Sadie’s Spirit

Above the tree line, the setting sun shone in brilliant pinks and oranges. When she looked down at her body again, she saw her hooded attacker standing over her. She couldn’t see his face under the hoodie he wore. He appeared to be robbing her, rummaging through her over-the-shoulder sack and checking the pockets of her olive hiking pants. She felt violated, even though she was no longer inside her body.

The sight stunned her. As a critical care physician, she had seen many corpses. The mortality rate of patients in the intensive care unit was over thirty per cent. Death was part of life; no one reached the end of the road alive. But she had wanted to achieve so much more in life, and thirty-two was too young. Her career had been in its infancy and was beginning to blossom.

Now what? Wander as a ghost forever, or is there a better place to go?

As Sadie floated higher, a about of nausea struck her. Her fear of heights threw her into a panic. Her irrational phobia had made no sense in life and made even less sense in death.

She hyperventilated if indeed it were possible for a ghost to do so. Flailing her arms and legs, she tried to swim through the air, to descend. Glimpses of a distant memory bombarded her: a small swinging box high in the air on a hot summer’s day. As she and her mom rocked in the Ferris wheel, Sadie clutched the safety bar with a white-knuckled grip. Due to an equipment failure, they had been stuck at the peak of the wheel, trapped in a box suspended more than two hundred feet up in the air.

As Sadie eased her spirit back down to earth, her panic slowly subsided. Her feet made contact with the paved road—solid and secure. She understood what it truly meant to be grounded.

She looked around at her surroundings as dusk fell. The forest was gone, replaced by a suburban landscape. The street and houses looked familiar.

Mom’s house!