staying at the hospital." James spoke evenly, pronauncing each word clearly.

"May I ask who is calling, please?" the woman spoke again in that annoying happy high pitched voice.

"Oh, I'm James Potter!" James spoke up happily.

"And I'm Sirius!" Sirius yelled into the phone, causing the woman on the other end to hold it at arm's length away from her.

"Shut up!" James hissed, pulled on the tangled cord, and stood in the corner, facing out so Sirius couldn't interrupt.

"Gimme the felly-tone!" Sirius whined, and grabbed at the phone. James tugged it away quickly.

"No!"

"Now!" Sirius demanded, throwing himself half over his buddy's shoulder, both of them slamming into the walls of the tiny booth, squished on the sides of the glass windows. The woman's voice was babbling about something over the phone, which was on the ground, while the boys were trying to rearrange themselves again to no hope, slamming into glass and everything else. Passerby people stared at them, and muttered quietly. Finally James picked up the phone again, standing over Sirius who was staggering to his feet.

"Er, yeah. Her name's Mona Lisa Proctor, she's about seventeen, kinda average height? Wait, what? I don't know her birthday!"

"September 27!" Sirius hissed into his ear, sticking his face up to the phone to hear better.

"Yes, that's right. Oh. Oh... Yep. Thank you for your trouble." James hung up the phone. "She isn't there."

"Then where is she!" Sirius burst out, wringing his hands in anxiety.

"Cool it! There's hundreds of hospitals in London, this was only the first one!" James said, and dialed another one. They both groaned, and started the whole process over again. Later that night, only having made fifty-seven phone calls, they both trooped back exausted to the Leaky Cauldron. Sirius was so sick of hearing caffinated cheerleader voices from little speaker things he wanted to smash every felly-tone in the country with a hammer. That was his last thought before falling asleep, dreaming of nothing memorable to think of in the morning, or comprehend in unconciousness.

It had been a week and a day now since I went 'missing.' I don't know what's happened in the wizarding world, or what's happened to my friends. Do you know how painful that is? Having to be alone, yet they're so close, but you just can't reach them! I kept thinking, did it even matter if I wasn't a part of this world anymore? Who would even care if I died? Sure, my friends would be sad and all, but in seven years they will have forgotten my last name. Just a passing memory, that's what I am. How many people before me had laid on this bed, knowing nobody here would remeber them for more than a week? Why didn't they see the world like I do, how horrific time is that it constantly kicks you again and again until you finally fall. That's me, the passing dream on the horizon, forgotten in the morning. I couldn't help but have dark thoughts constantly flash through my mind, it seemed like I was barely able to control my thoughts when I was alone anymore. There was somebody else at the helm of the boat, while I was locked behind a glass window, watching it all. The feeling always quickly passed, but why is it there in the first place? What am I, an insomniac?

Please don't answer that question.