New was paler than usual. I squeezed his elbow and he took a small breath, then smiled grimly at me. I hugged him tightly around the neck for a second before using the leverage to manoeuvre him into one of the beige plastic chairs in the waiting room. I'd told him he could wait outside, but he'd insisted on coming in as far as he could, just in case the tether wasn't long enough. It really was crazy short now. I was getting zapped between floors at work for real. I'd pretty much decided, right or wrong, that the tether operated based on how much I wanted to be near New at any time, and how sure I was of that want. I figured that day that I was zapped from the rooftop, after the trip into the mountains where New had found out he was my tether instead of Off, I had been desperate enough to have him accept me and agree to help me that even that had affected the tether. I loved the sense of control I gained back from that thought, however little.
Especially now that I seemed to be losing other forms of control I'd been so proud of.
"Tawan, the doctor could only give us a short visit today. Let's be quick," Mum called from in front of the nurses' station.
I caught New's eye one more time and he pushed me forward, crinkling his face up to encourage me as well as to hide the anxiety all over it. He'd told me his mother had come to stay in a place that looked a lot like this, eventually. I bit my lip and hovered a bit longer, until Muk's voice whisper-boomed some kind of order from the hallway where she, Mum, Gran and Sasin were disappearing. New leaned back, crossed one ankle over the other, and closed his eyes. He immediately gave a snore that actually made me laugh, and as soon as I did, I saw the lines of his face plumpen again.
I let out my own breath, then dove forward to plant a light kiss on his cheek before running after my family. He didn't even have time to yell at me – or just blush at me, really.
"If it had to be a human, it couldn't be the famous, rich musician?"
I rounded the corner and teetered over my toes into Muk's cemented form. She looked at my shirt sleeve – my ghost shirt sleeve – brushing just under the surface of her wrist. She was wearing a silver dolphin bracelet I'd given her for Christmas a couple of years before. It, too, ignored any contact from me. Muk's face had already been pinched, but it pinched more seriously as she stepped away.
"You can touch him because he's your tether? Tay, don't tell me you like him just 'cause–"
I snapped my fingers.
"Oh!" I exclaimed. Two older ladies walking by with matching bouquets of yellow roses did a visible double-take at my popped eyes, and giggled together behind their clasped hands. "Ohhhhh!"
Muk raised her eyebrows much too aggressively. "What?!"
I glanced around the deserted hallway, making sure all the powdered-blue room doors were shut, then clapped high in my sister's face. "I finally understand why you married the famous, rich, conventionally attractive actor," I said. I beamed widely.
Muk's opened mouth followed my hop around her like one of those swivelling heads at a carnival. I briefly allowed myself to fantasise shooting her with a water gun until it dribbled down her chin, before putting the urge aside and glancing back over my shoulder. She was stalking after me, looking all smart in her black skirt and blazer, her piercings removed and her gel nails about half the length she usually liked them. She was thirty-two. She didn't need to look like a K-Mart catalogue office lady, but she'd tried nonetheless.
She certainly didn't need to be visiting her dead brother's body in the freezer basement of a coma patient care centre.
She planted her steps quietly but firmly in line with mine, and her still open mouth started to sharpen its corners into her favourite sound, 'Ta'.
"How did you put it... I know his shit, sis."
There must have been a nest of birds on the roof just outside the window next to us. They were chirping in the warm morning sun, little curls of twig dropping in front of the glass. I stopped to listen, hoping to guess what kind of bird they were, even though my bird knowledge was not as well developed as my whale, dog or hermit crab knowledge. (I'd had about five hermit crabs when I was a kid, until Mum said she couldn't handle me losing any more every time I took them outside 'for a walk'.)
"...And he knows yours?"
Muk leant into the frame of the window to look into my face. I focused harder than I had in a long time, maybe since the wedding anniversary when I was hugging my mother, and flicked her in the forehead. She winced and then her eyes began abruptly rounding.
"Not as much as you, maybe. But more than enough," I yawned.
Muk's button-tight nose was red at the end. "I thought about what I said then, I... When you know as much shit as I do, you end up making other people feel like shit, I guess," she said.
I squinted at her. "I think if I scramble enough letters around, I can find 'I-M S-O-R-R-Y' in there. Yeah?"
She shook her head very assuredly, and her black bob shifted to show her right helix piercing had been left in, studded with a line of tiny gold sunflowers. "I would never. There's only one 'r'."
For some reason that made me snort into my chest, and then Muk snorted too, and then we both gave another snort so much in sync that the sound was doubled and a medium-sized swallow went flying off above the fields of the countryside.
"You know what you're doing, right?" Muk said after we'd composed ourselves and resumed walking down the hallway. I could hear the low voices of Mum and Gran just ahead, and Sasin's sneakers squeaking on the lino as he took up a stride once more.
"Ha," I replied. "I almost said something like, 'I'd be lying if I did', because I don't think I've ever known less about what I'm doing than right now...but actually, yeah, I'm pretty damn sure about what I'm doing. With New. Which is what you were asking."
"It's going to be painful, Tay."
"He thinks so, too."
"You don't?"
The nurse escorting my family bowed us into a service elevator, wide enough for two beds to be wheeled into if needed, and pressed the button for the basement. I swallowed in the chilly metallic air. Mum wrapped her gloved hand around mine. I shrugged at Muk.
"I gave myself a role," I told her. My sister blinked down at the glove I was offering her. "I won't cause any more pain to anyone, including myself. And especially him."
"Please," Muk sighed, slipping her fingers through mine, "you never have."
"Thanks, Dad."
"Just doing my job, son."
"If you two don't stop it," Mum quivered next to me, tendrils of hair shaking from her temples, "I will feel the most awful pain imaginable."
"The pain of cringe?" Sasin asked from the back corner. His arms were folded very tightly over his heart, the logo of his grey polo shirt pleated into a few unrecognisable squiggles. Gran drilled her hand into his elbow until he loosened enough for her to hook it onto his forearm like a British dowager.
"The pain of pride," she said. Mum fluttered her fingers above our heads and we all followed their trail upwards. The roof of the elevator was a pretty mint green, with a touch of aureate rust in the corners that I really liked.
"The pain of a Vihokratana," Mum said.
We slowed to a not-quite-smooth stop and the door clattered open to one side before us.
"Yeah," Sasin said, "cringe and pride. The Vihokratanas."
We laughed as loudly as we could, watching the lights flicker on and gripping each other's hands.
~~~~
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The Ordinary Haunting II
Fanfiction~Sequel to The Ordinary Haunting~ Tay Tawan was not expecting to get tied to New Thitipoom when he died. He used to be a happy-go-lucky kind of guy; the kind with no real troubles or regrets that he considered important enough to stop him from his e...
