Heather sat across from her patient, her legs crossed neatly, in a lavender upholstered chair with red lacquered arms. The chair's wooden frame was discolored where her hands had rubbed it smooth. Threads showed their age by popping up recalcitrantly from their woven fabric pattern beneath her grey suit. Heather shifted her weight, the other side, passed her notebook across her face to hide a stifled yawn and did not miss a beat as she jotted down several notes. 
    “It was just … so hard to watch him get sick. First the hair. He had always been so proud of his hair. Then the eyebrows. I didn’t tell him about those right away.” 
    The corners of the Mrs. Hudson’s mouth inched up. 
    “Tell me more about how Ben took the hair loss,” Heather prompted. 
    Mrs. Hudson smiled and sat up straighter to tell this story. It walked down positive roads in her memories. 
    “Oh, Benny knew it was coming,” she answered. “We had even shaved his hair funny shapes when it got worse. Can you imagine it? A seventy-year-old man with a mohawk? He was good about it, even when he noticed his eyebrows were gone. My daughter, Kristin, painted on his eyebrow sometimes. She was so good at it. He didn’t look made up at all, just a light line of blond hair like he had when we were young. She would listen to him tell stories about the old factory floor while she did it. She is so good to us. She visits all the time, and brings Ray and Little Ray with her.” 
    Mrs. Hudson looked directly at Heather. Her patients didn’t always look at her.        They tended to look past her, through her, or just to the side of her, but Mrs. Hudson looked directly at her. 
    “You look so tired dear, maybe we should stop early today.” 
    “I’m fine, just a late night. Why don’t you tell me more about Kristin visiting you?” 
    Mrs. Hudson smiled at her, an almost risqué smile for a woman her age. “A gentleman in your life?”
    You could say that, she thought, but bit her tongue. “An argument with a friend. It just went very late.” 
    “What about Alix?” 
    “Alix?”
    “You should consider dating my boy Alix,” Mrs. Hudson said. “Tall, handsome, a doctor like you. He wouldn’t keep you up all night arguing.” 
    “Lloyd is not…” No. She wasn’t going down this particular road. “Tell me more about what you mean when you say Benny was good about it,” said Heather.
She leaned forward in her chair to readjust her weight and directed her second yawn toward the floor. 
    The older lady looked out the window behind her, where the last red rays of light streamed into the room, bouncing off the polished floor boards. The entire room glowed and felt warmer, and the pastel upholstery and woodworking took on a luminosity around the old woman as she spoke.  
    “I remember, when he was young, in his forties and fifties, how proud he was of that hair. It turned white, every lock of it, but at least it stayed in his head he would joke. He would run his fingers through it, and play with the curl that used to hang down the front of his forehead. Just like Superman. Do you remember him? Probably not, I guess. Don’t have that sort of thing anymore. I just expected he would be sad, or cry, or complain about sitting in the chair for hours as they dripped the medicine into him, but he never did. He let me shape his last locks, and then post pictures of it to our kids on our Facebook page! Nobody else in the family used Facebook anymore, but we still liked sharing that way. He just always seemed so surprisingly… accepting of it.” 
    Mrs. Hudson smiled broadly and Heather took the opportunity to scrutinize her patient. A small green bag rested at Mrs. Hudson’s side, with a pile of yarn and a half-crocheted sleeve stuck out the top. Heather had met with her for several months now, without evidence of progress on that sleeve, or any sign of other work in the bag. She wore simple, well-used clothing from an earlier generation. The fingers of one hand played with her wedding ring on the other, rotating it again and again. The band remained clean and well-polished. Mrs. Hudson slumped, very much like a woman waiting for a late bus, while lost in thought. 
    “I miss him.” 
    “Why don’t you go to him then?’ Heather asked. “You seemed so happy the last few times we talked about him.” 
    The old women furrowed her brow. “I visited the grave yesterday. It was so overgrown. Like the keepers don’t even care about the place anymore.” She gave a harrumph. 
    Heather considered how to explain again. Sometimes the patients seemed to have trouble remembering. Perhaps a cognitive dissonance made it impossible for them to accept the truth. She organized the words she had practiced with so many other patients in this very room to explain the situation to them for a second third or umpteenth time. 
    A preteen boy burst straight through the wall. The undamaged sheetrock behind him traced the outline of a spectral afterglow right where his ethereal body had moved through the wall paper and white molding. His torn jacket swung in tatters and a flap of bloodied flesh hung loosely off his shoulder blade, which faced toward Mrs. Hudson in her chair. 
    “Leyton, we talked about this,” Heather said calmly. 
    “I can’t find Kaylem!” 
    “I’m with Mrs. Hudson right now.” 
    She didn’t like the initial managing of new patients, or at least new to her. Confusion set in easily. They could see one another, but they did not seem to have a grasp of past and present, much less the idea of private time, or private places. Leyton even less so, a boy who was barely into his preteen years when he passed. 
    “I need to find Kaylem!” 
    “Young man, do you have any idea what time it is? Why aren’t you in bed?” Mrs. Hudson waggled a finger at him. 
    “He was right next to me, and then he was gone, and I can’t find him.” 
    “Where are your parents?” 
    “Please? He has the ball, and we were on or way …” 
    “Leyton. Mrs. Hudson. Please be quiet.” Heather took a deep breath, and tempered her voice. She found herself standing, though she hadn’t registered the action. Calm and cheer remained cornerstones of her task. She couldn’t get riled around clients. “Mrs. Hudson, it’s late afternoon, remember?” She pointed out the window. “Leyton, your brother is perfectly safe. Do you remember what we said yesterday about how we can work together so you can see him again?”  
    He'd burst in on a different session the day before. Leyton looked up and tilted his head to the side like a confused dog. 
    “But he disappeared this morning.” 
    “I know it seems like that but I want you to go for a walk now, ok? Think about where you last saw him, and walk there very slowly. Tomorrow, come back, and we can talk about Kaylem, ok?” 
    Step one was always the same. Get them to understand the framework of day-to-day time. She needed that to keep them organized. Safe, on the other hand, was quite relative. If his brother had been near him at the time of his demise, he wasn’t likely in better condition, but that conversation would be weeks down the road. The dead who came to her didn’t embrace the reality of their demise easily. 
She never let her gaze waver from his brown eyes which were set in a cherubic face with rounded cheeks. She didn’t let his dripping blood outlined with silver draw her attention and she certainly didn’t look down at his stomach, where a gash, worse than the one on his back, showed the pink and yellow of organs and viscera. 
    He did not answer her. He looked at her funny, and slowly walked away, right back out the way he had come, leaving behind a second outline of white. She took a note. Not good. It was never good when they went silent like that. 
    “Children these days. When I tell Benny about this, he will be utterly flummoxed. Our kids were never like that. Always polite, even in restaurants. They never ran around and never shouted. They would never have dreamed of interrupting adults.” 
    Heather sat back down, straightened her pants and brushed them smooth while resting her notebook on the arm of the old chair. She watched as the colors around Mrs. Hudson shifted from the usual soft silver blue to a lightly pink tone and golden notes. 
    “Remember, when you go and see him tonight, that the keepers are all on a very long holiday,” she said. “They might not be back for a while, so try not to be upset about it, ok?” 
    Long holiday, along with billions of others. Heather rubbed the bridge of her nose briefly. 
    “I’ll remember dear,” she said. “I should be going though. I have to get this done for littlest Benny junior!” 
    Mrs. Hudson reached down and waggled the bag indicating the garment under construction in perpetuity. 
    Heather ushered the nice old lady out of the room, and all the way to the front door. She shimmered as she always did when the sunlight hit her directly, and faded away like snow on a hot patch of earth. 
    Heather turned back to the hall, closed the front door behind her, and looked into her dining room which had been converted into a makeshift session room. She looked at her notebook, still lying on the lavender of the chair, and sighed. She should finish the notes today, but tomorrow’s schedule remained theoretically free until Leyton popped back in. Progress on Mrs. Hudson’s garment moved back and forth through time. She wasn’t even sure if that was a good thing. Spirit psychology hadn’t been a course available to her in graduate school. She reached out, pulled the door to the room closed, and rubbed her eyes and the painted dark shadows beneath them. Six appointments in one day and the almost nonexistent night of sleep the night before didn’t help. 
    She walked past the living room, which gathered dust, and into her kitchen. Hairs on her arm stood up at the cold. No curtains blocked the windows. No blinds were drawn. The room stood devoid of decoration beyond the half-century-old faded green flowers running up the wall. They looked hand painted, but sometimes, when she was tired, they tricked her eyes into looking like more wallpaper. The former owner no doubt took great pride in hand crafting such a display. 
    Now, the room was a fishbowl belonging to a person too disinterested to add decorations for the fish.
    “Or too tired?” she said in her own defense. 
    A crack in the window, although covered over by several layers of tape and plastic wrap inside, and boarded over from the outside, nonetheless let in a terrible draft on breezy days. She had tried to find a replacement from the plethora of abandoned buildings around her, but the aged, sagging house had no match. Antonio, one of the few among the living who didn’t seem to mind the presence of her unusual patrons, had promised to try and replace the broken piece. She hadn’t seen him in almost a week. 
    Antonio was special. He could see them sometimes before things got bad. If people saw them, it usually meant she was too late. By the time other people became aware of her failures, too late had come and gone. The last time it had happened didn’t warrant repeating, or dwelling on.
    She undid the top button of her blouse, always kept up tight during her work, grabbed a pear from the bowl on the counter and flopped down in the kitchen chair. She ate it absent mindedly. Was it Saturday? Did it even matter anymore to make a distinction? She supposed Sundays’ importance persisted.  
    “Who ate my pear,” she said, question paired with answer.
    She marveled at the mind’s ability to wander, and tossed the core into the compost bin.
    “What are weekends to the never living?” 
    She was thankful enough to be able to continue her calling from before the Fall, even if it was to a different clientele. Some in the church understood her role. The Kritarchy government had even approved her practice and subsidized her living, provided she took care to espouse the right religious doctrines in public.  
    Eyelids drooped of their own accord as she stared out the half-covered broken window at the cracks of the sidewalk. A world of cobbled-together broken bit and pieces surrounded everyone. How were they supposed to pull the pieces back together again? She shook herself awake, stood rapidly and walked up the stairs to her bedroom. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she peeled off her shoes and her slacks, and then changed into her favorite pair of pajamas, red, soft, flannel and well worn. She couldn’t remember how long ago she received them or even recall who had given them to her, but she was grateful to the mystery Santa. 
    Laying down on the bed, she looked up at the ceiling while she considered her chores for the evening that would go undone. Surely it wasn’t slothful to go to bed early if you had the kind of night she had, right? Outside the red of the sunset had given way to green and purple skies and the darkness of night settled in one hue of purple at a time, but the day had not yet fully surrendered. 
    “I’ll read,” she said defensively.
    Defensively to whom, she really wasn’t sure. She rolled to her side, lit a candle and grabbed her book from the nightstand. Life of Pi. Just a few pages. 
    One blink, and it was dark. 
    “Shit,” she muttered to the room as she looked around. 
    The bedposts sat clouded in the darkness. Cloud covered moonlight filtered through the window. She lay atop the covers instead of under them, and took a deep breath while she stretched her feet out, uncoiling from her sleeping position. Daylight died completely and the candle on the nightstand beside her sputtered its last flickers of life, letting off puffs of honey scented smoke.
    “That’s what you get for picking such a boring book,” said a voice from the darkest corner of the room. “Silly name too.”  
    “There is nothing boring about it,” she answered the voice from the darkness calmly, trying to hide a sigh and impossibly a yawn. “You try being close to tigers, then tell me about boring.” 
    Wheezing breaths filled the room, then a gentle cough, followed by the sound of a machine whirring. The medical device kicked in whenever it detected a sign of struggle. At least this time she felt awake and somewhat refreshed from a half day of sleep so she could spend the night undoing some of the damage of yesterday, and figure out why he was here at all. 
    “What’s my name?” she asked.
    She liked to begin with names. If they remembered who she was from day to day it always made things easier. Slow heavy breathing answered her, followed by the whirring of a machine again. 
    “Mr. Espinoza, do you remember my name.” 
    Heavy breathing continued in the chair. 
    “Try to breath normally. You won’t need oxygen today, ok? Today is going to be a good day.” 
    “I said to call me Lloyd,” he responded. 
    She sat up in the bed, and swung her legs around to the floor. She opened the top drawer of the nightstand, brought out a second candle, and lit it. Then she used a drip of wax to stick it to the flat wooden surface.
    “Wax on the furniture!” 
    She rubbed her eyes and wished for a clock as she had many times in the last few weeks. 
    “Why don’t you tell me about the floral pattern in the kitchen?” 
    “Oh, when Mandy and I were painting those…” 
    She listened to him, somewhat annoyed at herself. Her notebook rested in the session room downstairs and she was still in her pajamas. 
    Never mix business and home life, mom used to say.  
    She pulled clothes out of the old dresser on the wall, and walked into the adjoining bathroom. The sound of Lloyd’s voice followed her, but he didn’t leave the chair. He never left that chair. Likely, he couldn’t leave that chair. She considered switching her bedroom, for the third time that week, but as he prattled on about his wife, and their life in this house, she felt somehow, she was in the right place, even if it was the wrong time. 
    She caught his audible smile between the labored puffs of air, the rattle of his lungs and the metallic ringing of the machine which had once kept him alive. 
Sleep could wait for another night. Work called.