Mitt swallowed with a mild degree of difficulty, as his mouth had gone suddenly dry. While his mind went into overdrive, he stared back at this rather extraordinary housekeeping supervisor, who was not only preternaturally poised, but also seemed clairvoyant. How did she know what she knew about his ancestry, and even more astounding, how did she guess he’d been seeing a young blond girl?
“You seem shocked,” Lashonda said when Mitt remained silent and frozen like a deer caught in headlights. “Such a response suggests to me that you have indeed seen this particular phantasm, because if you hadn’t, I believe you would have responded with simple surprise and a ‘no’ rather than with the confusion you are projecting. Am I correct?”
“Yes, you are correct. I’ve seen that hallucination,” Mitt said hesitantly. It was difficult to find his voice.
“So, I would imagine that your first question will be how it is that I even suspected you might have seen this specter. Am I correct?”
“Yes,” he managed again.
“Before I answer your question let me explain something to you that I realized when our eyes briefly met up on the fifteenth floor. You and I share certain unique traits and abilities, which can be seen as either a burden or a benefit depending on your point of view. As young as you are, you might not totally appreciate your unique capabilities, but I would be shocked if you didn’t have some idea. I know I didn’t fully recognize mine until I was well into my thirties, and even then it took someone else similarly endowed to clue me in, which I mean to do to you. Are you with me?”
“I guess,” Mitt said with continued confusion.
“What I imagine is that you are already aware you can occasionally predict the future, not all the time, but at least often enough to recognize it when it happens. Am I correct?”
Mitt merely nodded. Once again, he was taken aback by Lashonda’s insight. He’d never discussed his prognostic abilities with anyone.
“And more important, you can sense now and then what people are generally thinking. Or at least you have an idea of what they are thinking, and when it happens you experience a kind of tingling. Is this true?”
“It is true.”
“And what do you sense I’m thinking right now?”
“I sense that you’re worried I am somehow in danger.”
“Bravo! Exactly. And that is true, which is my real motivation for wanting to talk with you. Now, the answer to your question is simple. I, too, see her, not often but often enough. I see other visions, too, but most consistently the girl.”
Mitt sat up straighter in his chair. It seemed incredible! He’d been wondering if anyone else had seen the girl and now he knew. But then the problem was that if she could also see the child, could he still call it a hallucination? From his general understanding, a hallucination was a product of an individual’s mind and certainly not the product of several minds.
“Do you think we are seeing the same girl?” Mitt asked.
“Without doubt,” Lashonda said with absolute assuredness. “You didn’t challenge any of my descriptions.”
“True,” Mitt admitted. She had a point.
“And I could describe the dress with even more accuracy if it will convince you. I said an old-fashioned dress. What I meant is what they used to call a shirtwaist dress, with puffy sleeves and a Peter Pan collar.”
“I’m not sure what a Peter Pan collar is.”
“It’s a flat collar, fairly broad, mostly with rounded ends. It’s still used today but it was even more common back in the 1940s, as I learned when I looked it up.”
“That sounds like what I remember, although I have to admit, each time I’ve seen her I wasn’t so concerned about her dress. I was completely taken aback by seeing her at all.”
“That’s understandable. The first time I saw her, I’m sure I didn’t notice much detail. But what about the surgical instrument? It’s a critical observation.”
“I did notice the instrument,” Mitt said. “In fact, she pointed it at me.”
“She actually pointed it at you? Are you sure?”
“I don’t know if I’m sure. That was my impression at the time,” Mitt said with a shrug. “But maybe she was just trying to show it to me. How can I know? Again, I was overwhelmed by just seeing her. I’m sure there were other details that I missed entirely from shock. What’s impressed me the times I’ve seen her is how consistent the apparition is.”
“The reason she is consistent is that she is a real ghost.”
“What on earth do you mean, a ‘real ghost’? Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Lashonda said with conviction. “A ‘real ghost’ is the soul or spirit of a specific dead person, not just an illusory likeness of a human being.”
“Let me understand you,” Mitt said, trying to organize his thoughts. “So you believe this blond girl apparition was a living, breathing person at one time?”
“I don’t just believe it, I know it,” Lashonda said. But then she looked down at Mitt’s plate and nodded toward it. “I see you are not eating. I don’t mean to interrupt your meal.”
Mitt glanced down at his roast chicken. He’d almost forgotten it was there.
“Please eat!” Lashonda said. “You must be hungry or you wouldn’t be here. We can continue our discussion while you do, as I have a lot more that I need to say to you.”
“All right,” Mitt said. He was flustered but wanted to be agreeable, as he was desperate to hear more. “But you aren’t eating, either. I’ll eat if you eat.”
“Fair enough,” Lashonda said.
They both picked up their respective knives and forks and began to eat. While Mitt did so, he found himself overwhelmed by everything Lashonda had already said and was brimming with questions, most important about the blond girl having been a real person and not just a random phantasm. After just a couple of bites, which he swallowed with observable difficulty, he put his utensils down and sat back in his chair.
“I’m not as hungry as I thought I was,” he said. “Would you mind if we continued our discussion?”
“Not at all! Whatever suits you, but I’m going to continue to eat if that’s okay.”
“Of course,” Mitt said. “But before we get back to it, let me ask you a personal question. I don’t mean to sound condescending, so I apologize if I do, but by your manner of speaking and word choice, you sound like a mental health professional rather than a housekeeping supervisor. Are you both?”
Lashonda smiled as she took a bite of chicken and chewed it thoughtfully. “I don’t think of your question as condescending in the slightest. Thanks to both my parents being long-term employees of Bellevue Hospital, I was able to go to City College on scholarship. My major was psychology, which I enjoyed and undoubtedly colors my speech. After finishing college, I still followed my family’s tradition and came back here to work at Bellevue Hospital. My mother had been the night-shift housekeeping supervisor for many years. I ended up taking over from her, bless her soul.”
“Does that mean she is no longer with us?”
“It does. She passed away four years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, but life goes on.”
“Which brings me back to the blond girl,” Mitt said. “You said that you know she was a real person. How do you know that?”
“Not only do I know she was a real person, I even know what her name was. It was Charlene Wagner.”
Once again, Lashonda had startled Mitt enough to cause him to lose his train of thought. He’d had in mind to challenge whatever it was that she was going to say, never suspecting she’d come up with an actual name.