Read Online Cupid's Revenge by Melanie Jackson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Melanie Jackson
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Nic. That’s short for Nicodemus. Yes, that’s traditionally a man’s name. I am called after my paternal grandfather. It’s one of the trials of being an only child in a family with large expectations of offspring to carry on the familial traditions. I’m a little surprised they didn’t stick me with a whole string of my aunts’ and uncles’ middle names while they were at it, but I guess my parents figured that naming a girl Nicodemus was enough of a sacrifice to generational expectations. The other relatives went begging.
My namesake, Grandpa Nic, was the great-great-something-grandson of the first Nicodemus, best know for his psuedepigrapha, The Gospel of Nicodemus . Only according to family legend, there is nothing psuede about it. His visions were real dream visitations and his descendents had been having them ever since, though most of us have escaped the curse of prophecy.
Not too surprisingly, dream consulting is a family calling, a difficult job that few can manage and stay sane, so I haven’t got a lot of competition in this field. Of course, I can’t really advertise in the yellow pages either, so it all kind of evens out. I am not like a dentist or a stylist or an accountant. For one thing, I’m not that well paid. Also, my cases are the kind you can’t schedule for in advance—though certain people keep me on retainer, just in case. When I am needed, I am needed now . That was why I was on my way to Mercy Hospital, driving in the pre-dawn darkness without my usual skinny café-mocha or indulging in the regular Monday morning visit with Aunt Gertrude. The hospital was one of my long-standing clients who keep me on retainer for emergencies. It is also the place where my husband and parents died. Without me. They were gone through Death’s door before I even knew to look for them and there is a hole in my heart that I have never managed to fill.
Most hospital work I can do from home, but proximity helps when it is a fast snatch-and-grab job, which this might well be. It sounded like I wouldn’t have a lot of time for hunting down one Thomas Seymour before the family arrived, so I needed to go into the dreamside close to where he was sleeping. I may have lost my own husband, but I would not lose this man.
As so often happens, the threat on the patient’s life was an impatient family, just like this one. They were already on the way to the hospital to pull the plug on the unlucky Thomas Seymour (whose insurance had run out) and the hospital administrator wanted me to have a last look at their patient, age thirty-four, minor car accident victim with no apparent physical injuries but entering month four of an expensive and unexplainable coma.
It sounded fairly routine.
The hospital contract that had me up and driving at six in the morning had been negotiated by my parents before my birth. As I said, they are dead now and the previous hospital administrator has retired, but the family business lives on anyway. Officially, I am listed as a grief consultant, but what I really do is save the hospital from possible lawsuits for wrongful death and inconvenient reviews by medical ethics boards when it is decided that it is time to turn off life-support. The hospital administrator feels better knowing for certain that there is no mind left in the body and that the soul has actually moved on before they terminate life support. As a bonus, I sometimes rescue lost souls who have just wandered off in the Narcoscape and are in danger of becoming ghosts. When all goes well, which is most of the time, I bring them back to their families with their minds intact.
When the mind isn’t intact… well, we have ghosts in the Narcoscape too, lost minds who will not go to Death but refuse to return to Life. You recall that horrible feeling when you know you’re in a nightmare but can’t wake up? That’s what this is for the lost. It is a terrible fate, leading to a rapid mental degeneration similar to Alzheimer’s,
My namesake, Grandpa Nic, was the great-great-something-grandson of the first Nicodemus, best know for his psuedepigrapha, The Gospel of Nicodemus . Only according to family legend, there is nothing psuede about it. His visions were real dream visitations and his descendents had been having them ever since, though most of us have escaped the curse of prophecy.
Not too surprisingly, dream consulting is a family calling, a difficult job that few can manage and stay sane, so I haven’t got a lot of competition in this field. Of course, I can’t really advertise in the yellow pages either, so it all kind of evens out. I am not like a dentist or a stylist or an accountant. For one thing, I’m not that well paid. Also, my cases are the kind you can’t schedule for in advance—though certain people keep me on retainer, just in case. When I am needed, I am needed now . That was why I was on my way to Mercy Hospital, driving in the pre-dawn darkness without my usual skinny café-mocha or indulging in the regular Monday morning visit with Aunt Gertrude. The hospital was one of my long-standing clients who keep me on retainer for emergencies. It is also the place where my husband and parents died. Without me. They were gone through Death’s door before I even knew to look for them and there is a hole in my heart that I have never managed to fill.
Most hospital work I can do from home, but proximity helps when it is a fast snatch-and-grab job, which this might well be. It sounded like I wouldn’t have a lot of time for hunting down one Thomas Seymour before the family arrived, so I needed to go into the dreamside close to where he was sleeping. I may have lost my own husband, but I would not lose this man.
As so often happens, the threat on the patient’s life was an impatient family, just like this one. They were already on the way to the hospital to pull the plug on the unlucky Thomas Seymour (whose insurance had run out) and the hospital administrator wanted me to have a last look at their patient, age thirty-four, minor car accident victim with no apparent physical injuries but entering month four of an expensive and unexplainable coma.
It sounded fairly routine.
The hospital contract that had me up and driving at six in the morning had been negotiated by my parents before my birth. As I said, they are dead now and the previous hospital administrator has retired, but the family business lives on anyway. Officially, I am listed as a grief consultant, but what I really do is save the hospital from possible lawsuits for wrongful death and inconvenient reviews by medical ethics boards when it is decided that it is time to turn off life-support. The hospital administrator feels better knowing for certain that there is no mind left in the body and that the soul has actually moved on before they terminate life support. As a bonus, I sometimes rescue lost souls who have just wandered off in the Narcoscape and are in danger of becoming ghosts. When all goes well, which is most of the time, I bring them back to their families with their minds intact.
When the mind isn’t intact… well, we have ghosts in the Narcoscape too, lost minds who will not go to Death but refuse to return to Life. You recall that horrible feeling when you know you’re in a nightmare but can’t wake up? That’s what this is for the lost. It is a terrible fate, leading to a rapid mental degeneration similar to Alzheimer’s,
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