Chapter 4

Tammy floated off the tabletop settling into the chair next to me, putting her arm around my shoulder, as I shook my bowed head. I looked over to her, my eyes still shedding tears.

"If only we could have saved her," I cried. "She was calling out to us and we could do nothing.

"Now she's dead."

Exhausted, I uttered, "We could have helped her."

Then I felt a sharp pinch in my right side. As I rubbed where it hurt I flinched and said, "Ouch!"

"What's the matter?" asked Tammy.

"I don't know. I just got a very sharp pain in my right side. It's fading now, but something hurt me."

Marilyn leaned over toward me onto the side of the conference table saying, "You're face is a little pale. Something's happened to you."

"I'm a ghost," I thought. "Aren't I supposed to be pale?"

Well, that brought the proverbial house down. All of my friends broke out laughing. Through their mirth I muttered, "You'd think I'd be getting used to you all being able to read my mind or at least find a way to keep some of my thoughts private."

"Sure can be done," said Valerie. "But it takes practice and it's lots of work."

"Yeah, I'm still a fledgling at all of this," I admitted once again.

Rubbing my right side, trying to drive away the last of the dull ache the pain had become, I added, "I wonder if they've started another transplant?"

"That's the impression I'm getting," commented Stacey. "I got a similar feeling when they opened me up so they could put yours in me.

"First I felt a sharp pain. Then it rapidly shifted to a dull pain as it faded. Just like what you said just happened to you."

With that admission from Stacey, I remembered when I was leaning over the operating table watching the surgeon open me up, I'd felt a similar pain. I'd ignored it back then and I remember it had faded quite fast.

Aside from the dull pain I felt, I sensed being pulled away from the conference room and my new friends. Marilyn piped up, "See you in a few."

I smiled at her. As I was trying to say, "Guess so," the conference room faded from view and the operating room materialized in front of me.

I had to have misted from my friends and I wound up floating above the table. There I was laying on it in all my hooked up glory.

From the position of the surgeon operating on me, I figured the transplant recipient was getting my other kidney. I wondered how long it would be before I would meet a new Spirit.

As that thought crossed through my mind, a nurse leaned forward toward the surgeon. She carefully took my kidney, wrapped it in a sterile towel. Placing it in a red cooler marked, "Transplant Organ" she smiled and dashed out of the room.

I stayed for a moment, gazing down at myself, listening to the hum of the machinery hooked up to what was left of my earthly presence. I could almost feel the pulsing of the heart pump they had attached me. Tubes were everywhere. Except for the gaping hole in my forehead, I looked at peace.

I guess I was now at peace with my new existence: Being dead and traveling from place to place, sans body.

"Strange," I mused. "All this goes on around the living all the time. So little do they know."

As I thought about it, "Perhaps it's best that way," crossed my mind. Then there was a bright flash and I was standing in another operating theater as its door swung open. My kidney had arrived at its new destination.