Sam awoke to the pinging of a blood-pulse monitor. This seemed like a good thing since it implied that she wasn't dead. For a time, Sam had not been sure whether she was alive or dead or whether she wanted to be a alive or dead. She was pretty sure she was Sam Manson but the life of Ben Green still swirled in her mind like the taste of soured milk.

She opened her eyes a little and groaned. Though the light was dim it was that harsh blue shade of fluorescence that seems to sting no matter. She saw walls of pale, pastel green, a TV mounted on a high, swivel wall bracket and nothing else. She must be in a hospital.

Sam briefly wondered how she got here. The last thing she recalled was the sound of Danny's voice calling her name fading away like water running down a bathtub drain. Or had that been her consciousness.

Her eyelids slide down with an inexorable deliberation. By the time she had forced them open again Danny was standing over her. He looked concerned. He didn't look like he had just been thrashed within an inch of his life by a murderous ghost. It was ironic that Danny took the worst of it in ghostly battles but it was his friends who ended up in the hospital.

Sam tried to sit up and discovered that seemingly every bone, muscle and fiber in her body ached. She lay back with a groan.

"How're ya feeling?" Danny asked.

"Guess."

"Oh, sorry."

Danny looked at his friend and tried not to let the pain show in his face. She was wrapped up almost like a mummy. "Lacerations and Contusions" according to her chart. Danny understood that to mean cuts and bruises.

"What time is it?" Sam asked.

"Almost midnight."

"The same day?"

"Huh? Yeah. You've been here about four hours."

"Oh." That didn't seem so bad. There was something disturbing to sleeping around the clock, the fear, perhaps, of having missed something. "So how did you get in here?" She asked.

"Walked through the wall."

"Figures. Surprised they haven't kicked you out." She spoke in a whisper. It hurt too much to breathe any deeper to speak louder.

"There's a nurse, comes in every hour to check on you. She asked who I was. When I said I was a friend she said 'fine,' but if a doctor comes in and tells me to leave, I have to."

"I'm glad you're here." Sam whispered. "What did I miss after I passed out?"

"Not much. Once you broke the skull a hole into the Ghost Zone opened up, sucking the ghost into it. The pull was so strong it nearly got me, and surprisingly, it nearly got you."

"Yeah?" Sam said. "I guess the Ghost -- Ben Green, wasn't ready to let go."

"Then you said something weird -- "I don't want to die," and passed out. That scared me because I didn't know if you had died. I was going to fly you to the nearest hospital, only I didn't know where that would be, or had the strength to go ghost. And then -- just as well -- I heard trucks climbing up the path and knew the Head Ranger was here. She picked us all up and took us straight there. As soon as the Doctor discharged me and I came straight here to your room."

"Thanks. What about the others?"

"T'Keisha's fine. Tucker left her at the amphitheater. Tuck's got some burns and bruises. The Fenton Yo-yo finally exploded in his face. I should tell Dad about that... Anyway T'Keisha found her way to the hospital and is bedsitting Tucker."

"You've got to give the Yo-yo back to Abigail so she can return it to her father."

"There's nothing left of it to return! And when did you become all concerned about Abigail Farley-Smythe-Hyde?"

"I don''t care about her. She was pretty rotten to me all week, Danny. But she didn't really mean to make your week miserable. So why burn her over the Yo-yo?"

"Alright, if it's important to you, I'll return it -- if I had something to return. The explosion tore it to shreds. There's nothing there. Tucker was lucky he didn't get worse than burns."

"Well, think of something. What about Aetheria, Sid and the other Sam?"

"Aetheria seems to have lost an earring or two, I think from being thrown into the brush. She's got a big bandage over her ear. It makes her look a little like Vincent Van Gogh!" Danny paused. "I think she enjoyed that?"

"Yeah, probably. Nothing like a random injury to improve one's Punk look. What about the others?"

"Sid's got a sprained shoulder and a lot of bruises. The other Sam has some fractured ribs and maybe a concussion. You got the worst of it."

"I'd ask for a mirror but I'm afraid of what I'd see in it."

"You've got scrapes, cuts, and bruises over half your body, according to the report, and there was concern about your failure to recover consciousness for such a long time. Your clothes are over there," Danny pointed to a table pushed next to the wall. "They didn't survive too well. Are you feeling any better?"

"I feel like I was run over by a bus and dragged for half a mile. Maybe two buses."

"Want me to call the nurse?"

"She'll want to put me on morphine now that I'm awake. I'm not ready to go back to sleep. So -- the gang came out of this alive. I suppose little Miss Girl in White came out of this without a scratch?"

"Fractured ribs, a large burn along her right arm and side where the Ghost hit her. Cuts and abrasions. The only one who came out of this without a scratch is me." Danny dropped his head, shaking it as if to say this was all wrong.

"Danny, you took more punishment from that Ghost then the rest of us combined. You saved all our lives!"

"No, you did, Sam, when you discovered where the skull was, and destroyed it. I would have just kept hitting it with ecto-blasts that didn't have any effect on it."

"But if you hadn't kept fighting the ghost I would never have been able to dig the skull up. The instant the ghost realized I had it's skull, it went berserk and only your efforts kept it off me long enough to find a rock and smash it."

"But..."

"No buts, Danny. I'm too tired to argue. You saved my life. You saved the lives of everyone at camp."

"I wasn't there in time for Dash."

"He's not...dead, is he?"

"What? No, no. But he's pretty messed up -- arm broken in two places, broken leg, several cracked ribs, a possible concussion. The last I heard he's in surgery getting his arm wired together."

"So much for his football career."

"Surprisingly, the doctor I talked to said he's likely to make a full recovery. Won't be able to play this fall, but maybe next year. But the thing is, Sam, I should have been there, protecting him. I'm the hero, that's what I'm supposed to do!"

"But you were there, Danny. You were fighting the ghost all the way. The ghost dropped a reviewing stand on top of Dash. Of course that's going to cause damage. But you stopped him from killing Dash and that I know was what it intended to do. Those last few minutes when I was trying to smash the skull, it was like I was inside it's mind..." Sam shuddered, then groaned from the pain. "I never want to be in that place again!" she sighed.

Danny was going to say something but noticed that Sam was breathing rapidly. "Are you alright?" he asked. "Should I get the nurse?"

Sam didn't answer for a moment then changed the subject. "When did your parents get here?"

"About a half hour after the Ranger called. Dad crashed the Specter Speeder in the parking lot. Literally. Crashed. into the parking lot."

"Where are they now?"

"Dad's are running around the camp looking for residual ghost auras. It's like the Father's Day present I never gave him. Mom's with him, of course. Jazz is out in the hall with the mobile command communicator running interference for me. Unless she finished writing out a questionnaire about people's ghost experiences, in that case she could be anywhere, interviewing people. She gave me a Bug so I can keep up with developments" Danny pointed towards his ear. Sam tried to look but was too sore to move. Still she knew what he referred to. It was a small wireless headset that hooked over one ear. It looked like a cellphone thingy but was tuned to a different, private frequency the Fentons used.

"She was a big help for us. Be sure to thank her when you can."

"Like she'll forget the $200 she says I owe her..."

"Danny, don't be petty."

"Two hundred bucks is a lot of money. Maybe we should send Abigail the bill?"

"Oo. Wicked. How long did it take for the Guys in White to show up?" Sam asked.

"They flew in a half hour ago. I guess it takes a lot of time filling in paperwork to make an emergency run, even when one's daughter is in danger. I've been trying to avoid them."

"I wonder what Abigail had to say to her Dad?" Sam mused.

"Somehow I think she has experience in talking herself out of trouble." Danny answered.

"Yeah."

The two kids were quiet for a while. Sam had many troubled thoughts on her mind, while Danny was fighting off sheer exhaustion.

"I always thought I was a troubled kid," Sam began. "I had morbid thought, couldn't see the cheerful in stuff. My parents were kind of creepy with their cheerfulness. I hate them for always wanting to change me..."

"Really?" Danny interrupted, "because everybody always says you're the level-headed one of my friends. I thought I was the messed up one."

"Danny, this isn't a competition. Considering who your parents are -- considering who you are -- you cope better than you realize. I apparently have been coping better than I realized. Because this Ben Green, guy... he had problems."

Sam stopped, not sure how to go on.

"When I was touching that skull it was like I was Ben Green..."

"You mentioned that."

"But it was weird. I knew who I was but every detail of his life was there for me to see, almost as if it were my memory instead of his. I could remember wetting myself in first grade when another kid threatened to beat me up. I remember how my -- I mean, his parents would yell at him for not standing up for himself. I remember-- It's like it's still there. I want it out of my head. I mean I'm sure it will go away soon enough..."

"...But that's not soon enough," Danny finished her sentence.

"Exactly."

Sam asked for some water and Danny ducked out into the hall to find a cup and the ice machine. He came back followed by the nurse. The nurse was short, heavy set with a coppery colored hair unlike any shade found in nature. She smiled in an easy manner as she took Sam's temperature, felt her pulse, shined a light in her eyes and ran her ballpoint along the soles of Sam's feet. She wrote things down on a clipboard then asked if Sam was feeling any unusual symptoms. Sam said 'No.'

"I'll alert the Doctor," she said. "We've got so many cases it might be a while before he can show up. He didn't leave any order about pain medication so I'm afraid I can't give you anything. But I'm mention that when I tell him you're awake. Try to sleep."

"Sorry," Danny apologized. "I couldn't find the ice machine so I had to ask her."

"It's all right," Sammy murmured. "It tastes like bleach but I am so thirsty." She drunk about half the cup, then sucked up a couple bits of ice which she chewed.

"Danny, about Ben Green -- he was gay."

"Uh?"

"I think he was always being picked on because people could sense that he was gay."

"That doesn't make any sense," Danny protested.

"This was fifty years ago, people were a lot different them. They didn't like Blacks, or Jews, or Communists, and certainly not homosexuals." Sam rested for a moment. "Nana (Sam's grandmother) often talks about the Holocaust, even though she was born in America and was only five or six when World War Two ended. You wouldn't think it would mean that much to her. She hadn't lost anyone to it, but-- I guess its because it happened to people just because they were Jewish," Sam continued. "You know, Nana can't forgive the Germans to this day for what they did to our people."

"Does it bother you being Jewish?" Danny asked. It always came as a shock when he was reminded that Sam was Jewish. It was hard for him to think of anyone as a This or a That.

"No. Only that someone would care whether I am. But that's not what I talking about. That boy, Ben Green, who killed himself...when I touched his skull I got all these images and memories and stuff. He was constantly thinking about a counselor at camp, a big, blond boy, very muscular... I think he was in love with him or had a huge crush or something."

"Sounds like Dash. That's kind of creepy. Maybe that's why it attacked Dash?"

"No, well, kind of. I mean, Dash was a jerk all week long, and maybe even during the weeks before we got here. And the Ghost hated bullies so it would have attached Dash for being Dash, not because he resembled some long ago other guy. But it didn't help that Dash looked like this other guy, it was like...what... icing on a cake?"

"Insult to injury?"

"Yeah, that's it. Insult to injury. But the key thing is that I think the Ghost came out to that counselor, and got beat up as a result."

"I'd freak out, too, if some guy came on to me," Danny admitted.

"Would you beat them up?"

"No."

"See, that's how you're different from that counselor. And that's what crushed the boy's spirit and lead him to hang himself."

"Over that? I can't see it."

"You never will, Danny, you don't have that kind of darkness in you." Sam looked away as she spoke. Danny wondered if she was speaking in part about herself.

"But for him it was devastating. The next day it seemed like all the counselors knew and they all were making fun of him. He knew it would get back to his school and then to his parents eventually. The pain was ... unbearable." Sam was speaking slowly as if overwhelmed by the memories of the Ghost.

"He couldn't face that happening so while everyone was waiting for dinner he...hung...himself. -- God, I can't stop thinking about the feel of the rope around his neck and the pain, all that pain as he died."

Tears were running down Sam's face. Her hands had balled up into fists, twisting a bit of blanket into a knot. Danny reached over and put his hand on hers. She let go of the blanket and gripped his hand in a painful grip.

"I can't get it out of my mind -- his last thought -- before -- his last thought was 'I don't want to die,' and then he did!"

"That's what you said." Danny murmured. "Just before you passed out you said, 'I don't want to die.' I guess you were just repeating what the ghost was thinking."

"I said that?" Sam choked out.

"Yeah."

"That wasn't the Ghost. That was me. I –" But what she was going to say next died in her throat.

Danny handed her a tissue, with which she daubed at her eyes. She had not taken her other hand from Danny's.

There was an awkward silence for a long while. Finally Danny stirred. "I suppose I'd better go find my parents and face the music." He got up and headed towards the door. "Do you want me to turn off the light?" he asked.

"No! leave it on."

"Sure."

Sam hesitated for a moment, then said: "Danny, could I ask you a favor, a big favor, no questions asked?"

"Sure, anything," he answered, curious that she even had to ask.

"Could you stay here, with me, for the rest of the night?"

"Well I ought to ... Sure, I'll stay."

He sat back down and took her hand in his.

Sam settled down in her hospital bed and closed her eyes. Her mind was a blaze of swirling, confused emotions, the emotions of a boy who refused to die. But to one side was the solid comforting pressure of Danny's hand. As she concentrated on the concrete physicality of Danny's presence, the ghost seemed to fade, to quiet.

"You know," she said after a bit, "when that ghost pulled me out of the amphitheater, it wasn't by accident. It called me 'friend.' It thought I was someone who could understand it. Understand it's pain. And, god help me, I could. I know the feeling of rejection or feeling unworthy all the time. I've looked into the abyss. I've looked into it so much that it was starting to look back at me. It scared me. It scared me so much that I can't bear being in the dark or being alone. I'm afraid to be left by myself. Ben Green looked into the abyss and fell in. I'm afraid he'll pull in with him. I–"

A snore blew loudly from Danny. Sam twisted gingerly to look at her friend. He'd fallen asleep in the chair, mouth open a small thread of drool gathering at the corner of his mouth.

"Yeah, I guess I was boring you with my problems. But you're here for me and that's all that counts."