When she awoke the following morning, Taylor honestly couldn’t remember where she was. The bed was strange, and for a fleeting moment, she thought that she had gotten hopelessly drunk and had a one-night stand – the lack of hangover wasn’t because she hadn’t, as she was one the lucky few who didn’t get them. Matters weren’t helped when Marty stuck his head around the door.
“Good. You’re up.”
“Um… where am I?” she asked, rather sheepishly. She was still fully clothed, which was a blessing.
Marty smiled coyly. “Don’t remember last night, huh?”
And then it all came flooding back. The last time she’d been that emotionally drained she couldn’t remember anything was about three years ago when she’d stayed up for three days straight comforting a friend who had had a miscarriage.
Taylor sighed, “Sorry, the last couple of days really took it out of me.”
“And that’s why I’m taking you out for breakfast.”
“Marty, that’s very nice of you, but the only clothes I have to wear are the ones I slept in,” Taylor pointed out.
Marty smiled, “Come on. You can spare an hour on your way back home. I’m buying – you won’t hear that offer very often – and then, I’ll even walk you home.”
And that was how, four hours later, Taylor and Marty were sitting in a small diner, just around the corner from the precinct, having moved on from breakfast – no bacon, of course – to drinking cups of coffee. They had talked about everything – where they had grown up (Taylor on the west coast, on the California side of the California/Mexico, and Marty in New Jersey), to sports, religion and politics – the three topics that should be avoided. And whilst they had their differences, it turned out they had a lot in common.
Which brought Taylor to the topic of ghosts. He was the first person, strangely enough, she finally felt comfortable and relaxed around enough to talk to.
“Tell me your first time.” To anyone else, the first time could have referred to… well, just about anything, but Marty understood.
“I had just started my ER rotation when a young man came in with a GSW – a gunshot wound.”
Taylor nodded. She already knew what a GSW was, but she didn’t want to interrupt him.
“He was twenty-four, on his way home from work to his wife and new-born daughter, and got caught up in gang shootout. We did everything we could, but the nurse gave him the wrong dosage of a drug, and he died. At the time, we thought it was because I had cracked a rib, ad punctured his other lung.”
By the look on his face, it was clear to Taylor he was never going to forget that.
“I was cleaning up his body so that his wife could see him, when he appeared.”
“What did you think? When you saw him, I mean,” Taylor asked.
“I wasn’t scared. But then again, I didn’t think I’d seen a ghost.” He paused and waited for the waitress to refill their umpteenth cup of coffee, before continuing. “I was on my 57th hour and had just killed someone – I thought I was hallucinating.” He chuckled to himself, “The second time I saw one, I went and scheduled myself a CAT scan.”
“If I actually had time in my life, I would have done so myself. Flack spent that much time telling me I needed to see a psychiatrist, I almost convinced myself of that too. He still tells me I need to get my head checked out,” she frowned. “He knows, but he doesn’t believe. All of Mac’s team knows, but other than Stella and Sheldon, they don’t believe either. I’m not actually sure how much they believe me, though. They’re all too scientifically influenced.”
“Hawkes believes in ghosts?” Marty asked in disbelief.
Taylor nodded, “Thinks he saw one in the morgue.”
Marty burst out laughing, “That was me! It was three months after 9/11 and they were still recovering bodies. The ghost of one was telling me how he’d died, so I was sneaking around. Hawkes caught me, but he didn’t have his glasses on, and he was still half asleep.”
Taylor joined him in laughing, “Sheldon did mention something about the ghost wearing white. Oh dear.”
“So how about you? What’s the story with your first ghost?”
Taylor leant forward and began telling him the story. She was just telling him about how Rebecca had appeared at the funeral when Marty noticed someone behind Taylor and waved.
Taylor turned around to find Flack and Danny making their way over. She turned back to Marty and rolled her eyes. He smiled back at her as the two detectives arrived at their booth.
“What are you doing up at this hour Pinot?” asked Danny, as he slid in next to Taylor.
“Enjoying a cup of coffee with a beautiful lady.”
Danny chuckled, “You shown her your Porsche, yet?”
“Weren’t you wearing that outfit yesterday? Flack asked Taylor, as Marty laughed.
Taylor nodded, “I haven’t been home yet.”
“You work fast,” Danny said to Marty, earning him a swipe from Taylor.
“I slept in the Morgue.”
Danny chuckled. “What, you don’t get enough of dead bodies as it is?”
Taylor sighed, “No, I just didn’t want to go home.”
Danny looked over at Marty who gently shook his head. Danny nodded back, “I heard what you did on the Darius case,” he said to Taylor, who was stirring her spoon around a nearly empty cup of coffee. “It was brave of you.”
“It was stupid of you,” Flack blurted out.
Taylor snapped her head up, “Well forgive me for saving a girl’s life. If you people actually stopped thinking I was crazy for long enough to listen to what I’m saying, I would have let the people trained to use a gun, do so.”
“Did you come and find me?” Flack retorted.
“I tried! But even if I had, you wouldn’t have believed me! You never do – what was going to make you start then?” she accused him.
“No, I wouldn’t have believed your crazy talk, but I would have damn well stopped you from going out there. You saw what he did to everyone else he met – he would have done the same thing to you without even thinking twice.”
“And he would have done the same thing to Sarah,” Taylor pointed out, angrily. “Those ghosts came to me, because they knew that I would help!”
“THERE ARE NO SUCH THINGS AS GHOSTS!” roared Flack.
Danny was up like a shot, “We should get going,” he said, before Taylor could leap across the table and strangle him – which it looked like she was about to do. “I’ll see you at the court on Saturday, Marty,” he threw over his shoulder as he marched a fuming Flack out past a dozen staring customers.
Taylor threw herself back in her chair letting out an exasperated grunt, “I cannot stand him!”
Marty looked at her scowling face and laughed, “Well he certainly feels the opposite.”
“Huh?” Taylor stared blankly at him.
“Talking as a man who has met quite a few jealous boyfriends, I can tell that he likes you.”
“Yeah, would like me locked up,” said Taylor, rolling her eyes.
“Uh huh, and answer me this – how many men that don’t like you would notice you were wearing the same clothes?”
Taylor pulled a face. “He’s a detective. He’s supposed to notice things like that.”
“Right, so why was he getting so worried about you getting hurt?”
Taylor snorted, “Probably because he doesn’t want to fill in a mountain of paperwork when I wind up getting killed.”
Marty laughed, “Alright, then, why did his face practically turn green when you told him you hadn’t been home yet?”
“Look, Marty, the guy does not like me, and I sure as hell find that banging my head against a wall is far more satisfying than talking to him.”
“They say the best relationships have fire in them.”
Taylor laughed at him, “Not that much fire. Trust me, nothing will ever happen between us. I think we would kill each other before that happens.”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Like what?” Taylor asked him, disbelievingly.
“Seeing ghosts?” Marty suggested, simply.
Taylor rolled her eyes, “Completely different, Marty.”
“I tell you what, I think that by the end of the year, you and Don will be in a relationship.”
“That’s like, seven months away.”
“Scared I’m going to be right?” he asked her, wiggling his eyebrows.
“Puh-lease,” rolling her eyes at him. “There’s about as much chance as me giving, I dunno, Lindsey, a lap dance.”
“Just make sure you have a camera handy, because that is something I would like to see,” he told her, a huge grin on his face.
“Now that you have successfully managed to lower the tone, I think I should get going. I have a deadline to meet.”
Marty got to his feet, “Firstly, you were the one that mentioned the lap dance, not me – so you lowered the tone, secondly, I said I would walk you, and I will.”
Taylor laughed and allowed him to walk her out, and the few blocks to her apartment building. She said goodbye and walked into her apartment. She hit the play button on her voicemail and dropped onto her couch. There were sixteen missed calls – nine from her mother, five from Maddy, and two from her editor. She sighed and grabbed the phone, deciding to return Maddy’s call first.
She answered on the first ring, “So you are alive.”
“Hi Maddy.”
“Don’t “hi Maddy” me. You abandoned me in the middle of a café, after practically throwing a cup of coffee over me. The stain still won’t come out.”
Taylor sighed, “I gave you that top. It was a freebe from the paper.”
“So not the point!
“No, you’re right,” Taylor agreed.
“So? What happened to you?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Taylor, you are talking to the girl who helped you consume an entire bottle of tequila after you’d been dumped by that jerk you were seeing on your technical writing course. The same friend who didn’t laugh when you told her you had a thing for Alec Baldwin, and the same friend who broke into the principal’s office, back in high school when you had a hunch he was lifting money from the new pool fund.”
“Firstly, it was you that brought the tequila around, secondly, I only thought he was cute in Beetlejuice – you are the one who is obsessed with Michael Douglas, and thirdly, I was right about that hunch!” She groaned, “All right, but you will think I’m crazy. I’ve been… seeing ghosts. They ask me to help them.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
“Maddy? You there?”
“You’re right, you need to see a shrink.”
“Yeah, that’s what Flack keeps telling me.”
She could almost see Maddy’s ears perk up, “Who’s Flack?”
“Don’t get excited. He’s only the most annoying detective in the NYPD.”
“Is he cute?”
“Flack?” Taylor frowned. “Well… I… I guess. I hadn’t thought about him that way.”
“You so like him,” Maddy accused.
“Ugh, now you sound like Marty?”
This time, she heard the phone clunk as it hit the floor, “Marty?” Maddy asked as soon as she picked the phone back up.
Taylor smiled, “Now, he is cute. He’s an ME. But he seems like a bit of a player, to me.”
“Who cares? He’s a doctor, and he’s cute.” Taylor rolled her eyes – Maddy had a one track mind. “Who else have you been working with?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it working with. But there’s Danny and Mac.”
“Are they cute too?”
Taylor laughed, “Well, you wouldn’t kick them out of bed. Having said that, you wouldn’t kick many men out of bed.”
“Taylor, you know as well as I do that there is nothing wrong with a healthy sex life. You’re just jealous because I’m getting it, and you’re not.”
“Judging from this conversation, I’d beg to differ. How’s Pete?”
“You remembered?”
“Yeah.” She settled back into the chair. Suddenly, everything felt like it was going to be alright.
“Good. You’re up.”
“Um… where am I?” she asked, rather sheepishly. She was still fully clothed, which was a blessing.
Marty smiled coyly. “Don’t remember last night, huh?”
And then it all came flooding back. The last time she’d been that emotionally drained she couldn’t remember anything was about three years ago when she’d stayed up for three days straight comforting a friend who had had a miscarriage.
Taylor sighed, “Sorry, the last couple of days really took it out of me.”
“And that’s why I’m taking you out for breakfast.”
“Marty, that’s very nice of you, but the only clothes I have to wear are the ones I slept in,” Taylor pointed out.
Marty smiled, “Come on. You can spare an hour on your way back home. I’m buying – you won’t hear that offer very often – and then, I’ll even walk you home.”
And that was how, four hours later, Taylor and Marty were sitting in a small diner, just around the corner from the precinct, having moved on from breakfast – no bacon, of course – to drinking cups of coffee. They had talked about everything – where they had grown up (Taylor on the west coast, on the California side of the California/Mexico, and Marty in New Jersey), to sports, religion and politics – the three topics that should be avoided. And whilst they had their differences, it turned out they had a lot in common.
Which brought Taylor to the topic of ghosts. He was the first person, strangely enough, she finally felt comfortable and relaxed around enough to talk to.
“Tell me your first time.” To anyone else, the first time could have referred to… well, just about anything, but Marty understood.
“I had just started my ER rotation when a young man came in with a GSW – a gunshot wound.”
Taylor nodded. She already knew what a GSW was, but she didn’t want to interrupt him.
“He was twenty-four, on his way home from work to his wife and new-born daughter, and got caught up in gang shootout. We did everything we could, but the nurse gave him the wrong dosage of a drug, and he died. At the time, we thought it was because I had cracked a rib, ad punctured his other lung.”
By the look on his face, it was clear to Taylor he was never going to forget that.
“I was cleaning up his body so that his wife could see him, when he appeared.”
“What did you think? When you saw him, I mean,” Taylor asked.
“I wasn’t scared. But then again, I didn’t think I’d seen a ghost.” He paused and waited for the waitress to refill their umpteenth cup of coffee, before continuing. “I was on my 57th hour and had just killed someone – I thought I was hallucinating.” He chuckled to himself, “The second time I saw one, I went and scheduled myself a CAT scan.”
“If I actually had time in my life, I would have done so myself. Flack spent that much time telling me I needed to see a psychiatrist, I almost convinced myself of that too. He still tells me I need to get my head checked out,” she frowned. “He knows, but he doesn’t believe. All of Mac’s team knows, but other than Stella and Sheldon, they don’t believe either. I’m not actually sure how much they believe me, though. They’re all too scientifically influenced.”
“Hawkes believes in ghosts?” Marty asked in disbelief.
Taylor nodded, “Thinks he saw one in the morgue.”
Marty burst out laughing, “That was me! It was three months after 9/11 and they were still recovering bodies. The ghost of one was telling me how he’d died, so I was sneaking around. Hawkes caught me, but he didn’t have his glasses on, and he was still half asleep.”
Taylor joined him in laughing, “Sheldon did mention something about the ghost wearing white. Oh dear.”
“So how about you? What’s the story with your first ghost?”
Taylor leant forward and began telling him the story. She was just telling him about how Rebecca had appeared at the funeral when Marty noticed someone behind Taylor and waved.
Taylor turned around to find Flack and Danny making their way over. She turned back to Marty and rolled her eyes. He smiled back at her as the two detectives arrived at their booth.
“What are you doing up at this hour Pinot?” asked Danny, as he slid in next to Taylor.
“Enjoying a cup of coffee with a beautiful lady.”
Danny chuckled, “You shown her your Porsche, yet?”
“Weren’t you wearing that outfit yesterday? Flack asked Taylor, as Marty laughed.
Taylor nodded, “I haven’t been home yet.”
“You work fast,” Danny said to Marty, earning him a swipe from Taylor.
“I slept in the Morgue.”
Danny chuckled. “What, you don’t get enough of dead bodies as it is?”
Taylor sighed, “No, I just didn’t want to go home.”
Danny looked over at Marty who gently shook his head. Danny nodded back, “I heard what you did on the Darius case,” he said to Taylor, who was stirring her spoon around a nearly empty cup of coffee. “It was brave of you.”
“It was stupid of you,” Flack blurted out.
Taylor snapped her head up, “Well forgive me for saving a girl’s life. If you people actually stopped thinking I was crazy for long enough to listen to what I’m saying, I would have let the people trained to use a gun, do so.”
“Did you come and find me?” Flack retorted.
“I tried! But even if I had, you wouldn’t have believed me! You never do – what was going to make you start then?” she accused him.
“No, I wouldn’t have believed your crazy talk, but I would have damn well stopped you from going out there. You saw what he did to everyone else he met – he would have done the same thing to you without even thinking twice.”
“And he would have done the same thing to Sarah,” Taylor pointed out, angrily. “Those ghosts came to me, because they knew that I would help!”
“THERE ARE NO SUCH THINGS AS GHOSTS!” roared Flack.
Danny was up like a shot, “We should get going,” he said, before Taylor could leap across the table and strangle him – which it looked like she was about to do. “I’ll see you at the court on Saturday, Marty,” he threw over his shoulder as he marched a fuming Flack out past a dozen staring customers.
Taylor threw herself back in her chair letting out an exasperated grunt, “I cannot stand him!”
Marty looked at her scowling face and laughed, “Well he certainly feels the opposite.”
“Huh?” Taylor stared blankly at him.
“Talking as a man who has met quite a few jealous boyfriends, I can tell that he likes you.”
“Yeah, would like me locked up,” said Taylor, rolling her eyes.
“Uh huh, and answer me this – how many men that don’t like you would notice you were wearing the same clothes?”
Taylor pulled a face. “He’s a detective. He’s supposed to notice things like that.”
“Right, so why was he getting so worried about you getting hurt?”
Taylor snorted, “Probably because he doesn’t want to fill in a mountain of paperwork when I wind up getting killed.”
Marty laughed, “Alright, then, why did his face practically turn green when you told him you hadn’t been home yet?”
“Look, Marty, the guy does not like me, and I sure as hell find that banging my head against a wall is far more satisfying than talking to him.”
“They say the best relationships have fire in them.”
Taylor laughed at him, “Not that much fire. Trust me, nothing will ever happen between us. I think we would kill each other before that happens.”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Like what?” Taylor asked him, disbelievingly.
“Seeing ghosts?” Marty suggested, simply.
Taylor rolled her eyes, “Completely different, Marty.”
“I tell you what, I think that by the end of the year, you and Don will be in a relationship.”
“That’s like, seven months away.”
“Scared I’m going to be right?” he asked her, wiggling his eyebrows.
“Puh-lease,” rolling her eyes at him. “There’s about as much chance as me giving, I dunno, Lindsey, a lap dance.”
“Just make sure you have a camera handy, because that is something I would like to see,” he told her, a huge grin on his face.
“Now that you have successfully managed to lower the tone, I think I should get going. I have a deadline to meet.”
Marty got to his feet, “Firstly, you were the one that mentioned the lap dance, not me – so you lowered the tone, secondly, I said I would walk you, and I will.”
Taylor laughed and allowed him to walk her out, and the few blocks to her apartment building. She said goodbye and walked into her apartment. She hit the play button on her voicemail and dropped onto her couch. There were sixteen missed calls – nine from her mother, five from Maddy, and two from her editor. She sighed and grabbed the phone, deciding to return Maddy’s call first.
She answered on the first ring, “So you are alive.”
“Hi Maddy.”
“Don’t “hi Maddy” me. You abandoned me in the middle of a café, after practically throwing a cup of coffee over me. The stain still won’t come out.”
Taylor sighed, “I gave you that top. It was a freebe from the paper.”
“So not the point!
“No, you’re right,” Taylor agreed.
“So? What happened to you?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Taylor, you are talking to the girl who helped you consume an entire bottle of tequila after you’d been dumped by that jerk you were seeing on your technical writing course. The same friend who didn’t laugh when you told her you had a thing for Alec Baldwin, and the same friend who broke into the principal’s office, back in high school when you had a hunch he was lifting money from the new pool fund.”
“Firstly, it was you that brought the tequila around, secondly, I only thought he was cute in Beetlejuice – you are the one who is obsessed with Michael Douglas, and thirdly, I was right about that hunch!” She groaned, “All right, but you will think I’m crazy. I’ve been… seeing ghosts. They ask me to help them.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
“Maddy? You there?”
“You’re right, you need to see a shrink.”
“Yeah, that’s what Flack keeps telling me.”
She could almost see Maddy’s ears perk up, “Who’s Flack?”
“Don’t get excited. He’s only the most annoying detective in the NYPD.”
“Is he cute?”
“Flack?” Taylor frowned. “Well… I… I guess. I hadn’t thought about him that way.”
“You so like him,” Maddy accused.
“Ugh, now you sound like Marty?”
This time, she heard the phone clunk as it hit the floor, “Marty?” Maddy asked as soon as she picked the phone back up.
Taylor smiled, “Now, he is cute. He’s an ME. But he seems like a bit of a player, to me.”
“Who cares? He’s a doctor, and he’s cute.” Taylor rolled her eyes – Maddy had a one track mind. “Who else have you been working with?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it working with. But there’s Danny and Mac.”
“Are they cute too?”
Taylor laughed, “Well, you wouldn’t kick them out of bed. Having said that, you wouldn’t kick many men out of bed.”
“Taylor, you know as well as I do that there is nothing wrong with a healthy sex life. You’re just jealous because I’m getting it, and you’re not.”
“Judging from this conversation, I’d beg to differ. How’s Pete?”
“You remembered?”
“Yeah.” She settled back into the chair. Suddenly, everything felt like it was going to be alright.
Originally posted: 19/05/2006