The Ninth Floor (11 page)

He pushed a
strand of hair from my face. “That may be a factor.” Jack closed the distance
between us and ran his hands from my waist down to my hips then back up again. “Am
I forgiven?”

“I’m thinking
about it.” My already low voice became throaty as he touched me. His soft lips
found mine and kissed me until I was pressed between the doorjamb and his body.
When we finally broke apart, I was breathless, and he was definitely forgiven.
I pushed him back. “You’re here to paint.”

“Lead the way,”
he said. His mouth fell open when he saw my transformed living room. “You aren’t
playing fair.”

“What?”

“Dim lights,
candles, the couch …How am I supposed to focus on painting?”

I sighed. “Try.”

We ordered
pizza and got to work. Jack made a great painting partner—efficient, neat, and
precise. We were done with the first coat before the pizza arrived. I was
washing my hands when my cell rang in the living room.

“Would you get
that, please?” I called, worried it was Bee, Blair, Vivian—or a lost pizza guy.
I rushed to scrub off the rest of the paint and dry my hands. Jack met me at
the door, holding out the phone, a strange expression on his face. “Hello?” I
said as I took the phone.

“Who was that?”
Briggs’s voice growled at me.

“None of your
business. What do want? Did you get my email about the dogs?” He didn’t say
anything, but I could hear him breathing. “Are you going to talk or should I
hang up?” I walked past Jack, not liking him watching me talk to Briggs. I went
out on the balcony, too paranoid about leaving a paint mark to risk sitting on
my pretty new furniture.

“I got it,” Briggs
finally said like it hurt him to talk. “I don’t want to send them alone. Can’t
you come and get them?”

“I need to be
here, Briggs. She could be dying. I’m not leaving.”

“Then I’ll
bring them to you.”

“No. People
fly dogs without being on the plane all the time. Just follow the instructions
I sent and it will be fine. Don’t come here.”

He made a
noise. “Why not?”

Now it was my
turn to pause. The truth was on the tip of my tongue, and I’d never been a very
good liar. I didn’t want to tell Briggs he couldn’t come because just hearing
the sound of his voice broke my heart. I didn’t know what seeing him would do.
I also didn’t want to say I could see potential for a good thing with Jack, and
I was just starting to feel normal again. “I don’t want to see you.” I mentally
kicked myself for how pathetic I sounded.

“Ryan—”

I steeled my
spine and made my voice harsh. “This isn’t a discussion. Send the dogs and stay
out of my life.” I took a couple deep breaths before going back inside.

Jack was
leaned against the kitchen counter holding the pizza box. “I take it you don’t
want to eat on the furniture?”

I shook my
head. “Balcony?”

Jack nodded. “Is
Briggs
the reason we’re taking things slow?”

“Not that
slow,” I said under my breath as he walked past me, making him laugh.

“But he’s an
ex-boyfriend?”

The question
made me sigh. “Yeah. He still has my dogs, and I’m trying to get them back, but
Briggs can be difficult.”

“Maybe he’s
trying to win you back,” he said too casually.

“Trust me,
Briggs doesn’t want me back.” Jack shrugged and started to ask something else,
but I cut him off. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to talk about him. I want to close
that chapter of my life for good. I’m making a fresh start here.”

Jack was quiet
for a moment before nodding. “Fair enough.”

Awkward
silence filled the night air. I picked at my pizza, feeling guilty. “We started
dating as freshman. We never fought, were the perfect couple. One day I got
home from work and he was gone. He left a note on the door saying he didn’t
want to see me anymore and not to call. That’s it. No explanation. I tried to
talk to him, but he never gave me a clear reason. One day we were together and
happy, and the next I was public enemy number one.” I shrugged to keep my
shoulders from sagging, unable to make eye contact with Jack.

“Did you have
an affair?”

“No.” My gaze
flicked over to him, astonished he would think that about me.

“Did he?”

“I don’t know.”

“You really
have no idea why it ended?”

I put my
half-eaten piece of pizza down. “No clue. And now you see how I know he doesn’t
want me back.”

Jack shook his
head. “What an asshole. The very least he could do is tell you why.”

“I don’t care
anymore. I just don’t want to see him or talk to him again. Once I get Sid and
Nancy back, he’s out of my life—forever.” I pushed a smile onto my face. “So
now you know all my drama, and I know none of yours.”

“I’m an
orphan.”

“Really?”

He laughed. “Why
would I lie about that? Yes, but it’s not really dramatic. I had wonderful
foster parents who ended up adopting me. A few ex-girlfriends, but no terrible
heartbreaks. I worked my way through college and med school. Now I’m paying off
the loans.”

“So your whole
life has been smooth sailing? Must be nice.”

“I wouldn’t
say that. It’s been hard work, but that never hurt anyone.”

The rest of
the meal was significantly lighter. I appreciated how Jack was so even-keeled
and happy. I could feel his positivity rubbing off on me the more we were
together. He had made something of himself despite the odds. Briggs had had
everything handed to him on a silver platter, but he rejected it as I had. We
were going to show our families we didn’t need or want their money—we could
make our own—but he never had to work like Jack did. Neither did I, for that
matter. I respected what he was able to do.

We sat and
stared out at the street lights when the pizza was gone, laughing and enjoying
each other’s company. My eyes scanned the streets, windows, and pedestrians
below. It took a moment to realize what I was doing. I was looking for Aiden.
As much as I didn’t want a bodyguard, it was comforting to know he was around
all the same. I spotted his car across the street, but I couldn’t see him in
it. Jack said something I didn’t quite catch, pulling me back to the present.
It seemed like as good a time as any to ask the question that had been in the
back of my mind.

“What’s on the
ninth floor?”

Jack frowned. “I
told you. Nothing.”

“There has to
be something, or why would it be locked?” I smiled slyly.

He shook his
head. “It’s
nothing
. Just ghost stories.”

“Great, I love
ghost stories. Tell me.”

“How are you
from here and haven’t heard these stories?”

“I’m from here
in the loosest sense. I have only spent summers in Goodson Hollow since I was
seven. It isn’t like I had local friends, and my family would hardly consider
ghost stories dinner conversation.

“I don’t like
being the only one without the scoop on spooky St. Mike’s. I asked Bee and the
nurse but no one would tell me anything. So far you’re the most willing
informant I’ve found.”

“Probably
because I’m the only one who doesn’t believe it.”

“But there are
weird things that happen there. Someone called my name while I was waiting for
Bee to come back from x-ray. The closet opened and closed on its own …”

Jack’s mouth
pursed. “Normally, it’s only the seriously ill patients who hear their name
called.” He tilted his head and studied me for a moment, sending chills down my
spine. “Have you been feeling okay?”

I tried to
push the trickle of fear aside because I knew it was dumb, but it stubbornly
settled in my center. I racked my brain for any signs of illness, and Jack
started to laugh.

“Ryan, you don’t
seriously believe this stuff?”

“Just tell me
the story.”

He sighed but
began to speak in his smooth, nearly hypnotic voice. “The hospital opened
sometime around the first World War as a military hospital. Over a hundred
thousand soldiers died during the war and over two hundred thousand were
injured. The military needed somewhere for them all to go so they started
building hospitals. Well, they weren’t prepared for the amount of bodies that
came home and soon the morgue space was full, but the bodies kept coming.
Apparently the halls were lined with the deceased for days and days, even
during the hot summer months.”

I wrinkled my
nose. “Ew.”

“After that,
people started saying they heard voices and crying. Saw lights turn off and on
by themselves and things like that.”

“Well, that’s
not too bad.”

“It doesn’t
stop there. During the rest of its time as a military facility, the hospital
developed a reputation for being unlucky. The fatality rate was higher here
than anywhere else in the country. Next the hospital was sold and turned into a
mental hospital. The ninth floor housed the violent offenders. Stories started
surfacing about strange phenomena in the hospital, but mental hospitals scare
people in general so no one paid much attention. However, there was a rash of
murders and suicides on the ninth floor that it couldn’t be ignored.”

“Not terribly
surprising though, right? I mean, it was housing
violent
offenders.”

“
True
,
but this didn’t just involve patients. Death was rampant among the staff too.
Eventually the hospital was shut down, and it sat empty until sometime in the
1970s. That was when it was purchased by the Catholic Church and turned into
St. Michael’s Hospital. It was renovated and reopened. Immediately ghost rumors
and strange deaths started back up. The ninth floor was turned into the
maternity ward. SIDS skyrocketed, and it’s said every baby born on the ninth
floor between 1981 and 1986 died before their fifth birthday, but I don’t know.
In the late 80s the hospital was sold to the city, but the name stayed the
same—and administration made strict rules against talking about the haunting.”

“That is so
creepy.”

“It’s not
real.”

“How do you
know?”

“How old are
you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“So you were
born here in 1986 and you’re still alive.”

“No, my mom
wouldn’t be caught dead at a local hospital. We were all born at a
state-of-the-art hospital.”

“Well, there
were never any years in the high school that didn’t have a graduating class.”

I shrugged. “So
when did the ninth floor get locked up like Fort Knox?”

“When it was
sold. The new administration thought the legend of the floor was too strong and
that, if they closed it, people would forget and all of this nonsense would
stop.”

“Is the
fatality rate still high? Should I move Bee? What happened to her nurse? Was
she killed or was it an accident?”

Jack laughed
again. “No, you shouldn’t move her. I’m her hepatologist and I work there. I
promise it’s perfectly safe or I wouldn’t allow any of my patients to be here.
Leigh fell. It was an accident, not a ghost.”

“What about
Bee’s roommate? What happened to her?”

“I don’t know
her roommate.”

“One day Mrs.
Simpson was saying the ninth floor was the devil’s home, and practically the
next day she was dead.”

“It’s a
hospital, Ryan. People are sick. Sometimes they die.”

I shook my
head. “I know you’re right, but putting it all together makes one crazy story.”

“Yeah, but who
knows how much is true? You know how these things are. They build and grow over
time until they don’t even remotely resemble the truth.”

I leaned back
in my lawn chair, and Jack took my hand. Lights twinkled along Main Street below us, and conversations from the street drifted up through the air like
white noise. The hospital loomed on top of its hill in the distance, every
floor brightly lit except for that one void. A shiver of unease went through me
as I studied it, but I tried to fight it, tried to give myself to the sweetness
of the night air and the good company. A breeze caressed my face. I let my eyes
fall closed …

Bam! A
slamming noise rocked the balcony. I bolted upright and looked behind me into
the apartment. Jack did the same. We exchanged a glance before running inside
to investigate the sound. At first, nothing seemed out of place. Jack ran
downstairs to check the store, and I checked the closet in my bedroom. One of
the boxes I’d shoved on the top shelf had fallen to the floor and lay on its
side, split open. A couple photo albums were scattered about. I picked them up
and looked at the shelves. It didn’t seem possible that a box had fallen. .
They’d been wedged in, holding each other tightly in place.

“The store
looks fine,” Jack said from behind me, startling me enough my shoulders jerked.
He laughed. “Did I scare you?”

“Just jumpy I
guess. I think I found the culprit.” I pointed to the photo albums. “But I don’t
know how it happened.”

Jack rested
his hands on my shoulders and rubbed small circles at the base of my neck with
his thumbs. “Maybe the box was put in like that and the flaps just gave way.
You ready to finish this?”

“What?” I
looked back at him, tearing my thoughts away from the closet.

“The room. One
more coat and we’re done.”

“You’re such a
slave driver—I’m tired,” I complained lightly, smiling and letting him lead me
back to the bedroom. When the room was finished, Jack tried to talk me into
coming home with him, saying the fumes weren’t good for me, but I promised to
sleep on the couch and saw him to the door.

“Morning, Bee,” I said brightly,
feeling well-rested as I walked in carrying a bag.

“Look at you,
sunshine. What do you have?”

“A surprise.
Has the doctor been by yet?”

Bee smiled. “Only
Dr. Poe. Dr. Sadler seems to be running late—like you are this morning.” She
raised her eyebrows.