Love Bites Then it Sucks by Julie Steimle (best self help books to read .TXT) 📕

Rick exhaled as if breathless. << …Yeah. I can’t believe it, but yeah. Let me think… um… >> And he went silent for long moment. << We definitely should contact the Seven. You need to tell Abey—and I mean Andrew Cartwright—everything you told me. It is weird that their website is down right now. That’s not usual. Semour usually keeps it up and running even when he is working on it. I have a bad feeling there is more at play here—much of it trying to stop you from… >> his voice trailed off.

“Going after her,” Hanz said, completing the thought.

<< How much of med school do you have left? >> Rick asked.

“This year still,” Hanz muttered.

Rick sighed.

“And I’ve got my residency to finish also,” Hanz said, grasping his hair with his left hand. “And that could be several years.”

<< Basically anchoring you to one spot, >> Rick murmured.

Hanz inwardly groaned. He knew Rick was right. They guy was oddly intuitive to things that mattered most. Rick knew he wanted to drop everything to find Eve, yet he also knew the weight of responsibility. There was no way Hanz could drop everything—not after all his parents had sacrificed for him to go to medical school. He could not be that selfish. His entire plan had been for him to become a competent doctor to help create a stable income for not only himself and his future family, but also to lift the family he had come from out of poverty. If he abandoned it now to blindly chase after the love of his life… well it would be extremely romantic but entirely foolish. And Eve did not ask him to leave everything and rescue her in that letter. She told him to get help. She knew leaving his medical training would ruin his life, and she would never ask him to do that.

<< I’ll talk to Abey myself, >> Rick said after a while, breaking into Hanz’s thoughts. << We’ll find her. >>

“Thanks,” Hanz barely breathed out.

<< And I know you are going to hate hearing this, but get some rest, >> Rick said.

Chuckling painfully, trying not to cry Hanz nodded. It was likely Rick was also told such things while in similar circumstances. He was not a man unfamiliar with grief.

When Rick hung up, Hanz finally put the letter down and climbed into bed, shutting off the lights. His mind was buzzing as he prayed one more time for some understanding of what he could do. There was no way he could let this go. Eve wasn’t just the love of his life. She was more than that to him. He had long felt that she was someone he had known a long time ago and at birth had merely forgotten her. And to find her again had given him such great joy. And to lose her now was like having his heart ripped out. There was no way, not at all, that he could let go of Eve McAllister.

Chapter Seven

The days that followed were cold, damp, and wearying. I lingered at the hospital most of the time. I hated the smell of it and the chill in it, as it was full of ghosts who had not been reaped, and I had to take care of that first. The ghosts hid from my eyes, but I could feel them near. I walked through the halls unseen except by the ghosts. And when they thought I was not looking, I whipped out my scythe and swiftly hooked them up, ushering them on their way. I found I could do this with my eyes closed.

Taking away the crowds of ghosts in the hospital was the easy part of the job. The harder part was reaping the dying who begged with their eyes to live a little longer. That was heart wrenching. I talked with those who could see me, mostly to reassure them that I was not the devil and they were not going to Hell.

There was one dying elderly man whom I had regular conversations with, a black local with kidney failure. He lived just down the street from the hospital and was current in one of the wards under watchful care. The nurses thought he was hallucinating when he spoke with me.

“So… basically you’re stuck in New York?” he said to me as a nurse was sighing with a shaking head while changing his IV. His tight curly hair was frosty white like fluffy cotton candy, his dark skin spotted and wrinkled, though not yet papery. He had saggy cheeks and bags under his nearly blood shot eyes.

I nodded, peeking to the nurse also with a crooked smile. “Yeah. I’ve walked the neighborhood and have met the other reapers around here. I’ve actually tried flying out—but they chase me back in as if they think I want to invade their areas. They’re so territorial.”

He chuckled with pain, his blood hardly in his face. He spoke with barely a breath. “Now that’s proof you ain’t from around here. We just call it the ‘hood.”

I laughed, nodding. I never called any place ‘the hood’.

“So, damn, this means for certain I am dying,” he said, mulling over it His imps were suggesting he sneak down to the maternity ward for I don’t know what reason.

Nodding more, I chuckled weakly. “Unless you’ve seen the likes of me before this, yeah. That’s how come you can see me.”

He got a funny look in his eye. “So… you really ain’t a hallucination. ‘Cause the nurses all say you are.”

Shaking my head again with a heavy sigh, I frowned. “Nope. I’m real.”

“Damn.” He then coughed through a chuckle. It took him a bit to get his breath. “Well, I’m glad I got a super-hot angel.”

I blushed, pulling back. “You flirt!”

He laughed more, reaching a hand out as if to pat my butt.  

But I pulled back, rising from the stool I was sitting on. “If I you touch me, you’ll die.”

His eyes widened and he retracted his hand. “Damn girl. I was only teasing.”

I huffed, shaking my head. “No. What I mean is me touching you, will kill you—though you really should not touch a woman’s butt. It’s rude. But really, are you ready to die now?”

With a quizzical look, he shook his head. “No. My son Tyrone should be coming.”

I nodded. That’s what I thought. He had been mentioning Tyrone coming for him any minute, so I had held off for three days now, despite his mark glowing bright red.

The nurse shook her head. I saw her, getting a funny feeling as she walked out of the room.

“Hold on a moment,” I said to him and followed the nurse out.

Out in the hall, the nurse murmured under her breath, “Someone has got to tell him his son is not coming.”

“Why not?” I breathed out, upset swelling in me. The man was waiting. But of course the nurse did not hear me. So I screamed, “WHY NOT?”

Seeming to hear me, the nurse looked around, not seeing anyone. But she said, “His son Tyrone is dead. He died years ago. Car accident.”

I paled. Poor man. I looked back at the man in the bed. That’s why they thought he was hallucinating. His mind had already departed from reality. I had been holding off this entire time for the son, which the man had been insisting would come—but clearly I was mistaken.

Walking back into the room, feeling heavy with grief, I said to the dying man in his bed, reaching out my hand, “Come with me, and I will lead you to your son.”

He reached for my hand. The moment our fingers touched, his spirit lifted straight from his body and the machines flat lined. He hardly gazed back at them or me as the light portal split right open in front of him, and he walked through it, calling out, “Tyrone? Is that you?”

I could hardly see into the light to check if indeed Tyrone had greeted him on the other side. And as he departed this life, the nurses rushed past me, going to him. They did not get out a crash cart. But they did mark his time of death. He had died alone, except for me.

Wandering listlessly from the room, I went down to maternity where there was ghost of a stillborn child waiting for me, begging to go to the other side as her mother wept. The child had been strangled by her own umbilical cord, though her spirit was much taller and not a child in form at all. With grief, watching the mother sob as the nurses carried away the purple-faced baby, I asked her, “Can’t you go back?”

The spirit of the child shook her head, her face soft and tender on me as if to apologize for breaking so many hearts. I could feel what she was saying rather than with words. Her life was meant to be brief, she explained. She was sorry for her mother, for her grief, but that was the way it was to be.

Weeping, I hooked that child’s spirit, sending her on her way.

Then I dropped into the stool near where the mother had just delivered and sobbed next to her, with her.

But the room soon was evacuated and cleaned, the sorrowing mother taken to recovery, the stool I was on hauled off to a corner. I had to dodge to get out of their way.

There was so much sadness in the hospital. So much noise. The imps were screaming all sorts of nasty things. Nurses were urged to steal belongings of patients. Some were tempted to rob the pharmacy and resell on the black market, or just to take for themselves. Doctors were tempted to meddle with patients in improper ways. And I watched them all carefully to see if they gave into their temptations.

There were those who were tired, yet circumspect. I got to know those nurses and doctors pretty well, trying hard to shoo off imps from them who were working to cause them trouble. But then there were the few who I had found to be unscrupulous and dirty. It was sad to see, but expected. Hanz’s hospital where he was studying was much like this. Only here, I really could be a fly on the wall, whereas in California they could see me watching them and they were a lot more careful when I was around.

One of the worst in this hospital was Dr. Clay—a short mousy pediatrician who didn’t really care that much about the health of the kids, but was more focused on pushing pharmaceuticals on his patients. He cared a lot about status and money. I hated him. His ‘friend’ was Dr. Dowd, a radiologist lady who was his ‘close associate’ and I might add, a super slut. Dr. Dowd slept around the hospital, apparently, and Dr. Clay was her newest conquest. She had already scored Dr. Asbury (the oncologist), Dr. James (the phlebotomist), and Dr. Pips (the head of the burn unit). Dr. Asbury on down were single men, but Dr.